Ethan Hawke: Originality Requires Risking Failure
- 6 years ago
Actor, writer, and director Ethan Hawke discusses what qualities make a good artist, and why it's important to be accept ridicule for taking risk on the path toward artistic success. Hawke's latest book is "Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars" (http://goo.gl/JlE7qc).
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Transcript - Almost every manifestation of our personality is artifice. How we dress. How we do our hair. How we speak. You know there is truth that is way beyond where you were born and what school you went to and whether you smoked Marlboro cigarettes or whether you’re a heterosexual or a homosexual. I mean there’s a greater truth of the essence of who you are and that’s the actor’s job to get through. And that can handle any accent or any wig. I mean like it’s fascinating and it’s opened up doors for me later in life as I’ve started to learn and understand what people would call character acting. And it’s opened up possibilities for me that weren’t there before. But I made a lot of mistakes turning down really good projects in this kind of knee jerk idea that I had what was the truth, you know. And I’ve come to believe that that was a lot of bullshit and self-preservation, you know. You want more failings? I’ve got a lot of failings.
If there was one thing that I’ve learned that I feel whatever good fortune has put me in the position of realizing this is that without risking looking like an absolute fool you cannot do anything original, unexpected. Anything that comes from your heart. You have to shed that fear of judgment and that means you may fall on your ass. And one of the wonderful things is that’s our job as members of the artistic community. Your job isn’t to succeed. Your job is to be one of many people throwing – you’re the wind at the door. You’re the wave. One wave is going to crash through and it may be you or it may be somebody else. But there’s a lot of waves that are going to add up to somebody breaking through. I mean do you think people really – look when Linklater and I were first going around trying to pitch the idea of Boyhood. I got an idea, right. We’re going to make a little short film about a little boy for 12 years. We’re going to cut it together. It will be one movie. It’ll be all about childhood. It will be amazing. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/D1oISd.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/ethan-hawke-on-the-importance-of-failure-for-the-artist
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - Almost every manifestation of our personality is artifice. How we dress. How we do our hair. How we speak. You know there is truth that is way beyond where you were born and what school you went to and whether you smoked Marlboro cigarettes or whether you’re a heterosexual or a homosexual. I mean there’s a greater truth of the essence of who you are and that’s the actor’s job to get through. And that can handle any accent or any wig. I mean like it’s fascinating and it’s opened up doors for me later in life as I’ve started to learn and understand what people would call character acting. And it’s opened up possibilities for me that weren’t there before. But I made a lot of mistakes turning down really good projects in this kind of knee jerk idea that I had what was the truth, you know. And I’ve come to believe that that was a lot of bullshit and self-preservation, you know. You want more failings? I’ve got a lot of failings.
If there was one thing that I’ve learned that I feel whatever good fortune has put me in the position of realizing this is that without risking looking like an absolute fool you cannot do anything original, unexpected. Anything that comes from your heart. You have to shed that fear of judgment and that means you may fall on your ass. And one of the wonderful things is that’s our job as members of the artistic community. Your job isn’t to succeed. Your job is to be one of many people throwing – you’re the wind at the door. You’re the wave. One wave is going to crash through and it may be you or it may be somebody else. But there’s a lot of waves that are going to add up to somebody breaking through. I mean do you think people really – look when Linklater and I were first going around trying to pitch the idea of Boyhood. I got an idea, right. We’re going to make a little short film about a little boy for 12 years. We’re going to cut it together. It will be one movie. It’ll be all about childhood. It will be amazing. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/D1oISd.