Earlier this year, we spoke with Ethan Hawke about his soulful Apple TV+ movie, “Raymond and Ray,” co-starring Ewan McGregor and directed by Rodrigo Garcia. It’s a humanist meditation on brotherhood, family, grief, and trying to come to terms with that parent you had major issues with now that they’re gone (read our review).
READ MORE: The Best Documentaries of 2022
But now that the year is almost over and we’ve revealed our Best Documentaries of 2022 list—which featured Hawke’s Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward doc series, “The Last Movie Stars” at #1—now would be as good a time as any to roll out the second half of this interview where Hawke discusses this terrific documentary and much more (read our review). Hawke’s had a pretty exciting and eclectic year when you think about it. He directed the aforementioned acclaimed doc series for HBO Max, went back to his roots for a quiet little indie drama (“Raymond & Ray”), and he also starred in his first Marvel series, “Moon Knight.” He almost worked with “First Reformed” filmmaker Paul Schrader again too, but that project fell apart. But we encapsulate all this in this second half of our conversation, which recaps Hawke’s banner year.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about “The Last Movie Stars” Looking back on it, how, how do you, how do you feel about it? It was such a really soulful, really terrific documentary. I loved it.
Well, thanks for saying that. I mean, I guess it’s my love letter to my profession.
Yes, that’s true; the warmth and affection shines through.
You know, after doing this for almost 30 years, it was a project that kind of hijacked my psyche for nearly three years working on it. And because it’s a big responsibility to be in charge of telling the story of two people you really admire. And you realize pretty quickly that you can’t tell an individual story well without telling the story of their community. You know, you don’t really understand who they are if you don’t understand the actor studio; if you don’t understand Sidney Poitier; if you don’t understand seventies filmmaking; if you don’t understand… you know what I mean? You can’t understand “The Color of Money” without understanding “The Hustler.” And we all exist in relationship to each other. And then, as performers, you exist in relationship to your audience. What are audiences interested in, and what’s happening to America? And those 50 years? So I found the challenge of making the documentary epic. It was just huge.
Yeah, I was going to say the tremendous context you put around their lives—the context of the times they lived in and how they fit into it, the civil rights movement, etc.— I assume that’s why what initially began as a movie became a six-part doc series.
Yeah. I mean, I set out to do it in two hours. That’s what I was hired to do [laughs]. I wanted to do that. I always saw it as one film. I sent a five-hour cut of the movie to my filmmaking friend Richard Linklater, and I said, “Which three hours do I cut out of this?” And he called me up and said, “I think it’s a little short.”
Hahaha, amazing.
Right? He goes, “I want to know more about this. I want to know more about that.” And so we’re talking, and all of a sudden, I realized that the environment that we live in right now, with the way that movies are made, really allows for this bigger canvas. I mean, if I were making this movie in 1993 or something, it would’ve had to have been a hundred minutes long or something. And you would then have to decide whether you’re just going to do a greatest hits album or focus on one record. You know, I could have made the whole doc about Newman and Woodward in the 1950s, or I could have made it all about the 1990s and the Newman’s Own line. But what I love about them is it’s the totality of their life that makes them so interesting. It’s, it’s not like—there are some people or subjects you can really focus on, say in 1972, or whatever when it all came together for them. But that doesn’t work for Paul and Joanne. It’s their longevity that made them so powerful. So the movie needed to reflect that in some way. And I’m grateful that we live in a moment in time where people are interested in long-form documentaries.
More from this interview on the next page.
