{"id":3539,"date":"2018-06-10T18:24:50","date_gmt":"2018-06-10T18:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commarts.pleather.us\/2018\/06\/10\/ethan-hawke-says-movies-are-an-art-form-thats-been-completely-eaten-by-business\/"},"modified":"2018-06-10T18:24:50","modified_gmt":"2018-06-10T18:24:50","slug":"ethan-hawke-says-movies-are-an-art-form-thats-been-completely-eaten-by-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/2018\/06\/10\/ethan-hawke-says-movies-are-an-art-form-thats-been-completely-eaten-by-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethan Hawke Says Movies Are \u2018An Art Form That\u2019s Been Completely Eaten by Business\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/t\/ethan-hawke\/\" id=\"auto-tag_ethan-hawke\">Ethan Hawke<\/a> had a lot to smile about in Seattle on Friday night. The actor\/director was in town for the Seattle International Film Festival, where he was receiving the festival\u2019s annual award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinema and screening \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/t\/blaze\/\" id=\"auto-tag_blaze\">Blaze<\/a>,\u201d his first narrative directing effort in a decade. The festival also screened \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/t\/first-reformed\/\" id=\"auto-tag_first-reformed\">First Reformed<\/a>,\u201d Paul Schrader\u2019s psychological thriller starring Hawke as an emotionally disturbed priest, which has already scored $1 million in limited release.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pmc-related-link read-more\">\n\t\t\t<strong class=\"pmc-related-type\">Read More:<\/strong><a target=\"_self\" href=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/2018\/05\/ethan-hawke-first-reformed-paul-schrader-1201963279\/\" title=\"Ethan Hawke on \u2018First Reformed,\u2019 Making a \u2018Before\u2019 Film in 2018, and Getting Paid More When He Carries a Gun\">Ethan Hawke on \u2018First Reformed,\u2019 Making a \u2018Before\u2019 Film in 2018, and Getting Paid More When He Carries a Gun<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"p1\">In conversation for the tribute portion of the evening moderated by this writer after a screening of \u201cBlaze,\u201d Hawke said that his filmmaking ambitions evolved from personal experiences early in his career, and took the opportunity to offer a stern assessment of the movie business as a whole.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cMy mother was very depressed that I\u2019d dropped out of college. One of the things I promised her I would do was take responsibility for an education,\u201d he said, referring to the 1994 short film he directed, \u201cStraight to One,\u201d which screened at Sundance the same year as \u201cReality Bites.\u201d He wouldn\u2019t make his directorial debut until 2001 with \u201cChelsea Walls,\u201d but, he added, \u201cI was always planning on directing and writing because I had no faith in the life of an actor. I was very apprehensive that I\u2019d be able to keep doing it. \u201c<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Hawke said that feeling emerged from his experiences working with River Phoenix on Joe Dante\u2019s \u201cExplorers\u201d and watching Phoenix \u2014 who died of a drug overdose in 1993 \u2014 deal with being a young star.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cRiver had a tremendous success when he was very young, and a lot of it was stuff that didn\u2019t align with what he personally wanted to contribute artistically,\u201d Hawke said. \u201cSo if we\u2019d be out of a bar and a bunch of girls would come up to him and say, \u2018You\u2019re amazing in \u2018A Night in the Life of Jimmy Rearden.\u2019 It was so frustrating. I think it made a big impact on him.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1201901005\" style=\"width: 790px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1201901005 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/dead-poets-society-1989.jpg?w=780\" alt=\"\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Dead Poets Society&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">When Hawke landed his first serious role in \u201cDead Poets Society,\u201d he witnessed the toll of acting at the other end of the career spectrum by working with Robin Williams. \u201cRobin was a genius,\u201d Hawke said. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t wish being genius on your child. It sounds nuts. Everybody wants to be a genius. It\u2019s such an overused word \u2026 he would go and be alone for a while. I saw the curtain go up and the curtain go down working with him. You realized it came at a great personal cost.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Much of Hawke\u2019s career has been defined by a careful negotiation between art and commerce. He has avoided blockbusters and often points out that some of his best-known roles \u2014 including the \u201cBefore\u201d trilogy \u2014 haven\u2019t been big box-office hits. \u201cWorking with real talented people is about the best there is,\u201d he said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to do anything else, but it very rarely happens the right way. It\u2019s an art form that\u2019s been completely eaten by business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">He pointed to the way industry metrics for success dominate conversations about the business. \u201cNot only do we read about \u2018Black Panther\u2019\u2019s box office success, but we read about its Rotten Tomatoes score. So actually everything in our world is a competition, and arts are supposed to be one place where competition doesn\u2019t exist because it\u2019s about expression.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Hawke has a tendency to speak about his work in sweeping philosophical generalizations, much like the soul-searching Jesse in Richard Linklater\u2019s \u201cBefore\u201d trilogy. This conversation was no exception, as it ended with Hawke finding his way to a bigger picture. \u201cThey learned pretty quickly that the human being loves movies,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very relaxing art form. It requires very little work on the audience\u2019s part. They\u2019ve learned to play music to tell us exactly how we feel. The camera pushes in on a tear just right. The light hits it. Spontaneity is drained. The cash register goes off.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pmc-related-link sign-up\">\n\t\t\t<strong class=\"pmc-related-type\">Sign Up:<\/strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/indiewire.com\/email\" title=\"Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.\">Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Source: IndieWire film<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan Hawke had a lot to smile about in Seattle on Friday night. The actor\/director was in town for the Seattle&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-3539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-careering"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paqOTj-V5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}