Ethan Hawke rolled through the Venice Film Festival this morning for a career Q&A ahead of a gala event this evening where he will present Aussie filmmaker Peter Weir with a career achievement award.
The session was long and partly in Italian. Hawke’s answers were lengthy and he covered many subjects in contemporary cinema. One of the topics discussed was the idea of passion projects and how to make them happen. At that point, Hawke shared his opinion on Francis Ford Coppola’s $120 million self-funded Megalopolis.
“I love that Coppola sold his winery to make that film. I think that’s amazing,” Hawke said of Megalopolis.
“Greed runs our universe. If you say you just wanna make money everyone understands what you’re going for. I love it when people keep the great dream alive of making something magnificent. And it’s very hard because the whole industry that runs movie-making is designed to make money.”
Hawke added: “I have to pay my kid’s medical bills but I would never want to be a person who wouldn’t sell their house to make a movie.”
Hawke told the audience in Venice that he arrived at the festival after completing production on Blue Moon, his latest collaboration with filmmaker Richard Linklater. The film is Hawke’s project with Linklater and profiles the final days of American musician Lorenz Hart, who was part of the hit songwriting team Rodgers & Hart. The film is set primarily in Sardi’s Restaurant on March 31, 1943. Hawke said the project is the “hardest I’ve ever worked in my life.”
“Richard is such a strange person. He sent me this script 12 years ago,” Hawke explained of the project’s origins.
“I read it and called him up and said let’s do it. He said cool let’s make it but we have to wait a while. He said you’re still too attractive. Let’s just put it in a drawer and read it every few years and see if we’re ready or not. And every couple of years we read it, gave the writer notes, and it got a little bit better. One year, he saw me on a TV interview with Jimmy Fallon. He called me and said ‘Let’s make Blue Moon we’re ready.’”
This evening following Weir’s career achievement ceremony, Venice will debut The Room Net Door, the latest film from legendary Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. The film is Almodóvar’s first English-language effort and stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. Hawke worked with Almodóvar on the short western project Strange Way of Life and he described the filmmaker as one of the “unique voices” he’s experienced.
“We’re so lucky to have a new Pedro film premiering tonight. I’ve never met anyone like him,” Hawke said. “That’s one of the fun things about this profession. There’s not one way to make a movie. It’s based on the person.”
Hawke added that he’s worked with “men from around the world” but had only worked with “a few women, which is embarrassing for me to say, but it’s embarrassing for the industry because I want to.”
“Almodovar,” he continued, “is such a unique voice.”
“The way the camera moves is different. The shade of green in the shot, it all matters in an Almodovar film,” Hawke said.
“I was honored to even be a short film by him.”
The Venice Film Festival runs until September 7.