Ethan Hawke’s presidential endorsement couldn’t be more direct. “Kamala Harris is driving the bus I want to get on”.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter Roma during the Lucca Film Festival, the actor and filmmaker says his mother gave him some particularly insightful advice about this election season: “I was talking with my mother about the upcoming elections, and she told me, ‘Voting is like taking public transit. It doesn’t drop you off exactly at your house, but it gets you close. So, you take the train, or the bus, and it brings you near home.’ In my mind, there’s no question: I want to be on the bus that Kamala is driving.”
While in Lucca, Hawke started his day running along the ancient city walls and cycling through the historic streets. In addition to a lifetime achievement honor he’ll be receiving at the fest, Hawke is in Lucca to screen his latest directorial effort, Wildcat, starring his daughter Maya. The film tells the story of American writer Flannery O’Connor, who spent her life battling lupus, the disease that eventually left her disabled and led to her death in 1964.
“I was incredibly moved that someone as young as Maya wanted to take on such a challenging project, a film about a writer who hardly ever leaves her room. A story about a character whose life is all about writing and feeding chickens,” Hawke said. “But Maya’s been passionate about Flannery O’Connor’s writing since she was a child. She called me and her mom [Uma Thurman], asking us to work with her to bring this film to life. I’m proud she chose us.”
The film weaves together O’Connor’s life and the visualizations of her unsettling, hallucinatory stories, populated with grotesque, cruel and disfigured characters. Hawke likened them to a certain political figure: “If you heard a story about a real estate developer running for U.S. president, selling Bibles to pay off a porn star, you’d think it was a character out of one of Flannery O’Connor’s stories, not someone real!”
Born in Texas in 1970, and distantly related to playwright Tennessee Williams, Hawke shot to international fame as a teenager in Peter Weir’s 1989 period drama Dead Poets Society. “From Weir, I learned to embrace all challenges and to love them,” Hawke shared.
Hawke has been a frequent collaborator with director Richard Linklater, who guided him through the Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight trilogy, filmed over years alongside Julie Delpy, and the coming-of-age epic Boyhood, a film shot over 12 years. Throughout his diverse career, Hawke — who is also a screenwriter, producer, novelist and musician — has earned four Academy Award nominations.
Hawke’s next film as an actor reunites him with Linklater. “We shot Blue Moon, which depicts the final days of lyricist Lorenz Hart, half of the iconic Rodgers and Hart songwriting duo. The script is the most beautiful I’ve ever read. If we did it justice at all, it’s going to be an amazing film. It takes place over 90 minutes in real time, capturing Hart’s life.”
Hart led a troubled life, marked by alcoholism and depression. The film is set during the premiere of Oklahoma!, the first musical Rodgers created without him, as Hart spiraled deeper into despair. The cast includes Margaret Qualley, Andrew Scott and Bobby Cannavale.
“Hart was a funny, irreverent, deeply complex man with a broken heart,” Hawke observed. “He had a sense of humor that always had death lurking behind it. A bittersweet character, steeped in melancholy.”