Ethan Hawke wears many hats. The multi-hyphenate writer-director-actor returns to the Telluride Movie Pageant for a Tribute with Berlin prize-winner “Blue Moon” (SPC), by 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 can doubtless promote to a streamer because it hits the competition circuit. And exhibiting on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant is a brand new sequence debuting on FX September 23, “The Lowdown.” In spite of everything his latest 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 at all times liked music, and has realized rather a lot through the years from enjoying trumpeter Chet Baker (“Born to Be Blue”) and directing the music motion pictures “Blaze” and “Seymour: An Introduction.” That one debuted at Telluride in 2014. “Seymour was my midlife disaster, proper?” mentioned Hawke. “It’s an outdated Shaker expression, however to grasp a craft, you must apprentice three that encompass it. My actual mission is efficiency. That’s what I’ve accomplished 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 linked.”
His two Telluride motion pictures 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 perpetually.”
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 with 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 few 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 can be private to me, and it helps preserve me balanced.”
“Freeway 99” is Hawke’s love letter to music. “I knew that whoever received the election, half the nation was going to be despondent. Merle Haggard at all times 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 very secure place to speak about what’s happening 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 wished 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 motion pictures 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 attempting 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 a substitute of Hart, sealing their break up. “If you’re feeling a variety 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 girl [Margaret Qualley], and he’s not even heterosexual. However he can’t cope with the true ache that’s occurring. He can’t have 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 undergo 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 consuming below management. Hart is a superb talker, the phrases circulation 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,” operating traces. “He was my de facto performing coach,” mentioned Hawke.
Hawke was a “monk” throughout manufacturing, he mentioned. “I might simply sit in my dressing room and hearken to Ella Fitzgerald sing Rodgers & Hart songs time and again. If you happen to hearken to the music, you begin to notice how properly the script is written, as a result of the script capabilities like a Larry Hart music. It’s so humorous and completely heartbreaking and poignant and witty and irreverent and lewd. So I began that first monologue because the lyrics to the music. Rick [Linklater] was going to be Rodgers. Rick was going to jot down the music and construct it and ensure it was sculpted proper, and ensure it was offered 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 at all times needs to be the proper phrase alternative. It needed to have the language.”
But it surely 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 just below six ft. “A combover is about probably the most unflattering look that males have ever give you. So what occurs instantly is your individual shallowness drops, as a result of all people begins you, speaking to you in another way. We did all these old skool stagecraft tips to make me smaller.”
They constructed a trench within the flooring and he bent his legs inside vast pants. “Once you do a scene with Margaret Qualley if you’re a foot shorter than her, is totally different than being two inches taller than her, as a result of she doesn’t take it significantly.”
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, “if 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 in opposition to the wall of our expertise,” he mentioned. “The bullseye on this film is so small. There’s so some ways to go flawed. 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 price range, no price range, however fortunately, we didn’t want one. We wanted concepts and nice actors. I knew if the man enjoying 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 occasion, 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 stage of intimacy.”
However Rodgers is shifting 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 sequence “The Lowdown,” by which Hawke performs a renegade truth-teller. “I acquired to have this character constructed for me by this good younger man,” mentioned Hawke. “And I had a lot enjoyable.”