>> it's a target you can't get rid of... >> the untold story... >> who do you protect? >> ...of what's really going on in ferguson >> they were so angry because it could have been them >> fault lines ferguson: race and justice in the u.s. one hour special only on al jazeera america today on "talk to al jazeera." the actor thafng ethan hawke. >> you can make of the truth what you will. we make big moments define our life. the romantic moments happen on a bus ride. you can't anticipate. >> the coming of divorce and being a father.

>> i've been a child of divorce, i have been as a parent. >> recognition in dead poets society, good kill in 2013 about drum warfare. >> we can assassinate people from anywhere in the world and it's not being policed. >> it's the movie "training day" for which hawke received his osk. in an attempt to keep hawke humble the actor's mother haste encouraged him to given back. >> she took me to haiti shortly after the duvalier administration. she thought i was going to be aspoiled brat. >> i had a chance to speak to ethan hawke with all of this. just as his film "boyhood" was being released. >> you play a father from his late teen years through when his

family is going through divorce. tell me about this. you really have a personal connection to something like this don't you? >> i definite do. the centers on one time in the american life that your life is on a grid, first grade through 12th grade, if you grew up in america that's the little graph that everybody gets put on. even if you get derailed from it, everything is in relationship to what grade you're in. so we were able to make this movie because all what we really had to do to anticipate 12 years was plan the parents' lives. in the kid's life it just happened effortlessly. meaning like every kid, they'll get dragged through their parents' lives. so mapping out the parents' divorce, mapping out their following relationships and how those relationships impact the kids, you know, it was

a real pleasure for me to get to use something that i know a lot about. i mean family, and i was a child ever divorce. i've been through one as a parent. >> you got divorced when your own daughter was five. >> my daughter was five. and so was i actually when my parents split up was five years old. and the movie starts at a kind of interesting moment i think, just starts when the boy is six. which is when a lot of us start remembering. we start having some awareness of ourselves and connecting of one day to the next. and previous to that your life is kind of a dream. you can -- you might remember something but it's much more impressionistic than it is -- i remember my first grade teacher, you know, that's where people start thinking. and the kids don't even remember their parents' divorce. the movie opens and finds it sort of happens. they're wondering about it all.

richard linkletter and i who made the film we both of went through, it was our experience and by the time i was conscious i had no memories of my parents being together. >> really? >> yes. >> do you think that's same case for your daughter? >> i know it is for my daughters and my -- daughter aand my son, yes. >> you said something good to come from exercising your demons. >> they teach it in prison and all kinds of therapy. whether it's painting or you know writing people throughout history have tried ouse to use creative expression to better understand themselves and the world around them. it would be a good thing to show divorced couples this movie. one of the things that's interesting to me about its is

you really -- it is you really witness how both parents love the kids and how that really is enough. parents do make bad decisions all the time and a lot of times when there is acrimony and pain and suffering, people are quick to point blame or it's really easy you know. you want it not to be your fault, you know? but just because somebody does something wrong, or drops the ball in some fashion, doesn't mean they're not capable of carrying the ball, you know? and i think it's really -- it can be a healing thing. >> now from what i understand, you had quite a hard time after your divorce. and you found salvation in the theater, is that correct? >> well, you use all these very dramatic words, you know salvation and demons, those aren't my words. the theater has always been my first love. it's how i discovered acting. and there's something about it

that is humble, in a way that making movies is not humble. you know? >> tell me about that. >> when i make a movie like "boyhood" for example i'm in partnership with richard linkletter and i'm trusting him to edit the performance the way it ideally should be done. what's awesome about doing macbeth or something really interesting on the stage is i'm in charge of the pacing for evening. if i think the audience should slow it down and hear it, i slow it down. if it's not that interesting i can rattle my way through it. it's really fun, like being a musician you know. >> and you've been able to take that theory to the before series. >> a couple that meets and follows them for another 18 years when they have children together. >> the before series and

"boyhood" all my collaborations with richard linkletter, he is extremely sin cinematic. they are not theatrical. they are oddly cinematic. that assumes a absolute minute minutiae, it's the little tiny moments we don't really pay attention to, we think big moments define our lives, the same way we anticipate new year's eve is going to be fun and it really isn't fun. the magic of a romantic life happens in a bus ride. you can't anticipate. >> tell mee me about "boyhood"

and how it came to be. >> the aplaysing thing about "boyhood" is it started about 13 years ago ago. training day had just come out. i had made i think my third movie with richard -- i had done three or four, i'd done four and he knew he wanted to make a movie about childhood and he knew there was a lie about childhood, that your childhood could be boiled to one moment. you know most movies they all kind of boil it down to the time you won the football game and dad told you he loved you or something and it all came together. childhood is more of a series of moments that come to feel like one, you know? and could we do that? like literature could. what if i found some great six-year-old kid, just entering first grade and we made a movie over 12 years, would you play the data? you know i realize he was offering me a job that no actor

had ever been offered. he really wanted me to join and he asked me to make a portrait of fatherhood. here i was i had a five-year-old or a four-year-old and a one-year-old at the time. fatherhood was the most important thing in my life. he was asking me to make a movie about the most important subject in my life. being a father and loving my own father and trying to understand that father-son relationship and this one. i knew he was asking me to so that, and this is incredibly unique. did i think it really would happen, probably not. we couldn't even sign contracts for this job, right? it's not legal to sign a kid up for something beyond seven years. you know? so -- or even grown up can't sign anything for even -- so this whole thing was this act of faith. all of us could quit at any time. it was just this home project. >> did you have any hesitations

about it? >> none. i love richard linkletter's movies and he's a great friend of mine and i believe in him and i knew that the movie would be special. i didn't know how special. until eler coltrane showed up. the young man who is the star of the film. he galvanizes the film. >> did you feel like a father figure? >> no, i felt like a friend. he has a father, he has a wonderful father. in casting eler, you kind of had to cast the parents. the parents are the beautiful people themselves. they gave eler the things he needed to survive the film. >> do you think there will be a sequel? >> i it will feel like they work as a trilogy and if there would

be any more of them we would have to start work on -- you know it really deals with romantic life, and what was the romantic life what would it be like for the second half of your life, you know? and we never -- it feels more closed than it ever has before. if you asked me before sunset there would be a third, i would have said i'm hell-bent that there is. i feel like the story might be finished had a way that i didn't -- you know if you watch all 30 before trilogies it covers 18 years. and what keeps surprising me is ds your body your eyesight goes and the spirit whatever the essence of who we are there is some continuity there. and i find that continuity really striking.

and i think that depending on what you learn and how you handle your experiences you either get better at letting that essence or that spirit, whatever that word is, you either get better, at letting it come out, or you get worse. you know? a lot of people as they get older, you know, get more confused and more lost or they're -- and then a lot of people get wonderfully eccentric more and more, i kind of love that. >> the new york times said of you last year mr. hawke retains his purchase of boyishness, but a little different 15 years later maybe because he knows who he is. do you feel -- >> that's true. i would never say i know who i am because you know as soon as i walked out of this room, you know, i would fall flat on my face. you can't know who you are because you don't know what's going to happen to you today. it's changing, it's always moving.

the goal line is just always moving. so i understand my place better than i did when i was younger. and i've accepted my deficiencies, you know, there's a funny quote about just because you're supposed to -- accept who you are doesn't mean you're not supposed to keep changing. you know, or you don't have to improve, you know. if my kids were here they would be the first to point out to you all the different ways in which i need improving and, you know the more i learn about acting the more i see my deficiencies. and that's kind of the wonderful thing about getting older and the torture of it. is when i was younger i would do some antic, i did a really good job. and i didn't really know all the ways in which i could have done better. i did well about what i knew how to do.

the game keeps changing getting more involved, i know how to make other people better, i didn't know how i was hurting my co-stars or how stories could be better. simultaneously i'm learning about how to do things, i have bills to pay, people rely on me, i have a credibility that i've gained that i don't want to lose, that creates fear, right? you know when you are younger who cares? you know i used to be so -- i'd go on stage i remember and i wouldn't be nervous at all and now i'm totally nervous. >> really? you mention that your 40s felt like your 30s and whether you were in your 30s you wanted to be in your 20s is that true? >> when i was in my 30s i felt like a really oold young old young person

and i feel better, soon that will be a bad.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> this is "talk to al jazeera." i'm christof putzel speaking this week with the actor ethan hawke. >> in 2001 you played a very interesting character in "training day" and you were

nominated for an oscar. this character starts to submit to corruption. when you watch news these days events like ferguson do you see that through any different colors these days? >> "training day" is a very good movie using a metaphor for a whole different experience. any of us who have turned 40 or how to maintain your idealism in the face of a world that is very compromising at every turn, it's kind of shocking. the racial divide in our country, and how uncomfortable it still is to talk about. i think everybody wants it -- i think one of the -- why people shed tears when obama is elected, what americas do, because it feels like some racial divide is healing.

i mean we just feel that this must mean it's healing and then something like the ferguson case happens and you're like well there's still so much suffering some and so much dialogue happening in separate corners of the world. this is just one small thing. i mean i thought -- i thought we'd left racial issues behind for class issues and issues of environment and issues of poverty. and you know, there's huge issues that are the next generation's issues. climate change is on the cover of the paper again today. and sometimes i think we're going to look back at the traffic that i was in being late to this interview, you know, as the real while we were all talking about ferguson, we weren't noticing that we were just eroding our planet. you know? and meaning that it will make all other issues seem small, right? you know if the whole world floods. we won't be as concerned with how we get along, you know?

if we don't get along it's not worth saving to begin with. it's all important. >> do you feel that you're making films that have some sort of social impact? >> i don't believe in that, you know, if i see a movie or a painting or a song, that has an overt political agenda with me i somehow rebel against it. i like movies that tell the truth. and you can make of the truth what you will. you know? i think that there's something extremely political about the film "boyhood," and not because it advocates a leftie or a rightie point of view but that it teaches you that every moment is precious and worth fighting for. you know? i have family members who are in the military and extremely right wing and extremely intelligent and argue with me about differing viewpoints. and i think it's one of the privileges of getting to be in a

democracy, you know, i made a movie this year that -- about the drone strikes. >> "good kill." >> "good kill" that it takes a look at what drone warfare means. people think drones are the least horrible option, the easy easiest way to kill. that people aren't dying. but it's also an element of science fiction what tools are you unlocking and are you sure you want to unlock them and what's the right way for them to be used? some might call that political but i'm not interested in the politics of that film as i am the humanity of it. >> because these drones kill a lot of innocent people. >> yes they do and they can be used, allow can you feel when obama can't speak in public because there's drones. it brings up interesting

questions about -- it almost seems science fiction to me that we can assassinate people from anywhere in the world and it's not being policed. you know? if we saw videos of every one of those deaths, if they showed them on tv. people would have a different view of are. >> do you have a different view? >> you have to if you imagine yourself put that's the beauty of acting. i could also play general patton, and then would i see his point of view. you know? i always kind of feel that that's why i don't really like movies that have an overt political agenda. because i want to actually -- if you have an agenda with people you sometimes don't see the truth. you are so committed to a left wing point of view or a right wing point of view or you're so

committed to your cause that you can't even hear what is really happening. and i think job of the artistic community is to process whatever truth you can and tell it out in stories so that the rest of the community can have a dialogue dialogue. >> can you tell me, you have made comments about lgbt in films and the social impact they can have. >> i think if you look at where the community's relationship to leiveslesbian and gay rights where it stands today versus where i started acting, it's interesting when i started acting one of my first jobs was with river phoenix. and river went on, after "stand by me" to be a full blown teen idol. i was so jealous, he was such a cool stud guy and also happened to be wildly talented. people now can't believe what an act of courage it was for him to

do "my own private idaho." this was a teen idol that women were in love with and he went and played a young gay man in this movie. and i remember, in our community, the acting community, being like river's doing what? you can't -- he can't do that. like, really? i mean it was very brave. and now it's all over the place. you know, now nobody's defined by that. lots of people play gay characters. one of the things that's interesting is hollywood still hasn't gone to the place where it does a movie about gay people who really is gay. whether mark rufalo or heath ledger in brokeback mountain. it will be a new step when we really let people who are openly out of the closet and gay play tell their own story. that will be a nice moment. >> this is "talk to al jazeera." stay with us.

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♪ ♪ ♪ >> i'm christof putzel. my guest this week, the actor ethan hawke. >> right after you had your blackout l role in "he dead poets society" your mother encouraged you to get involved in a certain charity. >> well, i was very fortunate, you know i had a really amazing loving mother and loving father and loving brothers and sisters who looked after me. it's tough when you first experience celebrity. because all of a sudden people

want -- it changes people's relationship to you. girls in high school didn't think you were cute all of a sudden think you're cute. it is small obviously but it has other implications and one of them was i had a little bit of money in the bank. >> you were 18? >> yes i'd made i think $30,000 off of "dead poets society" and i was the richest person i knew. but my mother you know really quickly took my eye away from, you know, bietion things with buying things with it and being frivolous with it. in what ways i could see myself as a member of a community meaning what percentage of that did i think should be given away. was it really all to my credit that i got this job? wasn't there a large community that made that happen for me? >> it's a very humbling experience when you are 18. >> it sure is. i mean i -- it just kind of old

fashioned values, you know? and but -- you know, my mother now works in bucharest romania for gypsy rights. she took me to haiti shortly after the duvalier regime. she was an old fashioned do gooder el nora roosevelt type. >> are you still involved in that? >> after the haiti trip i got involved in the fund which is a tremendous success of getting men who are in prison and men who are hoaxless, if they are -- homeless if they are sober they can put their life back together and get you a bank account and pay your rent, get back in touch

with your kids, their ex wifes all the tough stuff that keeps people from staying sober. >> hello a very warm welcome to the news hour from doha. these are our top stairs. at least 13 are killed after a shell hit a bus in the city of donetsk. >> yemen's former president plotting against the government with houthi rebels. >> the release of mubarak's son ordered pending trial in a corruption case.