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The State of Ethan Hawke
November 30, 2007

Conducting Q&A’s with film actor and director types is a more-or-less casual affair, particularly if the interviews take place on the telephone. My recent 10-minute conversation with actor/director Ethan Hawke was certainly that—and more. I was in my office and he was on his cell phone, and I found that our frequently overlapping conversation about The Hottest State (ThinkFilm, Street: Dec. 4), Hawke’s 2007 directorial

debut based on his own 1997 novel, was one of the most casual and free-form chats I’ve had with an actor or director in quite a while. And it all began right after a polite young lady from Hawke’s office connected the two of us and informed me that, “Laurence, you’re on with Ethan.”  

 

VB: Hey Ethan, how are you doing?

HAWKE: I’m doing very well, thanks. Where am I talking to right now?

VB: I’m on 26^th and Park. I think you’re near me.

HAWKE: Yeah, I’m literally right up the block. I’m walking down 21^st Street and I’m about to walk into my house. In Chelsea.

VB: Well, thanks for taking the time to talk for a couple of minutes. From what I’ve been reading and hearing, you’ve been a busy guy, lately.

HAWKE: Yeah, but that’s how my profession works. It’s strange—you work on these projects and sometimes they take years to come to a boil and then they all come to a boil at the same moment. You have to run with it.

VB: I’m assuming The Hottest State is the one that’s been simmering the longest and is the most recent one to boil. It’s based on your own novel, you directed it, and you have a role in it, too.

HAWKE: Well, to say that it’s a personal film is to be redundant. To be honest, I’m embarrassed about all the different hats I wear in it, but there’s something wonderful about it, too.

VB: What’s to be embarrassed about? It means a lot to you—you wanted to make a movie, you got a chance to do it…

HAWKE: I think it’s a kind of throwback to the kinds of movies I grew up loving. It’s like All That Jazz or something like that. I just love those kind of uber-personal films. You try to take some kind of emotional truth form your own life and tell a story with it. The idea being that if you can tell the truth, then other like-minded people will relate to it.

VB: So what was your experience directing talents like Laura Linney and Michelle Williams and yourself in a supporting role.

HAWKE: Well, first, my part is tiny. I shot the scenes that I acted in last, so that by the time I was doing those, the film company sort of ran itself. But I’ve been around actors  my whole life and that’s a world I know, in and out. Laura Linney and I did The Seagull together on Broadway in 1992, so we were comfortable together.

VB: That reminds me, I saw you deliver an energetic performance as Hotspur in Henry IV a couple of years back at Lincoln Center.

HAWKE: That was one of my favorite roles, man! If Shakespeare’s gonna name him Hotspur, I better rip somebody’s head off!

VB: Certainly a different tone than The Hottest State.

HAWKE: Yeah, but like I said, the actors and acting I’m familiar with. What made my stomach full of butterflies were all the technical aspects—that stuff is all foreign to me. Trying to figure out production design and how those elements can relate to storytelling—that’s stuff that I just don’t know much about. Dealing with the actors, whether it’s Laura Linney or Michelle Williams or somebody like [Hottest State co-star] Catalina Sandino Moreno, who’s in the infancy of her career, all that stuff is fun for me.

 

Check back later in the week for the second part of my interview with Ethan Hawke.

 

 

Posted by Laurence Lerman on November 30, 2007 | Comments (0)