Ethan Hawke and His Inspiring Film Authenticity

This morning, I watched Ethan Hawke talk about the Before Sunrise Trilogy in a couple of interviews. He also talked about the price a person pays when they create art, using the examples of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams. These people were actors of immense importance, not merely as entertainers but as artists molding themselves from clay.

I find myself fighting a lot of what Ethan Hawke is talking about every day. I take the good with the bad, of course, but I have the urge to speak and do things that align with the deeper part of the soul. I love the way he discusses Richard Linklater’s style of directing. Linklater craves the type of authenticity that people live daily; that’s why his characters feel so real. Linklater is serious about his art. Even though his films are not as serious as The Brutalist (2024) or Schindler’s List (1993), they still strive for lifelike authenticity. Ethan Hawke said Richard Linklater told him while writing Before Sunrise (1995), “I have never been in a helicopter crash … but I have had a lot of DRAMA in my life.” This is noteworthy. Many think of films with huge explosions playing in their heads, grand romantic gestures, and the best of life. Even though these films are exciting, they somehow miss the regularity of life. The mundane repeating of the same things over and over again. This feeling of monotony and disappointment with the sameness of most experiences. It’s the experiences that stand out and break us out of the sameness that become the ones that matter the most.

Hawke also said, “We don’t have a singular plot through life.” This is so true, yet very odd to me because, as a child, it felt like I was born with some type of character arc. A lot of people would think in parallel to Christopher in The Sopranos. Chris says, “‘I don’t know Tony, it’s like the fucking regularness of life is too fucking hard for me.’” As I get older, I feel myself living a life comprised of hundreds, even thousands, of films. Every moment I am caught in is some type of scene. The accidental creepy walk down an alley, a moment with a one-night stand, the moment when you grab the hand next to you as a plane touches down, the last time your mother kissed you goodnight. All these things are the marrow of life. To get the good parts, we have to keep living. Not every moment is movie-like…but every once in a while, you can feel time stop for a second. The air stills, and time blurs as laughing, crying, and holding persists in my vision and through my ears.

One day I hope to have the collaboration experience that Richard Linklater allowed with SOMEONE who understands that life, while it may not be perfect (AT ALL), has moments so full of hope that eternalizes within ourselves for life.

Links to the interviews I watched if you’re interested:

DP/30: Ethan Hawke, Part 2: The “Before” Trilogy

Ethan Hawke on “Boyhood” (2015)

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