less than 24 hours after the end shooting in western Almería with Pedro Almodovar, Ethan Hawke had a crowded bathroom Last night, at the Doré cinema in Madrid, where he went to present his fourth feature film as a director, ‘Flame’ (2018)It’s about country-folk musician Blaze Foley who wants to become a legend and eventually becomes a cursed artist.
“I don’t want to be remembered, I want to be forgotten… we all grapple with the idea of seeing ourselves in the third personbut the real goal is to be fully immersed in the moment,” said Hawke, full to the brim, at the colloquium after the screening at Cine Doré with Pedro Almodóvar among the attendees.
Online tickets for the event sold out in less than ten minutes, and dozens of fans stood guard at the door for autographs or A photo of the actor from the ‘Dead Poets Club’ or Richard Linklater’s love trilogy.
Shooting of the movie ‘Strange Life’, 30-minute western starring Hawke and Chilean Pedro PascalAccording to Almodóvar himself, it ended at one a.m. Sunday after the Texan actor announced he was sitting in the back of the room.
“I’m very happy with the movie,” said the director from La Mancha. “Proud” to have worked with Hawke in “difficult” conditions among other things, due to the high summer temperatures Almeria.
‘A movie works when the whole crew falls in love with the same idea. and greats like Almodóvar achieve it,’ replied Hawke from the stage, who has developed his career as an actor and, more sinisterly, as a parallel director in recent years.
In the past Cannes Film Festival He is in the process of developing projects ranging from the sequel to ‘Daggers in the Back’ to ‘Raymond and Ray’ by Rodrigo García, while he premieres a new documentary series he directed about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Ewan McGregor.
“Great directors were only on their sets, while I, as an actor, have been on many sets. lets you steal from a lot of people”Said in an act presented by Carlos Revriego, deputy director of the Spanish Film Library.
“I’ve had many teachers since I was young, I saw that There is not just one way to make a movie, but many ways. and I was able to understand what worked for each and why,” he added.
Among all these teachers, Richard Linklater stands out.Texas like him. “He’s my best friend, we grew up together, we made nine movies, and one of them took us 12 years,” he told Boyhood (2014).
Hawke said Linklater was the first person he called when he decided to do it. ‘Blaze’, an independent film and the low budget largely financed by the player himself.
“The advice he gave me was: ‘Imagine you’re 19’ (…), has the humility of a student”and that was the best advice he could give me, because the people are not pretentious at all, they say a song is three chords and a truth, and it fits.
Actors who acted as musicians in the film, and especially Ben Dickie as Foley and Charlie Sexton as Townes Van Zandt Hawke explained that they are real musicians, something that has been at the heart of the project from the very beginning.
Dickey is a friend of hers and she started crying at home on Christmas years ago because after decades of career she wasn’t successful and didn’t feel like a “real musician”. Hawke thought of the Blaze Foley case, which they both admired, but He became a victim of self-destruct.
“He started playing ‘Clay Pigeons,’ and then I had the idea for the first time—to get Dickey to play Foley in a movie—and I immediately knew I had to do it. I suggested taking acting lessons.Of course he told me, but I thought he was joking,” she recalled.
Foley’s story has something in common with Chet Baker’s, brought to life by Hawke in ‘Born to be Blue’ (2015). “I already learned then that there are artists who do their best with their music, but who aren’t exactly great in their lives,” she recalls.