The Big Picture - Ethan Hawke Will 'Blaze' a Trail as a Director, Too | The Big Picture (Ep. 85)

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

Editor-in-Chief Sean Fennessey chats with actor and occasional director Ethan Hawke about his new film 'Blaze,'a biopic about the creative life and tragic death of the musician Blaze Foley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley. Here are a few things to check out in the Ringer universe before the end of the week. We've got an oral history on the movie Rounders 20 years later going up on Thursday. So read that and then check out the Rewatchables episode that Bill and Sean did on the movie earlier this month. And don't forget about our extensive football coverage. We have a new pod going up every day of the week on the Ringer NFL show and more football content on the Bill Simmons podcast, Dual Threat, and Against All Odds. Subscribe to those and more on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I have directed well and badly already. I have known, I've been directed well and I've been directed badly.

I know that making a movie is sacred and beautiful opportunity. And I also know that it's just making a movie. I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the biggest filmmakers slash movie stars in the world. Ethan Hawke is on the show today. And the reason for that is because Ethan has directed a terrific new film that's slowly opening across the country called Blaze. It's about the short creative life and tragic death of the musician Blaze Foley. But it isn't your typical Hollywood musician biopic. Blaze is told in an impressionistic and non-linear style. There are unreliable narrators, long musical performances, and swooning sequences of young

lovers discovering their bond. The Arkansas-born musician was inspired by outlaw country legends like Merle Haggard and songwriters like John Prine. Blaze stars Hawk's longtime friend and first-time actor Ben Dickey in an incredible performance, along with Aaliyah Shawkat and the musician Charlie Sexton, who plays the legendary singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. This isn't Ethan Hawk's first movie as a director, but it's clearly his best. A sensitive and gorgeous portrayal of creativity and action. I talked to Ethan about taking a new leap, his long career as an actor, and we also clarified some of those

controversial comments he made about superhero movies last month. Without further ado, here's Ethan Hawke. Ethan, thank you for coming in, man. That's me, man. Glad to be here. Ethan, you made a film. It's called Blaze. It's a beautiful movie. It's a true story about a real person that a lot of people are not familiar with.

You keep getting asked this question, why'd you make this movie about Blaze? And you keep saying it's because people don't know who Blaze is and I want them to know. Do you feel like people are starting to know now that the movie's been in the world a little bit? Well, it remains to be seen. He definitely, his legend has been growing.

When he died in 89, you know, you couldn't find a recording of his. I mean, you know, he had these outhouse tapes he'd recorded but they were just in like Gerf Morlix's closet and there were a couple records that he had produced you know one of which is kind of fascinating the first record he produced he in towns through a party that put the whole record label out of business they didn't ever release the record they gave him the masters and he kept them in a friend's car, and the car was stolen.

He lost the masters forever, right? I mean, that's some bad luck combined with self-sabotage. Okay. Then Townes gets him another record deal, and they record that record down in Muscle Shoals. Those producers get busted for dealing cocaine, and the FBI seized all their assets, including the records. Blaze actually snuck to somewhere, some FBI holding cell, and stole a bunch of the albums so he would sell them.

He would sell them for $8 and give $1 to the homeless. Now, since the internet happened, the outhouse tapes were released, and you can find those. And that's been really exciting. And he's slowly been building a fan base over, you know, the last 15 years or so to such a point that they are re-releasing. Even before we made the movie, the plans were in the works to re-release. They found those old masters, the FBI let go of the seized material. And so you can find all this music now. Also, Blaze recorded a lot of stuff for friends on their A-tracks.

So there's music out there now. But this thing, there is no doubt, has kicked it in the ass. I mean, it's launching the music forward in a way that was really my goal. I mean, the way you made it sound, it made it sound like I was just doing this benevolent thing for Blaze. And it wasn't that benevolent. I really saw in his story a way to do a more accurate portrait of an artist. You know, most artists are met with absolute indifference. When I was a kid, I was,

I went to one of those Cassavetes retrospectives and Jenna Rollins was sitting there at a screening of opening night, I think it was. And, and the audience was just, you know, they're deifying Cassavetes. And she's like, you know, in his life, you know, aside from a few high watermelons, mostly it was, he was just totally punched in the nose by the indifference of mankind, right? And he would be so touched to see you guys here today, but she was warning them not to over glamorize his experience, that it was very, very hard. And that is just because things are hard for you

doesn't mean anything is wrong, you know? That there's a lot of art being made, being delivered to whatever the collective consciousness is that is beautiful and important and vital to whatever's happening here, but doesn't find a way in the marketplace that makes mostly ignored, mostly ignored. So in a way for me, blaze, the film was a way to tell a story in doing the story of an artist. I can deliver you his art that will be all new. You know, if you go see The Doors, right, it's a great film.

You love it. But you already know all that music. So you're seeing a reheated version of that meal. Yeah, I've been building a relationship. I knew who Blaze Foley was. I wouldn't say I had much of a relationship to his songs. But since I saw the movie about a month ago, I'm building that relationship. But I'm also keeping an eye on the Spotify play counts since the movie has started to

trickle into the consciousness. And it's going up. It's obviously going up. It's going up, maybe not massively, but enough. And then there's something interesting. Yeah, exactly. And it'll keep going. I'll tell you, I'm very happy for Marsha, Blaze's sister.

And I'm happy for Blaze. I'm happy for the people listening. You know, it's such, the songwriting is so fantastic. Great records, yeah. And so. So did you have to make yourself kind of a master of his life? Did you have to understand every aspect of it? Because there's obviously this whole artistic life that he has.

And then there's this whole personal life that he has. And you worked with Sybil Rosen, who obviously is a figure in the story on writing the piece but do you have to feel like you have a total command of what happened to him in his life before you make a movie like this it's a really good question and I would say that you could never have command on a whole person's life. I don't know that I have command over my whole life, you know, and that I think that if I, you have to pick a point of view, you know, and if you did a movie about me from, and my best friend made it, right, it would be one thing. If you made it and my ex-wife made it, it'd be a different movie and one that I might

not like very much. Sure. Right? And if you, and if my mom made it, it would have a nice glowing patina about it and, you know. Point being,

that there are a lot of different truths to a whole mysterious entity of a human being, right? And I picked Sybil Rosen's point of view, basically. I find there's something macho

that I kind of like. There's something tough guy about the whole Texas outlaw country Western. I mean, look at an old interview, a whale on her, you know what I mean? But seeing the story through the eyes of a woman I respect, all of a sudden makes it infinitely more interesting to me because she's seeing through the pretense of the posturing and the posing or the macho this or the tough guy that. You know, Austin is full of people that will tell me what an asshole Blaise Foley was. You know, that he poured turpentine in my beer.

You know, whatever. He would heckle people on stage when he thought they were corny. I mean, he would. But he was an addict. You know, and he was having a tough time. You do something interesting in the movie too. It's because it is through a lot of Sybil's perspective, but also you have this kind of series of unreliable narrators, you know, and there's this almost like a blurriness on the edge of the frame of the movie where you're like, how much of this

is real and how much of this is just kind of shot through the lens of memory? Well, I wanted the whole thing to feel shot through the lens of memory. Exactly. Like I sat there and looked at the monitor every day and just would ask myself, does it look like my childhood? You know, and the edges are out of focus. I can't quite see my childhood. There's peace. I feel pieces of it.

I can smell it. I know what it does to my heart when I think about it. And I want the images to do that to your heart. And, but right off the bat, you know, I present two characters in kind of narrating the film as it were with differing points of view about what happened. One guy's telling a story that may or may not be true. The other guy certainly doesn't seem to believe it. Um, and I, what I like about that is I'm hopefully letting you know that the point of this film is not to give you a Wikipedia docudrama. The point of this film is to make

art of what plays this life and work meant to us, the filmmakers. This is what it meant to Sybil. This is what Towns is. That's not who Towns Van Zandt is. That's what Towns Van Zandt means to Charlie and I. Charlie Sexton. Charlie Sexton plays Townes Van Zandt, and it's an amazing performance. One of the things that's in the DNA of this idea is that as much as you could say the movie's about Blaze, it's about music. I mean, it's about creativity and about where it comes from. And one of the places it comes from is love, right?

So it's a big love story and it's, you know, the beating heart of the movie is a love story. Well, creativity is also, there are forces that are not love, right? There's a dark energy that runs through the world too. And you can't tell the story of Blaze without looking that square in the eyes. Like how did you, this guy fell in love in a tree house, learned to play the guitar and write songs, listening to John Prine in love

with a beautiful little Jewish gal with kinky hair in a tree house where everything is perfect. And then you wind up dead on the street at 39. Like what, it's such a short journey, really. It's interesting, though. I mean, the way that you do it is different than that traditional musician biopic, though, that we're talking about. It is a relief, obviously.

It's definitely one of the things I like about it. But as I was watching it, I was wondering if the way that you have cut the film together is essentially what you had down on paper beforehand, or if you had to go find a fairly unorthodox shape to the movie? I love that question because the answer is they're both true. I mean, in a lot of ways, the finished film really does look and feel like I thought it would when I first started. Like I knew it would have three timelines, past, present, future. I knew I wanted it to feel like memory, like the way a blues song does. I wanted it to work like that. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Little bridge, verse, chorus.

Things go forward, but then they circle back. They go forward. So it's not this linear structure. I love that. Beginning, middle, and end. It's a circular structure. And that was very meaningful. Now, how the circle worked, I had no idea.

I had no idea how good Ben and Charlie would be. I had a lot of exercises. I did old-fashioned exercises about make sure everybody's got stuff in their pockets. All right, you sit there, you sit there, and you know what, Charlie, why don't you just tell us a joke? Let's get us started. What do you think they'd be talking about today? And let's talk about, hey, Ben, tell Charlie about that Mississippi John Hurts song you like. And I'd just get them going, and they'd start talking, and I would tell Josh Hamilton to interrupt them. Are you filming all this? I'm filming it all.

Okay. And getting people relaxed in front of the camera. I'm getting it to a place where it feels like I've hung out in the studio with them recording. We did that as kind of a, we did one of the songs, you know, Blaze only has a few recordings, but one of them was, I wanted to, there's a scene in the movie where they press a jukebox. It's one time you hear Blaze's single. So we started the whole process of rehearsal just by recording that single.

And I let Charlie produce it for Ben. And when you hang out with these guys in the studio, it is so relaxed. It makes it seem like they're not working. It's very creative. It feels like what it would feel like to be inside a painter's studio while they're working. Just silences are magical. And there's a tremendous amount of wit. And because these guys work hard to have the opportunity to be in a studio. It's kind of like the way I feel whenever I get on set. So much work goes into creating a situation

where you get to be on a set playing a character, whatever it is. You don't want to take any second for granted and at the same time, you want to just lavish in it. Like it's both are true. So I tried to bring that feeling of being in a recording studio to being on set because they really understand that. It feels super familiar in a good way to them. And so my point being is I got a lot of material. Did you use that stuff? Some of it. Yeah. A lot of it was a lot better

than it had any right to be. And that was confusing as hell in the editing room. You know, when you start getting all these kind of magical little moments, and I knew the movie, I wanted it to be pieced together. It's like almost like if you have a stained glass window, you know, like in a church or something, they've got the life of St. Paul up. You know, it's got these little drawings and stuff. Well, I would imagine what's the life of Blaze done in this stained glass window.

And then somebody shot a hole through the thing and the whole glass just shattered. And I was trying to put it back together. What shapes can I put back together so that you can feel the story, you know? Let's talk about Ben Dickey. Let's do. Ben Dickey is the star of the movie and he's also your friend. And he's never acted before. Yep.

And he's incredible in the movie. I'm not hyperbolic. Amazing. It's not hyperbolic. It's an amazing performance. He's really tremendous. I think so, too. And I'm wondering if you'll tell me how you got him to that place

and how much of Ethan Hawke, the actor, went towards giving him energy to be a performer like this. One of the things about beginner's mind, you know what, you know, they, they call that like, you can, you ever have that thing where like the first time you pick up a bow and arrow and you just kind of like, Hmm, you put the, well, the arrow goes in here and you pull this back and you point it at the target and you shoot and you hit a bullseye. Not exactly, but I know what you mean. You know what I mean? It happens sometimes where the first time you do something, it can go great. You know, what's that Kerouac line?

First thought, best thought. Like oftentimes we think ourselves out of our best self. Point being, I knew I had a grown man and a serious artist whose art was being stifled a lot like Blaze's was. Ben has something to say about Blaze. Ben can tear up thinking about Blaze, right? Because, you know, let's face it, man. Being in the music business, I mean, Ben would work his ass off on these albums. And I've been his friend for a lot.

And I've listened to his first album, Blood Feathers. It's called Goodness Gracious. I drove across. I listened to it. I played the hell out Blood Feathers. It's called Goodness Gracious. I drove across. I listened to it. I played the hell out of that album. It's a great album. And he would get notes back from Pitchfork or various different outlets saying it's not good enough to review.

And I just feel his heart just get a fork stuck in it. Not good enough to review, but you reviewed that album. I just want a bad review in one of these. It's like basically saying your life's contribution is unnecessary. So he has access to the same Blaze narrative. He's feeling this hard, right? He knows what it's like to play in a dive bar with people walking in going, oh, him again?

No, let's go to that place. And then have to keep carrying through your song. There's something about that that I find valiant and awesome. And I wanted to make a movie about it. I know I've seen Ben, the way that he gets inside a song. You know, he once, he plays sometimes this song. It's a Blind Willie McTale song, I think, called Lonesome as I, I wished I could die. He sings that song, and he sings it like he is the song.

I mean, he doesn't sing it for you. He plays it for you. He is the song for you. And I knew that if I could get that kind of hypnotizing trance to just adjust the dial a little bit to acting and that something big could happen. And luckily for me, the great thing about having not, if I had, you know, pick, insert great actor, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Daniel Day-Lewis,

you know, Denzel Washington, whoever. Well, you know, they're going to have a busy schedule. They're going to have lots to do, and I'll get them for the costume fitting on this day. And Ben came down to the location like four months ahead. You know, he had this little studio apartment that we production gave him just off where we were building sets. And he helped the guys build sets, and he would go location scouting with me. And he didn't learn the songs that, you know, we have about 25 Blaze Foley songs in the movie. He had probably the start of shooting, I could just call out one of 70 songs and he would play it beautifully at the drop of a hat, right? He was writing postcards to Sybil Rosen every day,

every day, getting postcards back, saying, I'm working on the Moonlight song, but did he finger pick that? It seems like he's plucking it. You know, am I wrong? You know, when he practiced that and she'd write back, well, I remember his thumb would always hurt. Oh, his thumb would always hurt.

So that means, why was his thumb, you know what I mean? And his imagination was going to the deep end of the pool. And I think when you see Sean Penn and Milk or Daniel Day-Lewis in one of his finest performances, when you see, I remember reading about somebody, I didn't see it, but somebody saw Olivier do, you know, one of his plays,

do A Long Day's Journey to Night, they're talking about it. And when he exited the garden, to the garden, this friend of mine read me this passage in this book. You felt him go into the garden. You couldn't see it, but it was almost like you could smell fresh air come in the room. Just from the power of his imagination, that he felt the fresh air. And it translates. and it, it translates and Ben, it's a shamanistic deal that can, can happen. And it started to happen. You know,

he got really sick and I was worried about him before it started because the pressure was so great. It's one thing to tell you, when I first asked him to do this, I really think he thought I was kidding. I mean, I know he thought I was kidding. And then as it got closer and closer and he started feeling people, a DP arrives, a camera assistant arrives. Oh, the package. Ethan spent his own money on this. Oh, here's this other guy doing it. Okay, here's the thing. This is real.

Yeah, Ryan, they took the kids out of school. I think he started going, if I don't do a good job, all this is for naught. And I felt him kind of start to get sick. And then when he got better, it was like he had passed through some fire. And I tricked him. The first day of shooting, I told him, was a test day. I told him, we're doing this camera. I don't think it's going to work.

But why don't we just do a couple of the scenes of this lousy camera? And I'll see if it's, you know, I was saying, oh, we got a deal on this camera. But I just kind of was trying to downplay the nerves. But you got to go in front of the fire sometime. But we got the jitters out. And in each progressive day, something happened. And I would be lying not to say that it didn't have a big part to do with Alia. Alia Shawkat. Yeah, Alia Shawkat was his touchstone.

And he really admires her. I saw him say he felt like he was actually falling in love with her when he was making the movie. Look, man, acting is weird. I'm sure he did fall in love with her. And his partner in life, Beth, is my wife's best friend. And I think that she knows that. And she knew that this is what—they didn't fall in love in some creepy, gross way. They fell in love the way that people who, you know, I did a play, for example, with Wallace Shawn, Bobby Cannavale, and Josh Hamilton, Hurley Burley.

And we had to rely on each other. And in those periods where we made that play, we're kind of in love with each other. And it doesn't mean that we're like, you know, caressing each other's thigh. It means we're like gone to some place where intimacy lives. Hey guys, we're going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Miller Lite. We are in the waning days of summer. And you know what really hits the spot in the waning days of summer? A cool, cold beer. Miller Light is the great tasting light beer. With only 96 calories and 3.2 grams of carbs, that's fewer than half the calories and half the carbs of Bud Light. So there's really nothing more to talk about. If you want a cool, cold, refreshing beer in

these waning days, go with Miller Light. Miller Lite, hold true. Now back to my conversation with Ethan Hawke. You haven't directed actors on a movie set in a long time, not since your first film. And you've made a lot of films since then, and you've done a lot. And I assume you've grown a lot as a performer. And I'm wondering if you felt a significant difference making this movie to that movie. Wow, I did. And you know, in 47, when I directed before, there was a little enfant tari quality before where, you know, I'm directing Chris Gustafsson. I was 29, you know, on Chelsea Walls

and directing Vanessa, Natasha Richardson's, Vanessa Redgrave's daughter, Natasha Richardson. I was directing Chris and Natasha and I felt like a punk kid, you know, and I was running this set and I felt like I deserved to do it. I wasn't insecure about whether I deserved to do it. And, you know, Linklater used to say this thing that experience is something that can't be faked, you know, and that without experience, you don't really have confidence. You can play at confidence or you can trick your brain into feeling confident. But it was a wonderful, I have directed well and badly already. I have known, I've been directed well and I've been directed badly. I know that making a movie is sacred and beautiful opportunity. And I also know that it's just making a movie. Were there bad experiences that you've

had that you've thought, I don't want to be this kind of director. I don't want to be the person who does this. One of my favorite things that ever happened to me was my daughter was about, I don't know, 11. And I asked her how her trip went, whether she liked this person that was on a trip with her. And she said, I liked him fine, but Daddy, you wouldn't like him at all. And I said, why not? Because he was really rude to waiters. And that made me feel really good that she knew that I wouldn't like that person because I probably wouldn't. And the directors I don't like are the

ones that try to have power over other people and see their position as an opportunity to control. And one of the things that I've learned, it's an amazing thing of when you can use directing to empower. And you work really hard and you control what needs to be controlled in service of their art. You know what it felt like for Ben Dickey to win Best Actor at Sundance? I asked this dude to take it there. And he went down the rabbit hole and it

was scary. And you know, the hardest part he would say, he had no idea how much he'd love acting. And he had no idea how hard it was going to be to come out of character. When you invite, for lack of a better word, a spirit world into yourself, when you make yourself, you know, how you went on to another job. I knew she would. Ben didn't really know that. Summer camp ends. So he has now made another film. It sounds like you kind of

fucked him up a little bit though with this experience to be his first thing. I'm sure it was wonderful. Dead Poets Society did a number on me. I mean, you know, it was... Because you've had the same relationship? It was a mere holy experience, okay? I mean, I don't know what to say.

It sounds corny or whatever, but to get to be on a film set with Peter Weir, who's like a master craftsman, with five or six other young men that are really good friends and in the same place that I was with a comic genius, Robin Williams. And to be on set with John Seal, one of the world's greatest cinematographers. Listen to Peter and John Seal talk about art.

It's very exciting. Being on set with Denzel, acting at that level that he does all the time. It's somebody opens the door and says, by the way, there's a room over here where stuff gets really deep, you know, and then that door closes. You know, when Dead Poets Society wrapped, I made a ton of movies in the next five years, but I didn't have that feeling again. It's not always there. That feeling that, you know, it's an, for lack of a better, it's an energy thing. There's an energy that can happen. And I remember one of my favorite directors, Jack O'Brien, he's a theater director. He said to me, I said, how come you never go to

rap parties? He said, because if things go well as a director, everyone thinks you did it. And if things go badly, everyone thinks you did it. And the truth is, every time we did it, I didn't know you'd be so good. I didn't know that she would do that. I didn't know the costume designer was going to have that. And then if it goes well, they give you all this like, oh, thank you. They bow down in front of you. When things are good, it's in service of something you don't actually control. And I just mean to say that, yes, I fucked Ben up.

It was a big deal. And I don't think he or Charlie really understood how painful it can be to get, to put yourself in front of camera, to put yourself on stage, to try to communicate. These guys, Blaze Foley and Townes Van Zandt are major American artists and they had a lot of pain and to walk in their shadow, to even for a second shamanistically pretend to be them, you're going to get hit with some lightning bolts if you do it for real. It takes a process to let go of that. What advice did you give him after you guys were done with this film? I didn't give him enough advice afterwards. We were so excited to be finished and he had gone. I knew something remarkable had happened. What would you have told him if you could go back?

Well, ultimately what I told him is you have to get out of character with the same mental energy and alertness of which you got into it. People get so nervous about playing a concert, playing a performance. You know, when I'm playing Macbeth, I'll do anything to be good in that part. You know, do I have to stay up all night? All right, what do I have to do? What do I have to, I've got to go, you know, put myself through whatever. And then the thing ends and you're like, okay.

But you just basically did an incantation of the most malevolent, dark poem about man's obsession with greed and power and murder. And you're not going to let it go. You just invited it into your heart. You let it be. I let it dictate how my blood pumps. And now I'm just going to like walk on and like pick my kids up from school like nothing happened. You can't do it.

And not go crazy. You have to realize that it's part of a process of sharing and letting things ebb and flow. That art is this beautiful thing which you can share with people, but it's not you. It's the work. And as Ben and Charlie and I talked further on, I realized I should have prepped them better for letting go. You almost need like a funeral service. Weddings and funerals, they have meaning because we imbue them with meaning, but you've got to mark it. There's something very interesting about this stage of your career

and I want to ask you about it. So, you know, you're talking about the sort of relationship you have to the work that you've done and the work that other people are doing with you. You're at this real sweet spot, it feels like. And you tell me if I'm perceiving this correctly. You've got this performance in First Reformed,

which everybody says is wonderful and it is wonderful. Paul was here a few months ago. We talked about it it's a brilliant film you're brilliant in it we've got Blaze this is one of the best

reviewed things you've ever done it's yours you know you are at the forefront of it there's a moment there's a moment for you

right everybody is like Ethan Hawke is here it's a New Times Magazine feature about you does it actually feel that way to you in your life

or is this a constructed thing that just happens by coincidence um i did this play i'm going to answer your question called the coast of utopia about mid-19th century russian radicals and tom stoppard talks in there that sometimes when a revolution happens three days before you wouldn't have thought it was going to happen. It's like some accumulation, enough little snowflakes fall and eventually the roof collapses. Or, you know, a spider walks from here to there and it never seems like they're doing much. They're going back and forth.

And then all of a sudden some time goes by and there's this beautiful spider web. And I don't think that I, I haven't been doing the same thing this year that I've been doing since I was 18 years old. I am noticing that for some reason, other people have noticed. And that is extremely rewarding, especially because, you know, I've never, never had some big, I've had hit movies and things like that, but I haven't had a career that's been oriented around like, oh, thank God you got that part in, you know, Les Mis or whatever that, you know, Cats or, you know, that really changed everything. I would have liked to have seen that. It's been extremely slow. And I think that's been the right way for me. I find myself here looking at 50 and feeling like, wow, it's not for naught. Like you do these things and sometimes your brain depression can sift in and you think nothing matters for a second or you think these little things, you know, because we all go about our life and sometimes you get passionate about whether to go left

two degrees or left one degrees and then you think, oh, hell, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. And then 20 years go by and somebody talks to you about a line in Gattaca or a moment in Sinister that really moved them or, you know, there was a woman, I did a Q&A for Blaze the other day, right? And here I am, you know, I'm talking about my film. And there's one woman that she just couldn't stop talking about Reality Bites. She just needed to ask me like seven more questions about Reality Bites. And you know what?

I loved it. It meant a lot to her. And I'm glad she cares. You know, and you start to notice, man, people do care and it does matter. And so, and there's in that 30 years, you know, there you start to notice, man, people do care and it does matter. And so, and there's in that 30 years, you know, there's been a ton of dark days, a ton of them where, and when you survive them, you can laugh about it and it's great, but you don't know you're going to survive is the problem. Does the, when you have a moment like that, and I'm sure after

reality bites or I think a lot of people always point to Before Sunset as a kind of a turning point too for you I think in some ways because you played a part in writing that film. It was an unlikely sequel, et cetera. But do you ever have a sense of kind of the after moment too? Like you still probably do have to pick up your kids from school and there isn't a natural quality to your life. I mean nobody likes to say – no sooner does somebody tell me that things are going great, Ethan, you're having a great moment, than I think, uh-oh, now's when I'm going to really screw it up. Not trying to jinx it.

Yeah, you know what I mean? You think, well, wait, is this the moment? Does that mean it's over? Yeah. You know, I always think the great thing about failure is you don't have any backlash, you know? I remember I was kind of in shock about the movie Boyhood. I've done a lot of films with Linklater.

I kind of thought Boyhood would be like Waking Life, meaning that I would love it and that it would have some geeky fans. But that I didn't think it was fascinating to have something that was successful enough to have a backlash. You know, boy, that's not so great. It's a gimmick. And you're like, wow, we've really made it. It's well put. And so I know what I like to say is that I know I'll be washed up again soon, and I hope to recover with grace.

You've been nominated for a bunch of Oscars. You have not won. You might be nominated this year. You might not. Is it something that you think about? Are you actively engaged in that experience? Be honest. Society makes you think about it, right?

I mean, people I've met three times send me an email like, you're definitely going to get nominated for an Oscar this year. And of course, I want it because I want, I've dedicated my whole life to doing work that deserves it. I want First Reformed to deserve it. That's what I want. It would mean a lot to me for the community to feel that this work deserves it. It's incendiary art. It's work I've dreamt of doing my whole life. It's not complacent. It's a cry. And Paul is a major, major artist. And if I could contribute to work and that if it makes it to that party, it means it's made the national dialogue. And we as artists make work to be relevant.

We want to be a part of the national dialogue. Is Dazed and Confused a lesser film because it wasn't nominated for an Oscar? No, that's not lost on me. Would first reform being nominated, um, help my career? Definitely.

What kind of, I loved, I've always had this kind of shyness about coveting prizes because I want to be engaged in the work. Right. And not about the response to it. But I did interview Patty Smith once and I said, I want to be engaged in the work, right? And not about the response to it. But I did interview Patti Smith once and I said, brought up something kind of about having a push-pull relationship

towards awards. And she's like, I only have a pull relationship. I want them. I want as many as I can get. You know, you can tell me I'm pretty all day long. And I burst out laughing. I thought, you know what? That is the healthiest attitude I've ever heard.

You know, and the reason why I think that she feels that way is she's actually really proud of her own work. And she's done it the hard way. And she knows it. And I am proud of First Reformed. And I am proud of Blaze. These movies were hard to get made. They're difficult to do. And if they could be a relevant part of

the social dialogue, that would be extremely meaningful to me. This is kind of a facile question, but go with me on it. I'm with you already. Do you want to act more or direct more? What do you feel like is more your future? I feel that I, body and soul, am an actor. Everything that I know about writing or directing, I know as an actor. The joy of directing for me is I know how good Josh Hamilton is. I've known him for decades, and I knew that he would help Ben. I love acting. And I created an environment to let performances, to build a fire. He's so good silently with Charlie in those scenes.

So good. And so I'm really proud. Like, there's a great joy that comes from me about directing, but it's secretly about acting. Do you know? I do. I love creating the environment I wish I had as a performer. I love creating a script that has no plot because the plot is what makes acting so hard. Jeez, Jim, if we don't get the phone line put down by 12 noon, the Russians will activate their proto blah, blah, blah.

And you're like, how do you pull that line off? Well, you got to. And the more plot you have, the harder it is. And that's my job. And that's interesting to me, but meaning in my life as an actor. So do I know that I will write and direct more? I know it because it's a part of who I am, but it all stems from my relationship to acting. And like one of the, it was, I finished shooting Blaze and I knew we didn't have enough money for, you know, normally editing assembly takes X amount of time, but it depends on how much, how many assistants you have. We had no assistants. We had one guy and he was going to

work really hard, but it was going to take some time. And he really needed months to assemble the movie into any kind of shape to which I could begin my work. Right. He just needed to go through everything. And so, okay, well, I, as luck would have it, first reform finally got green lit. This movie, Paul and I've been trying to make for a little while and boom, we've got it. But I took everything that I had learned from watching Ben and Charlie and Alia. I mean, running a little acting workshop was like the best thing for my acting. You know, I tried to go be the same actor for Paul that I had wanted. Somebody who was completely prepared.

Somebody who was completely supple. Could go with conviction. Was still having an opening enough mind to change. Somebody who could retreat or advance on call. And I had this unbelievable piece of writing. And so my point being is that there's no difference in my mind. Am I going to act and direct in the future?

I'm definitely going to do all of the above and it's always going to be connected to acting. I just have two more questions for you. The first one is, you made some comments about comic book movies. Those comments were interesting, slightly taken out of context, but it created a dialogue. And I'm wondering what it's like when something you say becomes kind of like a centrality of think pieces for a few days. Like, did you follow that? Were you aware of what that started? I was aware of it. And it's part of the interesting thing about

the world we live in, because there I am giving an interview at the Locarno Film Festival with a bunch of Swiss, German, French people, right? And they're talking to me about superhero movies, and you start talking about the history of cinema, and invariably you're talking about the European

cinema, because I'm talking to people that have Fassbender and Godard and Bergman and, you know, Bresson as their, those are the keys that they talk about. And they have a certain cynicism towards America's obsession with accumulation of wealth, like, and what it's doing to the art form. And that's a very interesting conversation. You know, this form is incredibly young. You know, it's a hundred, I mean, people have been acting and playing music and telling stories and writing stories

for thousands of years. You know, I got to perform in the oldest theater on planet earth in Greece and Epidaurus, you know, and you know, where, where they would do like Electra and stuff. I mean, this is an old form. Movies. It's infancy. And the problem with it is it's so appealing. It takes so little work to watch a movie. You know, reading Anna Karenina is pretty hard. It's very rewarding.

But watching a movie is really exciting. There's music. There's things. And these, what, what big business has discovered is that the more they do the work for us, the more money they make. Well, that is going to have an impact on the development of this young art form. Right. And that's what I was talking about. You know, I have four kids under the age of 20, right? I've seen every superhero movie that has come out. Okay. I out. I've seen them all. Logan is one of my favorites. I picked that one to talk about because I thought it was unassailable.

Doctor Strange is another one of my favorites. Dark Knight is another one of my favorites. I'm a geek for the Tim Burton ones. I love talking about them. What I wasn't doing was being disrespect. Some of the best artists, musicians, set designers, costume designers, actors are working in this form. It is sucking up a tremendous amount of energy. And it's very hard for other kinds of movies to compete when there's one that does so much of the work for us. And that is an interesting thing to talk about. But to your point, one of the things that would happen And that is an interesting thing to talk about. But to your point,

one of the things that would happen to me is I would have one friend shoot me a text going, thank God you said that. And another one said, why would you say that, jerk? You love that movie. Like, you know, and you're like, Jesus, we're engaged in a national dot.

The internet is just a maze. It is so the Tower of Babel, you know, and you have to be so careful. I do this for a living and I was still sort of blown away by that particular comment just kind of going nuclear because it seemed, I don't know about harmless. It was just, it was different. It's certainly a conversation that people are having in closed doors all the time. And it's certainly, you know, not radical. Ethan, last question.

Yes. I end every show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they have seen. So what is the last great thing that you have seen so what is the last great thing that you have seen The Blues According to Lightning Hopkins Les Blank's film I just I got asked they were showing Blaze in Nashville

it's an amazing Belcourt movie theater there and they asked me would I program a double feature since I was doing it and so I showed The Blues According to Lightning Hopkins and Badlands. And Badlands, just because it's such, to see Sissy Spacek, that performance is so remarkable. Martin Sheen, if a movie is a fist, five fingers coming together, the acting, the writing, the directing, the photography, and the music come together in Badlands to punch you in the face. And it's my favorite kind of, you know, quote, unquote, art film because it's so much fun.

You know, it's not going to cinema school to go see Badlands. It's so fun. Now, the blues, according to Light and Hopkins, as, you as you know I feel I dare you to watch it's the sexiest movie it's so Lightnin' Hopkins is so hypnotic that music is so beautiful

Les Blank's such a great filmmaker and I highly recommend both films I felt Blaze was just as hypnotic Ethan thank you for doing this appreciate it just as hypnotic. Ethan, thank you for doing this. Appreciate it. Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture.

If you want to hear more about movies, might I recommend the Rewatchables podcast. This week, Chris Ryan, Bill Simmons, and myself talked about Tony Scott

and Quentin Tarantino's true romance. It truly was White Boy Day. And if you want to read some, I wrote a bit about Michael Moore and his new film Fahrenheit 11.9, which I found to be incredibly bracing and powerful in a way that I didn't quite expect. So please check that out at theringer.com. And thank you again for listening.