HALLOWED HALLS: An interview with Chelsea Walls director Ethan Hawke. By Warren Curry 4/18/02 Part 2 of 2

What have you picked up from the directors you've worked with?

That's been my film school. If you notice in the movie, each story line has its own color. There's a blue room and a yellow room and a red room and Kristofferson's room is void of any primary colors. That's a total rip-off of Alfonso Cuaron. When we did Great Expectations, he inundated the whole movie with green. It's a totally far out thing to do and it works. While you're doing it people think you're a little nuts, because somebody will come in and say, "I've got a great idea, I'll wear this hat." You'll say, "Is it red? Everything in this room has to be red." You don't even really notice it. Your eye doesn't really notice it and it gives the image some sort of continuity. The truth of the matter is that with DV you have to work extra hard to make it deliberate and evocative... I don't think I would've ever had the guts to make a non-narrative film if I didn't know Richard Linklater.

Given the style of the film, do you also dabble in painting?

No, but I think it's all the same. I'd seen Buena Vista Social Club and that's what really turned me on to doing this color inundation thing. The Celebration was great, but it didn't look great. Buena Vista Social Club looked great; I thought it looked like a watercolor. They'd walk into a room and everything would be green. I thought it was really beautiful. The guy who photographed the movie, Tom Richmond, and I weren't going to apologize for DV. We were going to make it DV and get what was beautiful about it. We thought if we did this inundation of color it would feel like a watercolor.

You mentioned that Wim Wenders has been a big influence on you. Was The Million Dollar Hotel a specific inspiration?

I haven't seen that movie. The Wim Wenders comment -- what I was really talking about is Paris, Texas is the tone piece. This is a tone piece. You want to set a mood and that's why the music was so important. He had Ry Cooder and so I knew we needed to get a great musician and so I got this guy Jeff Tweedy from this brilliant band Wilco; they're just terrific. I think Wim Wenders is a great filmmaker, but it was really that one movie (that inspired Chelsea Walls).

Was it hard to not have Kris do the music?

Well, the movie was so associative and weird, so I thought that all the music needed to be one. So many movies right now are this big mix tape. You know, you have this music budget and they put together this great soundtrack album. I thought that since the movie was so disparatethe hotel was really the protagonist in a weird way. It was the one thing that was always the same and the music would give voice to the hotel, so that would be what I would need to create continuity. As much I was would've loved for Kris to play, the guys who scored the movie wrote Bob and Steve's song and played behind "Little" Jimmy. I just wanted it to have some kind of cohesive sound, so that the jazz element of the movie would be able to work.

What was it like directing Uma on the set?

You know, she was the one person who didn't take me seriously as a director. That's just the way it goes. (Laughs). I'd be like, "O.k., we really have to get this shot of you walking out of the hotel, right at sunset, blah, blah, blah." She'd say," Hmmm... let's do that one tomorrow."

Do you take the work home with you when you're working with your wife?

Of course you do. The truth of the matter is doing a movie like this is a giant negotiation of people's schedules. It's like, "'Little' Jimmy's in town on the 11th, Kris only has a week to do his thing, Steve Zahn's starting his movie on x day." Uma was the one I kind of abused. The thing about Uma that separates her from our generation of actors is that she has worked with some of the best people working in cinema. Quentin Tarantino, Gus Van Sant, Stephen Frears, Terry Gilliam, Woody Allen, James Ivory, Philip Kaufman; she's worked with so many filmmakers. She's been a part of that whole aesthetic of cinema, where you kind of separate yourself from the whole... this town is so oriented for the movies and selling movies. She has a really high bar of what a set is supposed to feel like and what kind of creativity is supposed to go on. Ultimately, I was so grateful for her to be in the movie. She's so helpful in so many ways.

You were born in Austin, TX. What's in the water there? Why is there such a thriving creative community that's really received national attention in the last decade?

I think what's great about any of those cities -- like Seattle when the rock scene happened, Chicago had a great theater movement -- when things happen in smaller towns, there's a great aesthetic there that's not all about selling. When a group of people find each other in a town like that and start bumping into each other... if you're all about selling you go to New York or L.A. There are all these musicians in Austin, who don't really have any dreams of being signed to a major label and they're going to dedicate their life to music. It's so refreshing to be around; you liberate yourself from the idea that you will only be successful if the world stamps you so. You go, "I'll be successful if I do something that I find interesting." Then the conversation becomes a lot more interesting.

Had you been to the Chelsea Hotel before this movie? Were you very aware of its mystique?

I was very aware of the aesthetic of the Chelsea Hotel for some reason growing up. I was a real lover, sycophant almost, of the Bohemian world. You'd read about the punks and Kerouac typed up Naked Lunch in Chelsea Hotel. Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe and Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe fighting in the lobby. I was like, "Whoa -- I have to go to that hotel!"

Click on for an interview with Chelsea Walls star Robert Sean Leonard

Click here to go to Warren Curry's review of Chelsea Walls

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