The Big Picture - The Ethan Hawke Hall of Fame and ‘The Black Phone’

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Chris Ryan joins Sean to discuss the new horror thriller 'The Black Phone,' which stars one of our most beloved actors, Ethan Hawke (1:00). Then, they build out the Hawke Hall of Fame with his 10 essential performances (25:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey Guest: Chris Ryan Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The goal? Explain the 1990s in exactly 60 songs. The result? We did it. I'm Rob Arvilla. I host 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, which has, indeed, covered 60 fantastic songs thus far from Tupac, to Radiohead, to TLC. So let's do 30 more. Let's do 90 songs. No, we're not changing the name. More rad songs. more special guests, more astute critical analysis, more loopy nostalgic exuberance. That's 60 songs that explain the 90s every Wednesday, only on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Ethan Hawke. One of this past weekend's big releases was the horror thriller The Black Phone. And it stars as the masked grabber who kidnaps children, paradoxically, one of our most beloved actors for his entire life on The Big Picture. His name is Ethan Hawke.

He's had an expansive, always interesting career as an actor, writer, director, documentarian, many other things. Perhaps his biggest fan, to my knowledge, is Chris Ryan, and he's here on the pod to talk about Hawk. How you doing, C.R.? What's up, man? Movies are back. They came back with a vengeance this weekend. Quite a weekend. We had a solid performance from Elvis atop the box office. Top Gun Maverick continues to win. There's a Jurassic Park movie that I'm sure you fully understand in theaters right now. And coming in fourth place with a solid $23 million

is The Black Phone, the movie we're talking about today. Four movies grossing over $20 million in the domestic box office. Shout out to all the shareholders. Shout out to the theater chains, to the concessions. We did it, guys. Movies are sort of back. They're in this constant state of reimagining whether or not they

can come back or not. But The Black Phone does feel like a movie that was being released in the high times of 2019, Blumhouse thriller, and interesting movie. A snapshot of the movie really quickly, directed by Scott Derrickson, who previously collaborated with Ethan Hawke on Sinister 10 years ago. It features a 13-year-old kid named Finney Shaw who's abducted and is held in a soundproof basement by a sadistic mass killer called the Grabber. When a disconnected phone on the wall starts to ring, he discovers that he can hear the voices of the murderer's previous victims. They're dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to Finney. This is based on a story by Joe Hill, who is

Stephen King's son, and written by Scott Derrickson and Robert Cargill. What did you think of The Black Phone? So I think I liked it more in concept than execution. And that concept is essentially, what if we did it, but as Dazed and Confused? And I think that's a really good idea. They start out with some Little League. The kid looks a lot like Wiley from Dazed and Confused. There is that feeling to it. Good soundtrack. Kind of basic.

There are needle drops that almost directly reflect the needle drops in Dazed and Confused. For sure. There's some, I would say, chronological flexibility about... It seems like they're like hair metal kids in the 1970s for the sake of this movie. But beyond that, I really like that concept. And then I think the very things that the movie has going for it kind of go against it at times, which is essentially that it doesn't dwell too much on the backstory of the grabber or maybe like his motivation. It's not that I really need a lot of character motivation from this. And it becomes just a little vague as to what's possible in this world,

what isn't, what's going on. It's actually quite inventive because I think it was probably a lot of it was a function of the budget and a function of like the scale of the movie that they were making. But it's largely takes place in a room, you after they get after they get uh finney it's like more or less like kind of a one room deal uh but i thought it was cool i guess i've you know it would be like a two and a half out of three four star kind of thing yeah we're on the same page i think part of it was the marketing for the film had me thinking that this was actually going

to be a significantly darker movie, which is kind of a strange thing to say about a movie about a killer who abducts children, which is a pretty grim premise. But the movie is surprisingly magically real in a way, you know? And the fact that Joe Hill is Stephen King's

son, there is certainly a Stephen King, sort of the last 40 pages of a Stephen King novel quality to this story. It reminds me of some of the last 40 pages of a Stephen King novel quality to this story um it reminds me of some of the things you'd read in the stand about like how evil and how good are kind of it constantly at war with one another and yeah you know that there is this kind of spiritual aspect to a lot of the evil in the world and his sister is able to like communicate or see things in her dreams which is much like her late mother and that whole thing feels very like like very Stephen King yeah and I mean obviously that makes sense uh given who Joe Hill is as far as Derrickson it's it's kind of an unusual movie you can tell

that he uh was attracted to this because it recalls his childhood when he was growing up in this era in this time and um you know the idea of the finney kid being like a little bit of an outcast being picked on a little bit and kind of transforming that story in a story about like basically like forming bonds and forming unions with these children that he speaks to who have been killed but it's it's kind it's the word you used to me when you texted me over the weekend when you saw it was odd and i do think it is an odd movie because it's kind of neither fish nor fowl it's neither like a true thriller because you we basically know that the main character is going to be abducted because we've all seen the trailer but also it's not like a pure horror movie because it doesn't feature like

lots of grisly kills two jump scares basically yeah yeah and so i think honestly what recommends it and this is odd to say because we almost never see his face in this movie is ethan hawke behind a mask embodies a really odd horror movie villain you know a really odd kind of killer there's like a a vulnerability and a weirdness to his performance that is pretty unusual and i really i liked him in this a lot it's a little bit it's another movie where i feel like many of the actors aren't necessarily always on the same page about what kind of movie they're in but it feels like with you ethan hawke very much is like i know what i'm doing here i've made a choice about what this character is and i'm

following it all the way through so i did like crucially all of his scenes are with finney pretty much they're with this kid whereas like some of the other actors are doing stuff with detectives and other kids and like they're just like out there and like watching James Ransone and Jeremy Davies try to calibrate their thing to this movie is I think where

some of the tonal shifts happen. You know it's really interesting you mentioned like the thriller aspect of this. We really are living at a time where, like, David Fincher has all these guys in his pocket. Because this movie essentially opens with a credit sequence that's right out of Seven. And I kind of, I would be interested in seeing that version of this movie. You know, the, like, even one that's about the cops trying to figure out who did this

because I think that his influence like looms over this as much as say the It adaptation that happened a couple of years ago. Yeah,

I agree with you. So you're a veteran of the Stranger Things wars. Where are you at on kid acting these days? Do you feel like you've got your tuning fork

finally set? little princess leia has ruined kid acting for me for a few years now it's gonna be a minute i need christian bale to be reincarnated you know it's what's what's the last great kid performance oh that's that's an interesting question uh i i did think a couple of the kids in it were pretty good yeah um including um finn wolfhard of strange things fame so that that was a pretty solid cast that's a really good question there was one recently what am i thinking of didn't a kid get nominated recently yeah i feel like sophia lillis in it is probably the best we've had in the last couple of years. There haven't been too many.

Although, it's an interesting way to pivot into Ethan Hawke here. Because Ethan Hawke, of course, was a preteen when he first hit the movie scene. Child actor in Explorers, the Joe Dante film. And so, you know, we're going to talk about Hawke's whole career. And it is a wide, deep, deep bold unusual kind of career for a would you call him a movie star uh yes but i think he's maybe more of a really famous actor than he is a movie star and what's the distinction there and does that define him in a way that it maybe doesn't define any other actor that we have at the moment? Meaning like he can't open a movie, but you never are disappointed to

see him in a movie? And when he does open a movie, I don't know if he gets credit for it. Like if he, if this movie made 20 million bucks, like it did exactly what Blumhouse hoped it would do. It did probably exactly what Ethan Hawke hoped it would do when he probably didn't take that much money for the role, but got points on what it did at the box office. And it's basically been, you know, the other big horror movie from this year, Scream, was a sequel. This is one of the first original horror movies we've gotten in theaters in a while.

I don't know necessarily, though, Ethan Hawke wears a mask the entire movie, save like a brief moment, that people are going to walk out and be like, Ethan Hawke throws his hat in the Tom Cruise and Velociraptor ring in the box office fight. You know what I mean? Well, we're doing that, but sure.

Yeah, yeah. But like, I don't think he's going to get like the dap for that. I think what he gets is, and we'll talk about this a lot when we talk about his career, is he is this relentlessly searching, try-anything kind of actor who isn't afraid to do stuff that people actually want to go see, but also will do stuff nobody wants to go see. And he looks at those two things as completely equally important and valuable. Do you feel like you approach your podcasting career that way? That there are some that are just for you?

Are you referring to certain episodes of the Rewatchables? Or when Andy and I talk about a French language spy show for six weeks of the summer? That might be more like what I'm thinking. Let's go back to Hawk. So Ethan Hawk's only 51. He's a lot closer to us in age than I think I realized. Do you view him as a contemporary? I'll say this. I think that this is probably the actor that I most identify with. I don't mean I'm cool like him or anything like that, but it is the closest thing that a guy who could be in the magnificent seven. I can also imagine like hanging out with him. Does that make any sense?

Yeah. He's like cool older brother in a lot of ways. I didn't have an older brother, but if I did, I think I would have wanted it to be Ethan Hawk, you know, really curious guy, seemingly always going on adventures.

Is yours Pratt? Chris Pratt is the guy you would most want. I just said Ethan Hawk, bro. I just said Ethan Hawk. All right. You? Chris Pratt is the guy you would most want? No, I just said Ethan Hawke, bro. I just said Ethan Hawke. All right. You're the Pratt guy. We know this. Pratt comes from TV.

Ethan Hawke comes from movies. So just keep that in mind. Hawke is so unusual. You know, he's born in Austin, Texas. And he did spend some time in his youth in Texas. But for the most part, grew up on the East Coast

with his mom after his parents split. And he's having just a fascinatingly wide career. Like I said, he's been Academy Award nominated, and he's written novels, and he's directed documentaries. He's got a documentary coming out later this year, actually in about a month's time, called The Last Movie Stars, speaking of the movie star conversation, about Joanne Woodard and Paul Newman and their union and their partnership and kind of what they did together as a famous couple and the good they put into the world on the art that they made and that's such an interesting self-reflexive kind of work him thinking about like his place in the world he seems to be someone who is always not just questing to do something new but like constantly in self-analysis of the work that he's doing,

which I find very charming. I find it to be unusual for an actor or a movie star because most of those folks either seem completely intellectually checked out or too far in the other direction. Or completely full of shit. You know what I mean? It's just like if you just put the cue cards

in front of them, they'll just be like, I will sell this thing no matter what it is. When I talked to him for Good Lord Bird, it almost threw me off how intellectually and emotionally engaged he was with his career at the same time. And you and I probably, when we used to talk to musicians and when we talked to people who make TV and movies now, we ask about like how people plot their careers or how they view their own body of work and we're often disappointed by the answer like the people will often be like well i don't know it's just like whatever my agent brings me or it's like he loves that question we just got into the studio and let

things happen and it's not we're not really prescriptive about he was like no i see how this is all laid out i know what marvel is doing i know what this is happening i can't make good lord bird here unless i do that here and he's like a very playful and i think uh you know like there was a moment in the reality bites uh rewatchables where bill was like kind of like I wouldn't be friends with Troy, his character from Reality Bites, in college. He would have really bothered me. And I think that Ethan Hawke has some of that quality of the like, I'm the guy who brings a book to a party

kind of thing. But you kind of need those guys in the world. You need really sincere people who believe in creative arts with all of their heart or otherwise like what's it all for right i completely agree i think the thing that also recommends that approach for him is the fact that he's not too pretentious or up his own ass to make the black phone or to make the purge or to make even moon night which I did not think was necessarily all that successful. But he will still do mainstream fare because he knows how difficult it is to have a career and how difficult it is to get things off the ground that are not necessarily commercial. So he's kind

of constantly willing to make that bet. You and I have both interviewed him probably a couple of times at this point. He's just such a dynamic thinker. And also, like you say, kind of willing to take the bait from someone like you and i that he's willing to go off but also is like a basketball fan and a right and a dad and like sort of like a regular person in that respect yeah and so because of that like i think he's a much more approachable figure and doesn't have this not just the high-mindedness doesn't bother me as much but the he doesn't seem terribly famous you know he's very he's very handsome and um but he doesn't even in films there's a regular quality to him if you look at him in movies like the before movies or boyhood he seems like a man in the world and you can't say that about a lot of movie stars

um one thing i i was rereading the the john laur profile of him from the new yorker from a few years back around the time of the good lord, which is such a fascinating piece about his life and especially like the way that he was raised and kind of how he was challenged as a kid, which I think led to a lot of the work that he ended up doing. And I just thought this passage was really interesting. So he went to Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and he said, I wanted to get into college for my mom. And when I got there, I realized I couldn't live for her. I was super anxious to start living my life. So Lahr writes, in his second week, he hitchhiked to New York to see the Grateful Dead. In his fifth week, a teacher pulled him out of class and asked, are you high?

And then Hawk admitted that he was. And then that teacher asked, then why are you here? And that was the last theater class he ever took. He'd heard that there were auditions in New York for a Peter Weir film called Dead Poets Society. He decided that if he didn't get a part, he'd become a merchant marine. The sun was not yet up when he got to the Pittsburgh bus station. He said, the only thing I remember is my mom on the phone crying. She said, then I don't know if

I've ever done this since. I got on my knees and I prayed that I was making the right decision. And then shortly in that piece, Richard Linklater describes him as a real-life Neil Cassidy type. I was just going to say it sounds like a Kerouac character. Like the Merchant Marines or becoming an actor in New York thing is not...

You don't hear that very much anymore. Yeah, it's so interesting. You really have to have a certain kind of self-belief and a self-possession, I think, to get yourself to that place where you're giving an interview and you're like, I either was going to the Merchant Marines or I was going to be a huge movie star. He also, I mean,

not to doubt his dedication to the Merchant Marines as a vocation, but he probably was like, I'll go into the Merchant Marines and then I will write a novel about what I didn't in the Merchant Marines, like Joseph Conrad. I think he saw or loved people like people like towns van zandt and jack

kerouac and the the creative arts as something that happens in conjunction with a life of adventure and so in some ways you know he has become this huge industry unto himself as an actor who can essentially get smaller movies made if you get him in your film but i think he sees like doing uh first reformed or doing you know lots of movies with first-time directors you know lots of of people's first movies are with him i think he sees that as like the great adventure that's his merchant mar Marines is like calling into all these different ships of port, but it's all these different movie and theatrical experiences. It's interesting you put it that way because he also is incredibly loyal to filmmakers he's worked with before. He's worked with Linklater many times. He's worked with Antoine Fuqua many

times. He's worked with Michael Amerita many times. He actually builds also these long-lasting partnerships. The same is true for his work in the theater, which we probably won't talk about very much here. But he's also really one of the signature staples of New York theater acting over the last 20 years. He has his own theater company that he started with a friend. And he's appeared on Broadway many times. He's been nominated for Tonys and for Drama Desk Awards. And so he's got a big, big life as an American actor. And so I think that's the thing that distinguishes him from kind of his movie star contemporaries. Do you remember

the first time you saw him on screen? So I think that there's definitely a possibility that it was before I even understood who Ethan Hawke was and it was the Explorers because that was a big VHS tape in my early childhood that I do remember seeing that pretty early. I'm not sure if I saw Dead Poets. As it came out, that might have been a little intense for me at the time. But if it wasn't when it came out, it was fairly soon after that because my dad was covering the Oscars and the Oscar movies were talked about in our house when I was a pretty young kid. So it would definitely be one of those two, I would imagine. If you could summarize what you love about him as a screen presence in a couple of sentences, what is it? What does he do that is different?

I think vulnerability. I mean, I think that there's lots of actors who will save their kind of like, I don't know, like Costner will kind of do like once a movie, he'll kind of show like this character doubting himself or he'll show like this character's heartbreaking or show this character no longer believing in his own convictions or whatever. But like Hawk kind of does that the entire time. You know, you're never watching an Ethan Hawk character who's entirely sure of himself. And that to me is incredibly human. Like that's a behavior. And even, I don't

even know if it's written that way. He often plays guys who are, um, I will, you know, in the first half of his career, he plays people who are being thrown into situations that they have no experience in. And in the second half of his career, I find that he's often the dad in boyhood who's trying his best, but has failed in a lot of ways. And I've always really liked that about him. I mean, that's not movie star behavior, usually. Usually, you have somebody who's like, I'll do it if it's kind of the money shot, but I'm not going to just have this guy be this frail, fuck up the entire movie. Yeah usually he's a raw nerve a lot of the time which is unusual um have you read but it's never like edgy you know what i mean it's never like oh this puts me off or this is like um neurotic necessarily you know it's like more

more he's like an open wound you know yeah well i may dispute that in a couple of these performances we'll talk about but i was wondering if you've read any of his novels. I haven't. Are you afraid to be disappointed by them? No, I just, I think when Hot Estate came out, that was at the sort of peak of like, who does this guy think he is? And I probably went along with that line of thinking a little bit. And I really admire the fact that he's just like, I look like this isn't a vanity thing for me. This is like, I want to be a serious writer. I want to be a serious actor. I think that

he understands how he's perceived, but I do think that there are certain things that he'll do just despite whatever ridicule he might face. He has kind of rehabilitated that part of his reputation too, because the book that came out after The Hottest State, Ash Wednesday, was pretty well reviewed. And I think he released a book a couple of years ago as well, which seems to have been reasonably well reviewed too. So even that part of him... Have you read... Did you read Hottest State? I definitely picked it up in a bookstore when it came out and i don't know if i got past the first 20 pages in the bookstore but that's not really anything against the hottest state i've probably done that with 500 books in my life that's a that's a that's one of my bad habits is going into bookstores thinking i'm gonna really

like something starting to read it and then realizing i don't have time for it um so i haven't read any of them um i don't think that i will i have seen uh the adaptation of the hottest state which i would say is not the greatest film is filmography but why don't why don't we talk about his filmography he's made a lot of movies he's made i think he's made 85 films in 40 less than 40 years so he works often he is someone who has definitely made some movies that I have not seen, not nearly as many as Nicolas Cage. But unlike, say, Tom Cruise, who was the last Hall of Fame we built,

I had seen every single Tom Cruise movie multiple times, probably. This is an unusual career because, as you said, Explorers is his first film. Joe Dante, kind of pre-teen boy space adventure that is very charming, very winning. I rewatched it last night. Feels like a real relic of 1985, but

in a good way. Do you think that this movie belongs in the Ethan Hawke Hall of Fame? No, I think that we need to pick, although I will say that's a great kid actor movie at a time when i feel like they really figured out how to work with kid actors really well well it's it's a pretty fascinating one because river phoenix is his co-star and river phoenix is wonderful in that movie and in a role

that you wouldn't think river phoenix would play he's the dork he's the dork yeah and he's really good as wolf gang holler yeah and it's interesting because hawk i think struggled to get parts after this movie was released which was not a hit and river phoenix's next movie was stand by me yes and and hawk has talked about the jealousy that he felt as he watched river phoenix become this star leading up to eventually getting the part in dead poet society which is the next movie on the list. So he plays Todd Anderson, and this is Oh Captain, My Captain, and this is obviously going in.

Yeah, this is one of the great coming-of-age movies, one of the most beautifully observed dramas of that time period, and is in a lot of ways a pretty perfect movie. The next movie after that is a movie called Dad. I have not seen this film. I've not seen Dad. So I assume it's not going in.

No. White Fang though? I mean, White Fang, when I was nine years old, which is how old I was when this was released, was a big deal.

This was an event movie for children. I definitely saw it when it was released and have not seen it since. I believe it was a hit. Still. No, it's not. What about a film

that was released that same year, Mystery Date? So, I do remember this because this was very much like him being like, I graduated. I'm gonna i'm gonna be in romantic movies now i haven't seen it since like around when it came out it was a very big um trailer that was at the beginning of a lot of videos that i would rent

so i don't know if is heather graham in this it's terry polo terry polo um so it's so strange the timing of of the universe is always interesting to me on friday i watched a documentary called this is guar about the band guar you will watch anything i'm just trying to get a full sense of the landscape of cinema that's really something that is important to me do you like guar sure sure do you like put guar on while you're driving around? well you know I loved Empire Records as a teenager and there's a very famous guar cameo

so I had a little guar phase when I was 13 I wouldn't say I was really into getting dressed up like Odorous or Ungus yeah so anyhow I'm watching this guar documentary and dressed up like Odorous Orongus. You saved that for your 30s, yeah. So anyhow, I'm watching this Gwar documentary and I'm waiting

for the sequence where they talk about how they were in Empire Records and how that helped evolve them. And they start by saying we were actually in a movie called Mystery Date, which I had never seen. And there's a scene where Ethan Hawke and Terry Polo go on a date together and they go to seen. And there's a scene where they're, they go,

Ethan Hawke and Terry Polo go on a date together and they go to this bar and there's a bar band playing, but the bar band is Gwar in full Gwar regalia, you know, dressed up as monsters.

And it's kind of amazing that for a hot minute there, Gwar actually was in like three or four movies. That alone, though, I don't think warrants a inclusion in the Ethan Hawke Hall of Fame.

So Mystery Date is out. I do like Terry Polo though, if I'm being honest. Always had a thing for her. She was great. 1992, Waterland. I haven't seen this film. I don't remember it. Was this a prestigious drama? It's more of a mystery

movie. It's actually directed by Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenha directed by um jake gyllenhaal and maggie gyllenhaal's father stephen gyllenhaal uh shot actually by robert elswit who would go on to work oh yeah paul thomas anderson many times um pretty interesting cast jeremy irons uh shanae cusack john hurd and ethan hawke um i may have seen this and don't remember actually i don't remember it there was a lot of water movies back then too i don't think it's quite like water this and don't remember actually. I don't remember it. There was a lot of water movies back then too. I don't think it's quite like Waterworld. I don't think this is the prequel to Waterworld.

But there was also that, what was the Eric Stoltz, Wesley Snipes wheelchair movie? Was that Water Dance? Water Dancers? Yeah. So, you know, we were just firing them out as a country back then. Yeah.

And then, so the sequel to Water Dance, Deep Water was released this year. That's right. Directed by Adrian Lyne. So things have been going really well. Okay, another movie in 1992. Water, one of the great franchises we've ever created. Actually, I think the conclusion of the Water Saga is coming at the end of this year. Avatar, The Way of Water. Yeah, which is exciting.

Big Jim closing the loop for us. Do you think if you did a big pick pod, best water movies? I mean, there's a one million percent chance we're going to do that at some point water why not we're fucking done when that people want it do people want the water movies podcast i'll do it we're doing a train podcast later this year come on yeah yeah for sure definitely it might even be Water Week. Water Month? How else will we celebrate Avatar? Yeah.

All right. 1992, Midnight Clear. Did you read this book in high school? I did. And this movie is one of those like, they got who in this movie? It's like, it's because it's Ethan Hawke, Gary Sinise, Pete Berg.

Gosh, there's some other other pretty big people in this. Kevin Dillon. That's right. Frank Whaley. That's right. John C. McKinley. And it's an adaptation of William Morton's novel about his experiences in the Ardennes at Christmas,

I believe right before the end of the war in the European theater and world war two. And it is, uh, pretty moving. It's a pretty amazing movie. And, uh,

it's really under seen. Um, there is one or two moments in it that I don't think have aged great, but, uh, are true to the book, I guess. And,

and, you know, true to William Wharton's experiences, but he, Ethan Hawke is really, really good at it. And he is, This is a really big great lead performance

by him. Everybody else around him has kind of got their tics and bits and heightened personalities, and he has to be in almost every shot and be the kind of steady center of this film. This is one of the first movies that was directed by Keith Gordon, who was

one of the stars of Dressed to Kill, a number of other movies in the 80s, and went on to be a filmmaker. Legend of Billie Jean. That's right. Never seen it. Pretty good movie. I like him in Night Clear.

I also read this book in school. I wouldn't put it in the Hall of Fame, but I would just recommend it. I wouldn't either. Okay, we're starting to get to the true Hawk time. I would like to create... I don't know if it goes in the hall, but I'm going to ask for there to be a little foyer

where we put Alive. Okay. I was going to ask you about this because I haven't seen Alive in a long time. Alive is the sort of cannibal survivalist story directed by Frank Marshall from 1993. This was a very noisy

movie when it was released. For sure. This felt like an event film at the time. I don't even totally know why that was. What time of year was this movie released? I don't know, but I think it was also it was just like they do what in this movie? Yes. Right, so this movie? Yes.

Right, so this movie was released January 15th, 1993. So it's kind of unusual that there was so much noise around it given that it was a sort of a dumpuary release. Did Frank Marshall direct this? He did direct it, yeah.

Also, John Patrick Shanley wrote the screenplay for this movie. So that's probably part of the reason why it was produced by Kathleen Kennedy, who is, of course, very important these days in Hollywood. You it's it's about the survivors of a 1972 plane crash uh in the andes and the men who fight to stay alive and the things that they do ethan hawke ethan hawke's best friend josh hamilton also one of the co-stars

yeah vincent spano uh i remember liking this, but definitely have not seen it in 25 years. I've watched this movie a bunch. I don't ever dial it up now. And it's interestingly not a big cable one. I don't know. I mean, maybe it's just because nobody thinks anybody wants to watch people eating one another

during the middle of the day on Cinemax. But it is incredibly well-made. And he plays this really stoic guy who kind of becomes the leader of the entire group of people and is like, what we have to do is eat so that we can climb over the Andes to save ourselves.

I believe this movie is currently streaming on Paramount+. Oh, dope. Right next to the mayor of Kingstown. A Midnight Clear, by the way, is free. You can watch it on YouTube. You can watch it on Tubi. It's all over the place if you want to check that one out.

Alive, I'm just going to give a yellow. This is our first yellow light. Everything has been green or red up until this point except for Dead Poets Society which is officially in. Rich in Love is also in 1993. That movie is definitely not in the Hall of Fame.

1994 we get to Reality Bites and Troy who you mentioned earlier. Great film. Let me ask you just for the sake of conversation can we only have

Troy or Jesse in the Hall of Fame? No. They're two sides of the same coin. Okay. I'm just asking. I want to talk it out.

Well, I just feel like Troy is, Jesse is Troy minus the cynicism. Mm-hmm. Okay. The same beauty, the same artistic soul, the same kind of wandering, the same cultural brain. But not as like damaged by his dad and sort of self-destructive. Yes. Okay, so Jesse and Troy both go in. And Reality Bites

was written by a woman, and Before Sunrise was written by a man and a woman. And then written again, rewritten by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, along with Linklater. And that is notable to me.

You're, at this stage of your life, are you more of a Troy or more like Ben Stiller's character, do you think? Or more like a Steve Zahn maybe? Or Jeanine Garofalo? Yeah, I'm just folding clothes at the gap like Jeanine. Is that how you think of your podcasting these days?

Yeah, make sure it's got a perfect crease. Get out there to people you know I did that right yeah can you still do the shirt really well uh not too bad muscle memory I definitely put my wife to shame when it comes to clothes folding which unfortunately for me means I fold a lot of the laundry in this house um okay reality bites is going in floundering was also released in 1994 but that movie is not going in you remember that one I do not see it so funny. He's got a bunch of movies like this where I'm like, what was that? When did you do that? Yeah, even going through, basically throughout his entire career, I'll be like, oh, I didn't know he put out three movies that year and I only saw one. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from from real canadian superstore with pc express

shop online for super prices and super savings try it today and get up to 75 in pc optimum points visit superstore.ca to get started okay so reality bites is going in in 1985 before sunrise has to go in um let's wait to have our before movies conversation. Okay. 1995 also features a film called Search and Destroy. Have you seen this movie? I haven't. Once again, incredible cast in this movie.

Ethan Hawke only plays a supporting part. It's directed by David Sal based on a play by Howard Corder. The screenplay was written by Michael Almerida, which is notable because he would be somebody that Hawke would go on to collaborate with in the future. Griffin Dunn, Rosanna Arquette, Ileana Douglas, Dennis Hopper, John Turturro, Christopher Walken. Pretty amazing cast. Score by Elmer Bernstein. Jeez. I don't know. This movie made $389,000 at the box office. How does that happen? Anyway, Search and Destroy is not in.

Okay, 1997. Two years go by. No Hawk movies. Then we get Gattaca. Okay, so there is a huge Gattaca hive out there. There is Make Gattaca Rewatchable. There is Gattaca is a hugely influential and important sci-fi movie.

I thought Gattaca was pretty good. I think whenattaca was pretty good. I think when it came out, I found it a little cold, as I do many of Andrew Nichols' movies. But I recognize its importance, and if you want to say yellow or it's in even, I'll entertain the conversation. Okay.

My instinct, and this is not a question of quality but impact, is that it has to go in. Now, I revisited Gattaca last night. I have also observed the Gattaca Hive. I have seen the people calling for it for the rewatchables. I am very mixed on the work of Andrew Nichol. I don't think...

It's a movie with a great premise and a great ending and a very soft middle that kind of drags. I just rewatched it last night. This is the film where Hawk met his future wife, Uma Thurman, from whom he is now divorced. And the reason I think it should go in is because it's a very, very, very, very good Ethan Hawke performance. Yeah, right. In a movie that is a little bit uneven but especially as the movie gets more frantic and more desperate and his character is being coming

closer and closer to being found out you see that like this is basically just a you know humphrey bogart movie or a richard widmark movie just with a lot of beautiful kind of science fiction design and you can it's there's a dead giveaway in the alan arkin character kind of dressed like a classic gumshoe detective. And he becomes that really tense, frantic figure that you see in a lot of 40s and 50s films. And at the sort of breaking point, the big reveal at the end of the movie, it's some of Hawk's, I think, best acting

when he's in his 20s. So because of the fan base and because of the work that Hawk does, my gut is to put it in. Now, it's going to get a little gnarly after this though because I think there's going to be some Hawk movies that you like that I don't care for and vice versa.

We'll work to collaborate as best we can. Gattaca, I'm going to vote for going in right now. 1998, Great Expectations. Do you remember this? I do. Cuaron. Very, very, very big creative swing that I think really misses misses but I admire the the balls on it yeah it feels

like Cuaron preparing for better versions of films that he would make sometimes in Spanish not necessarily always in Spanish but you to mama Tambien seems to be like oh like the more reflect stripped down and refined version of what he's going for. Like a romantic drama is something he's really good at. And so I feel like this doesn't work as well.

So that's not going in. Even though, I mean, Ethan Hawke getting to play Finn Bell. And work against De Niro. Right. All his hopes and dreams right there, right? That you'd imagine as a young actor, that was a huge deal for him. Doesn't work. Newton Boys.

One of the real, I wouldn't say disappointments, but it's funny. This has been on Criterion recently for a little bit of time. So this is a Richard Linklater Western. And it's McConaughey's in this, right? McConaughey, Skeet Ulrich, Vincent D'Onofrio,

Dwight Yoakam, and Ethan Hawke. Yeah. And I kind of just don't understand how this movie's not better. You know, a lot of it is tone. A lot of it is just kind of it's all a little all over the place. But I was wondering if its appearance on Criterion

was getting some sort of critical reappraisal that I wasn't aware of. No, I think it's a Linklater celebration was the reason for it. And this is one of the more underseen Linklater films, even though it was sort of his big mainstream swing in the aftermath of Dazed and the before films. And it's a little bloated

and it's a little bit ill-conceived in terms of its tone. It was a big money loser, actually, and I think it kind of reset Linklater on a different course as a filmmaker. The performances are pretty good. I would say McConaughey and Hawk are pretty good together.

It's an odd duck. You know, very strangely, the Newton boys were from Uvalde, Texas, which, of course, has been in the news, tragically, and so I actually rewatched this on Criterion a couple of weeks ago too, and I clocked that and I was like,

God, what are the odds of that? It's so strange. But not the best movie in the collaboration between these two greats. So that's not in. The Velocity of Gary in 1999. Can't say I saw it. That's not in.

Joe the King, 1999. What is this movie? This reminds me a little bit of Search and Destroy. Directed by Frank Whaley. Starring a bunch of Frank Whaley's friends. Val Kilmer, John Leguizamo, Austin Pendleton. The great theater actor and

trainer who of course worked very closely with Hawk over the years. Cameron Manheim, Noah Fleiss. A lot of names I haven't seen since 1998. It's a drama based largely on Wally's own childhood and the childhood of his brother.

Okay. This film won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. I don't know anybody who's seen it. You don't know me because you know me and I haven't seen it.

Okay, what about a slightly bigger movie? Snow Falling on Cedars, 1999. This is one of the first movies that I remember reading about very like closely and being like wow this is going to be a really big deal Ron Bass adapting this this very like critically acclaimed novel and it came out and nobody saw it. I think part of the reason why it was a huge deal is because it was Scott Hicks' first film after Shine. And it was his big follow-up and didn't totally work. Another movie, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall produced this movie.

Ethan Hawke, James Cromwell reunited from Explorers. Max von Sydow, Yuki Kudo. Your guy Robert Richardson on Len's duty. Sam Shepard and Richard Jenkins in this movie too. Huge film. Flocked.

Hawk has a bunch of these. Oh yeah. Prestigious seeming movies in the first half of his career that don't totally work. I haven't seen this movie in a long time. I did see it in theaters when it was released because I was reading Entertainment Weekly and was told that it really mattered that year.

And it turns out it didn't matter. 2000. I just watched for the first time the New York City set at a modern adaptation of Hamlet. Yeah. Also with Sam Shepard, right? Also Sam Shepard.

He plays Ghost Dad. He plays Ethan Hawke's father. Very touching interplay between the two of them. Ethan Hawke almost feels like he is aging down, like he's playing a really punkish, mope-ish Troy-esque version

of Hamlet, which I guess in the text you can see that is sort of who Hamlet is. You seen this? I have. Yeah, I went on a Hamlet run during Station 11, where I watched a bunch of different versions of Hamlet. I think I arrived at my favorite version

being the Andrew Scott version that you can find online in different places that was on stage. You're saying Andrew Scott over Olivier. Just want to make sure that's on the record. That was my personal favorite. I think Olivier is kind of like, he's got the 715 homers.

You can't really fuck with that. Yeah, like this is good this is really like if you if i told you that young ethan hawke was going to do hamlet it's pretty much exactly what you think it would be it is yeah right down to the snow cap that he's wearing throughout the film yeah um i liked it i i thought it was really clever i thought the casting was really really sharp i don't think it's going in the Hall of Fame because it's just Hamlet. But it's a good performance.

A lot of the performances in the film are good. I like Bill Murray as Polonius. I like Liev Schreiber as Laertes. Julia Stiles as Ophelia. It's a pretty interesting movie. It's also, I think it speaks to, if not how everybody saw Ethan Hawke, at least how Ethan Hawke saw himself.

And I think that there are just some people who are like, I got to play Hamlet. I'm sure lots of people are like, I got to play Hamlet. But there are only a few people who are like, I got to play Hamlet and it's got to get made. It's got to be done. One way or another, I'm going to play Hamlet.

Interesting. Okay. So I respect that aspect of it. But yeah, it's not in get made. It's got to be done. One way or another, I'm going to play Hamlet. Interesting. Okay. So I respect that aspect of it, but yeah, it's not in the Hall of Fame. Now, I want to ask you a question. Is this upcoming year your favorite Ethan Hawke year like it is mine?

Let me just peek ahead just a bit. I think it might be the pinnacle of his career. I don't know if it's necessarily his best work. I guess that's up for debate and we will debate it shortly. There is a recent year that I like a lot.

And we'll talk about that when we get there. It's close. To give our listeners an idea of what we're talking about, it's 2001. He does Waking Life. Kind of extended cameo returning as Jesse in Waking Life. He does Waking Life. Kind of extended cameo, returning as Jesse in Waking Life. He does Tape. Kind of

extraordinary movie. Fascinating movie. I've mentioned it a couple times on the show recently because of that same Linklater collection on the Criterion channel. Right. And then he does Training Day. He also makes his directorial debut. And he makes his own he directs Chelsea Walls. Chelsea Walls. So this is a big year.

Now, Waking Life, I don't think should go in because it's just one segment in this really interesting rotoscoping animation experiment that Linklater would return to in the future, including in a movie this year,

Apollo 10 1⁄2. Tape is a fascinating, complicated movie that features a lot of challenging conversations amongst three characters trapped in a room. I think it's some of Hawke's best acting. Me too. But I wouldn't put it in the Hall of Fame

just because of like the movie itself has not like stepped out of that. No, I agree. Training Day, of course, is going in. It's in. Academy Award nominated for his performance is Jake Hoyt. He talks about this movie all the time.

I think it changed his life. I think working with Denzel changed his life in a lot of ways. Really interesting to read about him and what Denzel taught him as an actor, not just in scenes, but basically how to prepare, what to read. And then he has that great anecdote. I don't know if you shared this with you when you guys spoke about how Denzel taught him to never have screenwriters change the script, but always to plan to improvise what you want to say on set

so that the producers can't control what the script reads, but they can feel better about hiring you when you improvise something brilliant. They can feel like they can take credit for that, which is one of those great little nuggets of actorly wisdom. And I love the idea of Denzel sharing that with him one day. Who knows if King Kong and Got Shit on Me was in the screenplay for Training Day, but the idea of Denzel coming up with moments like that obviously is so exciting to audiences as it makes producers feel better too about the work. I mean, Training Day, this is one of your favorite movies of the century. Yeah. I mean, this is one of those movies movies of the century. Yeah, I mean, it's just,

this is one of those movies I actually saw this like twice the weekend it came out because I saw it once and then I was like, I have to go back to make sure I wasn't

like hallucinating how good that movie was. And the first 20 times you see it, it's all Denzel and then you just start to really notice like how good Hawk is

as Jake and his reactions to such a domineering Oscar winning performance are very oscar worthy in and of themselves so we are not even halfway through the man's career and we've got five greens just to recap very quickly here's what we got dead poet society reality bites before sunrise gattaca and training day maybe gattaca will go by the wayside we'll see because he takes a lot of risks.

Since 10. We're just picking 10. Going for 10. We always go for 10 for the halls of fame. 2002, he makes a movie called The Jimmy Show. This is not going in. 2004, he makes a thriller

called Taking Lives with Angelina Jolie. It's not going in. I did see this. This is a bad movie. Very bad movie. Angelina Jolie's made a lot of bad movies,

I gotta say. 2004, Before Sunset. This is one of my favorite movies ever made. Can you go into the hall twice for the same part? I would argue you should go in three times. I would argue that you're right in this case. Will anyone else ever do that in Hall of Fame, Big Picture Hall of Fame history?

Well, we've never done Al Pacino. Would Godfather 3 make it? Now, Godfather 3, the film, is not very good. You and I talked about it actually last year when it was sort of reimagined and reissued by

Francis Ford Coppola. But it was not what I wanted! That is high-end late Pacino, in my opinion. So maybe Al could do it. Who else? I mean, Bale for Batman. Would you put three?

You would put Batman Begins in? I only think one of those movies is good anyway, so probably not. The thing about Jesse is that he changes. The thing that's amazing

about Jesse is that Jesse, when he's a college kid traveling across Europe, Jesse, when he goes to find Julie Delpy in France, is different. And Jesse, when he to find Julie Delpy in France, is different. And Jesse, when he's with Julie Delpy in Greece, is different.

And so is Celine. Celine's different the whole time. It's just like, it's a true, it's not like a trilogy in the traditional sense of like, let's take this same guy and just kind of tweak it a

little bit it's like watching people actually go through life it's one of the great film accomplishments of our film going lifetime yeah we'll have to find a way to pay tribute to these films you think they're gonna make a fourth one i do but i don't know when. So I believe now this year would mark the longest stretch of time between films. So it was 95 to 2004 was nine years between stories. And then 2004 to 2013

was nine years. We are now at nine years since Before Midnight. No film in production. It's been discussed discussed but we are likely to go past that and so i wonder at what stage of life delpy link later and and hawk would address you know the thing that's nice about this trilogy is that each one of these films ends and you're like if they never make another one it's okay like the endings of these movies are so so perfect i'm i'm a half

step behind jesse and celine though in my life and so i like the idea of that there's the stories that they tell being a portal into my future you know i i before before midnight is like is is a really complicated movie as you go into your 40s. It's a really interesting movie when you think about the challenges of marriage and family and parenthood and just the vagaries of getting older. And I'm so curious to know

what gloss they put on your 50s or your 60s. Yeah, like what happens when their kids are older and out of the house and everything. We could spend like an hour and a half talking about these movies. Okay, then we won't. Taking Lives is out, but Before Sunset is in. That's two Jesse performances, likely to be

three. 2005, Assault on Precinct 13. I appreciate it. I'm glad that his name is Jake Roenick. It's another cool cop name that he has every couple of years uh assault on precinct 13 the remake of the john carpenter classic is not a good movie completely unnecessary

you know the original holds up and they didn't need to make this really so i'm not totally sure why they did he's good in it he's good in all of this these kinds of movies and he starts to make a lot of them now yeah in the next decade or so. This is like the post-Training Day run of making these genre movies. Correct. 2005, also Lord of War, a movie that you and I were trading notes on that is like solid.

Yeah, it's Nick Cage's movie though. It is. And I don't think it needs to go in. This is a reunion with Andrew Nichol. 2006, The Hottest State. the hottest state wrote directed and briefly co-stars in this film i would not put it in the in the uh hall of fame i wouldn't either i know it's very personal to him not his best work necessarily you know a movie i've completely forgotten about is fast food nation yet another richard linklater collaboration. I don't, this is definitely not going in.

I will say, what a bold and interesting piece of art by Richard Linklater. Yeah, it's awesome. This is a non-fiction book by Eric Schlosser that definitely swept the nation about kind of like what we've been doing to our bodies and how this food is produced. And it's a big kind of sweeping narrative about health.

And somehow Linklater shaped it into a narrative story with a lot of seasoned actors and some unseasoned actors, amazing cast. Paul Dano's in this movie, one of his first big parts, Bobby Cannavale, Wilbur Valderrama, Patricia Arquette, Louis Guzman, Hawk, Greg Kinnear. It's like, I don't know if failure is too harsh a word for a swing like this, but Linklater's the man. He's always trying something different.

Okay, so that's out. 2007, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I think in. So I rewatched this this weekend as well. Sidney Lumet, one of his last films. A very hard-edged thriller about two brothers who collaborate to rob their parents jewelry store with tragic ends yeah very shakespearean in its construct like unbelievable like throat clenching philching Philip Seymour Hoffman performance in this movie. He is fucking on fire in this movie. So locked in and so damaged and so tortured in this movie.

And to some extent, I have to say, and I'm sure Ethan Hawke was aware of this, he's getting fucking taken to the hole in the scenes he does with Philip Seymour. Now, that's the dynamic between these two brothers, too. It's the right way to play it, though. Yeah, that's why I like it.

It's because he's just like, I'm going to let this genius smoke me here on screen. Yes, but those are the characters. The characters are the domineering, overconfident, but also deeply insecure older brother who's not as beautiful and not as easily charming. And Ethan Hawkeke who is this very handsome but also a very dim younger brother and they have that great they have incredible interplay

in this movie the one thing that didn't work for me when i re-watched it this weekend is the time shifting narrative rollout is pretty messy and doesn't feel as coherent as I remember. It does. The movie does have great reveals, but it feels a little Christopher Nolan ish, actually, in terms of the way that it like shifts time and we go back three days to four days to the day of the event. Is this one of Ethan Hawke's best performances?

I just like the idea that this guy who has been basically making quasi leading man performances, even in training day, he's like the moral center of that movie. And then he does like a pretty like, like he like he submits himself to what this movie is. And I like that even I like when movie stars are like, whatever the director needs here, I'll give them without vanity. Okay, let's put it in okay i'm not sure if it's going to survive i think it will 2008 what doesn't kill you that's not going in no chelsea on the rocks is a documentary 2008 chelsea on the rocks documentary not going in new york i love you he wrote one of the segments in that omnibus film that's not going in. New York, I Love You, he wrote one of the segments in that omnibus film. That's not going in. 2009, movie that you're fond of. I love his performance in Brooklyn's Finest. He plays Detective

Sal Procida. Is this movie good? It's not good, but he's really good in it. And honestly that they were just like, what if we just did Trading Day in New York it's pretty awesome yeah it's another Antoine Fuqua

gear is in this it's like a triptych story where it's gear Wesley Snipes and Hawk and Hawk plays this strung out narc who is on the other side of the law and it's it's pretty cool it's like what if hot

what if jake was uh alonzo basically um i'm gonna give you a yellow i'm gonna give you a yellow give me a yellow we have a lot of a couple pretty big ones coming up we do all right so yellow staten island and daybreakers this year neither of which two genre movies, neither of which are really going in, right? Right. But I think Daybreakers is his sort of entree into the horror movies that he would then make a staple of the last 10 years of his career. And also notably, Staten Island is the first film

directed by James DeMonaco, who becomes someone that he works with a couple of times here as well. So that's where he makes that partnership, which we'll discuss very shortly. 2011, The Woman in the Fifth. You seen this film?

I can't say that I have. So, fun fact, this is written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, the great Polish filmmaker who a couple years later went on to make

Ida and Cold War and is now one of the most celebrated international filmmakers in the world who was their first ethan hawke incredible taste that's fucking crazy yeah um it's ethan hawke and kristen scott thomas in this movie which i did see i think when it was released and is um it's interesting um not not the kind of triumph that eda and cold war are those are like two of the best movies of the last 15 years but um you know, guy's got great taste.

He always discovers new filmmakers. That's the other thing. He'll work with international filmmakers. He'll work with American filmmakers. Like you said, he'll work with first timers. He'll work with his friends. 2012, Sinister.

We're kind of back where we started here with Scott Derrickson. And this is really the sign of the polarity of Hawkks career for the next 10 years the genre stuff mixed with the high art personal project work this is a really solid American horror movie pretty scary movie is it in the top tier of the last decade in your opinion um in a lot of ways I think this is the best execution of a classic

stephen king story that is not actually a stephen king story but this idea of a writer with demons of a writer chasing this kind of uh creative uh inspiration through his head and what he's sort of is like confronted with. I think it's pretty awesome. I don't know if I would go top tier, but you and I may need at some point soon to build a last 10 years of horror Hall of Fame or like a horror canon post 2010. Sounds like a Halloween project for us.

And I think that would be, I think Sinister would definitely be in the pool of movies we were choosing from. I think so too. You know, it's very famously a hit, a successful movie, which I think is part of the reason why he became this avatar for Blumhouse

over the next few years. And I think that he reads Blumhouse the way we read it, where it's like, this is not unlike the way I got my start in independent cinema, working with guys like Richard Linklater. These people make movies at a very small budget with a lot of creative freedom with an eye towards getting it to a lot of people if possible.

And obviously the financial benefits are there too. And I think that being part of movies like Sinister and now Black Phone fund the Paul Newman documentary and the the novel and you know his his theater company for sure like doing documentaries about blaze you know like it's definitely like i think he like knows how to pay his bills so i think we have to make a choice between sinister and the purge and the purge is the following year another blumhouse production in terms of what goes in. Because they represent the thing you just described. Which is like, at a minimum, solid horror thrillers that pay the bills and also create more good art in the future. And you and I are just Blumhouse fans in general. So, of those two, which do you prefer?

I think I prefer the first Purge. Over Sinister? Yeah, the first Purge. Over Sinister? Yeah, the first Purge movie. The first Purge movie, I was like, this is awesome. It's an extraordinarily good premise. Yeah.

I don't know if it's a better movie than Sinister, though. That's the challenge. It's tough. Are we split on this? I'll give you Sinister here. Honestly, it's not like we're splitting hairs for me what do you think the people would say if we put purge what do you what do you think your cohort would say oh that's a good question i don't know i think that

i think the purge has kind of uh lessened its impact over the years with the amount of movies it's made you know what i mean like i what I mean? I think the first Purge was like, did you see what the Purge is about? And then when you go see it, it's like, not as horrifying maybe

as the subsequent movies, but it is pretty cool. Yeah. It was so well marketed though. It was like a master stroke of marketing. They got me so excited for that movie.

Okay, I'm going to put Sinister in and I'm going to leave the Purge yellow for now. But I think you can make the case that they're interchangeable. Before Midnight is also 2013 and I think going to leave the purge yellow for now, but I think you can make the case that they're interchangeable. Before Midnight is also 2013 and I think it's going in. Okay. We're getting a little close

to the line here, but that's okay. 2014 Boyhood Academy Award nominated for his performance here. A small performance, you know, like a small role. Would you put this in? I mean, I got big COD energy here in this movie. And Ethan Hawke talks about how

the psychic weight of divorce has defined his life. Yeah. And first as a child of divorce and then as a divorced parent. And it's certainly a cliche for me to talk about this on a podcast, but it's a really effective rendering of like my dad's trying to be cool while taking me out for the weekend the astros yeah yeah i can

relate man i can really relate to that and i think he that same stripe of vulnerability that you're talking about where like he's really trying to seem cool to his kid but he's really a mess but then when we see him later in life and he's kind of got his life together you know towards that reunion when he like i think he's a club owner at the end of the film and he really seems to kind of have control over what he was searching for i know there's a real maturity in this performance i really like it like i would make the case that it's among his best work okay let's put it in what are we at now let Let's count it up. Okay. So if we include boyhood, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six,

seven, eight, nine, ten. Uh-oh. Okay. Is ten including alive? That's not including alive. Okay. And we have eight more years of films to walk through.

And also, we have not even discussed one of the greatest films he's ever made. So this is challenging. Okay through and also we have not even discussed one of the greatest films he's ever made. So this is challenging. Okay. I think we have some years that we can blow through here though.

Let's move quickly. 2014, he also makes Predestination. Very solid thriller. Yeah. This is the one with Sarah Snook, right? It is.

And she's quite good in this. Cymbeline also this year. Good Kill also this year. And he directs a documentary called Seymour, An Introduction. We have reached the phase in which Ethan Hawke is tremendously productive.

Yes. Yeah. I don't think any of those films are going in. They're all kind of interesting, I guess. Good Kill, another Andrew Nichol movie.

2015, 10,000 Saints, Maggie's Plan, Born to be Blue, and Regression are all released this year. Born to be Blue is a really good performance as Chet Baker. I don't think the movie lives up to the performance.

Was that kind of conceived as like an awards bait movie, you think? I think he... Not to be sort of dismissive. No, I don't think so because I think he is a little bit beyond that as like a strategist. I think he's a passion project person. And I don't think any... I think that telling Chet Baker's story,

this famously strung out but brilliant jazz musician, was meaningful to him. And it didn't totally cohere, though I know it's a really important one. He talks about it all the time. 2016, another four movies. He makes In a Valley of Violence with Ty West, really nasty Western.

He makes The Phenom. He makes Maude, kind of dramedy. And he makes The Magnificent Seven remake with Antoine Fuqua. Which I enjoyed, but is not going in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I think I had a harder time with it than you did. His character's name is unbelievable. Goodnight Robichaux. Yeah.

And he's a Confederate soldier who doesn't want to fight anymore. Yeah. Just a brilliant, just a great role in general for him that's your boy Nick Pizzolatto on the script your boy, how is Nick? he's down bad I say that, I don't know what's next for him

but when your signature franchise you're just not doing it anymore and other people are, it's tough it's a very tough beat 2017 It is just like you're just not doing it anymore. And other people are. It's tough. It's a very tough beat. 2017. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

This is a Luc Besson sci-fi fantasy. Say his character's name, Sean. His name is Jolly the Pimp, which is how I'll be introducing you on future pods. Not going in. Really wild, very strange film. 24 Hours to Live, also 2017. That's not going in really wild very strange film 24 hours to live also 2017 that's not going in that's a thriller 2018 juliet naked very pleasant movie really good movie yeah he plays tucker crow a kind of um how would you describe him like a jandek jeff buckley fusion kind of i thought more like ev Dando kind of guy, but also

a little bit more mysterious. Like, makes one album vanishes is the object of obsession for who's the other guy in this movie? I want to say it's Paul Schneider. Is it Paul Schneider? No, it's Chris O'Dowd. Chris O'Dowd and Rose Byrne is like his wife

and then Rose Byrne falls in love with Ethan Hawke's character. Chris O'Dowd sadly is playing me in this film. A guy who is obsessed with all of his stuff and hanging out in his basement. This would be like if Harry Nilsson came back to life and romanced your wife. It's terrifying just to imagine that.

It probably would work on Eileen too. 2018 also features blaze which is the movie that i talked to hawk uh about this is a movie he wrote directed and produced major passion project for him and his wife um about blaze foley the great country singer i really like this movie a lot it's um hawk has a small role in it and so I'm not totally sure as an actor it belongs in his Hall of Fame, but it is as close as I think he'll ever get to making a 70s movie. Kind of shambolic,

beautiful character study about an imperfect person. I like that this is the sort of stuff that he spends his money on. When he makes money, he's making 24 hours to live. So I like that this is the sort of stuff that he spends his money on. When he makes money, you're making 24 hours to live. So I dig that movie. I don't think it's in, though.

What do you think? I don't think it's in either, no. Another thriller, Stockholm. That's not going in. Also in 2018, The First Reformed, in which he plays Reverend Ernst Toller. So let's put that in.

So that's the movie that defines me as a man. And when you hear me at the end of a movie draft, picture me wrapped in barbed wire getting ready to decide my fate. Because you've lost another where I get 60% of the vote? Do you want to have

that conversation right now as I discuss first performance? No, we definitely need Amanda to be here. We can discuss that the next time we reunited uh 2019 kid quality flick also adopt a highway which didn't you see at a film festival i did it was at south by southwest this was directed by logan marshall green it was uh it is about an ex-con getting out of prison

and trying to adapt back to reality and um And I would say that you were talking about making movies that are like, this is like his version of straight time. It's somewhat of a flawed movie, but it's actually like a lovely performance by him. But we're way too full in the hall right now. Yeah, yeah. I'm not taking it.

And I'm not taking a live out off the waiting list for Adopt a Highway. Okay, that's fair. Also 2019, The Truth, speaking of his work with international filmmakers, right now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not taking it and I'm not taking a live out off the waiting list for Adopt a Highway. Okay. That's fair. Also 2019 the truth speaking of his work with international filmmakers. This is the follow-up to

shoplifters from Hirokazu Kore-eda in which he stars opposite Juliette Binoche and Catherine Deneuve. Nice work if you can get it for Ethan Hawke. This is actually a very

unsuccessful movie but I like that everyone here tried it. Corrieta has another film coming out this year called Broker that I'm really excited about that apparently is a return to form. 2020.

He plays Nikola Tesla in a movie called Tesla. You haven't seen this one? It's a pass for me. Yeah, I just think there's only one Tesla, you know? That's the one you drive. 2020. Cutthroat City. This is one of his funniest performances ever can we just acknowledge that this movie got made it's a bank heist during

katrina movie directed by rizza and it's ethan hawke ti who else is in this isa gonzalez yeah i mean shamik moore and demrius Shipp are really like the stars of the movie. But Ethan Hawke plays a crooked cop and he is electrifying. Is he our best crooked cop? Is an honest question

I have for you. And when are we doing the crooked cop episode? When is that episode happening, Crooked Cops? I thought we were going to do Crooked Cop Summer next summer on Rewatchables.

Is that something that's been discussed? Because we keep trying to do internaloked Cops Summer next summer on Rewatchables. Is that something that's been discussed? Because we keep trying to do internal affairs and then we feel like we need a bigger umbrella. You know, we can't just drop that in there.

Sad. All right. Well, ask Bill. Let me know what he says. 2021, zeros and ones. I watched this film recently.

Abel Ferrara directed it. It is a very chaotic, oddly constructed, really interesting kind of COVID production. Okay. Did You see this one yet? I did not. I think you can stream it for free now. I think it's along with Midnight Clear. I think maybe that's a double feature for you. Yeah, it's on Tubi. Fucking Tubi, man. Tubi is the future, CR. All the movies are on Tubi now. All the good shit. That's not going in the Hall of Fame. If you did the 20 best movies on Tubi is the future, CR. All the movies are on Tubi now. All the good shit. That's not going in the Hall of Fame.

If you did the 20 best movies on Tubi right now pod, you think you would put numbers up? I think you would. I think it was, first of all, when you put Sean Fennessey on a podcast, you put numbers up. But after that fucking accelerator is if you just do service-y Tubi pods. That's cool.

You're describing my Patreon future in 2025, unfortunately for me. Five episodes a week. Every episode is the 20 best movies on a different streaming service. That's actually really, it's chilling how accurate that may be. 2022. Don't worry. In 2025, there's only going to be three streaming services. It's true.

They're all going to be owned by Tubi, which is absolutely kicking everyone's ass these days. This year, we got The Northmen, in which Hawk played King Ornvadil. Yeah. I will avenge your father. He's awesome in this movie, but he's only in it for 10 minutes.

Yeah. And it kind of bummed me out, because you know, I mean, obviously, you know what happens to him if you see the trailer but it's like short-lived let's put it that way it is you know he talked about wanting to be in this movie because he wanted to be in a big epic his quote in the new york article about eckers is just this is why he i love him is he's just like i wanted to see what it was like to make apocalypse now so brilliant uh and then the black phone yeah um which i would say is not going into the hall of fame He's just like, I wanted to see what it was like to make Apocalypse Now. So brilliant.

And then the Black Phone, which I would say is not going into the Hall of Fame. I wouldn't either. But I did want to ask you something about the Grabber. Okay. Growing up, did you guys have an urban legend, childhood boogeyman myth out on Long Island? Yes. boogeyman myth out on on long island yes um it's interesting that you say that because in 1992 when i was 10 years old um katie beers was kidnapped um at a place called spaceplex which was an indoor amusement park and this the story of katie beers's abduction you know which is all extremely tragic,

though she was found alive, was as big as the moon landing on Long Island. This was on the cover of Newsday every day for what felt like a year straight. And anybody who's listening to this who grew up in the tri-state area, I'm sure you know the name Katie Beers. Yeah.

So, yeah. I mean, it's resonant. I mean, this is a real like the don't talk to strangers aspect of parenting. Stranger danger. Yes. All of that stuff

is totally oriented by this. The thing is is that we had stranger danger but we also like did have a parental supervision. So, it was like stranger danger was like the only governing principle of it.

I know. It wasn't like and I'll actually go with you to practice. It's such a paradox. Like I think about this all the time, right? Because as I said, my parents weren't together. So like it was, there was a lot of like,

all right, baseball practice is over. You're going to walk home. I walk home all the time from everything. And like cut through the park. Oh, oh my God. All of the shortcuts through like wooded areas. That's terrifying to think about now. And also I lived like a mile away from a shopping mall.

And I would just go like at the age of nine or 10 years old, I would just go to the mall by myself and just wander around B Dalton and Tower Records looking at stuff I couldn't afford. And that's part of the reason why I am who I am today. Just buying shit that I don't need. But you're right. Like it's pretty, the grabberber is that's resonant yeah that's that's scary stuff um there's some grabbers in philly philly lore yeah yeah yeah you want to speak on it i well

i would just say if you're curious google uncle eddie that's extremely ominous. Alright, so here's the problem. We've got two yellows and 11 greens. Our two yellows are Brooklyn's Finest and Alive, neither of which are going to make it in. But I'm going to read to you

the greens, okay? Okay. Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, Before Sunrise, Gattaca, Training Day, Before Sunset,

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Sinister, Before Midnight, Gattaca, Training Day, Before Sunset, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Sinister, Before Midnight, Boyhood, and First Reformed. So I can help us with the cuts here, but I almost wonder whether we come with a Hall of Fame that is not representative of the breadth of his career. So I would say we could get rid of the Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. While a very good performance,

I don't know necessarily that it's going to be shown in his memorial montage. I agree with you. I think that's probably the one that is the easiest to cut here. Because it's very, very good, but it is ultimately Hoffman's movie. And while it's important for him, I don't think it's critically important.

So I think that that probably gets it done for us how do you feel about that yeah that's how I that's what I think that was easy CR we did it man we know how to compromise

sometimes I conclude a Hall of Fame because I really need to go to the bathroom and I was like I'm gonna keep you here for an hour to talk about uncle eddie and the joys of brooklyn's finest i don't know why i'm so damaged though i could just be like can we just take a break for like one minute but no it's not how we were trained by bill simmons we will somehow rush through 45 minutes of our rewatchables and just be like man i've had to

pee for like an hour so true um this is is a good Hall of Fame. He's had a great career. Very, very proud of Ethan Hawke. Very proud to have observed his greatness over the years. Sierra, thanks for doing this. I can't wait for the water pods that we do later this year. Oh my God. We got water pods. We got train pods. We're going to do all kinds of vessels and land masses. When are we going to do the Asia pod, the land masses you know when are we gonna do the asia pod the europe pod i'm not talking about like films made in europe i'm talking about stories set in europe yeah uh when when does 2b start it's europe vertical 2b needs to cut the check that's all i'm saying i'm really doing a lot of work on their behalf

they need to cut no it's ad supported yeah but like it's free to us there's money in those streaming hills chris i'm sending money in those tubes there's they're streaming obscure able ferrara 2021 films and they're making hot cash off of them okay thanks for listening to the big picture today thanks to bobby wagner for his work on today's episode please stay tuned well stay tuned to The Watch. That's a great pod that my buddy Chris makes. And The Answer, is The Answer done for the year? When is that coming back?

The Answer is not done for the year, but I am not going to be on this coming week's podcast. Oh, sad. Maybe because you and I are going on a vacation together, but we're never going to talk about that in public. How about that for a tease? Later this week on the show, it's the best movies of the year so far we've got

10 different ringer staffers sharing their favorite films chris is among those people please check that out if you want to hear about some more good movies thanks again you