After receiving an Academy Award nomination for his role as famous Broadway composer Lorenz Hart Blue moonEthan Hawke couldn’t help but remember his long-standing friendship with film director Richard Linklater. “I have to express my gratitude to Linklater because the first acting award I won was a Bong High times Journal for my performance in Tape As the best stoning performance of the year. “And Rick keeps giving me these things, so I’m very grateful,” Hawk says.
In the independent film, Hawke transforms himself into the diminutive composer, regaling attendees at Sardi’s Bar with tales of the highs of his theater career and bemoaning the loss of his former partnership with Richard Rodgers. It was set during the opening night party for Oklahoma!the film constantly trains the camera on Hawke as he oscillates between charm and pleas for his continued relevance in the theatrical world.
Hawke, who describes the role as one of the most difficult he’s taken on in his long career, talks about transforming into Hart and why the physical transformation was akin to sledding down a hill that makes you think, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”
What would attract you to return to working with Richard Linklater?
Oh, this is completely uncomplicated. It’s just friendship. I think we met in 1993, and we just started talking and talking. We’ve been talking for 30 years, and every now and then these films grow out of that friendship.
He offered you this movie over a decade ago and waited for you to grow old in the role. But was there more that happened during that decades-long process?
I think his intuition was that we weren’t ready to do that. I don’t know if he can explain exactly why. Part of that had to do with me getting older. Part of what’s happened in the last decade is that I’ve become more and more interested in what people call character acting, and I’ve gotten better at it, so no time has been wasted. We also learned what a razor’s edge the film is walking on. A film that takes place in real time, at a single party. It’s a very difficult feat in filmmaking, and it takes a lot of contemplation on how to achieve something like this.
What made you more interested in acting characters?
It’s just the relationship of life to this profession. I might say my friendship with [Philip Seymour] Hoffman had a lot to do with it, but a lot of it was just continuing to try to grow. You have to figure out, “Okay, well, what if I did something completely different?” And you start pushing the limits of the box.
I worked on this character during a series of workshops over several years. What did you learn through that process?
It all goes back to my friendship with Linklater. We just read it and work on it. We’d talk about Larry, about people we knew who were like that, or what the movie was about, and what do we think he’s thinking? Then we would send each other recordings and say, “That’s an interesting line. Where does that line come from?” And we started to see the movie as a Rodgers and Hart song, like, “What if we made a 90-minute movie of a Rodgers and Hart song?” In many ways, it was Rick’s job to create the structure and the skeleton and the muscle the way Richard Rodgers did in the song, and it was my job to put the words on top of it and dance and play. Because what’s so powerful about their music is that it has all the power and gravity, and at the same time, it’s completely ridiculous. And when you’re being silly and writing a deep tune, it’s a magic trick.
I have described this as the most difficult role I have ever played. Why is this?
There were a handful that were very difficult. It’s just one of the few jobs that uses everything I’ve learned over the years, from the physical objects, to the voice work, to the movement work, to the verbiage, to the text, to the ideas we’re trying to get across. It was not a light lift.
How did you find his voice?
When you become a professional actor, there is a huge motivation to always stay in the same box. You stop allowing yourself to play as much, and play is where really good things happen. In that way, I love that Rick gives me a chance to really jump out of the normal sandbox… so that I can really find a voice that matches his intelligence and his energy and his spirit, for lack of a better word, and make all that language feel like my own.
She also underwent a major physical transformation to become Lorenz HArt, including shaving your head, wearing a comb, and adjusting your posture to help appear about a foot shorter. How did you feel when you took it?
If you’ve ever skied, and skied down a really difficult slope while doing so, you’re absolutely miserable. And when you’re done, you’ll say, “Wow, that was fun.” Once you survive, you’ll say, “That was interesting. I like that.” But while you’re doing it, it’s like, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”
You are a big theatrical person. Is this waR Did this story attract you?
definitely. The Broadway legend looms large in my psyche. So any time you touch on those legends — and even some of the final shots of all the artists’ photos on Sardi’s wall — it’s like the way a baseball player feels about the Hall of Fame. Want to know what they were thinking, what they were doing, and how they did it? How did they feel about it? Trying to make everything come alive for the audience is a game I find exciting.
I have done a lot of campaigning for this film. Do you see now? ThiIs this the end of the election campaign or is there more to come?
Ask me in a couple of months. It was great to get the nomination, and that was even more amazing [writer] Robert Kaplow was nominated because it makes me feel like people have actually seen the movie. Because if you watch the movie, it’s one of the most amazing pieces that Rick and I have written in our 30 years of work, and it’s just an absolutely brilliant script. I really feel like my job is like an ambassador for independent film. I want films like this to be made. I want there to be a future in my life and the lives of others so that there are films like this, so that people have choices in what they watch.
This has been a big year for you with your Oscar nomination and you getting the film black phone 2, You had a TV show Inside information. You had the movie the weight At Sundance, too.
The truth is, I work hard all the time, and sometimes people notice that, sometimes they don’t. I really enjoy what I do. It was a whirlwind, but I was doing it with friends. My relationship with[[‘inside information’s]Sterlin Harjo is really exciting to me. I love this show. It feels like an incredibly unique year to have this new friend in Sterlin, which makes this a really important piece for me, maintaining my relationship with Linklater and doing something we’ve been working on for a long time. Then my relationship with[[Black phone 2‘s]Scott Derrickson, this is our third film together this year. So nothing seems different to me. These are all old relationships that are coming to fruition, and that’s really exciting. But the way my mind works is that I only think about the next step.
I saw you described this next project with Linklater as “the greatest movie ever made.”
I say that every time I go to work. I’m like one of those athletes who is guaranteed to win all the time. And you know, sometimes I’m right. It’s a movie we hope to make this year. It’s something we’ve been working on for a long time. I couldn’t be more excited about it, as evidenced by my gross arrogance.
This story appeared in the February 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
