Watching him like a Hawke
AT IFC Center, way downtown, overlooking an ambulance and a falafel/frankfurter street cart, Ethan Hawke screened his new biopic “Blaze.”
“I directed this, cowrote it. The idea’s mine, and it’s about Blaze Foley.” Who?
“A Texas singer/songwriter who few knew. Nobody knows musicians because they’re met with indifference. He didn’t win 9 million Grammys, but he had an amazing love life with a lady in a treehouse. Being I love country western, reading about him I just took off. You rarely read a book that’s special, so my wife and I went to visit Austin, where he was shot and killed.”
How can you create a film about nobody, which also stars nobody?
“I’ve always been a writer. I’m an actor. I tell stories for a living. I sat down four weeks with his story, changed some things a little, underlined passages I loved, ripped pages out, made a map in notebooks, then worked a computer — like, first scene . . . how to open this . . build the story . . . love, sex, death, blues song, friendship. It’s mournful. “The cast is real musicians playing musicians. I’m in this playing a reporter, which means I represent the audience learning the story of Blaze Foley and how diff icult the music business is. “Being an independent movie, we didn’t have a big budget so I started off showing it to my friends. They loved it and then it went to Sundance.” Facing the concession where big soft pretzels were toasting, handsome Ethan headed for the screening. So how often has he seen this? “A million times.”