"Do You Wanna Put Your Hands In My Mouth?" Daniel Radcliffe Asks Paul Dano

"I sort of don't want to perpetuate a rumour that he can. Are you making a joke or is that out there? Because I tried to start that rumour." The rumour is that Daniel Radcliffe, as Manny in Swiss Army Man, can fart on command. "I said that joking, I sort of said that deadpan jokingly in a few interviews now, so I'll, yeah..." Is it true? "I can't answer that... Shit. It's funny," Dano laughs.

Paul Dano has retreated inside after playing a game of basketball on a "beautiful" evening in New York. He's about to cook dinner with his girlfriend, Zoe Kazan, his Ruby Sparks co-star, but takes time out to talk to The Music about the DANIELS' "farting corpse movie", Swiss Army Man, which premiered earlier this year at Sundance.

But the film is more than just an hour-and-a-half fart joke. Dano plays Hank, a desperate man marooned on an island. Just as Hank is about to commit suicide, having given up hope of rescue, a very flatulent corpse, who Hank later dubs Manny, washes up on the shore. The magical corpse becomes both a tool and companion for Hank as he journeys home, Hank teaching the speaking, singing, and still farting corpse the facts of life, and learning a few things himself.

"They wanted to make a film where the first fart makes you laugh and the last fart makes you cry."

"What the directors said to me that really resonated was that they wanted to make a film where the first fart makes you laugh and the last fart makes you cry," Dano says. "I think there's a lot in the film, and I think there's many things it's about, and that's something that I really love about it is just sort of how much emotion and energy and absurdity and beauty and ugliness and all of that is in there. But what I got from it myself was, y'know I think being in the woods and playing make-believe and singing this sort of beautiful music, and really abandoning yourself to absurdity, and risking a lot, and putting yourself out there emotionally as well, I felt like I was very in touch with a young part of myself. And so I think there's something in the spirit of the film, in the joy of the film and in the creativity of the film that really gave something back to me in terms of still like playing and having fun.

"We knew we were exploring something: the idea that shame can prevent us from love or from being ourselves, and how lonely the modern world can be, and how important real connection is.

"We want people to leave the theatre with a smile on the face. I think that the movie is in some ways about something sort of sad, but it's transcended by love and joy. A guy learns to be himself, and learns to... hopefully, he's going to be able to reenter the world. I suppose there's many things and I hope that everybody gets their own thing out of it. Our director Daniel Scheinert said something nice the other day. He said this is sort of an olive branch from weirdos to closet weirdos. I like that the film addresses things that we all do but somehow hide. There's so many parts of ourselves that we hide in life and in the world. I'm not sure that always make sense and it certainly doesn't to a kid. So when they ask - like a Manny - why would you not do that, it's very hard to explain. And the answer's not always good. We're all still learning to always be ourselves, and I think that's a good thing."

Swiss Army Man is Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's — collectively DANIELS — first feature-length film, the pair known for creating the video clip for DJ Snake and Lil Jon's Turn Down For What, as well as for their innovative short film collaborations. "I was a fan of the Daniels already," says Dano. "And I had actually, the first time I saw their music video of Turn Down For What I thought 'Whatever juice those guys are drinking, I want some,' and I watched everything I could find of theirs online."

Dano noticed that Kwan and Scheinert were working at the Sundance Institute's Directors and Screenwriters Labs - and coincidentally about a week later was sent the Swiss Army Man script. "I think I knew on like page two or three when my character rides the dead body like a farting human jet ski across the ocean that I was going to do it, because I thought that image alone was so funny and absurd, which made it kind of beautiful as well. It was something that was like the kind of thing I wanted to tell people about."

The farting human jet ski scene ended up being one of Dano's favourites to film: "When we got to that scene, which was the third week of our shoot, that was a culmination of something. I was so excited by that, it was like just an image in my mind and it couldn't have been more fun to film. There was a boogie board and then Daniel Radcliffe laying on top of the boogie board, me straddling him, and then a speedboat pulling us. And singing at the top of my lungs."

And that's only the beginning of the intimacy shared between Radcliffe and Dano. Both Dano and his girlfriend Kazan have now kissed Radcliffe, Kazan playing opposite Radcliffe in romcom What If. And Dano has kissed Radcliffe's girlfriend Erin Darke, in Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy. When asked about working alongside Radcliffe, Dano describes every day working on the film as "crossing a new barrier of intimacy". "After talking for about an hour, he was like 'Do you wanna put your hands in my mouth? Should we start sort of like getting used to this kind of stuff?' And I was like 'Yeah, well, y'know, I think we can wait a little bit.' He was ready to go. It was super intimate. Obviously I spent five weeks carrying him around. He's a joy to work with. He's balls out and committed and super sweet. That was kind of par for the course on this show. Every day was something. The grossest thing to me was when there's water coming out of his mouth into a cup and I had to drink it. We had this hose rigged up that went around his ear and into his mouth, and I could see the water sitting in his mouth."