March 2004 | blackfilm.com | features | interviews | taking lives: an interview with ethan hawke

March 2004

Taking Lives: An Interview with Ethan Hawke

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By Wilson Morales

Taking Lives: An Interview with Ethan Hawke

Ethan Hawke is breakout out with new films. Since being nominated for "Training Day", he went back to do the sequel to "Before Sunrise", which is called "Before Sunset" and his latest film is "Taking Lives", in which his character is too twisted to talk about.

IS IT HARD DOING THE PRESS FOR THIS WITHOUT GIVING AWAY THE ENDING?

HAWKE: It's really hard. This is my first day of doing any interviews for this movie, and it's real hard to talk about why I took the part, what kind of research I did for it, without giving the whole thing away. To answer all the kind of normal questions that people might want to ask.

IT'S A LITTLE DANCE?

HAWKE: Yeah, we're gonna watch me try to do it. I need your help to do it.

LET'S TALK ABOUT GENERALITIES, THE MECHANICS OF A THRILLER. HOW DO YOU PRESERVE THE SURPRISES?

HAWKE: That's a good question. The first real genre movie that I did was 'Training Day.' I haven't done a lot of what you would call genre movies. 'Training Day' is a cop picture, and it's really hard to make a cop picture that is different and unique and special when you've got four cop shows on every night on TV, and about three different cop movies come out. So to make one that's special, it's going to rely primarily on the uniqueness of the personalities involved in the story. And 'Training Day' was particularly good because he came up with a hook where it all happens on one day, and because Alonzo was such a dynamic, fascinating human being that Denzel [Washington] was playing. That elevates the genre. It turned me on to the idea of working within a certain framework. Even 'Training Day,' you've got to have your gunfight at the end. There are certain things in the cop movie that you just have to have or the audience isn't going to feel right.

THAT TURNED OUT TO BE THE WEAKEST PART OF THE MOVIE.

HAWKE: I think so, too. Yeah, I think so too. Because the rest of it ended up being so strong, it kind of superceded the genre, in a way, I felt.

IT WAS A DEPALMA ENDING TO SOMEBODY ELSE'S MOVIE.

HAWKE: Yeah, a De Palma ending to a 'French Connection.'

LET'S BRING THAT BACK AROUND TO 'TAKING LIVES.'

HAWKE: Thrillers have a real set kind of way that they works. I'm learning. I wanted to do the movie because I've never worked in this kind of genre, and very few mainstream movies give you an opportunity to play a really complex person. Most of the mainstream movies have real simple characterizations of people. I thought that this part was a really good opportunity for me to do something I've never done before. And it was so interesting for me. How the formula works, and whether or not you're turned on by this formula is another question altogether.

DO YOU SOMETIMES HAVE TO DIVE INTO THE MAINSTREAM, JUST TO KEEP THINGS GOING?

HAWKE: To keep the ball rolling? Yeah, I feel that I do. Because quite frankly, if you don't it gets harder to get anything done well. And it's just trying to find a healthy balance. I also enjoy doing lots of different kinds of movies. An indie movie is fun, coming off a big movie. If you've done a couple of indie movies in a row it's fun to go do a Hollywood movie and have a big press junket. It's interesting. It keeps shaking it up for myself. And I also like to work with talented people. I like Angelina Jolie. I've always thought she was really interesting, and I thought she could be the Liz Taylor of my generation.

HAS BEING A NOVELIST HELPED YOU AS FAR AS SCRIPT SELECTION?

HAWKE: It's helped my respect for writing. It helps me better understand the scripts I am working on, because I know how hard the people I wrote 'em worked on them. Before you try to write yourself, you can be kind of cavalier about it. 'Ah, this thing stinks. I'm changing it.' But once you start writing yourself, you realize, 'What are they doing here? Why did they write that line?'And you realize, 'Oh, I see what you're going for.'It helps you get into the writer's head. And that's your job as an actor.

HOW ABOUT THE DIRECTING, HOW DO YOU KEEP THE DIRECTOR IN YOU OUT OF IT?

HAWKE: I would never be able to direct a movie like 'Taking Lives.' My interests will take me somewhere totally else. And in the same way that when you direct, you realize how hard it is to direct, and how hard it is to kind of have a clarity of focus and a clarity of vision, and to try to get people united on that. So now, as an actor I feel even more drawn, seeing as part of my job is to try to help them do the best job they can.

WHAT KIND OF THAT WORK DID YOU DO ON THIS?

HAWKE: In 'Taking Lives'? I did as much work as I could in trying to have my character make sense. When you're an actor in a movie, I think your job ceases to be how the movie works as a whole. If you're in every scene it becomes different. But when you're playing a character part like I am in this one, my job is to make sure that my storyline works. My storyline is full of nuance. That's my job, to help the director not have to worry about that. So I'll try to do a good job. And when my character is on, in the movie, I want the movie to be working. I can't control anything else. So, I really worked on who he was and what his motivation was, and trying to make sense out of all that.

HOW DID YOU MAKE IT REAL?

HAWKE: I killed a few people.

NOW YOU'RE GIVING AWAY PLOT.

HAWKE: I know, I shouldn't be. No, one of the things that I found so interesting about any of the kind of studying I've done of different kinds of criminal minds is that, I was doing a little bit for this movie, but how righteous everybody feels and how innocent they feel. Which is really kind of the creepiest element of it all, somebody who's killed 14 people. Some part of them knows that they killed people, but they feel that somehow they were justified in doing it, that given their situations, given their conversations with God, given their whatever (they were justified). It's amazing to watch some of these interviews with these people. They feel they're a good person. Even though they do have eight bodies buried under your house. 'Yeah, but you're not understanding what I'm trying to say.' And so, I find that really interesting. So for whenever you're playing a complex, dubious person, (the task) is to make sure that you play them so that they don't think they're dubious. They think they're doing something good or they feel they're justified in some manner. That can make it more fun.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE 'BEFORE SUNRISE' SEQUEL?

HAWKE: It's hardly really a sequel. That was such a weird little art house movie. It's not like doing 'Bad Boys II' or something like that. That movie is really close to our hearts, those of us who made the movie. It's had its own little cult following, and for the last nine years we kept thinking about how much fun it would be to try to revisit those people and revisit that situation and see what we might have to say about relationships at this juncture in our lives. It was really fun. We've been talking about doing it for five years, and we finally found the right script and finally came together the right way. We just premiered the movie at Berlin, and I love it.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT RICHARD LINKLATER?

HAWKE: I feel that he's one of the truly unique voices in American cinema. He's just his own guy, and I love him because we live in a community where everybody is trying to get as much jack as quick as they can, and this guy's real sincere. He really has a way of looking at life that's a little bit different -- the kind of people and ideas that he's interested in. The movies are different than other people movies. I've always loved working with him, because he loves actors. He loves ideas. And it's hard to find a friend in this world. You find one, you want to stick with him, you know?

HOW MUCH DO YOU WORRY ABOUT GOSSIP ABOUT YOU BEING A DISTRACTION FROM YOUR MOVIES?

HAWKE: Nothing I can do about it, you know? What can I do about it? I don't know. I worry about it more on a persona level, having people you love worried about you, and everybody looking at you when they meet you and thinking weird things in their head. You know? That's what you worry about. My hope is ultimately that primarily, what I've done my whole life, is I've been really dedicated to the work, and hopefully that will bring itself back around. If the work is good, then ultimately what's going on in anybody's personal life ends up not being that substantial. It's something that craning your neck around, like when you drive by a car wreck... but, I think people get on with their own lives. The work will still be there.

IS THERE ANY OCCUPATION THAT INTERESTS YOU THAT YOU HAVE NOT YET TRIED?

HAWKE: I'd like to be a journalist. I always thought that I might go into journalism. It's so interesting, you know? Like my profession, it is what you make of it. Any subject matter, no matter what you're covering in a way, how you write about it, what you have to say about it, you can supercede, you can lift anything out. I don't know. Good journalism is the leader in our cultural thought. It's got to be, what we deem as important. That's why the media gets criticized sometimes, because you really are leading what the cultural dialogue is.

WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE YOU IN TERMS OF THE CULT OF CELEBRITY, WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER?

HAWKE: Think about it. People Magazine had its 25th anniversary five, six years ago, something like that. It just had its 30th anniversary, I think. That magazine has had so many spin-offs. Now there's like seven or eight spin-offs of that magazine. So each one of those magazines, it needs more fodder for a story. Reading, I enjoy it too, reading idle gossip is much more easy than reading 'Moby Dick' for crying out loud, you know what I mean? Unless it's about you, then you want everybody to put it down! 'Grow up!'

DO YOU FEEL GUILTY WHEN YOU READ ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE, BECAUSE SOMETIMES IT IS ABOUT YOU?

HAWKE: I try not to read it, for that very reason. I work very hard to try not to care. I can't control it. I gotta live my life. I gotta move on. The quicker I can move on, the quicker somebody else will move on.

WHAT ARE YOU WRITING RIGHT NOW?

HAWKE: I don't know. I try to always write. But what it'll turn into, I don't know. It's something I've always done.

ANOTHER MOVIE?

HAWKE: I don't know. I don't know.

ARE YOU COMPULSIVE ABOUT WRITING?

HAWKE: It comes in waves, like that. I do my best to make it as consistent as possible, but for me it really does go in waves. This year I haven't written hardly at all.

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