The joys, the magic and the commercial side of cinema, his interpretation of independent and successful films, including Star Wars AND Harry Potteras well as his collaborations with directors Richard Linklater and Peter Weir, and his lack of working with many female directors, were all topics covered in Monday's Venice Film Festival masterclass with actor-director Ethan Hawke.
At the beginning of the session, broadcast in live streaming, the star recalled that she came to Venice for Dead Poets Society. “It was my first film festival. I was 18. We screened the film down the street and it was an incredible experience,” Hawke recalled. “There were a lot of people who had made the film with us at the premiere, and you could feel the film casting a spell, and you could feel people's response to the film.”
He went on to say that director Peter Weir “was then, and still is, one of the very few master craftsmen I've ever met, and to work with him as a young man, and to absorb what he had to teach and then see the effects of that in action” was impressive. “It was an act of collective imagination. … He was very good at getting a group of craftsmen to have the same imagination and the same dream, and then watching that dream be given to others and received. It's very powerful.”
Hawke then added, amid laughter: “It was a bit like when you hear about the joys of taking drugs. You just want to do it again. It's a wonderful feeling because you don't feel alone.” The creative continued: “Being an actor is a strange double-edged sword, in that on the outside you're celebrated for success, but the real joys of performing are in disappearing…, you feel like you disappear and become part of this dream. And that's the wonderful feeling. And you see the dream live in other people, and that's where the euphoria comes from. And as soon as I left Venice at 18, I just wanted to do it again. And as I look at you, I'm so grateful to be here with you and to be a part of this again.” The crowd reacted with huge applause.
Hawke noted that she has made many films with many different directors, but mostly men. “I've worked with a lot of men from all over the world,” she said. “And I've only worked with a handful of female directors, which is, I would say, embarrassing for me, but it's embarrassing for the industry because I want to do it.”
In the wide-ranging discussion, the star also shared his great respect for filmmakers who sell properties and take personal financial risks, as Francis Ford Coppola did to self-finance his projects. Megalopolisto make dream projects. “Greed rules our universe,” Hawke said. “If you say you just want to make money, everyone understands what you’re after and they’re like, ‘Great, yeah, good. Oh, yeah, he sold 10 billion Big Macs. Good for him.’ No, you just poisoned the whole world.” The actor added, “I love it when people keep this big dream alive to make something great, and it’s really hard because the whole industry that runs film production is designed to make money, and especially our favorite movies, that’s not what the project was about.” Hawke concluded, “I would never want to be someone who wouldn’t sell their house to make a movie. I love it. I think it’s great. I admire it to death.”
Manufacturing Before dawn It was the beginning of his “adult relationship” with film, Hawke said, followed by his ongoing friendship with Linklater. He noted that the two have made nine or 10 films together, depending on how you count.
“Richard was the first great artist of my generation that I met, and he was a friend, but … he doesn't think about how to be a big shot,” the actor said. “He doesn't want to impress you. He doesn't want you to think he's fabulous. He really loves the medium of what film could be. And he's always a student himself.”
Hawke also shared, “He loves European cinema. He loves world cinema, and he's really interested, even as a young man he was extremely interested in how this form would change over our generation, over this period, and how to contribute to that dialogue.”
At one point, Hawke even joked about the ongoing education of film creatives. “At 16, I thought I knew everything. At 53, I feel like I know nothing,” he joked.
He considers himself a student of the art. “I feel like a student of this profession, and there's a certain geometry to all the films,” that differs between films of different genres and budgets, Hawke shared, speaking of the “math of the genre.”
Hawke also compared making independent films with Linklater and others to blockbusters on Monday. “If you go see Harry Potter OR Star Wars or something like that, which I’ve seen a million times and I love, but when they’re over, I feel a little disappointed that I’m not a wizard or a Jedi,” he joked. “And I walk through life thinking, I wish I was a Jedi. And when you see a Richard Linklater movie, you walk away feeling like, ‘Well, I did that. I met a person, I connected with another human being, and that was important, and that was magic.’ It’s like that old Zen quote: ‘You don’t have to walk on water, you can walk on land.’ Isn’t that amazing? I think that’s what Richard Linklater movies do: They remind you that it’s a miracle that we walk on the land and that we breathe, and that there are whales and giraffes and life is amazing if you don’t overdo it.”
Hawke said he never originally wanted to act in a horror film, but he likes the genre, partly thanks to Joe Dante, and he liked the story behind it. LeftHe stressed that horror films must first and foremost be scary and “work” within their genre, even if they also address larger underlying “socio-political” issues.
Asked about his love for music and directing, Hawke said that “how to work with music” is his favorite part of directing. And he said that learning lines as an actor can be dry and boring, but learning them or relating them to music changes things. The star then praised Brady Corbet The Brutalistwho enchanted Venice on Sunday, also with his music.
In a few weeks Hawke will receive the Golden Panther Award at the Lucca Film Festival in Italy and will present his latest film Wild catin which he directed his daughter Maya, on September 26. Hawke will also hold a masterclass at that festival and will present Lucca's Lifetime Achievement Award to Paul Schrader, who directed him in First reformed.
Previous Venice 2024 masterclasses have featured Sigourney Weaver, who spoke about the legacy of her character Ripley in Alien and the rise of Kamala Harris, legendary Australian director Peter Weir, who joked that he had to intervene to fix the “bad” kiss between Mel Gibson and Weaver during filming The Year of Living Dangerouslyand Richard Gere who joked that he and Julia Roberts had “no chemistry” Pretty Woman.