Leave it to Ethan Hawke to turn Quentin Tarantino’s vicious and uncalled-for Paul Dano slagging into a teachable moment. While the internet’s been melting down over Tarantino calling Paul Dano “the weakest f*cking actor in SAG” and “weak sauce” on Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast, Hawke went on The Joe Rogan Experience and basically reframed the whole thing as proof of how loved Dano actually is — and how much Tarantino’s rant says about Tarantino.
Most actors or directors in Hollywood had been visibly put off, annoyed that Tarantino would publicly slag another member of their community. On Rogan, however, Hawke took his customarily sanguine and nuanced approach, finding the silver lining in it all while downplaying Tarantino’s comments as not malicious, but just the product of an opinionated man with no real filter.
“There’s a great lesson [in this],” Hawke said. “You know what? I don’t think Paul Dano ever knew that so many people loved him. Right. Out of nowhere. Paul Dano’s just going about his life. He’s got to wake up one morning and find out this director just went off on him and is saying these hateful things.”
“But, anybody that knows Quentin knows he just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks, talks, right?” he continued. “Anybody who knows Paul knows he’s a great, world-class human being. And, you know, all this love for Paul’s coming out. And it’s a great lesson in that. You don’t have to worry about the negativity that people send your way. You don’t have to worry about it at all. Even from one of the greatest actors or one of the greatest directors of all time.”
The real kicker is Hawke’s read on the psychology. Later in the conversation, Hawke pushed his larger point even further, stripping away the subtext. “Obviously, whenever anybody says something hateful, they’re talking about themselves,” Hawke said. “100%. That’s not, that’s who they’re talking.”
From there, Hawke expanded the lens to encompass how directors generally thought about actors. He told Rogan about a “really famous big shot director” he met in a New York dive bar who had just seen his most recent film. “He’s sitting there, and he’d just seen my most recent movie,” Hawke said. “He’s like, ‘You know, you were pretty good in that one.’ And in the comment was, the subtitle underneath it was, I have hated you for 27 years.”
Hawke then used that story to make a broader point about how filmmakers thought. “I’m sure if you were alone drinking with Steven Spielberg, he’d shock you with some opinion he hates, right?” he said. Orson Welles or something like that. I mean, he wouldn’t be a good director if he wasn’t opinionated.”
Meanwhile, Tarantino hadn’t limited his aim to Dano. In the same recent run of commentary, he also trashed Owen Wilson, Matthew Lillard, and even parts of George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” reinforcing the sense that he was in full unfiltered-opinion mode rather than carefully choosing his words. Around the edges of all this, Tarantino’s podcast partner and former felon, Roger Avary, managed to drag things even lower with an exceptionally idiotic and embarrassing AI/Grok video that only made the backlash louder.
Hawke, characteristically, refused to let the whole thing calcify into bitterness. “Quentin,” Hawke said, gently, without much judgment, “he just says whatever comes into his mind.” So, Tarantino tried to turn Dano into a punchline; the response turned into an impromptu career-wide appreciation instead. Last but not least, Michael Cera has entered the chat and left one last parting gift of this discourse. Watch the Rogan episode below.
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Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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