Ninjas Interview Sharp-Fanged Ethan Hawke on Daybreakers: “There’s Something Beautiful About Everybody Eating Everybody”

Share on Facebook posted 01-08-10 by Julina Tatlock

Breaking this Friday January 8th is a vampire film that will allow you to come out into the light and be proud of your vampire fandom. (Or, if the whole Twilight phenomenon makes you throw up in your mouth a little, this new film will show you that vampire movies don’t have to be about sparkly, sexually frustrated teenagers with dreamy haircuts.) Daybreakers, starring Ethan Hawke, is the sort of film that gets described different ways by different people. The filmmakers, twin brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, call it a sci-fi flick. Ethan (yep, we’re on a first name basis now) calls it a horror-genre pic. And we would call it both, with a dollop of zombie myth mixed in. I know this sounds confusing, but I’ve seen the movie, and all its disparate elements make for a fresh, ambitious and yet vampire-myth-faithful film that is smart and stylish (and at times, really, really gross).

The film is set in the future, when an infection, rumored to have been started by one bat, has changed 95 percernt of the world’s population into vampires. These vampires need to drink human blood to survive or they turn into voracious, frightening giant bat-like creatures called subsiders. The major tension of the film is that the vampires have nearly exhausted their food suply; they’ve eaten all but 5 percent of the human population, and humans, now almost extinct, are farmed for their blood. The sterile, pristine, “normal” world that’s presented is collapsing, and the veneer of civility is cracking to expose the underlying violence on which the whole society is founded. The dominant population has been greedy, and blind to the destruction of their own appetites. (Sound familiar?) World markets are collapsing, and Depression and food riots break out. Yep, it’s deep, and a perfect film for the heady, dirty-haired charmer, Ethan Hawke. A couple of days ago, I got to meet Ethan to talk about his role in Daybreakers and, aside from inadvertently insulting him, I had a fun time talking with him about the power of pulp, the role of allegory in film, and, yes, good, old-fashioned blood and gore.

From the Lincoln Center Stage to a Blood-Soaked Vampire Flick. Really?

Q: Since this is your first horror film, I was wondering, when you saw the final cut, what were some of the things that surprised you, given that the whole vampire thing is getting a lot of attention?

ETHAN HAWKE: You know, when I first read the script obviously the whole vampire thing hadn’t taken off, so I actually thought it was really an original moment to be bringing back the vampire movie, but it no longer is … When I saw the final cut of the movie, it’s strange to me, I’ve never really been interested in genre movies, in acting in them. I like watching them, but when I was a kid I did The Explorers with Joe Dante, who was one of the last directors to come out of Roger Corman’s whole thing — he’d directed The Howling and Piranha — he spoke very eloquently and beautifully about the power of genre filmmaking and the whole idea about Roger Corman is how you could make a poster and sell the poster, and you could make the movie about whatever you wanted to, as long as it had a werewolf in it at some point. So I’ve always been interested in it. The whole time I was working on the film I could only try to help them by applying my limited knowledge of story; I had no idea what to do when someone’s head explodes and bats are flying around you. What I liked about these guys is that they are very old-school. There really were guys who spend days in make-up, not in a computer lab. I mean, they did computer things too, but Peter and Michael [Spierig, the directors,] love the old-school horror movie idea and the fact that the movie, in a very subversive kind of way, is very intelligent. I love a good genre movie that has an allegory to it; it’s what John Carpenter did so well. I think it’s cool.

Q: What’s your favorite medium?

ETHAN HAWKE: My favorite thing is to work with talented people. When I first met the twins, Peter and Michael, they came in with drawings and things that they’d done, and you start to realize that while so many of these movies are based on graphic novels and things like that, how original it was that it wasn’t based on something else — that it was their own, this idea that most of the world is vampires and you sit there listening to them talking about it and their passion is exciting to be around. They don’t take the idea of making a movie for granted. At the time, I’d just finished doing Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, which was a nine-hour play about mid-nineteenth century Russian radicals, and it couldn’t be more different than a vampire movie, but they share a joy of making art. These guys, if you talk to them about John Carpenter’s The Thing, they talk about it with the same joy and enthusiasm that Stoppard will talk about Dostoevsky. So I just like being around people who make me feel — make me remember what a privilege — how much fun it is to make a movie or a play. Or do anything.

We See a Lot of Blood, But What Does It Mean

Q: Can you talk about the allegory? What you think it’s about?

ETHAN HAWKE: Well, I think it’s pretty self-evident, I think it’s about people destroying their natural resources. That’s the most obvious one: Are we going to wait till the polar ice caps melt until we do anything about it? Are we going to wait until there are two humans left? That’s the one that I find so interesting: turning us [humans] into the icecaps, turning us into the American Indians, turning us into the meat industry. I was making a joke earlier that this movie is going to become the staple for all PETA members.

Q: The humans do look like dairy cows.

ETHAN HAWKE: Exactly, I was like, PETA will love this.

Q: Now that the climate for vampires has changed, are you happy that yours holds true to the rules of vampires — The way that it was set up that there wasn’t some cheap, easy, high-school romance going on?

ETHAN HAWKE: This is the first post-adolescent vampire film in about 20 years. My daughter is such a die-hard fan of the Twilight series that I cannot speak ill of it in a public forum. But I do think it’s fun to be in a rated-R vampire movie. I think there’s supposed to be something bad-ass about a genre film — it’s not supposed to be for the intelligentsia if it can actually be or do something else … You know, that’s the best punk rock, the best comic book, heavy metal — it seems like it’s one thing and it’s actually another. I love that.

Q: What was it like being a vampire? There are some good [aspects]. Would you like to be immortal, for instance?

ETHAN HAWKE: The only fun idea I had in the movie [was], I liked this weird notion that when faced with immortality, everyone was depressed. You know that they are smoking all the time and there’s this haze and deadness to it. And when given mortality, there’s this joy and hope. It doesn’t really make sense — you’d think you’d be happy if you could live forever but yet, it makes you realize that the reason why life is beautiful is because it’s passing.

Q: Talking about special effects, what was it like being on set with the dismembered bodies and all that? Was that just another day at the office for you? Or were those special days?

ETHAN HAWKE: Those were the days where you think, If this movie isn’t good, I will kill myself. You know what I mean? Because you just sort of imagine your grandmother looking at you there with the severed limbs. You know, when you talk about the allegory of the movie, there’s something beautiful about everybody eating everybody. It’s like the violence begets the violence begets the violence; it’s like some weird orgy of everyone wants to kill each other, and everyone ends up dead. I loved it from the first time I read the script, and they were like, “Oh, he’s human, he’s a vampire,” and they all start eating each other. But those were the days when the ground ran red like a river, and you do wonder where the hell you are. And I am not really a violent person. I’m not normally terribly comfortable with that stuff. It was weird.

Q: Your character is a very cerebral guy in a violent world. Was it a challenge to-

ETHAN HAWKE: (Interrupting) Because I’m so stupid? (Laughs)

Q: No, no, no.

ETHAN HAWKE: For a dumb guy like [me] (laughing)

Q: Yeah, you did pretty well. No, I was trying to say that it’s unusual in a contemporary action film or horror film for a lead male character to not be physically active. I remember only once in the end that you kill when [the female character is] being attacked; that’s the only time that you take physical action. Was that a challenge for you in that environment? Did you and the Spierig Brothers address that?

ETHAN HAWKE: That’s why I felt so strange, ’cause here I was in the middle of The Road Warrior, but I was always going, “I have a cure.” And yeah, it was interesting. I think in some strange way, I never understood why [they wanted me in the film]. They really wanted me to do this movie, and I never got to the bottom line. When they showed up with this comic book and these things they were drawing, they also had pictures from [my movie] Before Sunset that they had mocked up with fangs, and me in other movies. They loved the idea that everyone was a vampire; they wanted him to be as normal as possible and not superhero-y, you know? And I really thought that was kind of a fun. There are a million vampire movies and you’re always trying to find what’s unique about this one. It is bizarre how you can’t, or it seems you can’t, really have a very lucrative career in the film business without killing a lot of people on the screen. It is very bizarre. There are a couple of people who have managed to do it, but they are very talented.

And We Made These Fangs Just for You, Mr. Hawke

Q: They wrote this part for you, right?

ETHAN HAWKE: That’s what they say, but I never understand why!

Q: Do you feel an obligation to take them seriously when they come up and say, “I’ve written this part for you”?

ETHAN HAWKE: Well it’s flattering, you know? Ultimately, you don’t really care, if it’s not good. I responded not to that but to their — they reminded me of Joe Dante and the people I was around when I was younger, because they had that kind of glint and joy. You know, Tarantino has that, the joy of making movies and how you can make movies that are about something without being pretentious the slightest little bit, and I love people like that and they are really creative guys.

Q: What was the most surprising thing that happened on the set or the most challenging?

ETHAN HAWKE: The funniest thing that ever happened is being directed by twins. One twin comes up to you and says, “Oh it’s terrific, just a little more scary, a little more scary.” The other says, “Great job but you’re seeming a little timid — fight him, get in there.” And then they go into their respective corners [and argue]: “Rabble, rabble, rabble … But you’re wrong! Rabble, rabble rabble.” [They] then come out to you and say: “OK, do it like you did.” That happened constantly.

The biggest thing with movies like this is that the fun of it is the obstacle that we’re not James Cameron. There is so much that is possible now in people’s imaginations that they are used to seeing, such unbelievable spending, that to be competitive, in that way, is very difficult because we didn’t have the money to do all that. This movie is totally resting on a lot of different ideas to carry it. It can’t compete in the other way. So you have to go kind of old school with it like the puppets, and you have to make it funny, and you have to find something else that’s going to be clever or worth your time. So that was always challenging, and trying to figure out, “Should we bother with an action sequence here? Because we can’t really afford to do it.” We all had to be real discerning about the final stages of the script and what could be achieved.

Q: What would you say is your biggest fear as an actor and in life in general?

ETHAN HAWKE: My biggest fear as an actor is that I would not get hired again— that’s the one. I swear, it is so funny, and I thought it was so ridiculous, but I worked with Jack Lemmon when he was older and I was 18, so he seemed ancient so he was probably 60 but he may have been in his late 60s or early 70s, and he said, “The thing is, you’re always worrying about if this is your last movie.” And that’s — there is always this thing to any actor — and I said to him, “You’ve been nominated for five Academy Awards! Of course, you would never stop working!” And he said, “We all know how many chance ingredients came into you being [here] in the position to have good parts in movies; there are so many talented actors.” And the fear is that it is going to be taken away from you, ’cause you weren’t even sure how you got it. And my fear as a human being is that I’m not going to be a vampire.