Ethan Hawke talks Daybreakers!

Ethan Hawke began his film career in The Explorers, one of my favorite movies, and returns to genre film with his first real horror movie, Daybreakers, coming out this Friday. As he sits down in this three-piece suit he furrows his brow slightly, making all of us emotional reporter types swoon a little. Look for our review of the 2010’s first horror movie later this week, and until then tide yourselves over with this roundtable interview with The Immortal Hawke:

There’s Team Edward and Team Jacob, do you think we can get Team Ethan going?

Ethan Hawke: No, I think what’s good about this movie is that it’s first post-adolescent vampire movie in a long time. So I think we can hopefully avoid that.

Were those adolescent vampire movies already all the rage when you started working on Daybreakers?

Ethan Hawke: No. It’s kind of funny about that collective consciousness. I got the script when I was doing a Tom Stoppard play and it seemed like the most radically different and new thing at that moment in time. “You know, 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, you know that’s how it is with genre movies. Like the Western will explode and be in style for a little while, and then there will be too much Westerns and nobody will want to see one. I think what’s kind of valuable about this movie is the first joke we make… It’s an R-rated vampire movie. I remember being a kid and sleeping over at my friend’s house and staying up late. What was that Isabella Adjani…? Nosferatu! We stayed up late watching Nosferatu. Vampire movies are supposed to be secret and bad and should be rated R.

What attracted you to this film. The Spierig Brothers wrote the film with you in mind, but rumor has it that you weren’t initially too enamored with them…

Ethan Hawke: The truth is that I had been sent the script and the script came with the DVD of The Undead (the Spierig Brothers’ first film), and I didn’t read the script. I popped in The Undead and watched about ten minutes of it, and I was like, “That movie sucks.” (Laughter.) 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 started watching 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 the genre. It got me thinking about when I first started acting with Joe Dante, and 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 [I realized] that there’s… the best of what this genre has to offer. First of all it’s original. It’s not based on a graphic novel, or some 60’s TV show or comic book that came out nine years ago. It has real originality, and 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 really fuels the way the Sci-Fi element of it works. So by the time I met them I was really impressed. 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.

What would you say is the prevalent message of Daybreakers?

Ethan Hawke: I think that when an analogy is really singing, it’s what you want it to be. I made a joke that this could be the number one movie for PETA advocates. It could be a huge animal rights champion film. And in another way, oil is the most obvious one. Sucking the blood dry. There’s a great Neil Young songs years ago, The Vampire Blues… This idea that we’re literally sucking the earth dry. The idea of oil as the Earth’s blood was not started with this movie. But the movie wouldn’t be good at all if that was the only thing interesting about it. The movie works as a badass genre movie. It just happens to have something else at play. You know, Gattaca was a similar way too. It was just a basic sci-fi movie, but there was obviously all these themes at work underneath it.

Was this a particularly demanding role for you, physically or…?

Ethan Hawke: There was nothing demanding about this role at all except how much I didn’t want to make a bad genre. I personally, as someone who has never done this kind of movie, that was part of the appeal… I didn’t want to make a bad one. I thought it would be really fun if we could do it really well… The challenge of this movie is invariably you don’t have enough money to make the movie of these guys’ dreams. These guys, they want to be James Cameron someday and make all their dreams come true… I’ve had a lot of experience in independent film and how to choose… You’ve got to be very discerning about where to put your five bucks, and where you cut, what you don’t cut. And 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.

You take the first Blade film: Kris Kristofferson is great in that movie. 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. And 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. That’s what’s difficult about it. I’ve done movies that are physically grueling. This is not one of them. I watched Apocalypto the other day, I couldn’t imagine. That guy must have ran for like, a year. Every time runs through the brush, the actor in me goes, “All right, that hurt.”

You’re doing theatre and writing now, and you’ve been at this a long time. Are you still passionate about filmmaking?

Ethan Hawke: That element comes into it. Part of the appeal of this movie was, “These guys really wanted me, for some reason?” And that caught my curiosity. Why in the world? Once you have an kind of quote, unquote “celebrity” or notoriety, often they just want you to be in their movie… ANY names that are just on that sheet of paper that somebody gave them. I was curious why. I like doing things that are different, and at the same time we all have what interests us, you know? The fact that these guys were so smart and so creative, I knew that they didn’t just want to make a blood and guts movie. The history, the real language of cinema has very affected by people like the Spierig Brothers, the genre filmmaking, whether it’s in Shanghai or whether it’s in Mexico, so… I know that’s not really your question…

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

You did another movie right after Daybreakers, didn’t you?

Ethan Hawke: Brooklyn’s Finest.

That’s another cop drama?

Ethan Hawke: With Antoine Fuqua, who did Training Day.

So not only is it a genre you’re familiar with but a director you’re familiar with.

Ethan Hawke: The thing about the cop thing that I like is that it’s one of the rare opportunities… If you’re a dramatic actor, they’re not making that many “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 and… I like that genre for that reason, because you get to play characters who are recognizable human beings and I enjoy that the most.

Training Day is such a staple now, do you feel that kind of legacy hanging over you with Brooklyn’s Finest?

Ethan Hawke:  It doesn’t matter. When you do Before Sunset you know, that while it’s a limited audience, there is a small group of people that love Before Sunrise, and you feel a certain pressure to make sure that you uphold the level of quality that has been… You set a bar and you have to at least match it. This movie, Brooklyn’s Finest, is different than Training Day. It’s not the same kind of a movie, but it’s a great double feature with Training Day. There’s no doubt in my mind that someday 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. Antoine loves these people and these characters. It’s what he really excels at.

How do you feel about turning 40?

Ethan Hawke: It beats not turning 40. (Laughter.) That’s the only way to look at it, don’t you think? You know, as an actor, the Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away. This is a medium that is largely youth-oriented, and yet at the same time I’m playing characters that are so much more appealing to me now than when I was younger. Playing the guileless ingénue was… I longed for a part that was as interesting as the one in Brooklyn’s Finest, or the one in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, or to get to play an adult role is really exciting. The downsides are that you’re not as pretty and they don’t want you to kiss people as much. (Laughter.) The upside is that I get to do the kind of work I always dreamed of doing.

Are you writing anything right now?

Ethan Hawke: I always try to.

It’s tough, isn’t it?

Ethan Hawke: (Laughs.) Yeah! You know the older you get, the more expect from yourself, somehow? I used to be like, if I wrote ten pages, I’d be like, “You guys should all read this! I did it, can you believe it!” And then you get older, and it’s “Eh…!”