Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Ethan Hawke

Episode Date: November 18, 2018

Ethan Hawke hasn’t starred in many big-budget blockbusters, but that’s by his own design. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” the movie star opens up to Willie Geist about how he built a career on deep, challenging roles, like the one in “Boyhood” that earned him an Oscar nomination in 2015, his breakout role in “Dead Poets Society,” and his latest performance in “First Reformed.” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, it's Willie Geist back with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thanks so much for checking in and listening along with us. I got a great one for you this week. My guest is Ethan Hawke. Ethan and I got together in his neighborhood in Brooklyn, sat down at his favorite bar to talk about a film that's getting him a lot of award season talk. It's called First Reformed. He plays a priest struggling with his faith.

A lot of critics say it's the performance of his long career. And a lot of people suggesting he could win some awards for it. He's already been nominated for the Gotham Award for Best Actor and the movie for Best Film. A lot of people see that as sort of a precursor and a tell about what may be coming down the road at the Oscars. We also talked about a passion project of his, his film Blaze. He wrote it, he produced it, he directed it about an unsung country music legend named Blaze Foley, True Story, Real Life. So we get into both of those as well as his career and the breakout role when he was just a kid in dead poet's society, what he learned from Robin Williams on that set about acting, how that role taught him

that this is what he wanted to do with his life and influence the rest of his career. Also sort of being an artistic guy in a Hollywood world, in other words, turning down some roles, you'd be shocked to hear he did. Early in his career, he was supposed to do a movie or he was offered a movie with Jack Nicholson, had to call his hero Jack Nicholson and say, I can't do the movie because I'm working on a novel, a 20-something, doing that. He also talks about his daughter, his 20-year-old daughter Maya, with his ex-wife, Uma Thurman, who will be appearing and starring in the third season of Stranger Things. Really interesting, really smart guy.

I think he'll enjoy the conversation with Ethan Hawke right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. This is my pleasure. So what's the first bourbon we reach for when we walk into this great bar? Okay, the first bourbon that we'd reach for would go. I would have to go, well, you start with the bullet ride, just to make yourself feel at home.

And then you don't want to wait too long before you drink the expensive stuff. Right. You know, see, you go up to the Balantines, you know, a little bit, as soon as you can't. Yeah, I agree with that. When you're really drunk, you can switch to Jack Daniels. That's the thing, right?

Because you don't have to be too drunk when you get to the good stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's like always drink expensive wine right away. Early. Yeah, don't waste it. Which means it's usually lost on people like me. So this is your spot.

Thanks for having us here. Well, thanks for meeting me here. On a busy time for you, you just nominated for a bunch of awards for first reform. Congratulations. The Gotham Awards, the movie, the actor, the screenplay. What do you think people are responding to in that movie? We were just talking, it's not a huge budget movie with a big marketing budget, but people have really identified it as one of the movies of the year.

I don't know that I'm the right person to talk about it because it is hard to talk about how much you like your own work and not sound like a jerk. I'll help you through this. All right. But I will say that there's something about... Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver in Raging Bowl back at a time period when people really wanted cinema to be incendiary, when people were expecting from the movies a grown-up experience.

Meaning there's something that's happened to movies where it's been... because it's so oriented about making money, that they really want to appeal to the most amount of people possible at all times. And if you're doing that, you can't make taxi driver. Because taxi driver's not really made to appeal to the masses. It's made to find you at a specific moment in your life. And if you see it, if you see Raging Bowl

at the right moment in your life, it'll actually change you. But it's not what you do from six to eight because you have nothing else to do. Right? And what Paul did for me, when I read this script, I heard that voice, that same voice that wrote those movies and that same voice that turned me on to what is possible with cinema as an art form. And I thought, damn, if we could make this movie, the movie is, it's not right, it's not left, it is a scream. It's like a cry from a grown-up saying, where is leadership?

Where's my spiritual leadership? Where is religiously... This is a country that constantly kind of cites religion without really talking about religion, you know, or a Christian nation or whatever you say. Here's the deal with Paul's writing. It is a movie that gives voice to, I think, or at least I should say the way that I felt when I read it,

is I didn't have the language to communicate my frustration that I was feeling about how difficult it is to be a grown-up when you are trying to be a good leader to your children, a good leader in your community, and you're seeing leadership that upsets you. We want from our leadership, it should be easy to do the right thing. That's the ideas of governments and church.

Community is supposed to orient us to make it a little bit easier for us to do the right thing, to be the best version of ourselves. And I think what Paul's movie First Reform does is it's a cry. It's a cry for, this is fake, this is fake, I want to live an authentic life. And it's a grown-up dialogue about it. And I think critics, first of all, are so grateful to have something that is full of nuance. It uses their education, like a good film critic, right?

Most of the time, most movies they're asked to review don't need their graduate degree in film studies. Paul's does. Paul's making references to films that are responsible from the 50s, 60s, and 70s for the moving forward of the medium. And I think critics, that really turns them on. And in a certain audience member, they're grateful for that. And I know I was. When I read, I was just like, damn, if we could get this movie made and I can play this part, I have the feeling that the whole way I've been living my life for 25 years has led me to be ready for this, which is how I feel about the arts a lot of times is you go through periods where they might feel dark or they might feel lost or you might not be getting the feedback that you want to get back.

But those are the time periods that you're, if you're taking care of yourself, that you're growing. So when an opportunity presents itself, when you get that at bat, you're ready for it. Actors are only as good as their opportunity. So this was a huge opportunity for me. You talked about leadership. You're not just talking about political leadership wanting that, but in the church as well.

Obviously, we've seen so much with the Catholic Church. What do you think the movie says about faith in America right now? Well, the first thing it says, the reason why I think the religious community itself has been so supportive of the movie is it takes the idea of thinking deeply about your spiritual life. Seriously. And most movies, if you see a priest in a movie,

they're either some idiot who's like bumbling through a marriage ceremony in a Will Ferrell comedy, right? Or they're in the exorcists, right? And they're like, some demon-possessed person. There's very rarely just a man or woman of faith who is trying to be to give the community a center to find their moral authority for each individual. And so I think what's great about Reverend Toller is he reminds me of the priest I grew up with. I mean, I had a blessed experience that way. You know, there was a woman who confirmed me.

Her name was Reverend Jean Smith. And in the Episcopal Church, they let women be priests, you know. And she was amazing. I mean, her relationship to her faith was very open and very not brittle. And she, for young people, you know, it's very hard to make sense out of what grownups mean by an inner life. And so many grownups are fake. right, are full of hypocrisy. And kids are quick to sniff that out.

And Gene Smith was a great, great teacher. So I had positive role models. You know, my father is very religious. My mother's very religious. They're deep thinkers. And I felt drawn to this because I wanted to do a portrait of religious life that didn't make fun of it or didn't demonize it, but could really represent it.

And what a strange crisis point we are. We're at a point where the majority of Christian evangelical leadership is undermining their own moral authority in the name of oftentimes one goal. To me, it's fascinating the way people use a certain political system. They want one end, so they're willing to overlook eight other things if they can just get this one thing. And I think that's how we all get played against each other. Or it's how the tribal division of the United States, I've watched in my lifetime. I have, you know, huge members of my family are super right-wing. Other than yellow-dog Democrats.

And I've just watched them getting more and more pulled away from each other. My grandfather was a Texas state legislator, you know, and he was part of LBJ's Civil Rights Movement in Texas, and he was a beautiful man. And he used to say, you run on your differences, but you govern where you're united. That's what you have to do, and that's how democracy works through loyal opposition.

You can sense this build, right? There's always a way to keep the ship at ballast and not constantly pulling it over and pulling it over. But we're not doing that right now. We're not doing that right now. And I don't know why we're talking about it, but I will say what's fun about First Reformed is engages an audience in a sincere dialogue about that.

Paul, you said, for the people have seen the movie, the ending is absolutely insane, right? It's bonkers, and when I was playing the end of the movie, I said to Paul, like, look, I love this, but talk to me a little bit about it. You know, what am I playing here? What's happening? And I remember he said that a really good film starts the second you walk out of the theater. A serious film is something for you to own. It's not entertainment.

I mean, hopefully it is entertaining, but it's entertaining the way something that leaves a great meal is, which is it leaves you healthier. It didn't just waste your time or occupy your time. It's leaving you something. And he said, this ending of this movie is designed to make you think. It's designed to engage you in a dialogue about hope and despair and where they intersect. It was like, okay, that's a good answer. Well, it's interesting the way this is broken through. We were talking a minute ago, and I've talked to a lot of people who do.

do what you do for a living and they'll privately complain about the state of Hollywood, which is you can't get anybody's attention unless there's a superhero in the movie, or it's a sequel, or it's a known commodity that they're making another one of. It must be nice to have this be elevated to the point where people are paying attention and they're watching and they're starting to honor it with awards and good criticism. Does that matter to you? It really does. Yeah?

It matters if you... I once was doing an interview where I got to interview Patty Smith. She had just won, I don't know, the Pulitzer or the National Book Award or whatever, some big award that she'd won. I said, guys, do you feel shy about that? She said, hell no, I want to win prizes. Anybody wants to give me a prize, give it. And I was thinking about why she have no, why is there no shyness about that?

Because I've always felt, and I realize it's because it's her work. That's her work. There's nothing compromised in her work. She's winning an award for something that's hers. And a lot of times in acting, we know how collaborative it is. And so when Dead Poets Society came out, I know that I'm the beneficiary of Peter Weir's giant gift, of Robin Williams' giant gift, of Tom Schumann who wrote the script.

I don't feel any ownership of the success of that. With First Reformed, I've been doing this a long time, and I feel that this work represents, this kind of movie represents the kind of cinema that I want to put into the world. And if that kind of work is meaningful to other people, then I'd be lying to say that that had no meaning for me because I'd do it for other people. And that's the idea is to communicate and to share. And to share on your own terms, you know, I mean, when boyhood works, it feels really, when a movie like Boyhood works, it feels like you've beat the system. The system is designed to be a unit of sale.

We're going to make this thing, and it's going to be a product, and they're going to sell it, and everybody tells you you have to play that game. Every now and then, you can kind of find your way into people's hearts not giving them something that's reheated. You're giving them a fresh meal. And it feels like a little victory. Training Day was the same way. It felt like this is a good cop picture. It's threading the needle of making mainstream entertainment that isn't insulting.

And is hopefully the kind of thing that you can see at 16 and love and see at 26 and think about, oh, I didn't understand that level. See it at 46 and go, oh, I see what they say. And, you know, like a great book does that to you. That's the hope. So yeah, I'm glad that people like first reform. Not to mention a boyhood, you put a dozen years of your life into it. Not to mention 12 years of my life, yeah.

So speaking of ownership of a product, Blaze, writing, producing, directing a film like that. I have to be honest, I'd never heard of Blaze Foley. Well, that was why we made the movies, because nobody really has heard of Blaze Fuller. So what grabbed you about his story, a guy most people have never heard of? I think it was a long time coming to me. I love music movies. I see every single one. I love musicians.

I love kind of trying to know where a song comes from. You know, when you see the Johnny Cash movie or the Ray Charles, it's so cool to understand what the song meant to them, this thing that has meaning to you. But there was something that always struck me as fake about it, which is that I've spent my life with artistic people. You know, I did my first movie in 13. I ran theater companies.

I've been around dancers and painters and set designers and costume decorators in most people who dedicate their life to the arts. This is the reason why my dad was so scared for me to go into this. Most people are met with absolute indifference. That is, the news channels and everything's filled with this one percentage

of people that are kind of making a living at it. And for that person to exist, there's a wave underneath them of creative energy. Bob Dylan doesn't happen alone. Bob Dylan is thrust to the top of a huge musical movement. And the same is true for all of us. And I thought,

God, what if you made a movie about the arts that wasn't about celebrity? That was actually about how hard it is to be creative in the world that is constantly kind of stifling people. And Blaze's story left to mind of a first class poet who had no financial success.

Now, if you're going to talk seriously about that, that's not society's fault. That's largely his fault. It's also culture plays a big part of it. How we treat each other. What Blaze was writing about and thinking about

was about the every man. There's something so beautiful about someone who doesn't pimp themselves out. I mean, it's the same reason why the priests in my life, the religious people I've met, I think why we have a a response to an authentic religious person in their life is they're not trying to get ahead.

Most people you meet are trying to make five more bucks. They're trying to impress you. They want to get prizes or power or something to have power over others. And when you meet somebody whose spiritual life is their priority, then their life is about empowering others and empowering the world to be its best self.

And I think that feels so good. Why am I talking about that? You're talking about Blaze. I feel the same way about school teachers, by the way, too. That's why you respect them. That's why that's why Poet Society responded to people. It's because a lot of us have had a teacher. In Blaze, Foley, for me, is a kind of teacher because you listen to that music,

and it's a first-rate poet who never had any of the superficial gifts. He never was nominated for a Gotham Award. You never nominated for any award. So when I feel blue or when I feel like misunderstood or lost, you look at these people and you're like, damn it, I can carry on. You know, there's so many people out there that are fighting the good fight that care immensely or are doing first-rate work that aren't finding a home in the commercial marketplace. And that speaks about the marketplace, not about them. And I can draw inspiration from that. That's why, I mean, it is hard to make a biopic about somebody nobody's heard of.

It's a tough salesie. It was also my idea. It's like, all right, I'm going to cast a guy you've never heard of. And a movie about a guy you've never heard of. But in a way, that made perfect sense in my brain because it was the right way to do it. Ben Dickie, whose stars and Blaze, is a great songwriter himself, and he has a lot to say about a life in music. And he's lived it. He's lived it.

It's not some, you know, Daniel, that's a lot to say about a life in music. Louis would have to do seven years of research and dive bars to come close to what Ben can offer. There's something about it too. There's not a fairness to who makes it to that 1% you're talking about. You know that's better than I do. There are great actors, great musicians, great people in my business, who for whatever reason breaks or they didn't navigate it right. They don't get where they want to be. There's a scene in Blaze and I put in there, it's a little arbitrary, but it's about dice. Yeah.

And I think about Dice a lot, you know, just the luck of the role. And where some of us are born, some of us are handicapped by the parents who hurt us. Some of us are handicapped by a culture that doesn't celebrate us, right? You know, so many things have to go right for a life in the arts to manifest in the right way. Or any life, in athletics, I mean, whatever you want to, in architecture. it's so, and so many things that we don't control, and I think that's so hard for us to understand. We want to think that if we do everything, right,

if I eat just right, if I go to the gym, if I'm nice to everybody, I won't have to die, you know? And it's like somehow that's not the way the universe works. Right. My wife and I talk about, by the way, this is going to turn into a 10-hour, great conversation, but we talk about that all the time. Our kids were born at Columbia 165th in Broadway.

The day we get out of the hospital, we turn right out of that driveway. Another family turns left, and the change starts right there. For a couple days in the hospital, we're the same. Everything's the same. And then it all changes. It's mysterious, isn't it?

It is. But I digress. You mentioned Dead Poets Society. I don't know if you know this. Next year is the 30-year anniversary? I thought about that taking my kids to school this morning. I realized like, wait, it's 2018. So this time, 30 years ago, I was shooting Dead Poets Society.

Wow. Fall of 1988. And it is amazing how... fast that's going to life. When you think about it 30 years later, what comes to mind? I guess how much I feel the same. I mean, that's the thing. I remember my grandfather saying that to me,

is you think I'm this old man, and I still feel in here, you know, like the guy in that photo, because I was looking at a photo, I remember, I was looking at my photo of my grandpa in the 50s, and he looked so awesome. His suit was all like, pimped out, amazing, he was walking, he looked so hip. And he said, that's still, that's me.

That's me. I mean, I know you don't see that me. Yeah. And I think I am happy that I'm getting to do the kind of work. You know, dead poets aside a little bit of a charge. You know, you hear people talk about Carpe Diem or Gather You Rosebuds Well, You May. I don't think I realized it at the time. But that movie was a charge.

And to a lot of people who saw it, but to those of us who worked on it, it was a to live your life to the fullest and live it by your own definitions. You know, how do you define success? Not how everybody around you define success. It's not what your mom wants to live your life, how you think somebody else or, wow, you know, your brother, whoever it is, how you want to live your life. And I think I didn't realize at the time what a tattoo that movie was on my heart. What did you learn from Robin Williams, just one of the way?

Robin Williams just watching him as a young actor. The first, he gave me the first taste of what acting could be and what young people often, you see young people say, oh, I want to be an actor or something. Usually what they mean is I want to be noticed. I want people to pay attention to me. And what you learn is you develop a relationship to acting that the real mystery and the beauty of it lies in a dissolution of it. of self that when it goes really well, you disappear and you're in service of a larger

story and you realize that all the things that are essential about who you are exist in you as well and in everyone. And it's a very powerful thing. And I did this scene with Robin where he says, you know, Todd Anderson doesn't think he has anything of value inside of him. And he asked me to sound my barbaric yop over the rooftops of the world. And it was an amazing experience because the deeper into that scene I got, by the time the day it was over, I couldn't remember what had happened. And it was the first taste

of how positive and how beautiful performance could be, which is part of a collective imagination. It's not me. It's Robbins' imagination. It's Josh Charles' imagination. It's Robert Sean Leonard's imagination. It's the grip. It's the guy holding the light.

We're all, you know, you're collecting something. And when you see that, have impact over 30 years later, you go, everybody likes to tell you how things don't matter. They do matter. And when something goes right like that, it has reverberations that last a long time. And that makes me excited to go to work tomorrow. And reverberations that continue today. I mean, I have to imagine for you, you still hear about it when you're walking down the street, dead poet society. What didn't it do to your life, though, as a young actor, you're a teenager, trying to figure yourself out a little bit, I have to imagine.

Here comes this movie that makes like a quarter of a billion dollars, and now you're famous, and now people know your name. What did that mean to you in your life? You know what strange is the way that life works is now, at this point, at 47, I don't know what it's like not to have that happen. You know, I mean, that's true. I was lucky because it happened in a group. I've often felt it was more difficult for people like Matthew McConaughey or Julia Roberts or Denzel Washington.

Well, Denzel had happened pretty slow for, but when it happens to somebody overnight and it has an individuality attached to it, meaning I was kind of one of the dead poets. Right. You know, it wasn't really Ethan Hawk. You know, that kind of happened with reality bites. but I was I felt the power of how the arts can affect people and that had a big positive impact on my life the negatives are kind of there's a luxury tax

of having to make mistakes in public there's a luxury tax of losing anonymity and that can inhibit your learning like it's very difficult to do anything authentically when you're in a zoo The reason why it's hard for these animals go crazy is when you get put behind a glass wall, you go crazy. You don't know what you're missing until it gets taken away.

And you have to work really hard to break that glass wall down. I think that's part of why I've always liked to write and direct and do other things. It's a way to break that glass wall of celebrity because you humanize yourself and you embarrass yourself. Right, right. And that's kind of a good thing. Right. I mean, reality bites, though, sort of made you this icon of that time, of this era you represented that generation.

Did that repel you from fame in some way? Because it seems to me that you had choices along away in your career where you could have taken some big budget movie or been a superhero and you decided actually not to. Was that a reaction to something that happened earlier in your career? I think it coincided with River Phoenix's death. And I think that that had a big impact on me. River was the first of my generation to be fully developed. I mean, I actually, I thought he was fully developed, and obviously looking back now, he was not.

I mean, he had so much more to grow and be. But I think it woke me up really quickly that your life is not your career. You know that your life is yours, and I had to take care of it. I mean, I remember I got to meet Richard Linklater around the same time, right after Reality Bites came out, we started making before sunrise.

And Linklater was so excited about living. And he didn't care about fame or not fame. He really cared about the medium and the art form and where this generation is going. It was very exciting to be a part of the way he thought. And I remember he used to say, if you look at the life of artists and you see who fulfilled their goals

and who got lost along the way and the association with self-sabotage, drugs and alcohol. If you could take self-sabotage out of it, basically almost everybody who achieves their dreams. And he's like, you can't let the part of yourself that hates yourself have the wheel of the ship. Just can't let it happen. You've got to work really hard.

And one of the things that happens, if you get famous for something you're not proud of, you don't have any ownership over, not to bring it back to Patty Smith, but if you get famous for something that feels fake to you, then your whole life starts to feel fake. And it really can chop you off at the ankles. Even though other parts may be seeming to succeed, you fundamentally don't feel a sense of ownership. by that success.

But I think, thinking about you being a 20-something, that takes a maturity and a perspective that most 20-somethings don't have. In other words, if the producers of Independence Day call you and say, we're going to put you in the biggest movie in the world, you're going to be on movie posters and Times Square and billboards and all that. Was that not hard to say no to, all that stuff? It wasn't hard if you put yourself in my mindset, which is that people sometimes attribute like the fact that they'll say that I, what, what?

I wasn't ambitious or I wasn't, you know, I turned those jobs down because I was in pursuit of my own definition of success. I was extremely ambitious, you know, but I didn't want, I wasn't ambitious for fame or for money. I was ambitious to make a substantive contribution to the arts, and I knew that a lot of those superficial staples of success are actually in the way of that,

that, you know, and that if you get too famous or you make too much money, those things become obstacles and you trip all over them. And what, how people, whereas if you prioritize your own development as a person and as an artist and you're not asking what can I get, but you're asking what can I give, if you make that transition, then things like money and perception fade down and something else. arises for it and you have a different kind of success, but one that you can be proud of. Which allows, yeah, totally, which allows your internal compass to say, I'm not going to do that blockbuster, I'm going to go write a novel or I'm going to go do Broadway. Not because anything's

wrong with that blockbuster. That's what I think some people misinterpreted as a kind of, I don't know, snooty or I don't know what they thought, but I was trying to find my own way and find out what it meant. And I remember I had this funny, I got offered this movie, Jack Nicholson is my favorite act, right? I mean, I just, five easy pieces, one for the cuckoo's nest, you know, the list is too long. The last detail, I mean, so many, so many movies. The passengers, flipping to my mind, the Shining Reds, I mean, he is one of my all-time favorites. And I got offered a movie to do with him, and I really wanted to do it. and I had to turn it down because I had this funny situation which I promised I'd sold, I was 25, I'd sold my, a novel.

And it seemed like a crazy thing to do, but the editor of the novel was really challenging me to do a rewrite on it. And I knew I needed to do that. And I knew that if I didn't do this rewrite and work at least as hard as I could, that I would be the dilettante that everybody accused me of being and that I needed to just really have this experience. And so I turned down this Jack Nicholson movie. Wow. And out of nowhere, the phone rings. And it's Jack Nicholson.

He's like, hey, I hear you not doing the movie. You know? And I'm like, I'm like, oh, look, I said to Jack, I said, listen, I told him the situation. So here's the deal, man. I really, I love acting. You have been, there's a handful of artists that have actually changed my life and you're one.

My life is better because of your work, no doubt. And I want to work with you, but if I don't do this, I'm going to fail myself. So I have a choice of either like failing you or failing myself. And what do you think I should do? He said, sounds like I called the wrong dude. It sounds like we got the wrong man for the job. Sounds like you got a book to write. So he got it.

He completely got it. Yeah. You know? And life was full of those. It's not like it was ever simple or easy. It was really confusing. And there are many years in this 30 years of making movies that I felt really lost, or that I misplayed a beautiful hand dealt to me.

But of course, the game's not over. You know, you get to keep playing. And there's certain people out there. You know, Paul Schrader reached out to me with this movie, this part and first reformed, and it, like, sang to my heart and I got the chance this year to make blaze and I got to make a movie completely on my own terms and my own way and that to that 25 year old self that was the dream so you never look back with regret on any of those were you kidding what the hell was i saying to jack

oh i look back that's what i mean i've had many dark nights where what did i do i totally screwed that up i mean you know i've had many many nights like that And I think any person who lives a long time is gonna, or at least if you're gonna try to walk, you're gonna fall. I mean, you know, if I didn't prioritize my own learning at some point, it was never going to happen. That's what I felt. And I didn't want the success of Dead Poets Society

to create so much of a vacuum, pulling me one direction that I didn't take responsibility for my own education, which hadn't happened. Right. I was 18 years old. What did I know? Nothing. And I'm the only one who knew I didn't know anything.

Other people are abusing me with knowledge that I didn't possess. Right. And pushing you to get on the next project and whatever the money is. Whenever anybody's paying you money, people think you're not wasting your time. Right. And it's like, I remember my stepfather once said to me, you know, it's so hard to tell when people are BSing you when they're giving you compliments. Because you want to believe them so hard.

You know, you're the best. You're amazing. He's like, well, this guy's pretty smart, right? Because you want it to be true, Sylvia. And the same is true with money. It's like we think because you're getting paid a lot of money or getting paid money that that must be the right decision to make. But in the arts, it's just not.

There's no correlation between, if I look at my high earning years of this 30-year career, there's no association with the quality of work. Right. None. So if I imbue them with that kind of quality, well, then my compass is going to get all screwed. Doing the first reforms in the world and the boyhoods of the world has generated my career, not the times when I've gotten paid a lot of money. Right, right. As you say, the game is far from over. You're 47 years old. There's a lot of road ahead of you. What else do you want to do as you look ahead, directing, producing what you've done? What else is out there? I have a 20-year-old daughter right now, you know, who's falling in love with acting. And one of the things about young people's idealism is it reminds you of your idealism.

You know, and it makes me want to be the actor that she thinks I am. You know, she sees me a certain way. And I like that person, you know. Yeah. And I like the part of her. her that believes in the power of what we're trying to do with the arts. And so I know that I could be a lot better. And I know that, you know, if I was lucky, right, if I'm 47, you know, I could double this,

right? I got 30 years to go. This could be the halfway mark, right? This could be half-time. And in which case, I have learned a lot. And if I could apply it. And one of the things that felt amazing about Blaze, to be honest, is if you look at Alia Shawcat or Charlie Sexton or Josh Hamilton or Ben Dickie's acting in the movie, it's really good. I'm really proud of what they achieved.

And it lets me know that all this stuff that I've learned about acting, creating an environment to make good work and to start to produce and direct and do, take more of a leadership role in creating the right kind of job. jobs, that would be, that would be your blessing. I would be happy with that. And by the way, you're young enough and fit enough to still fit in the superhero outfits, if you change your mind. You still got that. You still got that. And also there's fathers, you know, superheroes have dads. Sure. You have sex. Absolutely. The wise old gray beard, right? Yeah, I got some good bag of parts coming. That pays well too. I know it sure does. I know it sure does. So let's talk about your latest true West. Yeah. Back on the stage. Does that feel like home to you being on Broadway?

It is my first love. There's no doubt about it. Acting on stage is like the center of the storm for me of what I love to do. And I get to work with Paul Dano, who I cast in one of his first plays. You know, I directed Paul. And Sam Shepard has been a major influence on my life, my artistic life. I got to work with Sam a lot. I got to be in a couple of his plays,

and I got to act with him. And, you know, he's passed now, and this will be the first major production of his since he passed, particularly this play and on Broadway. And it'll be the last one that he had anything to do with. You know, he picked this director. And I got the offer for this play

five days before he died. Wow. Yeah. So it kind of felt like... I was like, I came home and was like, Wow, Sam wants me to do Trueest. And I was so, oh, Ethan, do you want to do that? I don't know.

And then he died and felt like, wow, okay, I have to do this. Yeah. And I don't know if you remember, but the last time it was done, Phil Hoffman and John C. Riley did it. And they were switching parts. And it was really amazing production. And Sam loved that production. But he had this feeling that that had started this idea

that was the way it was supposed to be done. Right. He's like, just so you know that's not the way it's supposed to be done. They're supposed to be a 10-year age difference. Like it's supposed to be older brother, younger brother. Right. And that's what he really wanted. So he wanted us to find a great young actor to do it with me.

And so we got Paul Dano, and I love Paul. And it'll be intense. Christmas is ruined in my household because my first preview is like either the day before or the day after Christmas. Oh, you're dead. My wife saw that and said, what? You're going to be a maniac. back.

So. You know, it's funny. Actors like you I watch light up when they talk about stage productions. They love their movies, but there's something about being back in that Broadway or off Broadway community. It's because it's do or die. Yeah. You know, if you tell me, if you come up to me in the street and you say, I saw you

on training day, I don't know if you saw it on the plane last night, you saw on cable, you maybe saw it at Toronto Film Festival, I have no idea. Whatever it was, I wasn't there, right? And if you come up to me and say, I saw you in Coast of Utopia, immediately, I saw you I was actually there. And that's a different experience. You know, often happens to me, hey, I was there the night that a cell phone rang,

and Martha Plin yelled at the person in the audience, or, you know, something. I was there, Chris, oh, right, I remember that's the night the lights didn't work, right? Oh, yeah. And so it's a living thing. And it's beautiful because of that. And it's a high wire act.

You know, the stakes are just so much higher. It's a little bit more rock and roll, if you do it right. I mean, of course, if you do it wrong, it's, you know, geriatric or terrible. They'll close you down quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that part of it's true, too. You know, you can get embarrassed up there. Right. Not you, though. I think you're okay. Never. Never. Thank you, man. I appreciate the time. That was fun. Pleasure. My thanks to Ethan Hawk for a great conversation at his favorite bar. Very cool to sit down with him there. First Reformed and Blaze are both out, and you can catch him in True West on Broadway coming

this winter. And my thanks as always to all of you for tuning in to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. If you like what you hear and you haven't yet done it, check out our library of extended conversations with all my guests. And don't forget to click subscribe to hear new episodes each and every Sunday. And be sure to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll talk to you next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.