{"id":236162,"date":"2026-01-13T19:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T19:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/236162\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T19:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T19:56:08","slug":"ethan-hawke-talks-blue-moon-next-richard-linklater-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/236162\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethan Hawke Talks Blue Moon, Next Richard Linklater Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEthan Hawke<\/a> is a little wired. It\u2019s just after 9 a.m., we\u2019re sitting on a West Hollywood restaurant patio, and he\u2019s on his fourth cup of coffee. \u201cYou ever read a Harrison Ford interview<\/a>? I watch him and I\u2019m like, \u2018How does he do that?\u2019\u201d Hawke says. \u201cIt\u2019s like he\u2019s writing his response in his head \u2014 deleting that one, writing another one. Then he comes out with it.\u201d He smiles to himself. \u201cI can\u2019t do that. That ain\u2019t me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the last few months, Hawke has been asked to talk a whole lot. The Austin, Texas, native is winding down work on the campaign trail for Blue Moon<\/a>, directed by his longtime collaborator Richard Linklater<\/a> and featuring his most transformative performance on screen, as the alcoholic depressive songwriter Lorenz Hart. Hawke has already been nominated for the Golden Globe and Actor Awards \u2014 and should the Oscars follow suit, it\u2019ll be his first ever Academy nod for a lead role. \u201cIt\u2019s symbolic of 30 years of work to me, and it\u2019s so different from anything I\u2019ve ever done \u2014 but it uses pieces of everything that I\u2019ve learned along the way,\u201d Hawke says, reaching for the french press carafe. It\u2019s the latest in a string of bold, distinctive star turns, which also includes the critically acclaimed shows The Good Lord Bird<\/a> and The Lowdown<\/a> and the Paul Schrader<\/a> film First Reformed<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat movie, which found Hawke portraying a tormented priest, arguably ushered in this new career chapter \u2014 and fans were disappointed when he missed out on an Oscar nomination despite loads of precursor prizes. Hawke too looks back on that with some regret. \u201cI didn\u2019t do [the campaign] on First Reformed because I was doing a play, and I wasn\u2019t going to drop out of the play \u2014 but all things being equal, when it was over, I thought it probably would\u2019ve been great for the film if I had done it,\u201d Hawke says. He acknowledges having felt some personal hesitancy: \u201cFirst Reformed was hard to talk about: climate change, loss of faith in America \u2014 and it\u2019s a Paul Schrader movie, so, does he blow himself up in the end?\u201d (Schrader is known for a controversial sound bite every now and then<\/a>.) \u201cIt was a hard one. It was not something you were dying to do interviews about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBlue Moon presented a simpler brief: It\u2019s set in New York circa 1943 over one night at Sardi\u2019s, imagining Hart drinking his pain away on the opening night of Oklahoma!, the new musical by his former partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott<\/a>). It\u2019s the latest Linklater-Hawke teamup, a creative relationship that\u2019s spanned more than three decades and resulted in multiple shared Oscar nominations for screenplays (on the Before movies). And in the nine years since First Reformed, the industry has changed in such a way that the future of independent American movies feels newly, intensely under threat. Getting out there to support Blue Moon seemed like a no-brainer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you see this whole thing as an advertisement for our industry, then it starts to be fun \u2014 like, okay, let\u2019s remind everybody that these movies are important and a relevant part of our culture,\u201d Hawke says. \u201cWe want movies like Blue Moon for other people. If the people invested in Blue Moon make money off of it and it makes audiences happy, there\u2019ll be more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tEthan Hawke in Blue Moon<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSony Pictures Classics<\/p>\n

\n\tHawke has received two acting Oscar nominations, for his supporting roles in 2001\u2019s Training Day and 2015\u2019s Boyhood. These were, he says, \u201cthe two time periods in my life where I very clearly felt people narrativizing my life as if something had changed \u2014 like, \u2018Oh, now he\u2019s back on track.\u2019\u201d When Training Day came out, he noticed coverage amounting to, \u201cWow, that\u2019s what happened to the kid from Dead Poets Society, he\u2019s a man now!\u201d Boyhood was a stranger case, since it was shot in increments over 12 years, with Hawke and co-star Patricia Arquette\u2019s careers and lives slowly changing in that time \u2014 only for the world to treat its release as an epic comeback for them both. \u201cI remember reading articles about a Hawke-aissance or something. I\u2019m like, \u2018What the fuck are you talking about?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHawke explains, \u201cThis job that I\u2019m in is a constant recontextualization, not for yourself, but for the people watching.\u201d He\u2019s noticed it happening again with Blue Moon and the buzz surrounding it \u2014 he\u2019s also terrific in The Lowdown, which FX just renewed for a second season \u2014 but this time, sees a more natural turning point worth exploring and discussing. \u201cI came out of the gate getting leading parts and that can breed a laziness about the actual methodology of acting,\u201d Hawke says. \u201cI was teaching myself to reboot the computer, from a leading man to a character actor, and thinking, \u2018What if I could combine these things?\u2019 If you don\u2019t do that as you get older, you get a lot less opportunities. Very few people get to be Paul Newman.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBlue Moon beautifully captures this new approach. \u201cIt\u2019d be really cool to release the movie after having deleted the previous 30 years of my career,\u201d Hawke says. We see that he is doing the \u201cmagic trick,\u201d as he calls it, because we know him. We consider the audacity of the performance in the context of his decades spent on the big screen, typically in a more naturalistic key.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo how does Hawke look back on some of those demanding lead roles from earlier in his career, like Michael Almereyda\u2019s remixed 2000 Hamlet? Hawke gives me a Harrison Ford-length pause \u2014 not out of nervousness, but genuine thought. That project, which interweaved Elizabethan dialogue with a contemporary setting, signaled another artistic pivot. \u201cIt\u2019s just where my curiosity was really getting unlocked,\u201d Hawke says. \u201cI love that movie. Things that were modern when we did it are now retro, but it actually still functions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGenerally, over time, Hawke has reframed some of his thinking on how his work will age. About 20 years ago, he was cast in the crime thriller Before the Devil Knows You\u2019re Dead opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman<\/a>, in what would be the final film of Sidney Lumet<\/a>\u2019s career before his death in 2011. He and Hoffman wanted the iconic Network and 12 Angry Men director to shoot on film, and didn\u2019t understand why Lumet opted for digital. \u201cSidney said, \u2018I get it. I get it \u2014 you wanted to have that Dog Day Afternoon look?\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah!\u2019\u201d Hawke says. \u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018Here\u2019s the thing. I made every film I ever did as frugally as possible \u2014 if you wait 25 years, they\u2019ve all got that great retro look.\u2019\u201d Hawke confirms: \u201cWhat\u2019s funny is I went to an anniversary screening \u2014 and it does look retro!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lesson speaks to Hawke\u2019s philosophy on making popular art. \u201cPeter Weir<\/a> used to talk about how much he loved [Andrei] Tarkovsky, but he was like, \u2018That\u2019s not what I\u2019m trying to do. I\u2019m trying to make popular art.\u2019 And as a popular artist, I\u2019m willing to play within the sandbox of commerciality.\u201d Hawke had Black Phone 2<\/a> out in the same year as Blue Moon, and has been met with fans asking to sign merch for the horror film while promoting his little-indie-that-could. As he speaks about that balancing act, Hawke\u2019s heart is clearly with the smaller stuff.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are a handful of people that make commercial art. Quentin, PTA, Ryan Coogler \u2014 it\u2019s really good for all of us. If you look at Spielberg and Guillermo [del Toro], they\u2019re these large trees in the forest, and they provide a lot of shade and a lot of health,\u201d Hawke says. \u201cBut we need society, the culture, to make events out of small things and to help cultivate the undergrowth of the forest. The underbrush is getting thrashed and it\u2019s so hard for a young sprout to find roots and have enough time to make enough art to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRichard Linklater and Hawke in 2004.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAmy Tierney\/WireImage<\/p>\n

\n\tThis leads us to Hawke\u2019s other \u201cHarrison Ford pause\u201d of the morning. Last week<\/a>, he hyped the hell out of his next movie to be made with Linklater, a period piece decades in the making just as Blue Moon was, while on Today. He revealed it\u2019ll go into production later this year and \u201cwill be among the greatest films ever made.\u201d Given what Hawke had just told me about the state of indie movies, I wonder where the confidence in that timeline comes from.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know why I said that,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m mad at myself. The problem with doing so many interviews is eventually you lose your mind. It\u2019s like a guy who stayed at the party too long. You just talk too much.\u201d Hawke then reiterates the movie will be made: \u201cRick will tell you, I feel this way about every movie we\u2019ve ever done, but I\u2019m very confident about this. Whenever we make it \u2014 and I think it will be this year \u2014 it\u2019ll be the heaviest lift of our lives, but we\u2019re really ready.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHawke also knows, however, that there are no sure bets in this world. A few years ago, he reunited with Almereyda to make the film Tesla, only for more than half of the movie\u2019s budget to be slashed a week before production began. \u201cThe same thing that happened to Tesla could happen to us, and then you\u2019re facing a decision: Do you march ahead at a fraction of the budget, or do you stop and try to re-raise it?\u201d Hawke says. \u201cI hate that it\u2019s so much work. It\u2019s so hard \u2014 Rick has to spend years raising the money to make the movie and trying to convince people that it\u2019s going to be worthwhile, even though he\u2019s never made a movie that wasn\u2019t worthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy did Hawke pause with his answer here? \u201cIt\u2019s balancing the gratitude for being in the game at all with the desire to want the best,\u201d he explains. \u201cI used to love John Sayles, and eventually it just got too difficult for him to raise money for movies, and we stopped getting John Sayles movies. That\u2019s our community\u2019s loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are moments when I can sense Hawke sounding run down by the state of things. At one point, he muses without an AI prompting, \u201cWhen people start talking about AI, I really just want to go back to the theater. I\u2019m like, \u2018I don\u2019t understand what this is about, it\u2019s above my pay grade.\u2019 In the theater, everybody has to fucking put their phones down and they have to breathe and they have to sit still. It\u2019s like going back to the farm. There\u2019s a Luddite aspect to it for me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Hawke is a hard guy to keep down. \u201cI went to see the Taylor Swift Eras Tour and I thought, this is actually really cool,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s all these young people dying to be at a live event. The future is here, strangely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLater on, I note Broadway\u2019s worrying trends of commercialization \u2014 Carrie Coon recently said<\/a>, \u201cNow in order to do a play on Broadway, you have to do The White Lotus, or else\u2026they have to replace you with someone more famous\u201d \u2014 but there, too, Hawke sees the silver lining. \u201cI remember seeing Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen do Gadot in London. I would say 90 percent of the audience was under 30, and they were there to see Gandalf and Captain Picard, but the production was brilliant,\u201d he says. \u201cThey walked out thrilled, having absorbed Beckett and been given a world-class production. They went for the wrong reason, but it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMight that apply to Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon? In the awards context, at least, this tiny single-location film, featuring more dialogue than your average one-act play, is in the hunt opposite the likes of One Battle After Another<\/a>, Sinners<\/a> and Marty Supreme<\/a> \u2014 dwarfed in both production budget and box-office haul. \u201cIt kind of falls on me, so it\u2019s been a little lonely,\u201d Hawke admits of the campaign. But those Black Phone 2 posters awaiting his signature after, say, a small tastemaker screening come with territory that Hawke has become intimately familiar with. He\u2019s an artist who\u2019s pushing himself, grateful for anyone coming along for the ride \u2014 and from whatever angle. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not financially supported by Netflix or anyone, they\u2019re not paying for my car ride to go over to these things,\u201d Hawke says. \u201cI\u2019m going as an ambassador for independent film. You\u2019ve got to try to not make it about yourself. Otherwise, it just gets too weird.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ethan Hawke is a little wired. It\u2019s just after 9 a.m., we\u2019re sitting on a West Hollywood restaurant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[96622,1939,29324,458,146,28012,127972,85,46,43792,5434,64041,127973,64237,6406,127974,68617,127975,29165],"class_list":{"0":"post-236162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-andrew-scott","9":"tag-black-phone-2","10":"tag-blue-moon","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ethan-hawke","14":"tag-first-reformed","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-marty-supreme","18":"tag-one-battle-after-another","19":"tag-paul-schrader","20":"tag-peter-weir","21":"tag-philip-seymour-hoffman","22":"tag-richard-linklater","23":"tag-sidney-lumet","24":"tag-sinners","25":"tag-the-good-lord-bird","26":"tag-the-lowdown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}