Ethan Hawke is currently promoting Blue Moon, in which our editor-in-chief, Chris Bumbray, raved about Hawke’s performance. In the review, he said, “It’s a great role for Ethan Hawke (who’s also killing it in The Lowdown), but unlike anything he’s done before with Linklater. He completely disappears into Hart, playing him as a man who seems like a joyous social butterfly but carries a deep sadness beneath the charm. It’s a heartbreaking performance — Hawke at his most vulnerable.”
Variety reports on a new interview Hawke had with Vanity Fair and the Blue Moon star recalled what it was like to see Robin Williams in action while filming Dead Poets Society. Hawke stated that directing Williams was not an easy task for director Peter Weir. He explained, “Robin is a comic genius. But dramatic acting was still new to Robin at that time. And watching that relationship like, in the room — I was four feet away while they’re talking about performance — and that was something you don’t un-see. Robin Williams didn’t do the script, and I didn’t know you could do that. If he had an idea, he just did it. He didn’t ask permission. And that was a new door that was opened to my brain, that you could play like that.”
He continued, “Peter liked it, as long as we still achieved the same goals that the script had.” He also noted that the two men “had a very different way of working, but they didn’t judge one another or resist one another.” He, then, explained, “They worked with each other. That’s exciting — that’s when you get at the stuff of what great collaboration can do. You don’t have to be the same — you don’t have to hate somebody for being different than you are. And then the collective imagination can become very, very powerful, because the movie becomes bigger than that one person’s point of view. It’s containing multiple perspectives.”
In the rest of his review of Blue Moon, Bumbray states, “Blue Moon won’t be an easy sell. Many viewers probably haven’t heard of Rodgers & Hart — and might not care to. Truth be told, I didn’t know much about them myself, but the strength of Linklater’s direction and Hawke’s mesmerizing performance quickly drew me in. It’s more user-friendly to newcomers to the topic than Linklater’s own Nouvelle Vague, which comes out later this month. It deserves to stand among Hawke’s best work, and it’s high time the Academy recognizes him (it was criminal he wasn’t nominated for First Reformed).”
