- [voiceover] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by: mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. also by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. - i'm evan smith, he's a four time academy award nominee, twice an actor and twice as a screenwriter, who's new film is born to be blue, about the life of the jazz trumpeter chet baker. he's ethan hawke, this is overheard. - [voiceover] let's be honest, is this about the ability to learn, or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly. how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa... you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you saw a problem and overtime took it on... let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak, are you going to run for president? i think i just got an f from you actually. this is overheard.

(applause) - ethan hawke, welcome. - thank you. - nice to see you again. - yeah, nice to see you. - i'm inclined to ask you why chet baker, but it turns out this is not the first time you've thought about playing chet baker on film. - no, interestingly... - you have a chet baker thing. - well maybe. he's certainly a captivating human being. he's a very mysterious human being, anybody who knows his music knows there's something very lonely and detached about his music that is, sombeody, another musician said, it's like he doesn't sing well, he sings like a memory of somebody singing well. and that is, it's very beautiful, i was very touched by him. and years ago, i was about 25 or 26, and right after before sunrise when richard linklater and i were first becoming friends, we had an idea about making a movie about chet baker at 25. so i researched the hell out of the part and got really into it, and felt like it was going

to happen, but in the process of trying to raise the money for it, i got too old for that script. (laughter) it was actually kind of a painful moment. i loved this script so much, but the script centered on, it was a day in the life of chet baker and it was the day before he tried heroin for the first time. - so set within the 24 hours? - yeah, and it was about what goes into that decision that would change his life forever. and rick wanted to make that movie. there was, it started, we made a mistake of writing it, i was about 26 and we were conceiving it for 25, so i was already behind. and then, you know, as you raise the money, before i knew it i was 32 and i was sitting here in austin out to lunch with rick, and he's like, hey man, (laughter) you know that chet movie? i'm like, yeah i know, maybe we should go to new line, i was thinking, he was like yeah, teeth are getting kind of long. (laughter) and i'm like, because he's really one of my best friends, so if he said it, it was like, ohhh.

- oh man, he has to be right, yeah. - but of course, you fast forward to now, and now you're playing chet baker. - [ethan] in his early 40s. - at a later age. - you were going to say old man, (laughter) you were gonna. but luckily you like lassoed that back in. - it's okay, they'll edit that out later. - yeah yeah yeah. no, i get this script of here's chet in his 40s. and what was interesting about it is i felt a connection to the preparation i'd done before. like i felt like, and what's really unique about this movie is that in the movie, there was a moment in chet's life where dino de laurentis came to chet and said i want you to play your own life. - play yourself. - play yourself in a movie, kind of like, remember how eminem played himself, and it's been done before, elvis did it in a way. he wanted chet to play his own story. and the movie never came to pass, but our film imagines that it did. but so what's fun is i'm acting as chet baker acting like he's 25. do you know, so i got to, the whole thing kind of came full circle for me.

- right, it's a movie within a movie. - yeah. - and actually the great thing, i think, about this movie is that you really pull off the part. - i hope. - there's been some discussion in the reviews of this film that have come out so far that, well, it's not really a biopic in the sense that it's not a literal telling of the chet baker story. some license, some liberties have been taken. a composite character or two. but basically you're playing chet baker and you pull off the part, without being a jazz trumpeter, right? without being that guy, i mean... - well that's my job, you know? - i'm wondering about the preparation, the preparation that goes into, like i was saying to you before that i was thinking of miles teller in whiplash, right? who was able to drum well enough, capably enough, that you bought it. and i bought it in this case, that's the point. - well good, that really is my job, and it's a really difficult job, and i begged the director for another three or four months, you know i really, but my trumpet teacher said, mmmm, it could be three or four years.

(laughter) - had you picked up a trumpet before this movie? - i had goofed, you know, i grew up with my stepfather. you know people often, you know i've written books, i've kind of been a jack of all trades in a lot of ways, but part of why that happened is in the house that i grew up in, that's what my stepfather did. he tried to write a musical once, he'd get really into sculpture, he moved to nashville to be a country songwriter, he enjoyed all kinds of, he saw the arts as one thing. you know, they're just fingers on one hand, you know. and so i grew up in a house that preached that. and so i grew up around a lot of different instruments, and i've never been very good at them, but i like the piano and i like the guitar. - you play a little bit. - play a little bit. and so it was fun and easy for me. i mean easy in that i enjoyed doing it, it was fun to have an excuse to take trumpet lessons. and somebody else is paying for it. - may not do it again. - to my great, i loved it while i was doing it.

and i have not picked it up since. and i think it's very difficult, you know, and it really annoys people who love you. (laughter) the guitar or the piano, it's kind of one thing to listen to somebody practice, but a trumpet, a wrong note is so painful. - kind of annoying. how well did you know chet baker's music? or how much do you enjoy either chet baker's music or jazz generally, are you a fan of this sort of music? - i was, before the movie i was what i think a lot of casual jazz fans are, you know what you like. and there's certain like, well i like that one miles davis record, it doesn't man i like all miles davis records. but in preparation for this i gave myself permission to really go down the rabbit hole and really try to understand why did chet baker love charlie parker so much? what was revolutionary about what charlie parker was doing? and it's really interesting about the level of musicianship that used to be in popular music. i mean these guys were amazing musicians. and they were trained, and they had a very sophisticated ear.

chet used to have this thing, he'd say, man, you know, the average musician, he's talking about the 50s, you know, about what miles particularly, and charlie parker, and dizzy were doing. so exciting. as i started to learn, you know once you learn what they're talking about, then you start to hear it. and then it gets much more exciting. - right. well it's exciting now to think about these guys as the subjects of movies. you know, don cheadle is about to be miles davis in a film. how great to have these stories told. now i want to ask why you made this choice now, so the linklater film all those years ago notwithstanding, you've just come off of boyhood. not the most commercially successful film, but maybe the most critically successful film in almost 30 years, a little bit more than 30 years, of making films. so you put yourself into the hands of a director who really no one's heard of, right? his name is robert budreau. he had made a lot of short films, he'd made some features, but he's not an antoine fuqua, he's not a peter weir, he's not a sidney lumet, he's not a rick linklater. so how much of a risk was it to

decide to do this film? - if you're going to spend your life in the arts, you know, you have to kind of trust your nose. meaning is that you can smell when something is, when somebody's intentions are right. and this, he's a young guy. - canadian. - uh huh. and you know what, he believed in me. and he wanted to make a serious film. and that was enough for me. - seriously. - i really loved the idea of the film within a film. i thought, it's a great opening scene, you haven't seen the movie yet, but there's a wonderful notion that gets at the lie of any biopic, which is that our lives don't fit into a narrative. they don't have a beginning, middle, and end. there isn't a clear motivation for why. somebody fell in love with somebody else or why they are addicted to drugs, or what it is. i had a... my two great inspirations of my generation as an actor,

river phoenix and philip seymour hoffman. two people i worked with, two people that i cared about and really inspired me. both died of heroin overdoses. and it was really on mind. and i have a 17 year old and a 13 year old. and i'd been making this documentary about a musician and music. i made this documentary called seymour: an introduction, and it's about an 88 year old piano maestro. he really talks about how hard it is to keep living. there's so many, people love the narrative of the artist who sets themselves on fire, and you know, and it's beautiful flame and it goes down and we all cry. but what about how to live? you know, what about how to keep being creative? and i've been trying to think about my own kids, and how to not fall into this myth of how wonderful it is to destroy yourself. and you know chet is an interesting example because i think he really loved the myth of the jazz musician, the jazz life.

i'm an outsider, i'm an outlaw. drugs represented to him an outlaw. i don't function in society, i know you judge me, and i don't want to funct, all i care about is music. i don't care about my relationships. like, i'm a monk to this, a monk who has a lot of sex. (laughter) it's a great kind of monk, it's an interesting chapter of the diocese, but anyway. but my point is that it was on my mind about what these, why do so many wonderful artists destroy themselves? and so this script came to me, and i met robert a bunch of times, and i realized that he really, his goal was to make an interesting film. and if all i do is... you know one of the things that's hard about getting on the other side of 40, is that you start to have to find young people to work with. you know? (laughter) you just have to. it's an unfortunate fact.

- and you have to make choices that you might not have made 10 years ago or 15 years ago. - yeah, i wouldn't have made it. - right, you know the relationship between the actor and the director is always a determinant of the success of a film, right, and we know this. and i mentioned some of the big directors you've worked with. i want to ask you about the linklater relationship particularly. i went back and counted up the number of films you've made with rick. i thought, meh, it's probably four or five, it's nine. - it's nine, yeah. - it's nine films. so in some ways what de niro has been has been to scorsese, or what sam jackson is to tarantino, you and rick have that same kind of relationship where you make him better, he makes you better. and you like to work together, you go looking for projects on the front end to do together. right? what is it about the way you work together that has been so good for both of you? - well first of all, to those of you in austin, i feel, it was kind of on my mind as i was coming down here and i, you know, was at the austin film society last night. you know i can honestly say you guys are so lucky. this is a: a great city, and b: he's a really

serious artist. he's the real thing. and i was lucky enough to meet him, you know, right after slacker, and reality bites had just come out, and those two movies were kind of lumped together as these gen x, you know he was kind of the indie rock version and we were the kind of, you know, i don't know what we were. and we got lumped together and we worked together. - and the first thing you did together... - was before sunrise. - was before sunrise. - and we have made nine movies, and it is, it's a little bit like being in a band, you know, which is just that, i think good musicians, when they play well together it's because they can see each other's weak spots and support them and accentuate their positives. it's like any good relationship, you know? you don't want to ask too many questions about it, because i don't know why. - right, but you trust him. the point is after nine films, or probably after fewer than nine, you've come to trust his vision as an artist, and the way he views you.

- completely, and i even, because i get to work with other people, and i get to see the way the industry works, that's what i mean when i say he's really unique. it's very hard to work in hollywood, so many people, you know i wanted to be a dramatic actor, so few dramas get made anymore that don't involve zombies or superheroes. the kind of old school, like, new york, al pacino, dustin hoffman, gene hackman, you know. you know, denzel's managed to do it, you know to be an old school dramatic actor. he's not a comedian, he's not an action star. - and not lower himself into bad choices. - it's really really hard to do, and i'm telling you, the studios don't want to make dramas, they're not interested in stories about people. they even, you know, i mean when we showed boyhood at sundance, yeah we got great reviews, still nobody wanted to release it. you know they still thought it was a losing financial, they don't believe that the people of america

care about people. you know, they really, or i don't, there's no they, right? it's individuals who are worried about losing their job, and if they purchase something that doesn't make money, it's just too risky. - but boyhood is an interesting example because obviously what's, you know, everyone celebrates the idea. well let's film people over the course of 12 years and make this movie. but as a practical matter there is maybe not another director in the entire industry who would have done this. and honestly, as an actor, what a choice for you to make, not knowing at the beginning of this whether the 12 year thing is going to make, or things going to get in the way, and this all will have been for naught. - you know when you meet somebody, and you know, you see it in their eyes, you know, an originality of thought. when i sat down, i mean, forget boyhood for a second, you even talk about before sunrise. when i read the original script of before sunrise, you know, i didn't really like it, it was two people talking on a train for hours. i mean, i make fun of rick about this, and he acts like it's not true or something, but there literally was like a five page monologue where my character talked about what a great film john huston's the dead was.

(laughter) and it is a great film. but that's not, you can't, i was saying to him, you can't make a movie where all i do is talk about how great another movie is. (laughter) and i remember rick going, why not? but anyway, and so i was talking to him about, and then he, we had this meeting in new york to talk about it, and i remember he said listen, let me be really clear, i don't care about whether you talk about john huston's the dead, or whether you talk about meister eckhart, another thing i was making fun, there's another long monologue about meister eckhart, which i'm still not sure i pronounce correctly. but anyway, he said i don't care what we talk about. it was a beautiful thing he said, which was that, he said i've never been in a gunfight, i've never been involved in espionage, i've never been involved in a helicopter crash or something, and yet i feel like my life has been full of drama. and the most dramatic thing that's ever happened to me is really connecting with another human being. like when you really connect you fee like

your life is different, you know, there's a connection. he says, and i want to make a movie about that connection. and i thought wow. he goes, so i just need you to give yourself over to this completely, and i need to find a scene partner for you who can do it too. and that's an original, like, when you see that in somebody's eyes, and you go i believe in you. so when that's said, so when you pull it off and then the guy comes to you and says i keep thinking about how we can make a movie about growing up. you go, okay let's do it. - well again, the artistic vision is rare, but also in this industry there's not really a commercial imperative to do that. and so that's one of the reasons that you can work with him over and over, because you know this is not about making money and making bad choices. it's pretty great. - it's true in europe. and it's true in other places in the world. i once, i was in china for some film festival, i got to see wong kar-wai speak. and he talked about, you know,

we don't hear people say this, but he talked about america has an equation that time is money. we don't hear people say this,ruins everything.out and that it's essential in the way they even think about making movies, is how many weeks do you get paid, this is how, because he makes his movies sometimes over, you know he makes them in erratic fashion, so shoot for two weeks and then he'll shut down for six months and then get the actors and pick back up again. we don't do that because there's investors. and they need the return on their money. and you know, rick and i never talked about this thing, but i realized that rick doesn't do that jump, in that he doesn't see time as having a dollar sign next to it. - it's not about profits. - it's about experience and what we're doing. - right, and about art. so you are, of course, perfectly happy to make bigger budget... - i prefer them because i get paid. (laughter) - more conventional films. - because time is money bud. (laughter) - i want to ask you about a film, because by the way, if you haven't heard, time is money. i want to ask you about one that's coming out

later this year as we sit here, it's a remake of the magnificent seven, and antoine fuqua is the director, denzel's in it, chris pratt is in it, vincent d'onofrio. so this is the old kurosawa. - seven samurai. - seven samurai. and it is the biggest budget film. - that i've ever been involved in. - that you've ever been involved with. - it's the biggest budget and biggest shoot, longest shoot. - so to go from the chet baker story to the mag, i mean it's such an abrupt shift, but it shows that you're able to go sour and sweet, right? you can do different things in the same year. - i enjoy it, you know i enjoy working with denzel because he's like a light in the darkness to me. i mean he, what he has accomplished, what he has transcended. i mean, what he's done would be hard for any actor. but then put in the fact that he's dealing with issues of race all the time. that's put him, he's transcended it all. i mean, i remember on training day, you know, he had guys from the naacp coming to him like, are you sure you want to play a bad guy?

and i remember him saying, does anybody come to gene hackman or al pacino and ask them if they're sure he wants to play a bad guy. i'm an artist, like what is this about? but he's, you know he's, he has been over a generation forced to be a role model. - well he's also chosen to be a role model. - and he's chosen to be a role model. but i like his acting, you know, like if you see flight. it's very rare that an american actor, first of all that an american actor succeeds in hollywood and succeeds on stage the way that he has. he's a throwback to kind of an old school british actor in a way. i like to see how he works the business. i like to be near it. - so if he's associated with a project, you think, this could be something i want to do. - yeah. - i love that. - and antoine, you know is, i've done another movie. - you did training day, brooklyn's finest with him. - which, and he's, he's so passionate. and it's different than rick because antoine's a stylist. you know, it's an interesting, you know like when

willie nelson plays the guitar it sounds different than when other people play the guitar. it's the same instrument, everybody plays it, but why does it sound like willie when he plays it. well when antoine moves the camera, it looks like an antoine fuqua film. you can't quite figure it out, and i love working with people like that. and he's so, he cares so much. - you're excited about this movie. - yeah i am. - let me ask you about this book. so this is, it's called a novel, but it's not really a novel. it's really more a story that is really, itself, virtues or rules for living a noble life. explain the origin of this, this is called rules for a knight, this came out last november. what was the genesis of this? - well i don't know. (laughter) - the thing is, at this point in your life you don't have to do stuff like this, this is certainly not to make money. this is book publishing, nobody makes money in book publishing. - i know. i ask myself the same question.

i'll tell you what actually happened. i'll try to not be too long winded about it. which is that, you know, i have two kids from my first marriage and then two young children. and my present wife was reading a book about how to be a stepparent. you know, it's hard, you know, you don't want to have to read a book about it, but sometimes you run into issues, and you really just don't know how to deal with them, and she's reading this book, and this book was talking about the value of rules. in that, as much as kids say they hate rules, that it's very good to know the boundaries and what your parents believe in. like, you know, what time, bedtime, just because a kid has two separate houses doesn't mean the bedtime has to be the same. you just have to be consistent. and if you can be clear and not pass judgement on the other house. you know, like, you go to grandma's house and she lets you watch tv, and so that's the rules over there, but that doesn't mean when you come back to your dad's house you get to watch, you know, whatever the things are. so we started asking ourselves what the rules of our house were. we had this idea, like, of doing this, you know,

my wife does some kind of fun little art, we're going to do a little calligraphy, like, you know, rules for the prince and princess of the house kind of thing. and then i started thinking that was corny, and it just developed into a little family art project. it happened pretty effortlessly, and i started to realize that i didn't really care about bedtime, i cared about why it's important to get enough sleep. you know, and articulate like, why is it important to get enough sleep? you can't be a good friend if you don't get enough sleep. how is soccer going to go well if you don't get enough sleep? and this is what you, you know, so you start kind of getting into the ethics of every decision. and it started out as seven rules, well it started as, for my oldest, this princess, but she actually fell out of princesses and didn't like princess, and then my son hates princesses, so, and i realized that my daughter likes knights, and my son likes knights, so it became rules for a knight. - became rules for a knight, but what i love about... - you asked.

- i did ask, but what i loved about this honestly, this is going some place, what i loved about this is that each little section of the book is, you know, discipline, honesty, humility, and of course, what i thought reading this book is the presidential campaign. (laughter) could you please send a copy of this book to everybody running? right? (applause) - i tell you what... it is so strange to watch this presidential campaign. last night we did a screening of before the devil knows you're dead, and i worked with sidney lumet, and it was his last film, and he directed network. i really advise everyone, i just rewatched it. - it holds up, oh man. - watch this, it seems like it was made yesterday about this campaign. it's crazy how prescient this film is, about how much the internet and how, it's really. - well what has this whole electorate been about this last six months but

i'm mad as hell and i'm not going to take it anymore. right? the anger campaign. goes right back to peter finch. look, this is the family business. we've talked about this over the years many times. you had a family member, grandfather, who served five terms in the texas legislature. this is the family business on some level. - yeah. - so you care about this stuff. i'm assuming because you were born in texas that you're a ted cruz guy in this case. - oh yeah, absolutely. (laughter) well here's what i find, this is what i love about texas. my grandfather used to say that, that it's very interesting that the governor of texas right before george bush was ann richards. ann richards was, you know, about as liberal democrat as you could get, right, at her moment, and bush, what is it about texas that both of them are so texan, you know? and i kind of love that about texas. you know, it's an outlaw state and they love anybody who speaks their mind. i remember being at a concert, at a willie nelson concert, and president bill clinton got up

to introduce him at this concert. and as clinton stood up, half the audience booed so vehemently, and half the audience cheered so much. the two guys next to me actually got in a fistfight. (laughter) i mean they actually, they came to blows, right? and clinton just said just hold on, hold on, he kept staying stop applauding, stop booing for two seconds, let me say something. he said, this is exactly why i love willie nelson. (laughter) he said you guys can hate each other so much, and disagree so much, but still love blue eyes crying in the rain. - well, let's all just say that whatever our politics are we agree on chet baker, okay? - well, maybe. (laughter and applause) - hey, ethan, it's great to have you here. thank you very much. ethan hawke, thank you. - you guys were great. thank you so much. - [voiceover] we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our sebsite at klru.org/overheard

to find invitations to interviews, q and a's with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. - when dead poet's society finished, i enrolled at nyu as a creative writing major, to try to use that money to go do that. and then it took me a little while to realize that the movie had been a success. so it was a little different, but once i realized that acting was just opening so many doors that it was hard not to walk through them. - [voiceover] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by: mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. also by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. (light ping music)