Ethan and Maya Hawke discuss closet Christians, American sins, and making a film about faith.
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A zombie apocalypse might be a little bit easier to get asses in seats.
She was also a vampire, jokes Maya.
I dont need to see your home movies.
Ethan Hawke:Im really mad at Maya about something.
I went to visit her in Atlanta and she just couldnt stop playing this stupid game.
What game?E.H.
:It doesnt matter.
Its like turning people on to drugs.
It was so annoying.
I was talking to you, and you just couldnt stop doing this [pantomimes cell-phone hypnosis].
:Couldnt stop playing the Watermelon Game.
E.H.:And then finally I was like,What is that game?
:I wake up thinking about it.
I have things to offer.
Ill find myself in a car somewhere.
I dont want to need that.
E.H.:And it makes me think about, will they even remember they saw it in five years?
:Oh, I know.
E.H.:Shes gotta feed the chickens twice a day.
Besides that, what about her was so appealing to you?M.H.
:The short stories were required reading in my English class and I loved them.
And then I went to our local bookstore whats it called?
E.H.:Books Are Magic.
E.H.:Thatll give you extra credit.
How good she wanted to be was what was standing in the way of her and being that good.
I love that idea.
I love that she wasnt really writing about boys.
I loved that she was so, at 22 or 23, invested in her inner life.
And so there was a lot of common ground there between the two of us.
It was a great tool in which to talk to each other.
E.H.:We started daydreaming about going to her house and making a short film.
When Maya was in high school still?E.H.
:Yeah, like, lets just make a short film aboutThe Prayer Journal.And thats where the idea started.
And then it was just a conversation
M.H.
:That kept happening.
Then we forgot about it for a while.
We worked on editing it for my Juilliard audition monologue.
Then I introduced him to Ethan, and then thats where it all began.
I love that you call him Ethan.M.H.
I dont know why I did that.
Sometimes I do it when Im nervous.
What does a closet Christian mean?
Ethan, do you agree with that assessment?E.H.
everybody would say no.
They would get up and excuse themselves to go to the bathroom.
And so dialogue shuts down about it.
Ive always just found it dangerous to talk about.
You think youre going to get Emily Dickinson or something.
:Youre equally interested in what Emerson has to say as you are what Thomas Merton has to say.
E.H.:But the truth is that my mother ran the Sunday school.
I really was raised in that.
I dont talk about it that much, because it tends to make people go to their corner.
Its been interesting that this chapter of my life has been in this milieu of people of faith.
Whats your relationship to religion and spirituality, Maya?M.H.
:I grew up in an interesting hodgepodge.
I didnt go to Sunday school and I didnt go to church every Sunday.
E.H.:Those kinds of conversations are so much more valuable when you discover them on your own.
I didnt give you Flannery OConnor, you found that.
If I had, I mightve ruined it.
But its all interesting and exploratory to feel like there might be a reason we exist.
:Oh, for sure.
The three signs of the apocalypse.
How did you envision it and pitch it at first?E.H.
E.H.:Its very strange, the film industry.
How involved were you both in writing it?E.H.
:Can I take the lead?
Or no, you go first.
:Ill go first quickly.
Initially, I was like,I want to do this.
I dont know how it could be done.
And I dont know how to make it; I dont know how to talk about the stories.
I dont know how to involve her writing.
Thats when I was like,Whoa, I think this could happen.
E.H.:That was exactly what I was going to say.
It was a very simple idea: The movies going to end before shes ever really been published.
And you loved it.
And you looped in Laura Linney to be Flannerys mother.M.H.
:That was a big breakthrough in the scriptwriting process, finding that character.
The primary character in her life is her mother.
And her mother shows up all over her stories, her letters, her life.
E.H.:Shes from the South, so she of course knows everything about Flannery.
Laura was friends with Joanne Woodward and my friends.
I kept wanting to give the script to her, but I knew shes so smart
M.H.
:You dont want to give her your
E.H.:First draft.
It was powerful for Laura and me.
At the Telluride premiere, Maya, you referred to the film as dangerous.
:Making a movie about religion feels dangerous right now.
Making a movie about a not particularly beautiful, not particularly nice, not particularly digestible female southern writer.
E.H.:White women in the Jim Crow South.
Nobodys more unlikable there.
:The idea of walking into Netflix and pitching this movie right now would feel ridiculous.
E.H.:Its liberating, in a way.
The attempt is worthwhile, so fuck it, Ill fail.
M.H.:Yeah.
Its impossible to nail this.
Flannerys a little weird.
Shes prickly, shes wild, shes judgmental.
Whether or not they do is completely out of anyones control.
:Thats dangerous, too.
But if you dont talk about the past
M.H.
:Then you start to erase it.
E.H.:We want to color-blind cast and diversify, make ourselves feel better about what were looking at.
But we dont like looking at it.
She was definitely racist.
E.H.:No, she was a hero of a white America thats now coming to a point.
My mother gave me Flannerys work to promote feminism.
My mom was like, You have to read female writers too.
I didnt know or think about her racism until, I dont know, the George Floyd reckoning started.
:I do think you should be allowed to tell stories about things that are not inherently celebrating them.
E.H.:Its a promotion of it.
:And we have to be allowed to talk about things and photograph things that we dont believe in.
E.H.:Or that we have problems with.
Do you feel like you have or had to?E.H.
And youre like,Wow.
The wisdom that he achieved did not come easily.
I mean, how the hell did Bob Dylan turn into Bob Dylan?
:It cannot be something that is pursued.
When people start pursuing misery to improve their integrity, they are declaring themselves foolish.
Ive heard it said before that being an artist often intersects with being a vibrating, very sensitive person.
And the world is very brutal to sensitive people, and they do often suffer a lot.
E.H.:You see that a lot with addiction.
There are a lot of artists who I think end up setting themselves on fire to feel great.
Usually, when they are successful, theyre successful despite setting themselves on fire, not because of it.
Have you always felt that way?
Or did you used to feel like you personally had to be tortured?E.H.
:I have to give a lot of credit to my friendship with Richard Linklater.
Hes really frustrated by navel-gazing.
He needs to live a little, and then he can really do something.
And Rick, as soon as the guy walked away, he was like, That guys an asshole.
What you should probably do is read some William Burroughs.
He loves going to rock shows and baseball games and hanging out with his daughter.
He is just completely disinterested in suffering for sufferings sake.
:And in terms of music, I think its so much harder to write something great about happiness.
Everybodys misery feels original to them when theyre miserable, because it feels so palpable and painful.
But its hard to write a happy song a song like Dancing in the Moonlight.
I try all the time; its a very hard thing to do.
:For me, it wasnt hard.
Weve been working together our whole lives.Mywhole life.
You were around before.
So most of the actors in it, excluding a couple exceptional people, wed known before.
The thing thats been complicated is figuring out how to talk about it.
Thedoingof the movie is easy.
The press is complicated sometimes.
E.H.:When you make it a public unit of sale thats the only time we felt uncomfortable.
What do you mean exactly by public unit of sale?E.H.
Ive got my own home movies.
Theyre going to talk about the dad-daughter thing.
We were so involved in what we were doing that we stopped thinking about that.
I have such respect for Mayas artistic compass that I wasnt thinking about my daughter.
:Were extremely sensitive and very important to each other.
And we really were not thinking about the marketing of the movie.
M.H.:Exactly.
Im curious about how it actually felt for you.E.H.
I remember feeling envious.
I thought that was really cool, and it put in my head that it was a doable thing.
One of my favorite movies is John HustonsThe Dead, which Anjelica Huston made happen.
Theres something beautiful about a family business.
How did it feel to you, Maya?E.H.
She says, Yes.
:Theyre like, You know my mom?!
And Im like, No.
But, really, the truth about my life is that therearea tremendous amount of positives.
Its really about exposure.
Exposure to the arts, exposure to interesting things.
I got to travel so much as a kid and see so much of the world.
And go to plays with him, so many plays on Broadway and Off Broadway.
E.H.:You get to go backstage and see how people rehearse and how they do their costumes.
Youve got to go make stuff.
And its hard to make stuff.
Its hard to get permission to be on a set.
Its a difficult world to enter.
How has your relationship changed over time?E.H.
When you imagine having children, you imagine taking them to the park and putting them in a swing.
You cant really imagine a 25-year-old woman who can talk the way that she talks.
Im trapped in the 90s, with these 90s references.
I learn a lot about whats happening in popular culture through Maya.
Young people are forcing you to articulate, challenging you to remain idealisticandto remain principled.
That challenge is extremely engaging and makes life worth living again in a new way.
What qualities do you see of yourselves in each other?M.H.
Ive learned from watching my dad that something we share is that our anxiety chokes us.
A lot of our power is invested in our speaking and talking and our vocal quality.
And so when we feel powerless, we lose our voices.
I also feel like were similarly both enjoyable and annoying people to take out to dinner.
We cant stop talking, and were really a nightmare to go out to dinner with together.
Ethan, whats something that youve learned from Maya?E.H.
See, that wouldve really pissed me off.
Well, try saying this, go apologize for that, and I guarantee itll go better.
But Im not sorry for them.
Youre sorry that theyfeelthat way.
And Ill call back: You wont believe it.
At what point in her life did you realize that she actually could be an artist?E.H.
:Since she could speak.
E.H.:Shed lose her shoes at a Knicks game.
Its hard to do.
Youre not supposed to take them off.
:I still lose my shoes.
She was always extremely precocious.
She was one of those kids who, as a young person, was very comfortable with adults.
She invited a bunch of my friends to her high-school graduation party.
And the teacher said, Im really worried about your daughter.
She said shes not happy.
I asked Maya about it.
Shes like, I thought it was a boring question.
I hope this wasnt too painful, considering the unit of sale aspect.M.H.
:Its not painful.
E.H.:And have everyone like us.
:And have everyone like us.
