The way things currently stand, it’s probably safe to say that William Friedkin has retired. This is Serious Business You’re Fucking with Here: The Films of William Friedkin ‘Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?’ And that’s when art is not a luxury. You love them so much, you can’t even see straight, you know, you’re dizzy. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. In response to his own question, he said “Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems, or anybody’s poems, until their father dies, they go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart, they don’t love you anymore, and all of the sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life and ‘has anyone ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’ Or the inverse, something great. He insists, “poetry, beauty, romance, love-these are what we stay alive for.” Hawke gave a 2020 TEDTalk entitled Give Yourself Permission To Be Creative, in which he explored what it means to be creative, pushing viewers to ask themselves if they think human creativity matters.
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Keating (Robin Williams) tells the boys that we read and write poetry because the human race is full of passion. This ethos permeates many of the characters Hawke has inhabited in his career. Hawke has said working on this film taught him that art has a real power, that it can affect people deeply. Through his nervy body language and searching gaze, you can feel both how closed off to the world Todd is, and yet how willing he is to let change in. Hawke’s performance as repressed schoolboy Todd in the film is mostly internal, all reactions and penetrating glances, rather than grandiose movements or speeches. Like any good film of this genre, Dead Poets Society is not just a film about characters coming of age, but a film that guides the viewer as well, if they are open to its message. He did the work he loved and kept the wild Hollywood lifestyle mostly at arm’s length. Hawke never attempted to break out, to become a star. He saw from the inside what Hollywood was capable of doing to young people with talent. When River Phoenix, his friend and co-star in Explorers, had his life cut short by a drug overdose, it hit Hawke personally. In an interview with Rolling Stone’s David Fear, Hawke spoke about the impact of these two films on him as an actor.
Hawke’s first two films, Joe Dante’s sci-fi fantasy Explorers with River Phoenix and Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams, set the tone for a diverse filmography filled with popcorn fare and indie cinema in equal measure, but they also served as touchstones in his development as person drawn to self-expression through art.
While these highlights in his career are not strictly autofiction, one can trace Hawke’s Künstlerromanesque trajectory from his childhood ambitions to his life now as a man dedicated to art, not greatness. Though none of his roles are traditionally what we think of when we think of autobiography, many of Hawke’s roles, as well as his work as a writer, suggest a sort of fictional autobiographical lineage. Through Hawke’s dedication to his craft, we’ve also seen his maturation as a person unfold on screen. In an interview many decades later, he told Ideas Tap that many children get into acting because they’re seeking attention, but those who find their calling in the craft discover that a “desire to communicate and to share and to be a part of something bigger than yourself takes over, a certain craftsmanship-and that will bring you a lot of pleasure.” The practicality and wisdom he exudes at such a young age would prove to be a through-line of his nearly 40-year career. The simultaneous fusion of his nervous energy and poised body language will be familiar to those who’ve seen later interviews with the actor. When asked during his first ever on-camera interview if he’d like to continue acting, a young Ethan Hawke replied, “I don’t know if it’s going to be there, but I’d like to do it.” He then gives a guileless shrug of relief as the interview ends, wiping imaginary sweat off his brow. Isn’t Everything Autobiographical?: Ethan Hawke In Nine Films And A Novel
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