Ethan Hawke Daybreakers Interview
Ethan Hawke Daybreakers Interview
Hawke thinks his directors' first movie "sucked!" …Sort of.
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You know those people you see reading "Finnegan's Wake" or "Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont" in the Starbuck's, propping the book just so, so everyone around can see the cover? That's how I felt the other day at the Daybreakers junket at the multi-mirrored SLS Hotel in lovely downtown Beverly Hills.
I didn't plan on coming off poseur-like, but just prior to actor Ethan Hawke's entry into the lavish ballroom where the interviews were to be conducted for the upcoming vampire flick, a friend gave me two Fellini DVDs and I had them sitting on the table in front of me. Hawke's first remark was, "Oh, are we going to be talking about La Dolce Vita today instead?"
However, I actually like Fellini, so maybe I'm not a poseur after all. At any rate, Hawke (who, oddly enough, I've never interviewed before; I thought I'd gotten to everyone in Tinsel Town by now) gives off an aura of organic pretention. He's a cineaste, a lover of all things literary, the director of some seriously emo music videos, and he's a bit of a stage play snob… but he's also grounded, realistic, and goes so far as to confess he thought the Daybreakers directors' first movie, Undead, "sucked" the first time he tried to watch it.
Hawke said he got about 10 minutes through the DVD and turned it off without even looking at the Daybreakers script. But admits he was wrong when, a few weeks later, his younger brothers were staying with him and they started to watch the zany zombie flick. "They couldn't sleep and they were hanging out, and they put that movie on and they were howling with laughter," Hawke said. "I walked downstairs and said, 'What are you guys watching?,' and it was this movie, Undead. So, I sat down and watched it with them, and then I thought it was genius. I somehow didn't get their sense of humor before."
Hawke, looking distinguished (if a bit weary), in a well-fitting 3-piece suit and crisp white dress shirt, added, "I didn't really understand this genre, so much. My first movie was with Joe Dante, and all of what Joe used to talk about was Roger Corman and those kind of genre pictures, like The Howling or Piranha, or his first movies, [he said it] was about the power of genre filmmaking and what it can be. I have some base awareness of it and was interested in it, but I fancied myself a dramatic actor."
But that doesn't mean Hawke wasn't willing to trade drama for dorkiness in Daybreakers. "I think it's my job to risk looking foolish," Hawke said simply. "One of the things I've learned from the actors I've worked with is you don't get something for nothing. If you don't risk looking foolish, you'll never do anything special."
While Hawke didn't quite say he thinks Daybreakers is one of those special cinematic offerings, he did describe it as a welcome "Post-adolescent vampire movie," and said it's important that actors look upon their life as a work in progress. "If you're going to spend a life in the arts, you need to be infused with a sense of gratitude and a sense of wonder. It's a privilege to be in this profession. But there is a payment you have to make for that privilege, which is to do your best all the time. To challenge yourself. That's the luxury tax."
When it comes to challenge and originality, "That's why I liked the script for Daybreakers. It has a lot of things going for it, like originality. It's not a graphic novel or based on some 60s TV show, so there’s a lot of new ideas with the vampire realm in Daybreakers."
As far as playing a vampire, that was a complete new experience for Hawke, whose best-known genre film is the sci-fi study Gattaca from the mid-90s. But at least he still got to wear suits, have clean fingernails, and look nice. Making horror movie, he said was, at times, "Just absolutely miserable. Do you know what it's like to sit and eat during your lunch hour, just drenched in blood, trying to talk on the cell phone? That's the part that's the least appealing to me."
But there was plenty of appeal, as well. "The genius of the vampire myth, for me," Hawke said, "is [exploring] what it's like to live your life without the fear of death. That's always the appeal of it. You're not a werewolf, or something horrible. You're kind of like yourself, but you're not going to die. What I loved about this movie was taking vampires and putting them in the real world, so they have jobs. And you get to smoke all the time because why wouldn't you? I find that element of it really enjoyable."
Enjoyable as the interview was, we never did get around to talking about Fellini.
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