HAWKE SLIPS INTO BAKER’S SKIN
Talks to Bill Brownstein about jazz icon
So, Ethan Hawke blends almost seamlessly into another role. But unlike many of the contemporary, near- Everyman characters — invariably caught up in family dysfunction — Hawke has taken on in recent years, his role as legendary jazz musician Chet Baker in Born to Be Blue really is a stretch.
Sure, family dysfunction figures in Baker’s history, but that was just one of many issues tormenting the trumpeter. And viewers will have no trouble buying Hawke’s Baker trying to grapple with all manner of woes, from relationships to drugs, from sustaining a career to coveting the respect of his peers.
Yes, Hawke does the junkie routine well, and he is equally credible as a not- so- innocent heartthrob. But go a little further. Check out Hawke’s fingering on the trumpet. Check out his breathing. He has no trouble passing for a seasoned jazzbo, either.
True, he did take trumpet and voice lessons prior to starting the assignment. But his trumpet teacher told him that even if he had taken five years of lessons, he would still not remotely play like Baker.
“Actually, he said that if I took serious lessons for eight years, I might be halfway there,” Hawke cracked during a promotional visit to Montreal last week.
Hawke may have expertly faked Baker’s horn prowess, but there’s nothing false about the actor’s love of jazz. He was smitten with such jazz flicks as Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues ( featuring a bravura performance by Denzel Washington) and Robert Altman’s Kansas City. He has been a longtime Baker fan, ever since catching the revealing 1988 Bruce Weber documentary Let’s Get Lost, about the trumpeter’s life and times.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and so when you’re well cast for something, it makes it easier to do a good job, because you so enjoy the role,” noted Hawke, 45, who made his acting debut in the 1985 sci- fi film Explorers.
“I love music so much. I loved Chet Baker. I loved learning the trumpet. I loved learning about whatever made him tick. I feel like I’ve spent much of my life around people like that. That’s a world that has fascinated me pretty much my whole life.”
What makes the movie so compelling is that there is no moralizing about Baker’s heroin habit and how he felt he needed the drug in order to perform at the highest level. Hawke, who has lost friends to heroin, hardly condones its use, but has a sense of why it was so prevalent in Baker’s time.
“To understand that kind of addiction, you have to understand to an extent the jazz culture of that time, after the ( Second World) War, when there were so many drugs on the street. The reality is that a lot of people who were serious about music were doing drugs and felt strongly that it was fun to play on them, because they could keep their focus, yet lose themselves. A lot of Chet’s heroes — Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis — were known users. ( Drugs) were almost like a badge of honour.”
Hawke is drawn to projects about real people — projects that go beneath the surface. “The problem with most life stories on screen is that they only go so far. We can read those on Wikipedia. The trick is to make them larger — about the choices one makes, which affect the direction one takes — and to make people really feel it.
“If you’re going to make a movie about a jazz musician, it should have that air, that mood, that timbre, that feeling you have when you’re lying down and listening to a couple of Chet Baker records.”
No doubt. But it helps when an actor can dig so deep into a character that viewers feel like they’re watching a documentary, rather than a dramatization. As in his other finest films — the Richard Linklater trilogy of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight ( the latter two co- written by Hawke), as well as Linklater’s Boyhood — Hawke has achieved this feat in Born to Be Blue.
“That’s always the goal,” he said. “And Linklater and I always had the same goal — a kind of nonacting. To ( blur) the line between yourself and the character so completely that it’s unclear where one begins and one ends. And, exactly, that people actually feel like they’re watching a documen- tary.”
There are some extended scenes in the trilogy — focusing on the relationship between Hawke’s character and his love interest, played by Julie Delpy — that are so realistic, it seems they couldn’t possibly have been scripted. In fact, many were improvised by the pair, including one memorable uncut 14- minute take between the bickering players in Before Midnight.
“That was a lot of fun, but we also had to work very hard to achieve it, to make it real.”
Clearly, Hawke is drawn to more independent cinema, as espoused by the likes of Linklater and international directors.
“I’ve always been allergic to American projects that are obsessed with money as being the be- all and end- all of what consti- tutes a successful human being. I’m more interested in projects that have less to do with glamorizing and more to do with honest behaviour. And I love the way European and British actors age better — they understand they’re growing into wiser, more experienced people,” explained Hawke, who cited Charlotte Rampling ’s flawless performance in 45 Years as an example.
Hawke has amassed more than 40 film credits over three decades, including Dead Poets Society, White Fang, Rich in Love, Reality Bites and Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day, for which he received a supporting- actor Oscar nomination ( as he did for Boyhood). He will soon be seen in Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven.
Hawke’s love for music and realistic films led to his documentary directorial debut with the much- acclaimed Seymour: An Introduction, which chronicles the life of renowned pianist and piano instructor Seymour Bernstein. He had previously made his fictional- film directorial debut with Chelsea Walls ( 2001), an ensemble drama about a day in the lives of guests at New York’s famed Chelsea Hotel.
He went on to direct the relationship drama The Hottest State ( 2006), based on his bestselling debut novel of the same title, which he penned in 1996. Hawke also drew rave reviews for his second novel, Ash Wednesday, published in 2002.
While these non- acting forays impress many, he concedes they likely cause his acting agents to have fits. “They’re always telling me to stay a little more focused,” joked Hawke, who is married with four children and lives in New York.
“But there’s a great Shaker expression: ‘ If you improve in one talent, God will give you more.’ And then there’s that Zen expression which essentially says: ‘ To master one profession, you have to apprentice three.’ I always felt it would be beneficial to my life as an actor to explore directing and writing and other things. If you isolate yourself and don’t let yourself be pretty much a human being, then you stagnate your own growth, particularly if you had started acting at 13.”
Clearly, no stagnation for this former 13- year- old thesp.