Ethan Hawke wears many hats. The multi-hyphenate writer-director-actor returns to the Telluride Movie Competition for a Tribute with Berlin prize-winner “Blue Moon” (SPC), through which he performs Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart. And Hawke is debuting his new documentary “Freeway 99: A Double Album,” a two-parter dedicated to the life and music of Merle Haggard, which is able to probably promote to a streamer because it hits the competition circuit. And exhibiting on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition is a brand new collection debuting on FX September 23, “The Lowdown.” In any case his current efforts, Hawke, who has 4 Oscar nominations (three for collaborating with Richard Linklater), is able to simply discuss. “I’m exhausted,” he mentioned over breakfast in Telluride.
Hawke has all the time cherished music, and has discovered lots through the years from taking part in trumpeter Chet Baker (“Born to Be Blue”) and directing the music films “Blaze” and “Seymour: An Introduction.” That one debuted at Telluride in 2014. “Seymour was my midlife disaster, proper?” mentioned Hawke. “It’s an previous Shaker expression, however to grasp a craft, it’s a must to apprentice three that encompass it. My actual mission is efficiency. That’s what I’ve completed my entire life. That’s the place the rubber meets the highway. However studying about directing, studying about writing, studying about music, studying about these different issues helps. It’s all related.”
His two Telluride films are united in that they’re each about songwriters, “two of the best American songwriters within the historical past of America,” he mentioned. Lorenz Hart had partnered with Richard Rodgers on such American songbook faves as “Blue Moon” and “My Humorous Valentine.” Hawke’s love for Merle Haggard was embedded from his youth. “For many of us, the music that our mother and father performed is someplace deep inside us ceaselessly.”
His dive into Haggard follows “The Final Film Stars,” about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, “my love letter to my very own occupation,” he mentioned. “In fascinated by what to do subsequent, I like making documentaries, as a result of it’s one thing you’ll be able to work on slowly. Once I was youthful, I used to attempt to write prose, and I wrote some books as a result of I wanted a job to maintain the imbalance of an actor’s life. In the previous couple of years, documentary has changed that a part of my life. Earlier than I work on Larry Hart, I’m engaged on Merle Haggard. Then I take a break. I disappear for 8-10, weeks. I play Larry Hart, after which I come again into me once more, and I’m speaking about my childhood and my loves and issues which are private to me, and it helps hold me balanced.”
“Freeway 99” is Hawke’s love letter to music. “I knew that whoever gained the election, half the nation was going to be despondent. Merle Haggard all the time wrote about individuals. He continued his entire life to by no means write from a left wing or proper wing perspective, however from a humanist perspective. Nation music is a spot the place males can categorical their emotions, the place they typically battle, and it’s a extremely protected place to speak about what’s occurring inside you.”
The 2-part documentary digs into, amongst different issues, the unrequited love story between Merle and Dolly Parton. And Hawke acquired to recruit a few of his favourite singers to interpret Haggard’s songs. He requested them which songs they needed to sing, and Nora Jones, Valerie June, Steve Rowe and others picked them. “I believed I may inform his life as a musical,” mentioned Hawke. “I may use his personal writing to inform his personal story.”
When it got here to his ninth collaboration with Richard Linklater, “Blue Moon,” Hawke’s music films helped him to organize for Larry Hart. “Issues like learning jazz for Chet Baker, learning the piano with ‘Seymour,’” he mentioned, “learning the ache of making an attempt to be a songwriter by way of ‘Blaze.’”
The ache of Lorenz Hart comes by way of on this achingly unhappy story set on the finish of Hart’s partnership with Rodgers (Andrew Scott). All of it takes place at Sardi’s on the opening evening of “Oklahoma!” — which Rodgers composed with Oscar Hammerstein II as an alternative of Hart, sealing their cut up. “In case you are feeling a whole lot of ache,” mentioned Hawke, “there’s this concept that success or approval from others goes to quiet that ache or bandage it. However within the historical past of mankind, it by no means does. He’s heartbroken about Rodgers. He’s setting himself up, and he’s distracting himself that he’s in love with this younger lady [Margaret Qualley], and he’s not even heterosexual. However he can’t take care of the true ache that’s taking place. He can’t take a look at it for a second. That film is a few man who died of heartbreak. The alcohol was a part of his disappointment, the ache was too nice to endure with out it. Alcohol is a painkiller.”
The film begins out with Hart strolling out of “Oklahoma!” and ponying as much as the bar at Sardi’s, the place the bartender (Bobby Cannavale) tries to maintain his ingesting beneath management. Hart is a superb talker, the phrases circulate out of him like butter. Hawke has to maintain the rhythm and cadence of lengthy speeches. And theater vet Cannavale, who had bonded with Hawke on “Hurly Burly” once they had been each going by way of divorces, was there for him on “Blue Moon,” working strains. “He was my de facto appearing coach,” mentioned Hawke.
Hawke was a “monk” throughout manufacturing, he mentioned. “I might simply sit in my dressing room and take heed to Ella Fitzgerald sing Rodgers & Hart songs time and again. In case you take heed to the music, you begin to understand how properly the script is written, as a result of the script capabilities like a Larry Hart tune. It’s so humorous and completely heartbreaking and poignant and witty and irreverent and lewd. So I began taking a look at that first monologue because the lyrics to the tune. Rick [Linklater] was going to be Rodgers. Rick was going to put in writing the music and construct it and ensure it was sculpted proper, and ensure it was introduced proper.”
Nailing this efficiency was about phrases. “This man doesn’t stroll and discuss like me, so it’s voice and speech,” mentioned Hawke. “He speaks in full sentences. He speaks with clear concepts. It all the time must be the right phrase alternative. It needed to have the language.”
However it was additionally motion and physique language. Hart was quick, with a hideous combover. “I grew my hair actually lengthy after which shaved the center in order that I may do the combover,” mentioned Hawke, who’s slightly below six ft. “A combover is about essentially the most unflattering look that males have ever give you. So what occurs instantly is your individual vanity drops, as a result of everyone begins taking a look at you, speaking to you otherwise. We did all these old fashioned stagecraft methods to make me smaller.”
They constructed a trench within the flooring and he bent his legs inside huge pants. “Whenever you do a scene with Margaret Qualley while you’re a foot shorter than her, is completely different than being two inches taller than her, as a result of she doesn’t take it severely.”
Fortunately, Hawke had a decade to get used to the film. Linklater gave it to him when he was in his early 40s and mentioned, “while you’re sufficiently old, we’re going do it.” They’d get collectively each couple of years and do a studying of the screenplay, Hawke mentioned, “and we’d prune it and tweak it and discuss it.”
The actor didn’t really feel any nervousness about it till simply earlier than capturing in Eire. “Then I spotted that this film was going to place Rick and me up towards the wall of our expertise,” he mentioned. “The bullseye on this film is so small. There’s so some ways to go fallacious. One room, actual time. Larry Hart is dying.”
Additionally, the film was filmed quick. “Rick needed to be extremely decisive and clear,” mentioned Hawke. “We didn’t have a giant funds, no funds, however fortunately, we didn’t want one. We wanted concepts and nice actors. I knew if the man taking part in Rodgers wasn’t phenomenal, the film wouldn’t work. That was the most important problem.”
In just some fast scenes in the course of the after social gathering, the film establishes the connection between these former companions who’re each grieving the breakup. “There’s a sure Lennon-McCartney to Rodgers and Hart,” mentioned Hawke. “For these two people who find themselves that inventive collectively for that lengthy. It’s a excessive degree of intimacy.”
However Rodgers is transferring ahead, whereas Hart is descending into alcohol. Hawke had lengthy admired Scott, who additionally comes from theater. Qualley doesn’t, however all of them rehearsed the hell out of it and all of it got here collectively.
Subsequent up: Sterlin Harjo’s FX collection “The Lowdown,” through which Hawke performs a renegade truth-teller. “I acquired to have this character constructed for me by this sensible younger man,” mentioned Hawke. “And I had a lot enjoyable.”
