Ethan Hawke Talks ‘The Last Movie Stars,’ Working With Marvel, Paul Schrader & More - Page 2 of 2

For sure, an excellent opportunity, and you make the most of it. Are you going to direct again? By the way, I also love your documentary “Seymour: An Introduction,” which again is a love letter, but maybe more to art and to a craft; the beauty of creating art. Really terrific doc.
Well, thanks, man. If you told me when I was 25 that I would make two documentaries in my life, I would say, “You’re nuts. I have no inner fire to be a documentarian.” What’s happened is that I’ve just been immersed in the arts my whole life. And so, these projects have just spun out in a really natural way. But I’d be surprised if the next chapter of my life doesn’t have more of that. It would surprise me for sure.

Right. You’ve directed dramatic features, made docs, and written all kinds of things, but it’s kind of funny. When you say, “I didn’t intend to be a documentarian,” I almost didn’t think about it like that. I just look at it as a continuation of your storytelling journey.
That’s exactly well said. When people say to me like, “Why did you make a documentary? Why do you direct this? Why do you do a play? Why write a graphic novel? Why write all this stuff?” And it’s like, well, I’m a storyteller. That’s what I do. You put me in a room, and I’m going try to spin some yarn together to tell a story. And so they’re all, it’s all really part of the same movement of energy. It’s just finding different lanes to run down.

That makes perfect sense; you’ve worked in a lot of mediums, and you kind of know by now which lane works best for the material. I wanted to ask before we end, two things I had on my mind—the Marvel of it all, which was something for you earlier this year. And then Paul Schrader, because “First Reformed” was so terrific, revitalized his career again—though he’s never stopped being great—and then you guys were going to do a Western; what happened there?
Yeah, I hope Paul and I can work together again. I would love to make that specific Western. He wrote an outstanding Western. But the dance of independent film, and financing and people’s schedules coming together, like it, can get financed if you can get these two people together at the same time, and it looks like fun to be a film director, but the logistics of it are so hard. It’s not just the directing of the movie that’s hard. It’s the hustling and all the tap dancing required to make it happen.

Right. So essentially, someone would have financed it with you and Oscar Isaac in the leads, but your schedules weren’t in sync, and then people moved on sometimes, and things get left behind in the moment.
More or less. I feel so blessed to have made “First Reformed” with Paul at that moment in his life and at that moment in our culture. I mean, it was such an uncommon movie to get to make, and the fact that we got the money together and the fact that audiences liked it and, and it’s such a well-made film. I’m so proud of it.

Yeah, that film really caught fire, and I’d really love to see you two work together again. So tell me about your Marvel experience, because I think that’s interesting. You used to be fairly critical of the blockbuster industrial complex—and making fair points, I might add—but then you tried it, at least to some extent, so looking back on it, how did you feel about it?
Well, I feel a little bit about it, like what I was saying about the Newman and Woodward doc. We all don’t exist alone. We don’t get to make the universe up the way we wish it would be.

It’s interesting in studying Newman’s career; you really see the kinds of movies they were making in the 1970s, the kinds of movies they were making in the 1960s, and what audiences wanted. And I’m a performer, and audiences really love spectacle movies right now.

And there was a period where Hollywood was making Bible stories, and there was a period where it was making Westerns, and there’s… you know what I mean? So, it was important to me to try to do whatever we do well and do it as well as possible. And I saw a real opportunity with Oscar Isaac for “Moon Knight.” There was a fire inside Oscar about that project. He really wanted to play that part. And that’s a good sign. With Oscar, I could tell he was going to do his damnedest to give an outstanding performance inside a blockbuster [laughs].

And I thought, “Well, hell, I’d like to help him try to do that.” It was just two actors in the middle of a big swashbuckling event piece. We could at least try to do what we do inside of it. And I really had a great time, to be honest. The exciting thing about the people at Marvel is that they love actors. They’re very generous towards actors, and they really understand that if there’s a likely high correlation—if an actor is really turned on to give an outstanding performance— the chances of the audience responding well to that are very high. What we don’t like is audience members are watching somebody phone it in, right?

Yes, very much so.
We love to see passion, commitment, and desire, and watching somebody jump off a high dive is thrilling. And so, to watch Oscar take this extremely challenging part and jump off the cliff, man, I loved it. So, for me, in many ways, you know, it’s never what you do, but how you do it.

It makes sense, and what I find interesting is that you’re so open to so many things, so many mediums. Why wouldn’t you want to try that out too? Will we see you in that Marvel world again?
I really don’t know. There are so many things I want to do. With the pandemic lingering around in the rearview mirror a little bit—knock on wood—I feel drawn to doing a play. I find that top of my mind again as I walk down the street and think, “When am I going to get back on the stage again?” Because that always feels healthy. It turns me on, and it turns my brain on in a way. There’s so much energy in the film community about commercial interests; it’s just so omnipresent. How did the film do? What’s it going to make financially? How’s it going to connect with an audience? And there’s just something wonderful as a storyteller, as you said, not to be concerned with that. Let’s just kind of touch the true flame of it. Let’s get some people in a room together and sing them a song or tell ’em a story. The theater constantly reorients my brain, so hopefully, that’s a thing sometime soon.

“Raymond and Ray” is streaming on Apple TV+ now. “The Last Movie Stars” is streaming now on HBO Max, and “Moon Knight” can be found streaming on Disney+.