Directed and co-written by four-time Academy Award® nominee Ethan Hawke, Wildcat invites the audience to weave in and out of celebrated Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor’s mind as she ponders the great questions of her writing: Can scandalous art still serve God? Does suffering precede all greatness? Can illness be a blessing? In 1950, Flannery (Maya Hawke) visits her mother Regina (Laura Linney) in Georgia when she is diagnosed with lupus at twenty-four years old. Struggling with the same disease that took her father’s life when she was a child and desperate to make her mark as a great writer, this crisis pitches her imagination into a feverish exploration of belief. As she dives deeper into her craft, the lines between reality, imagination, and faith begin to blur, allowing Flannery to ultimately come to peace with her situation and heal a strained relationship with her mother.
We open Wildcat Friday at the Laemmle Claremont, Monica Film Center, Newhall and Town Center and Monday at the NoHo. During his recent press tour to support the release, Hawke spoke passionately about seeing older movies, including his personal favorite (Warren Beatty’s Reds). With one exception (see if you can spot it), we wholeheartedly agree. He name checks some of the greats, including Kurosawa (we’ll be screening Seven Samurai in July) and Fassbinder (we’ll be showing The Marriage of Maria Braun in November as part of our Anniversary Classics series.) What’s more, on May 22 we’ll be screening one of his first movies, Dead Poets Society. From MovieMaker Magazine:
Ethan Hawke hopes he doesn’t sound like the “old man yells at cloud” meme when he says this, but he says it anyway.
“The thing that I don’t understand — and this makes me sound old — but what I don’t understand about young people today is why they don’t watch more movies,” he tells MovieMaker.
“I mean, they’re perfectly willing to binge watch, for weeks of their life, something they know is really super okay [while] they could be watching Badlands as we speak,” he adds.
Hawke is particularly shocked by the lack of film education in young directors, specifically around the greats, like German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder known for Love Is Colder Than Death (1969) and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972).
“They don’t know who Fassbinder is and they don’t know who Éric Rohmer is and they don’t know who Kurosawa is. They think they’re modern and they haven’t seen Do the Right Thing. Are you kidding? It’s on your damn phone, watch it!” he says. “But they’d somehow rather watch some TV show that came out yesterday that they won’t remember.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: Several years ago, David Lynch succinctly addressed the idea of watching a movie on a telephone.]
Make no mistake: “I say all that not to sound crotchety,” he stresses.
“But there’s so much excellence in the past, so many of these thoughts of what we’re all going through emotionally and what we’re looking for — authenticity in our lives and healing — all these common threads of humanity people have been talking about for centuries. Cinema is a young art form, but it’s 100 years old now, and there’s a lot of great work, and you can rip it off madly.”
For those young filmmakers who might be interested in taking some of Hawke’s advice, he also suggests looking to your collaborators for recommendations. Like a director of photography, for example.
“The fun thing about having a great DP is the more you explain what you’re trying to drive at, they can turn you on to, ‘Well, you know who’s also into that idea — let’s watch this film. Let’s steal that shot. That’s a great shot.’ I really enjoy that,” he says.
“But I’m always amazed at how often young people who say, ‘I love movies and I want to make movies’ don’t actually watch movies.”
Click here to read the whole piece.
Excerpting a 2010 Wall Street Journal interview with James Cameron.
(URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704764404575287491367359362)
MR. MOSSBERG: There are a lot of people who strongly believe that we ought to be able to see motion pictures or a television show on whatever device you want and whenever you want.
MR. CAMERON: You hear a lot of that. It is usually not from the people that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars making the film.
MR. MOSSBERG: Is there is a way for the people who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars making the film to make money back in a different system than we have now? If I wanted to watch it on my PC or on the TV or on the iPad or something instead of going to the theater, as long as you are getting paid for it, why isn’t that OK?
MR. CAMERON: It is fine. I have always said I don’t make movies for iPhones, I make them for the big screen. But the reality is, good narrative, good story, good acting, all of those things scale. People have to ask themselves what they want from the experience, “Do I want it now or do I want it great?” Because you cannot have both.
MR. MOSSBERG: In your daily life, tell us what your video-watching habits are. Do you watch much television? Do you watch things delivered over the Internet and on which kinds of devices?
MR. CAMERON: All of the above — laptops, desktops. I’ve got TVs in a couple of different sizes, LCD screens, and then my postproduction facility is on my property, so every once in a while I get the kids, we make some popcorn, and we go down and watch a movie in the screening room.
MR. MOSSBERG: Have you ever watched a movie on an iPhone or an iPad?
MR. CAMERON: The iPad I would do. The iPhone is just too small for me. Now, I think other media, whether it is news, sports or whatever it is, that is fine. But I would not watch a movie that way. To me there still has got to be some shred of sanctity in the film-watching experience.
I agree wholeheartedly. To see a movie over a the large screen is the only way to view a movie. The experience of movie watchers sharing the experience alongside you makes the story so much better.
I remember when Ethan Hawke was young — tee hee hee!
Yup .. what makes me feel old is seeing brooke shields on the cover of AARP magazine ! sheesh