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FunTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - My name is Ethan Hawke,
00:06 and I am here in Toronto at Deadline Studios
00:10 to celebrate the opening of our film, Wildcat,
00:17 here at the Toronto International Film Festival.
00:19 And the film is,
00:22 sings a song of Flannery O'Connor.
00:25 - My name is Maya Hawke,
00:27 and I play Flannery O'Connor in Wildcat.
00:30 Yeah, that's the information.
00:32 - That's who you play.
00:33 - That's who I play.
00:34 I also play characters from several of her stories.
00:37 - That's true.
00:38 - In case we need to be really detailed, specific here.
00:42 Well, we have always been really close
00:46 and loved talking about literature and ideas,
00:49 and I was really lucky to grow up in a house
00:53 with someone to talk to about all that stuff.
00:55 And at one point I had a teacher recommend me
00:58 Flannery O'Connor,
00:59 and I found her prayer journal sort of separately.
01:01 And then my dad and I read it together
01:03 over one very long summer.
01:06 And then he ended up helping me adapt it into a monologue.
01:11 And then slowly kind of figured out--
01:15 - It could be used as an audition piece and stuff.
01:17 - That's true, yeah.
01:17 - It was absolutely fantastic.
01:19 - Thank you.
01:20 And then we found this guy, Joe Goodman,
01:22 who had the rights to her stories and letters
01:27 and the prayer journal.
01:28 Really, I just wanted to make a movie
01:30 about the Flannery and the prayer journal,
01:32 but he had this kind of treasure trove
01:33 of available information and things to use.
01:38 And my dad and I have always loved talking
01:41 about kind of faith and imagination,
01:44 and he can kind of take it from here.
01:46 But we sort of saw a way to make a movie
01:49 about our own relationship to the creative act
01:53 as a spiritual act through the guise of Flannery O'Connor,
01:57 who was a deeply creative and deeply faithful person.
02:01 - Exactly, she said it.
02:02 She gave, Flannery O'Connor was the kind of springboard
02:05 for a chance for us to kind of disguise
02:10 something really personal to us
02:13 in the framework of a biopic, you know?
02:18 Every person's life is interesting,
02:19 and there's always kind of a lie in movies
02:22 that a life has a narrative,
02:23 like this happened and that happened,
02:25 that our lives are more a collection of moments.
02:27 So you could make 25 different movies
02:29 about Flannery O'Connor.
02:31 You know, it's just what you choose to see about it.
02:33 - You should say the thing that the guy said to you.
02:36 - What did he say?
02:37 - That you asked someone who used to know her.
02:39 - Oh, yeah.
02:40 In doing research for it,
02:41 I talked to somebody who actually knew her.
02:43 I said, "Well, I want to make a movie
02:45 "about Flannery O'Connor."
02:46 And he said, "That'll be the most boring movie ever made."
02:49 And she herself even said,
02:51 "Anybody who ever writes a biography of me,
02:52 "it's gonna be really difficult.
02:54 "There's not much to say about a trip
02:55 "from the writing room to the chicken shed."
02:57 - Yeah.
02:58 - Which was what, she struggled with lupus
03:01 most of her adult life.
03:02 What do you--
03:03 - You just have to do the punchline.
03:04 - Well, I'm going to.
03:05 I'm getting to it.
03:06 So, you know, she didn't do a lot, struggling with,
03:11 and so this guy's saying that it was gonna be
03:13 an incredibly boring movie.
03:14 And I said, "Well, we really want to make the movie
03:15 "about her imagination."
03:17 And he went, "Ah, that's a good idea."
03:20 So that was the launching pad.
03:22 - I knew I wanted to play this character,
03:24 but I had no idea exactly what he was talking about,
03:26 how you would make a movie about her that was interesting
03:29 and that didn't artificially create plot in her life
03:32 where there wasn't one,
03:33 where you didn't make a romantic relationship
03:36 much more important than it ever was,
03:38 which is very limited in its significance.
03:42 Or create some kind of big artificial drama about sickness,
03:47 where that's the whole,
03:49 you hear the person cough for the first time,
03:50 and then you know the movie's about 30 minutes from ending,
03:53 you know, that kind of classic thing.
03:55 And so he had this incredible idea
03:59 that he spent a summer reading the collected works
04:03 of Flannery O'Connor and started to see these themes,
04:05 like you've seen a lot of writer's work,
04:06 where characters start to come back,
04:09 and those characters are often symbolically related
04:13 to people in the life of the author.
04:16 And the character that is most often in the stories
04:19 is her primary relationship, which is with her mother,
04:21 who we were lucky enough to have
04:23 the fabulous Miss Laura Linney play,
04:25 and as well as all the other characters.
04:28 And so that was kind of his vision
04:31 of how to make the movie about her imagination
04:34 was to draw from all of these stories,
04:36 where she was exploring her internal life
04:40 by fictionalizing aspects of it.
04:44 - I read a really interesting quote the other day
04:46 about how you can learn more about life
04:50 from one well-examined dream
04:53 as you can from 100 scientific experiments.
04:55 And I thought that was kind of an interesting relationship
04:59 to our movie, because we don't know Flannery O'Connor.
05:02 We didn't know her, we don't know what she was really like.
05:05 But she shared with us her dreams,
05:08 and they're beautiful, magnificent dreams
05:11 in these short stories that she wrote.
05:13 And so we can really study these dreams,
05:15 and you start to see her,
05:17 and you start to see the Jim Crow South.
05:20 You start to see the soil that she grew in.
05:25 And so different things start to appear
05:29 that are really complex and interesting
05:31 if you let it evolve.
05:32 - A therapist once said to me that he could pick out
05:35 any of his clients' patients' dreams.
05:39 If they were submitted to him without a name,
05:41 he could tell you whose dream was whose.
05:44 It was inspiring and awesome.
05:49 She just sets a bar for integrity
05:52 and preparedness and passion
05:56 that is so wonderful to have on set with you.
06:02 Because as much as you can have in yourself,
06:04 you know, there are days you're tired,
06:07 there are days, but there's no days where Laura
06:09 shows that she's just not 100% committed.
06:12 And it just made me wanna do my absolute best every day.
06:16 And just also to watch her go from character to character,
06:21 and to get to build those transitions with her
06:24 and how we were handling that aspect of the story,
06:27 and with my dad, that was amazing.
06:31 - Great actors really help you.
06:33 You know, they're both, directing and acting
06:34 are both interpretive arts, right?
06:36 You have a set script and we're interpreting it.
06:39 And Laura's and Maya are half directors.
06:42 They're so passionate about their ideas
06:45 that they help push the movie forward.
06:49 They're so committed to their ideas
06:50 that other people, the hair and makeup department,
06:52 the production design, the cinematography,
06:54 all kind of hinges off trying to capture this performance.
06:57 And when the performer is a leader, everything flows.
07:02 - It's one of the reasons it's very great
07:06 to be directed by an actor,
07:08 or someone who's primarily an actor,
07:09 is that they feel that way.
07:11 It's a really special way to get to practice acting.
07:14 Honestly, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
07:19 And what was so beautiful was to be around
07:24 so many people that I love,
07:26 working as hard as they've ever worked.
07:29 I guess everyone set an example for each other,
07:33 and every single person that came to set
07:36 just raised the bar of the level of commitment
07:41 to the project.
07:43 And I think that getting to be together
07:46 and to watch each other work in such a close way,
07:50 and to come back home at the end of each day
07:53 and laugh and cry,
07:56 and talk about how to get through the next one.
07:59 It's a great thing about independent filmmaking
08:01 is that every single night,
08:04 especially if you're staying with the director,
08:06 is like a how are we gonna make tomorrow work?
08:09 Yeah.
08:10 - So you'd have to go to bed hearing me like,
08:13 "No, change that location!"
08:15 (laughing)
08:17 - But it was awesome.
08:19 It was just, I don't know.
08:21 You said a really smart thing before we started,
08:24 which is that if you're privileged and lucky enough
08:30 to get to work with family,
08:33 you have a target on your back.
08:35 Meaning, you have to prove that you deserve that,
08:40 that you warrant that.
08:42 And as soon as you just think,
08:43 "Oh, it's so wonderful that we're together just magically,
08:46 "it's gonna be something worth somebody
08:48 "paying money to watch,"
08:49 it's really arrogant.
08:51 And to not take the generosity
08:54 that the world was showing us
08:55 to let us have this opportunity
08:57 and to try to meet that responsibility head on.
09:00 You said, "We have to work harder
09:02 "than we've ever worked before."
09:04 Because at least that way we'll know
09:08 that we did our best and didn't take this gift lightly.
09:13 'Cause the best experience was just being together.
09:16 - That's so well said, though.
09:18 - Well, you said it.
09:19 - No, well, I forgot.
09:21 (laughing)
09:23 (upbeat music)
09:26 [Music]