Ethan Hawke spoke on a range of issues with reporters after receiving the President’s Award at Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
POLITICS OF THE PANDEMIC
Hawke is working on the Marvel series Moon Knight in Poland, and he said their approach to the pandemic was refreshing.
“There are stores in America where you walk in, thinking they might be mad at you for wearing a mask. In others, they might be mad at you if you don’t. It’s the most amazing example of a divided nation.”
ROBIN WILLIAMS
Hawke also shared that he thought his co-star in Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams, hated him.
“I thought Robin hated me. He had a habit of making a ton of jokes on set. At 18, I found that incredibly irritating. He wouldn’t stop and I wouldn’t laugh at anything he did,” he said, mentioning that in the end, it was Williams who got him his first agent. “He called, saying, ‘Robin Williams says you are going to do really well.’ There was this scene in the film when he makes me spontaneously make up a poem in front of the class. He made this joke at the end of it, saying that he found me intimidating. I thought it was a joke. As I get older, I realize there is something intimidating about young people’s earnestness, their intensity. It is intimidating – to be the person they think you are. Robin was that for me,” he said, complimenting his younger co-star in First Reformed, Philip Ettinger.
POTENTIAL NEW PROJECT
He also spoke about another collaboration with Richard Linklater. This time, they’d focus on the transcendentalist movement, which included writers and philosophers in the 19th century, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and “Little Women” scribe Louisa May Alcott.
“They were the first leaders of the abolition movement; they were vegetarians; they fought for women’s rights. Rick is obsessed with how their ideas are still very radical. This could be a super cool movie and Rick is writing it right now. He is mad at me for coming to Karlovy Vary, he thinks I should be at his house,” he said.