Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke has been famous for more than half his life, since bursting onto the movie scene 22 years ago as a kid obsessed with aliens in Explorers. From then to now, Hawke has made his mark in films ranging from Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, Before Sunrise and its sequel, Before Sunset receiving an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, Gattaca, Hamlet, Training Day snagging a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination Assault on Precinct 13 and the hot new thriller Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. But theater fans treasure Hawke for the amazing 1-2-3 punch of Henry IV in which he won raves as Hotspur, Hurlyburly as the searching central character Eddie and The Coast of Utopia as rebellious rogue Michael Bakunin, a role that earned him a 2007 Tony nomination. The versatile Hawke has also written two novels, directed three feature films and co-founded an off-Broadway theater company Malaparte, which closed in 2000. Right now, he's busy directing The New Group's premiere of Things We Want, the latest play by his close friend Jonathan Marc Sherman. Though it's a small-scale off-Broadway production, Hawke has attracted a starry cast: Peter Dinklage, Josh Hamilton and Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano as brothers living in their childhood apartment, plus Zoe Kazan as the girl down the hall. Chatting with Broadway.com while walking to rehearsal, Hawke made it clear that on his list of career priorities, theater remains at the top.
Give us a one-sentence preview of Things We Want.
It's kind of a zen koan about the nature of desire. That's my one sentence.
A what?!
A zen koan. The Buddhist monks had these weird riddles that meant you were on your way to enlightenment if you figure them out. The play is about three brothers who are mourning the death of their parents. They live together in an apartment in New York, and the play centers around their relationship with each other and a girl who is their neighbor.
You and playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman go way back.
Jonathan and I kind of grew up together. We ran a theater company [Malaparte] together years ago, and I've directed and acted in a lot of his plays. I was among the first people to read this play, and I loved it the second I read it.
Jonathan asked me to direct it. The truth is, this is a play that is probably best directed by an actor. There are no fancy sets; no crazy transitions; there are no staging wonders or fight sequences. It's about people's emotional lives, about trying to find the human center of things without being fancy, and that's how he wanted the play to be directed in its first production. Also, Josh Hamilton has acted in a lot of Jonathan's plays, and Jon wanted Josh for the only part I would be right for. I think his way of getting to work with both of his main collaborators was to ask Josh to be in it and me to direct it.
I read a description of Jonathan's plays that said they have "disturbed audiences." Do you find his writing disturbing?
That's not a word I would use. A lot of people found Jonathan's first play, Women and Wallace, very disturbing because it was about a young man whose mother killed herself, and about his relationships with women. It was a startlingly dark play for a young man to write. But maybe I'm weird and don't find things disturbing that I should [laughs].
What do you like about his plays?
How do you articulate your feeling about someone's voice? He has that thing—when you read one of his plays, about three sentences in, you know it was written by him. Some musicians have it. Willie Nelson can play the guitar and it's the same instrument everybody else uses, but the way he plays it, you go, "That's a Willie Nelson song." You watch 10 minutes of a Martin Scorsese movie and you go, "That's a Scorsese movie." It's particularly hard [to define] with writing. But Jon has it. He's got something to say. When I met him as a young man, it felt like meeting Dostoyefsky or something. He's a fearless, intense, compassionate, deep human being. I believe in him. It's fun to grow up with people and to watch your generation's playwrights and artists find their way.
Is it true that you and Jonathan and Josh Hamilton took a cross-country road trip back in the day?
That is true. We were in our early 20s and took off for, I don't know, four weeks or six weeks. We had a ball. When you're in a car you spend a lot of time talking, and Jonathan educated Josh and me on that trip. He had read so much. Jonathan could talk for four days about Samuel Beckett as we visited the Indian reservations in North Dakota, you know? We stopped at Steppenwolf [Theater in Chicago]. We stopped at Sundance. We had all these weird interests, and we were hoping to have our Neal Cassady paradise moment. It was a real formative time for us—we came home and started a theater company. You can only imagine what it feels like to be in a rehearsal room with these two clowns 15 years later [laughs].
Is it ever awkward to direct a friend and work on another friend's script?
I've done it my whole life. I've done six movies with Richard Linklater. I've done a couple of movies with Andrew Niccol. I enjoy getting to work with people who are like-minded. You have to treat each other with as much respect as possible, and then your friendships deepen. The only thing I've learned is that you can't ever do each other a favor. If you want to do your friends a favor, you should pick their kids up after school or lend them your umbrella. If you do each other favors in your work, your friendship doesn't last very long. Josh [Hamilton] and I have worked together so much, not only through the theater company we ran; we were in the movie Alive together and we did Hurlyburly and Coast of Utopia together. We've literally spent years backstage together. When he hears me waxing poetic in the director's chair, he rolls his eyes. He was 15 minutes late to rehearsal yesterday, and I laid into him in a way that I would only with somebody I've known for 20 years.
How is directing a play different from the movies you've directed?
I keep asking myself that. It feels so different, because movies are all about the position of the camera. People say film is a directors' medium and theater is an actors' and a writers' medium. And that's really true. [Directing theater] plays into more of my strong suits, because if I know about anything in this life, it's acting. I've done it professionally for more than 20 years. I love talking about acting and trying to figure it out, and theater relies on acting in a way that movies don't. I mean, Harrison Ford is great in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but there are a lot of other elements that make that movie a classic. On stage, it's just you and the ideas in your head. You are your own editor.
Why have you remained so loyal to the theater?
I guess it's my first love. There's something about the theater that's not precious; it's so humble and human. There's a myth out there that movies are immortal. But the truth is, the first movie I made, Explorers, when I was 13, is really dated. You can watch it, but it's not the same. The music is kind of cheesy. It feels like the early '80s. But if somebody comes up to me and says, "I saw you in A Joke," which was the first production Malaparte did, there's some magic to that. It means we shared an evening together once 15 years ago, and if they loved it, it's not dated in their minds. It's still fresh and relevant.
No way can I sum it up. It was so powerful to be involved in something like that. Part of it felt like going back to grad school in some weird Russian studies course combined with a master class in theater taught by [director] Jack O'Brien and [playwright] Tom Stoppard. Being part of a company doing the plays in rep was the most powerful element of the whole thing. If you're going to do a nine-hour play, you've gotta rehearse the hell out of it. To be part of those all-day performances—to be that tired and look out at the audiences who were staying right with usᾹit's why you wanted to be a performer. The toughest among us were moved by those days.
Every Coast of Utopia actor seems to say the same thing.
You don't want to idolize people too much, but Tom Stoppard is a real heavyweight on the planet. He's got an amazing mind and an amazing intellect. So has Jack O'Brien. If you're interested in a life in the arts, these guys make you want to grow old. And in a culture that's always trying to convince you that you want to go back in time somehow, it was wonderful. I know I will never have another experience like it. I don't know how I had the brains to take that job!
You went out on a limb more than anybody else—giving up the possibility of doing a big-budget movie for almost a year.
Yeah. I had worked with Jack on Henry IV and I was the first one he came to. So there was a hard moment, because you're thinking, "Are other people going to get involved in this? Is Tom Stoppard going to be involved? Is this going to go well? Is Lincoln Center really going to be behind it?" The Coast of Utopia was a giant success, but it could have been a giant failure. It could have been the folly of New York. But I'm so glad I did it.
In the past four years, you've acted onstage in Henry IV, Hurlyburly and The Coast of Utopia. None of these things is like the others!
I feel really proud of that trifecta. What's funny is that the shortest play I did was three and a half hours! Hurlyburly was three and a half, Henry IV was four fifteen and Coast of Utopia was nine. When I was doing Hurlyburly, Liev Schreiber was doing his curtain call in Glengarry Glen Ross before I was done with my first intermission. It's nice to be working on a play now that's only two hours long [laughs].
Your modern-day film version of Hamlet, with Liev as Laertes, attracted a lot of younger fans.
That was my first experience with Shakespeare, and I really lucked out. Then Jack O'Brien saw the movie and loved it, and offered me the part [of Hotspur] in Henry IV. I hope to do some more of it. Shakespeare is so much fun to work on. I sometimes worry that it's more fun for the performers than the audience.
You should do Much Ado About Nothing.
I would love to. I'd love to do one of the comedies.
I'm not sure who should play Beatrice with you...
Well, let's let Jack O'Brien figure out who else should do it.
Mary-Louise Parker once said that nobody in Hollywood cares about people's theater credits. Do you find that to be true?
They're slightly intimidated by it. They feel that it's somehow legitimate, and that bothers them. But they haven't seen any of it and they don't really care. Who's a better actress than Mary-Louise Parker? Nobody. She should be in everything! Let's face it, they hire [movie] directors who are ad guys. Every now and then there's a serious filmmaker, but most of them want a product, they don't want art. Art is dangerous. Art is scary. Art is movies like Apocalypse Now that they're not going to know how to sell. They don't want people to take risks. If they're going to spend that much money, they want to know how many units they can sell. It's like Coca-Cola to them.
What are your favorites of the films you've acted in?
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. And Gattaca. There are a few that I like, but those three might be my favorites.
People are loving that movie! I don't think Phil or I expected that. It's been a while since Sidney's made a really good film, and it's thrilling to see him back in form. Movies are so peculiar: You can spend six months working on a movie and think it's going to be genius and it turns out to be no good at all. You can't figure out why—all these talented people. But every now and then, it's really good. We shot that movie razor-fast, in like 10 or 12 weeks, here in New York; Sidney works so quickly. I kind of thought there was no way anybody would ever see it. But we showed it at Toronto [Film Festival] this year, and it was fun to see people like it that much.
Is it fair to say that you feel ambivalent about being a movie star?
Yeah, I've always struggled with that idea. There are jobs I think I would be right for, and if I was a big enough movie star, I would get some of those great jobs. Everyone wants to be successful, and it's fun to get lots of attention, but I've always been leery of the life that it gives you. Sometimes I wish I was much more anonymous than I am. It's a struggle. I look at Star magazine, and I don't envy Brad Pitt one slightest bit. Why would you want that? One minute they celebrate you wildly, and the next minute there's a public stoning. It breaks my heart. I mean, watching the joy our culture takes in making fun of some poor woman like Britney Spears losing custody of her kids, when we used to buy all her records? We make people insane. Look at Michael Jackson. Celebrity is so corrosive to your soul. Whether you're a movie star or not, we all struggle with our egos. And the way the ego of a movie star gets fed can turn into a powerful beast, and it can eat up your life. I've been terribly ambivalent about it. But at the same time, I love to work with talented people and make good art—not to mention the power for good you can do if you use your celebrity in the right way. All that stuff, money and power, can throw you or it can be a gateway to something better.
You mentioned Gattaca—you've certainly never embraced the red carpet in the way that Jude Law [who played Hawke's clone in the film] has.
No, I never did. It's funny—that was his first movie, and he truly wanted that! There are people who are drawn to the bright light like a moth to the flame, you know? And I've been worried about getting burned my whole life. I've tasted enough of it to know it can hurt. A lot. Theater has been kind of my salvation in a way. It's a place you can disappear into that's very humble, but you still get to do good work—often, let's face it, you get to do better work. The Coast of Utopia doesn't pay like a good part in Die Hard 4, but it's a lot more fun than sitting around on a set while they blow up helicopters.
See Ethan Hawke's production of Things We Want, at the Acorn Theatre on Theatre Row.
