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First Reformedis like nothing Ethan Hawke is famous for.
Hes desperate and jumpy, holding everything inside.
Reverend Tollers faith in the church has decayed somewhat, but hes also got an epic case of mania.
Theres been other interpretations.
Hawkes performance is hard to shake: In every scene, its like Toller is wearing an invisible straitjacket.
Do you remember how you felt the day beforeFirst Reformedstarted shooting?
So I had to have basically somewhere between 30 and 50 journals of different lengths.
I spent all of the Christmas holidays doing these journals.
Thats what they hired you for, you know?
So I remember I was confused about what the collaboration was going to bring.
Can you tell me why?First off, I come from a long line of very serious Christians.
My family were Quakers who came over on a couple boats after the Mayflower.
My grandparents and my mother and my father are all extremely religious people.
Cause he might be choosing to live a frivolous life, that might be their first assumption.
I see a real connection between that life and the artistic life.
You study great painters, or great poets W.H.
Did working on this make you reconsider your own faith or spirituality?No.
Theres a tremendous amount of anxiety in the air, a lack of political and spiritual leadership.
Fear collects in your chest.
When its amplified, its exactly what weve done to the whole world.
All that stuff is very much on Shepards mind as he writes about these self-loathing men.
And thats not leadership.
Something I really like about your performance in this is that Tollers physicality feels so limited.
I think of it as a sort of manic restraint.
A recessive performance avoids the audience.
For Toller, it invites you into his inner mania, as you said.
I think thats really well put.
On the surface, he has to create a feeling of everything being fine.
Inside, theres kind of an Edvard Munchlike scream happening all the time.
Was it uncomfortable to live in that for the whole shoot?Oh, yeah.
Its always a challenge.
You dont have a movie like this without really looking hard into depression.
Just cause youre depressed doesnt mean you dont have clear-sighted insights into others.
I want to go back to those journals he had you write.
And then its kind of a funny story, but its true someone stole my journal.
What!Like at an airport, yeah.
About five years ago.
I left my bag for a minute, and somebody went in my bag and stole my journal.
It freaked me out.
We live in such a weird time where its like,Oh my God.
Im going to have to read my journal on the internet.
This is going to be hugely embarrassing.
Remember when that would happen in high school?
Well, I was just incredibly petrified of who this person was that stole my journal.
And I just stopped keeping a journal.
I tried to start again, but I have not been able to do it.
But I miss my journals.
But you still have all the other journals?I still have all the old ones.
Do you ever reread them?I havent in a long time.
Ive always found it extremely helpful.
Its scary, isnt it?
I found my journals the other day fromExplorers.
Oh, wow.I know.
I literally have these journal entries about how Rivers getting on my nerves.
Id like to talk about two scenes inFirst Reformedthat really took me by surprise.
The first is when Toller and Mary float through the earth and space and the cosmos.
Joan Baez came to visit him, and she was barefoot.
He hadnt seen a womans foot in like 20 years or something.
He writes in his journal that he couldnt take his eyes off her foot.
I thought about that when shes asking him to touch her hand.
Toller basically levitated, you know?
Thats how good it felt.
The other scene is when Toller sits in the office with Jeffers, the pastor at Abundant Life.
All of Tollers anxieties come to a head: Well, somebody has to do something!
Cant somebody do something, c’mon?
Isnt someone in charge with a brain in their head?
Rules are made to be broken, and even Paul agrees with this.
If Im doing a recessive performance, at some point he has to explode out of his little box.
I can go back in the box, but that was the moment where the cracks show.
For some reason, the movements of it all has slowed down as Ive gotten older.
Ive enjoyed it a lot more.
Theres an expression they have at Juilliard called, Let your habit not be your only choice.
And that is certainly one of the advantages of getting older.
It was a Tom Stoppard play.
Its actually nine hours long about these mid-nineteenth-century Russian radicals.
A lot of the cast was extremely good.
Somehow, some kind of adult relationship to acting started there.
Martha Plimpton was one of my friends when we were children actors, and she was there.
That was a very pivotal experience for me, I think.
I had three very pivotal experiences with the director, Jack OBrien.
He directed me in ShakespearesHenry IV, inCoast of Utopia, and thenMacbeth.
Ministry is a vocation many are called, but few are chosen, and all that.
Do you feel like being an artist is your vocation?Definitely.
I definitely feel that way.
The more time you spend away from love, away from what you love, the less you grow.
Its just like water and light, you know?
It sounds a little airy-fairy, but its not rocket science.
You take care of yourself.
Its something to aspire for.
None of us are there.
Very few of us are there.
Cause, you know, crack makes a lot of money, too.
Thats a funny way of putting it.Its true!
People think just cause the movie makes them money its good.
Or just cause a restaurant makes money, its good.
Or just cause a person makes money, theyre good.
I have a great sense of gratitude around it, that its still in the dialogue.
Im as surprised as anyone.
So its kind of awesome that were here.
Does the awards-season stuff feel grueling?
One of the things thats hard about making commercial movies is that you have to sell it.
It feels like youre sharing, and it has a different energy around it.
But its got a different goal.
I really like the way you talk about celebrity and art and this industry.
Howd you get the name Hunter?
My parents just wanted a unisex name.
They didnt want to know my sex before I was born.Its a really cool name.
Ive never met a woman named Hunter before, and I really like it.
My wifes name is Ryan.
Shes always actually explaining to people who call that shes a woman.
But Hunters a cool name, and its a great name for a woman because … whats the god?
The god of hunting is a woman.
I always forget her name.
It might be Athena, for crying out loud.
But anyway, I remember thinking its really interesting that the god of hunting was female.
She protects the animals and is cool.
Just one last question: Have you ever heard ofHawkecast, the Ethan Hawke podcast?God, no.
Its fun.Well, I already love these guys and think theyre brilliant.
Im sure they would love to hear that.Theres a great James Joyce line.
Hes asked what he expects from his reader.
He says, A lifetime dedication to his work.
I always thought that was funny.
