Table of Contents
The Script
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Interview With Ethan Hawke
Since making “Before Sunrise” with writer/director Richard Linklater and writer/actress Julie Delpy in 1995, Ethan Hawke has earned an Academy Award nomination, a Screen Actors Guild nomination, and has seen his personal life become fodder for gossip columnists. 1
Happy to be able to discuss his movie "Before Sunset" rather than his personal relationships, Hawke talks about how he’s changed since making the critically acclaimed “Before Sunrise,” the process of bringing the characters from the first film to life for the second time, and even touches a bit on an upcoming project, “Assault on Precinct 13,” co-starring Laurence Fishburne.
INTERVIEW WITH ETHAN HAWKE:
- How difficult was it to revisit this role? Did you have to rethink it?
- It wasn't difficult. It was something we really wanted. We worked hard to try to make this happen. It wasn't like some movie where people were dying for us to make a sequel. It was one that we had to kind of scratch and beg for a few years to be able to do it. So for Rick [Linklater] and Julie and I, I think we all felt incredibly grateful for the opportunity to try this. To make such a personal film, they are making less and less of these kinds of movies. It doesn't fit into any genre of filmmaking. So I was thrilled to be back doing it. Also acting with Julie is so easy for me. I enjoy working with her so much.
- How have you changed since the first movie?
- I am a much better person. I’m kidding. I think that the primary way I have changed is I became a father. That’s the only thing. The external things are the things you think of.
- Julie says you matured a little bit. She says you were a "puppy" on the first one.
- She used to tell me that all the time while we were doing it. It's funny because they show a little clip in the beginning of the movie of the first film, I couldn’t believe what a puppy I looked like. (Laughing) I look like my feet are too big. But I felt so old. I wonder if that is what I will feel like 10 years from now watching this one? Will I think I look young in this one?
- How was the acting different?
- This one was harder because the first one had time cuts, it had montages. We met strangers and had other scenes and we were in amusement parks and on Ferris wheels and trains. This one is so stark and so naked that while the first one was considered incredibly naturalistic, this one takes naturalism to a whole [new] level compared to the first one. So it was much more difficult. It was the kind of thing where we knew if we did our jobs really well, it would look like we weren't acting at all. But it is very hard to do that – to not have any plot to lean on. There’s no, “Let’s go over here.” There’s nothing to entertain you in the movie. It’s simple. It's like an elegant documentary.
- You and Julie didn’t improvise anything?
- We would work on the script, writing it, and then we would go to these locations. We had these things like, "Okay, how long does it take us to walk from the bookstore to the cafe?" We'd have to figure out like, "Okay, we can't use that street. We are going to have to go around over here, so we need an 8 1/2 minute scene." We would have to go, "Ok, we’ve got to cut those lines," or “All right, well, let’s pick that thing that we thought was going to be in the café and bring it in here, so that we can get from there to there to there, at the same time not just have any of it be filler.” We basically kind of wrote it as one scene and cut it apart to fit these locations. For example, we knew we needed to get from that stairway down to the sand. The first couple times we were rehearsing it, I would just goof around and ride down the thing and Rick said, “Hey, let’s do that.”
- How much of your own personality did you write into the character?
- I have always seen Jesse as kind of like 1/3 me, 1/3 Rick and 1/3 Julie Delpy's fantasy man. That's really what it is. In a way, it is a parallel life of mine. I remember on the first movie, I’d just met him and stuff, so I’m pretty much just doing a Richard Linklater impersonation in the first movie. That’s what I was doing and I dressed exactly like he dressed and just imitated him in that. And I get a little bit of that in this movie, too.
- Toward the end of the movie your character starts talking about the troubles in his marriage. How close to home did that hit for you?
- Well, I don't know. Julie likes to say that oddly enough my marriage was going great, I was just so method I destroyed it. (Laughing) I had to get into character. Whatever. If the movie has any value, it has value beyond its relationship to my personal life. If it is good because it has a relationship to it, then it is not any good.
PAGE 2: Ethan Hawke on Writing, Being Romantic, and "Assault on Precinct 13"
From "Before Sunset
- Are you happy with how “Before Sunset” turned out?
- Yeah, I love it. But for me, it’s not about…to spend the summer with two of your closest friends in the world writing a movie about romantic love in Paris. I have always believed in Rick. I think he is one of the best of my generation. So I don't really care how it turned out, in a way. It was such a worthwhile attempt. We were trying to make a movie about really just connecting with somebody.
- Are you romantic?
- You wouldn’t make both these movies if you weren’t.
- What about bringing these two character together again?
- I hope so. We'll see.
- How has being a dad changed you? Are you a better actor or a better dad?
-
I don't know.
Those are questions that anybody who is a parent asks themselves. I think that if you walk through this life and I end up being a bad father, then it won't matter anything else I achieved in my life. It will all be irrelevant. If my kids are doing well, then my life is going pretty well. And if my kids aren't doing well, it doesn't matter how the other elements of my life are. It's kind of amazing to have a context like that. This is really wonderful.
- Will you be writing any more books?
- Oh, sure.
- Are you working on anything right now?
- I am always trying to tinker with something. Whether it will turn into anything...
- Do you have any specific genre that you like, such as sci-fi?
- I like Sci-fi. I was always a huge “Lord of the Rings” fan. Fantasy more than Sci-Fi. I did one sci-fi movie. I did “Gattaca.” I liked “Gattaca” because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi. The more kind of head trippy sci-fi. I always like that. I was a big “Twilight Zone” freak.
- Would you ever write anything like that?
- I am not smart enough for that kind of thing. Those guys are all so smart. It’s funny, I was realizing today that both books I have written and now this one screenplay that I’ve co-wrote, all completely deal with romantic love. That's all they have to do with. It’s all boy-girl shit.
- Are you an expert now?
- Obviously I am terrible at it, so I’m working it out. (Laughs)
- What is the “Precinct 13” remake?
- I had such a good time doing “Training Day” that I have been looking ever since then to find... I always considered “Training Day” kind of my first ‘boy movie’. I've done all these kind of art house movies. But I really enjoyed doing “Training Day.” So “Assault on Precinct 13” is with [Laurence Fishburne]. I have always loved his work and wanted to work with him.
Interview With Julie Delpy2
Two strangers meet on a train, have an intense but short 14 hour relationship, and promise to reunite in six months. What happens nine years from that first meeting makes up the story of “Before Sunset,” the follow-up to writer/director Richard Linklater’s critically acclaimed 1995 indie, “Before Sunrise.”
Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Linklater wrote the script for “Before Sunset” over a five month period but shot the film over a span of just 15 days. While “Before Sunrise” had breaks in the action, “Before Sunset” features long periods of the two characters talking to one another without any interruptions, a tough task for the two actors but one all felt was totally necessary in order to tell the story.
INTERVIEW WITH JULIE DELPY:
- How was it to go back to this character after so many years?
- It was lovely because what we get to explore in the first film, we didn’t get to explore some things that I still wanted to explore with this character. The luxury of being able to do that is amazing, but [there’s] a lot of work behind it. To be able to convince a company to give us money to do a sequel to something that is not a blockbuster is very hard to do.
- Did you watch the first film to get back into character?
- We knew the film pretty well. A lot of things had slipped our minds but we started writing the script in 2002 together. Two weeks before we shot the film, we watched “Before Sunrise.” We watched it together and had a great time doing that. We laughed and made fun of each other – what people do in watching themselves 10 years before. Then we said we really had to nail the second one because the first film is such a sweet, romantic film. And we had to do a different film so let’s not be afraid that they have grown, they have changed and it’s not so sweet and romantic, but it has taken another dimension that we need to explore and reach.
- What were your writing contributions?
- I’d say I wrote most of my dialogue, some of Ethan’s dialogue, and Rick [Linklater] wrote some of my and Ethan’s dialogue - and vice versa. We wrote the structure and story together. We came up with the concept together. We did bring a lot of writing to the script.
- Does that mean there’s a lot of you in the character?
- Well, isn’t everything people write autobiographical in some way? It’s definitely ideas I wanted to express that I wrote in another film that never got made. So you know what? I said, “Screw it. I’m going to write in this one.” Rick took bits of a piece I had written on modern society, that had nothing to do with the film, but he took an entire chunk and put it in the film.
- How did you guys decide which character showed up for the reunion on December 16th?
- Pretty quickly. She was the more romantic one in the first film it seems so it was more interesting to me that she was the one who didn’t show up. And she had grown to be a bit more cynical in the years. In a way, it’s like they shifted.
- The takes are very long. Did you know every word or improvise?
- We didn’t improvise a word. Everything was written and mapped out. Every gesture, every break in the dialogue, every moments where we look at each other – everything was written and rehearsed.
- You sing three songs in this movie. Did you write them specifically for this film?
- No, it was part of an album that came out in Europe and hopefully will come out here. I’m in discussion. It’s called “Julie Delpy.” I didn’t want to call it that but the label wanted my name on it. They thought it was easier to promote that way.
- How has Ethan changed since the first film nine years ago?
- I think he’s grown tremendously. I think he was a puppy in the first film – it really felt like that way. It’s true in your early 20s women have a certain maturity that I only realize now, and even as you get into your 30s. At the time, I thought he was a great person, but kind of sometimes immature a little bit. Now [he’s] totally not and our relationship is dynamic. Now we’re both immature.
- Have you yourself changed in those nine years?
- Actually, I was more grown up and serious then than I am now. And actually that’s part of growing up, becoming less serious about everything. I was so intense and I was suffering so much over anything and I was in pain constantly. Luckily I grew into having more a sense of humor. I think writing has been essential to me in feeling better.
PAGE 2: Delpy on Writing, "Frankenstein," and Countess Elizabeth Bathory
From "Before Sunset"
- Even without seeing the first movie, "Before Sunrise," audiences should be able to understand "Before Sunset." Did you have conversations about making that a reality?
- That was a challenge we weren’t sure we achieved…but we tried our best in the writing, acting and directing to make sure it was not just a sequel, but also a film. For the people who know the first film, it gives something else and for the people who don’t, it’s just a film like any other film.
- How old were you when you first started writing?
-
I was 9 when I started writing short stories. I never pursued [it] in
a commercial way of publishing or making money. Now I am more because
I’m going to direct a film I wrote, so I’m more into it.
I have to say doing “Before Sunrise,” the first film… I had written a script when I was 18 that a lot of people wanted to produce and a publisher wanted to publish as a book. I didn’t want to do that. I said no. I’ve written pages and pages of novels that I’ve erased from my computer – it’s really weird. Now I’m finally at peace with it and am able to put it out there. It’s taken me a long time.
I think “Before Sunrise” was the film that made me capable of writing again, because I quit for a few years, because we wrote some of the dialogue in the film and some of the scenes. To see, even if I didn’t get credited, but critics saying afterwards, “Oh I love that scene,” and I was like, “That was one I wrote or partly wrote,” it made me feel more comfortable with writing, so now I’m doing it. Now I’m afraid I’m going to have a block for a year after saying that.
- Will you do another “Before” in nine years?
- Well, we don’t want to do a sequel in nine years because we don’t want to have this mapped out pattern. If we feel like we really have something to say and people really want to hear something else, and explore and see more and go to other fields because we’d do something very different again, we will do it. But we’re not sure we’ll even do anything.
- What’s the “Frankenstein” project you’re doing for television?
- It’s a job I took right before this film and I’m there the first 10 minutes of the film so it’s a quick cameo…then I die. But it was very nice, lovely but it was basically a tiny cameo they asked me to do and I did it.
- What’s the movie you wrote and hope to direct about?
- Chris Hanley is producing – “American Psycho” – he’s a good indie producer and he optioned my film. It’s based on a true story based on Elizabeth Bathory who was a Hungarian countess in the 1600s. She became obsessed with eternal youth and started bathing in virgin’s blood. She killed about 400 girls. It sounds like a gothic [tale] but it’s more a drama. It’s more focusing on the psychology of human beings when they’re given power.
- How did you find the story and why is it important for you to do it?
-
It’s a story I always heard of but never pursued before. Then I did
historical research and I got fascinated by the story and the whole
power trip around it. Yes, she might have killed all those people but
maybe she might have not. That’s how I tell the story. At the time,
the church and the people in power were trying to get rid of people
they didn’t want – and that’s how I tell the story. That’s how the
witches were burned and all that.
A lot of women were killed at the time because the men were busy at war - that’s all they knew [how] to do over three generations of wars - and they became less and less capable [of ruling] countries. The women started taking over in small castles – not the king or anything like that. In small areas, she’d rule the castle. The switching period is the Renaissance period when men realized they were losing control and that’s when the witch hunt thing started to get rid of women, more or less. Bathory might have been a victim to show to people that women cannot be powerful because they become crazy and kill people.
- Why do you want to direct it?
- I’m obsessed with certain traits of human nature. I’m obsessed with human beings, first of all, and the deepest qualities I explore in this film, [the] darker side and faults. Every character in the film has major, major flaws and terrible things they have about themselves. She is vain, obsessed with power, and cruel. One of the other characters is greedy, another is weak…I explore all the possible worst traits in human kind and I go very far with it. So it’s pretty dark. And I will play the leading role because I’m crazy.
1. Ethan Hawke Reunites With His "Before Sunrise" Collaborators for "Before Sunset" — From Rebecca Murray, Your Guide to Hollywood Movies.
2. Julie Delpy Talks About "Before Sunset"
