Ethan Hawke on Daybreakers

It sure is nice to see a real vampire movie again, where they actually kill and eat people and don’t fall in love. Of all the people, Ethan Hawke is the one to play a real vampire again. The lovey dovey guy from Reality Bites and Before Sunrise plays a vampire scientist looking for a replacement to human blood, since the humans are almost all gone. We got to join a roundtable interview with him on the new film Daybreakers.
 

Q: Were those post-adolescent vampire movies already all the rage when you started working on this?

Ethan Hawke: No. You know, it's kind of funny about the whole collective consciousness. I got this script, I remember, when I was doing a Tom Stoppard play. And it seemed like the most radically different and new thing at that moment. Tom was like, "It's time for a good vampire movie." I had no awareness of any of this stuff. And it's been fascinating to watch it all explode, knowing I just finished making a vampire movie. But the truth is, that's how it is with genre movies. Like the western will explode and be in style for a little while, and then there'll be too much westerns, and nobody will want to see one.
 

Q: What drew you to this film then?

Ethan Hawke: Well, the truth is that I had been sent the script, and the script came with the DVD of the Undead. And I didn't read the script, and I popped in the Undead and I watched about ten minutes of it, and it was like, "That movie sucks." And then it was some holiday or something, and my brothers were in town, and they started watching it in the middle of the night, and they just started howling with laughter. And I came downstairs and I watched the whole movie with them and I got it. I didn't get the sense of humor of that movie, and I had kind of forgotten the sense of humor of this genre, and what's possible inside a genre movie, and it got me thinking about when I first started acting with Joe Dante. He had just made The Howling and Piranha and Gremlins, and he had a real passion for these movies and really taught me about them. And so then I read the script, and when I read the script, you realize that there's the best of what this genre has to offer. First of all, it's original, meaning that it's not based on a graphic novel or some '60s TV show or a comic book that came out a million years ago. It has real originality. I think the best genre movies have a metaphor or analogy at work in the subtext of them, and this idea of people destroying all their resources and not caring until they were all gone is really powerful. It kind of fuels the way that the sci-fi element of it works. So by the time I met them, I was really impressed. And when you meet them, they have that kind of irrepressible curiosity and love of movies that I think is required if you're going to make a good film.

Q: How physically demanding was this role?

Ethan Hawke: There was nothing demanding about this role at all, except how much I didn't want to make a bad genre film. Personally, as somebody who has never done this kind of movie, that was part of the appeal, but I didn't want to make a bad one. I thought it'd be really fun if we could do it really well. The challenge of this movie is like, invariably, you don't have enough money to make the movie of these guys' dreams. They want to be James Cameron some day and get to make all their dreams come true, and this was a very finite amount. I've had a lot of experience in independent film, and about how to choose. You've got to be very discerning about where you put your five bucks, and where you cut and what you don't cut. One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character. Even like something like the first Blade film, Kris Kristofferson is great in that movie, and you're really sad when he gets killed. It's hard to do that. The best example is Han Solo. You fall in love with these characters. I'm not saying that we achieved that, but the good John Carpenter movies, for example, Kurt Russell in The Thing is great. There's something appealing about the people. And these guys knew a lot about comic books and stuff like that, but trying to make a good movie that's not too long, it's not too short, that's what's difficult about it. I've done movies that were physically grueling. This was not one. I watched Apocalypto the other day. I couldn't imagine, there are so many shots of that guy running! I thought, "That guy must have ran for a year  through the forest!” Every time they're coming through the brush, the actor in me was, "Okay, that hurt." How many takes of that did they do?

Q: So whether it’s film or theater or writing, you still enjoy it?

Ethan Hawke: I don't really care so much what the genre is, as long as the people really care. It's weird, I did these things back to back. I worked with, like, a guy who is 70 years old, Tom Stoppard, who is just writing this nine hour play, and his passion for what is possible in the medium of the performing arts is contagious and thrilling. Then I was working with these guys. It was their second movie, their first big-budget movie. They were like 29 years old when I first met them. I don't even know how old they were, but they were younger than me and their passion was contagious. It was a  different kind but that's thrilling. To be in a room with Richard Linklater and listen to him break down the history of cinema and how the language of it - because he's really interested in the whole international cinema of everything - it's exciting to be near. There's a lot of people, and I'm turning 40 this year, and the people that I know who are 60 and are still really excited and passionate about filmmaking are all really good. There's a whole other room to get to. You know, a lot of people burn out but if you can sustain it and kind of get into the next room, it's fascinating. Some people burn out, and some people like Clint Eastwood, he was a wild, international movie star in his 30s, and he's doing the best work of his life now. Go figure.
 

Q: You did Brooklyn’s Finest after Daybreakers, another cop drama, right? 

Ethan Hawke: With Antoine Fuqua who did Training Day. 

Q: So not only a familiar genre, the same director. 

Ethan Hawke: The thing about the cop thing that I like is that it’s actually one of the rare opportunities. Right now, if you’re interested in being a dramatic actor, they’re not making that many just regular dramas. Movies have to have some other thing going on. The nice thing about the cop genre is that it’s regular people so you get to deal with real people who eat at restaurants. I like that genre for that reason because you get to play characters that are recognizable. I enjoy that the most. 

Q: Training Day is such a staple, is there pressure when you do a cop movie after that? 

Ethan Hawke: It doesn’t matter what. When you do Before Sunset, you know while it’s a limited audience, there was a very small group of people that love Before Sunrise. You feel a certain pressure to make sure that you uphold a level of quality that has been a bar. You set a bar and you have to at least match it. There’s no doubt in my mind Brooklyn’s Finest is different than Training Day. It’s not the same kind of movie but it’s a great double feature with Training Day. There’s no doubt in my mind that some day Antoine Fuqua will be at a film festival and they will do a double feature of these two movies. It’s east coast/west coast. They’re fun. Antoine loves these people, these characters and these situations. It’s what he really excels at. 

Q: And you’re not a rookie again I take it. 

Ethan Hawke: No, no, no, no. It’s totally different. That movie centers around the hottest precinct in the U.S. which is in Brooklyn. It follows three different officers in this one precinct in their overlapping lives. It’s a little Magnolia crossed with Amores Perros, crossed with Training Day. 

Q: Do you still enjoy making movies like you used to?

Ethan Hawke: That element comes into my life. I mean, part of the appeal of this, really, was these guys really wanted me for some reason. That caught my curiosity. Why in the world? Because once you have any kind of "celebrity" or notoriety or whatever that is, often times, people just want you to be in their movie. Anybody who's name is on that sheet of paper that somebody gave them, they want. But these guys, I was very curious why. I like doing things that are different. At the same time, we all have a set amount of what interests us. The fact that these guys were so smart and so creative, I knew they didn't want to just make a blood and guts movie. The real language of cinema has been very affected by people like the Spierig brothers, by this genre of filmmaking, whether it's in Shanghai or whether it's in Mexico.