Ethan Hawke on How It Was the Right Time To Make ‘Blue Moon’ with Director Richard Linklater [VIDEO INTERVIEW]
When you sit down to chat with actor Ethan Hawke, your mind expands to the endless intellectual roads he could take you down within a conversation. In my first interview with the Oscar nominated, Texan born thespian, we spoke about his work behind the camera for the mini-series The Last Movie Stars, a documentary about the fascinating lives of married actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. To be honest, I was a bit nervous to speak to Hawke as not only was this an in-person interview, but this was a man that I’ve grown up with, watching his movies like Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, The Before Trilogy, Training Day, Gattaca, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, and Boyhood; all films that made a profound impact on my life, especially the last film, as a young boy growing up in South Texas with divorce parents, Boyhood hits close to home. Within the nerves and build up for the interview, my time with him was a blur at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival, but when I read back the transcript of our time together, I was struck by the profound love, care, attention to detail he had for his subject matter, as well as the optimism within his profession and the world; a rare thing to hear these days.
In the three years since that discussion, Hawke has continued to stay busy, as he’s appeared in three television series, including FX’s The Lowdown that just premiered this Fall, and starred in several successful films including The Northman, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Raymond & Ray, Leave the World Behind, and this year’s Black Phone 2. He’s also directed a feature film, Wildcat, which starred his daughter Maya Hawke and was produced by his wife Ryan Hawke, as well as stepped behind the camera for Highway 99: A Double Album, another documentary about country music singer Merle Haggard, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year where Hawke received the Silver Medallion for his incredible work throughout his career, including his latest performance in Blue Moon. In his latest film with longtime collaborator Richard Linklater, Hawke plays Lorenz Hart, the acclaimed American lyricist and half of the Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. The film takes place over the course of an evening that would change Hart’s life forever, as the musical Oklahoma! has debuted to massive acclaim and the Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein era begins. In their review out of the Berlin Film Festival, our own Connor Lightbody said Hawke “transformed into Lorenz” and plays “the character as if he is in a near permanent sense of arousal, like a puppy who can’t stop humping anything in sight but will pine when he gets told off;” it’s a masterful performance that ranks as one of the best of the actor’s career.
In my latest conversation with Hawke, we break down his relationship and friendship with Linklater, why they thought this was the right time to make it, and how time is the ultimate theme found in their stories over the last thirty years. We also spoke about how it took them nearly a decade to complete the project, his curiosity in playing artists, working with Blue Moon’s ensemble, memorizing all the film’s zippy dialogue, and his thoughts on the current state of independent cinema. While he plays someone in Blue Moon who made timeless songs that stood for generations, Hawke seems to be continue to move forward, working at a pace that defies time, exploring, with Linklater and others, the interesting figures found in our culture, and doing this, in my opinion, becoming one himself.
Blue Moon is in select theaters from Sony Pictures Classics.
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