Join Now

Want news that’s as fresh as your morning coffee? Join our community and stay in the know!

Ethan Hawke compares Richard Linklater’s films to Star Wars and Harry Potter

Date:

Share:

Ethan Hawke is getting candid about his thoughts on some of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, including Star Wars and Harry Potter.

During a master class at the Venice Film Festival on Monday, the actor-director compared the films by frequent collaborator Richard Linklater to those of the aforementioned tentpole movies.

“If you go see Harry Potter or Star Wars or something, which I’ve seen a million times, and I love them, but when they are over, I feel slightly disappointed that I’m not a wizard or not a Jedi,” he joked. “And I walk through my life thinking, ‘I wish I were a Jedi.’ And when you see a Richard Linklater film, you walk out feeling, ‘Well, I’ve done that. I’ve met a person, I’ve connected with another human being, and that was important, and that was magic.’”

Ethan Hawke at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.

Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty


He continued, “It’s kind of like that old Zen quote: ‘You don’t have to walk on water, you get to walk on Earth’. Isn’t that amazing? I feel that’s what Richard Linklater’s movies do, is remind you that it’s a miracle that we walk on Earth and that we breathe at all, and that there’s whales and giraffes and life is unbelievable if you don’t hyperbolize it.”

Together, the two have made “9 or 10 films together, depending on how you count,” Hawke told the audience — including the Before trilogy and Boyhood. The actor said he credits the former with his forming a more mature take on films. “That was the beginning of my adult relationship to movies, making Before Sunrise, and the friendship [with Linklater] that came after that,” he said.

The latest Hawke-Linklater collaboration is Blue Moon, a film centered around Lorenz Hart — the songwriter who worked with Richard Rodgers before Rodgers became a successful duo with Oscar Hammerstein II. The film is set in 1943 during the opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical Oklahoma!

In Venice, Hawke revealed that Linklater showed him the “amazing” script for Blue Moon 12 years ago but told him they needed to wait a while to film it, citing Hawke’s good looks.

“‘You’re still too attractive,’” Hawke recalled Linklater saying. “‘We got to wait until you’re a little less attractive.’”

Last year, Linklater saw Hawke on a talk show and decided it was time. Hawke jokingly acted offended.

“‘Hey, I saw you on Jimmy Fallon… let’s make Blue Moon, we’re ready,'” he recalled Linklater telling him. “I thought, ‘go to hell.'”

Blue Moon, which was shot this summer, does not yet have a release date.

Elsewhere in the wide-ranging conversation, Hawke brought out his inner film nerd to talk about what he thinks is the “geometry” and “math” behind a good film.

“If you can’t tell, I can’t help it, I just feel like a student of this profession,” he told the audience. “There is a certain geometry to all film and the geometry is different for small, indie art film than a horror film. The geometry is different for a western. The geometry is different for a romantic comedy. There’s certain ways and rules that the universe wants these stories to be told in.”

Hawke said he learned to use this geometry to calibrate his own performances, too, once he realized “one of the ways that I could make my work different — in different keys or octaves or whatever — would be to really play with the genres.”

“For example,” he said, “if you see Anthony Hopkins in a drama it’s very different than when you see his work in a horror film, and I think the more of this math that you learn, the more effective of a storyteller you become.”

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Watch the full conversation with Hawke in the video above.

Unmatched Baby Essentials

baby

━ more like this

The D Brief: Trump blames Kyiv for war; DOGE at Pentagon; Uncertainty at SDA; State’s Afghan-resettlement office at risk; And a bit more.

Trump joins Putin’s Ukraine blame game: Almost exactly three years ago, Russia’s military launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a young democracy on Russia’s...

US troops, Afghan allies say executive orders endanger their families

Editor’s note: For this story, Military Times spoke to multiple U.S. service members, as well as Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the war...

Tracking Trump: His actions on education 

Since taking office Jan. 20, President Donald Trump has unleashed a flurry of orders and actions designed to reshape the federal government’s role in...

VA leadership nominee grilled over recent department layoffs

Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary nominee Paul Lawrence faced harsh questioning from Democrats during his confirmation hearing Wednesday not for his plans for future reforms...

Could Play Boost Students’ Math Performance?

When he teaches a math class, Tom Fisher wants students to feel confused. At least, he wants them to feel that way occasionally and...

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here