Ethan Hawke wears many hats. Multi-hyphenated writer-director-actor returns to Tellurid Film Festival for a tribute with the Berlin Prize winner ”Blue moon“(SPC), where he plays Broadway Lician Lorenz Hart. And Hawke debuts his new documentary”Highway 99: a double album“A two -part parties devoted to life and music from Merle Haggard, who will probably sell to a streamer when it hits the festival circle. And shows at the Toronto International Film Festival is a new series that debuts on September 23,” “The decline. “After all his latest efforts, Hawke, who has four Oscar nominations (three to collaborate with Richard Linklater), is just talking.
Hawke has always loved music and has learned a lot over the years from playing Trompeter Chet Baker (“Born To Be Blue”) and directing the music films “Blaze” and “Seymour: an introduction.” The one who debuted at Telluride 2014. “Seymour was my midlife crisis, right?” said Hawke. “It’s an old Shaker expression, but to master a craft you have to learn three that surround it. My real mission is performance. That’s what I have done all my life. This is where the rubber meets the way. But learn about directing, teach me to write, teach me about music, learn about these other things.
His two Telluride films are united by the fact that they are both about songwriters, “two of the biggest American songwriters in America’s history,” he said. Lorenz Hart had collaborated with Richard Rodgers on such American songbooks as “Blue Moon” and “My Funny Valentine.” Hawke’s love for Merle Haggard was embedded from his youth. “For most of us, the music that our parents played somewhere deep inside us forever.”
His dive in Haggard follows “The Last Movie Stars”, about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, “my love letter to my own profession,” he said. “When I think about what to do next, I love to do documentaries, because it’s something you can work with slowly. When I was younger I used to try to write prose, and I wrote some books because I needed a job to maintain the imbalance in an actor. I play Larry Hart, and then I come back to me again, and I talk about my love and things.
“Highway 99″ is Hawke’s Love Letter to music. I knew that the one who won the election, half of the country would be desperate. Merle Haggard always wrote about people. He continued his entire life to never write from a left or right point of view, but from a humanistic point of view. Land music is a place where men can express their feelings, where they often fight, and it is a really safe place to talk about what is happening on the inner you. ”
The two -part documentary digs, among other things, the unanswered love story between Merle and Dolly Parton. And Hawke had to recruit some of his favorite singers to interpret Haggard’s songs. He asked them what songs they wanted to sing, and Nora Jones, Valerie June, Steve Rowe and others chose them. “I thought I could tell his life as a musical,” Hawke said. “I could use his own writer to tell his own story.”
When it came to his ninth collaboration with Richard Linklater, “Blue Moon,” Hawke’s music films helped him prepare for Larry Hart. “Things like studying jazz for Chet Baker, studying piano with ‘Seymour’,” he said, “studied the pain of trying to be a songwriter through ‘Blaze.'”
The pain from Lorenz Hart comes through in this truly sad story at the end of Hart’s partnership with Rodgers (Andrew Scott). Everything takes place at Sardis on the opening evening for “Oklahoma!” – As Rodgers composed with Oscar Hammerstein II instead of Hart and seals their split. “If you feel a lot of pain,” said Hawke, “there is this idea that success or approval from others will silence that pain or bandage it. But in the history of humanity never. He is heartbroken about Rodgers. He sets himself. It for a second.
The movie starts with Hart going out from “Oklahoma!” And ponying up to the bar at Sardi’s, where the bartender (Bobby Cannavale) tries to keep his drink under control. Hart is a great speaker, the words float out of him like butter. Hawke must maintain the rhythm and cadence in long numbers. And theater veterinarian Cannavale, who had bound with Hawke on “Hurly Burly” when they both went through divorces, was there for him on “Blue Moon”, running lines. “He was my de facto actor,” Hawke said.
Hawke was a “monk” during production, he said. “I would just sit in my dressing room and listen to Ella Fitzgerald Sing Rodgers & Hart songs over and over again. If you listen to the music, you will start to realize how good the script is written, because the script works as an Larry Hart -song. It is so fun and completely heartbreaking and poignant and witty. Funny. Rodgers.
Nailing of this performance was about words. “This guy doesn’t go and talk like me, so it’s voice and speech,” Hawke said. “He speaks in complete sentences. He speaks with clear ideas. It must always be the perfect word choice. It must have the language.”
But it was also movement and body language. Hart was short, with a horrible combover. “I grew my hair really far and then shaved the middle so I could make the combination,” said Hawke, who is just under six meters. “A combover is about the most flattering look that men have ever come up with. So what happens immediately is your own self -esteem, because everyone starts looking at you and talking to you differently. We did all these old school tricks to make me less.”
They built a ditch in the floor and he bent his legs in wide pants. “When you make a scene with Margaret Qualley when you are a foot shorter than her, is different from being two inches taller than her, because she doesn’t take it seriously.”
Fortunately, Hawke had a decade to get used to the movie. Linklater gave it to him when he was in the early 40s and said, “When you are old enough we will.” They would meet every couple of years and do a reading of the script, Hawke said, “and we would crop it and fine -tune it and talk about it.”
The actor did not feel any anxiety for it until just before he shot in Ireland. “Then I realized that this movie would put Rick and me up to the wall in our talent,” he said. “Bullseye in this movie is so small. There are so many ways to go wrong. A room, real time. Larry Hart dies.”
In addition, the film was filmed quickly. “Rick must be extremely crucial and clear,” Hawke said. “We had no big budget, no budget, but fortunately we didn’t need one. We needed ideas and amazing actors. I knew about the guy who played Rodgers was not phenomenal, the movie would not work. It was the biggest challenge.”
In just a few quick scenes during the after party, the film creates the relationship between these former partners, both of which mourn the division. “There is a certain Lennon-McCartney to Rodgers and Hart,” Hawke said. “For these two people who are so creative together for so long. It’s a high level of intimacy.”
But Rodgers is moving forward, while Hart falls into alcohol. Hawke had long admired Scott, who also comes from theater. Qualley doesn’t, but they repeated all the hell out of it and everything came together.
Next up: Sterlin Harjo’s FX series “The Lowdown”, where Hawke plays a Renegade Truth-Teller. “I have to build this character for me by this brilliant young man,” Hawke said. “And I had so much fun.”
