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00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - My name is Ethan Hawke,

00:06 and I am here in Toronto at Deadline Studios

00:10 to celebrate the opening of our film, Wildcat,

00:17 here at the Toronto International Film Festival.

00:19 And the film is,

00:22 sings a song of Flannery O'Connor.

00:25 - My name is Maya Hawke,

00:27 and I play Flannery O'Connor in Wildcat.

00:30 Yeah, that's the information.

00:32 - That's who you play.

00:33 - That's who I play.

00:34 I also play characters from several of her stories.

00:37 - That's true.

00:38 - In case we need to be really detailed, specific here.

00:42 Well, we have always been really close

00:46 and loved talking about literature and ideas,

00:49 and I was really lucky to grow up in a house

00:53 with someone to talk to about all that stuff.

00:55 And at one point I had a teacher recommend me

00:58 Flannery O'Connor,

00:59 and I found her prayer journal sort of separately.

01:01 And then my dad and I read it together

01:03 over one very long summer.

01:06 And then he ended up helping me adapt it into a monologue.

01:11 And then slowly kind of figured out--

01:15 - It could be used as an audition piece and stuff.

01:17 - That's true, yeah.

01:17 - It was absolutely fantastic.

01:19 - Thank you.

01:20 And then we found this guy, Joe Goodman,

01:22 who had the rights to her stories and letters

01:27 and the prayer journal.

01:28 Really, I just wanted to make a movie

01:30 about the Flannery and the prayer journal,

01:32 but he had this kind of treasure trove

01:33 of available information and things to use.

01:38 And my dad and I have always loved talking

01:41 about kind of faith and imagination,

01:44 and he can kind of take it from here.

01:46 But we sort of saw a way to make a movie

01:49 about our own relationship to the creative act

01:53 as a spiritual act through the guise of Flannery O'Connor,

01:57 who was a deeply creative and deeply faithful person.

02:01 - Exactly, she said it.

02:02 She gave, Flannery O'Connor was the kind of springboard

02:05 for a chance for us to kind of disguise

02:10 something really personal to us

02:13 in the framework of a biopic, you know?

02:18 Every person's life is interesting,

02:19 and there's always kind of a lie in movies

02:22 that a life has a narrative,

02:23 like this happened and that happened,

02:25 that our lives are more a collection of moments.

02:27 So you could make 25 different movies

02:29 about Flannery O'Connor.

02:31 You know, it's just what you choose to see about it.

02:33 - You should say the thing that the guy said to you.

02:36 - What did he say?

02:37 - That you asked someone who used to know her.

02:39 - Oh, yeah.

02:40 In doing research for it,

02:41 I talked to somebody who actually knew her.

02:43 I said, "Well, I want to make a movie

02:45 "about Flannery O'Connor."

02:46 And he said, "That'll be the most boring movie ever made."

02:49 And she herself even said,

02:51 "Anybody who ever writes a biography of me,

02:52 "it's gonna be really difficult.

02:54 "There's not much to say about a trip

02:55 "from the writing room to the chicken shed."

02:57 - Yeah.

02:58 - Which was what, she struggled with lupus

03:01 most of her adult life.

03:02 What do you--

03:03 - You just have to do the punchline.

03:04 - Well, I'm going to.

03:05 I'm getting to it.

03:06 So, you know, she didn't do a lot, struggling with,

03:11 and so this guy's saying that it was gonna be

03:13 an incredibly boring movie.

03:14 And I said, "Well, we really want to make the movie

03:15 "about her imagination."

03:17 And he went, "Ah, that's a good idea."

03:20 So that was the launching pad.

03:22 - I knew I wanted to play this character,

03:24 but I had no idea exactly what he was talking about,

03:26 how you would make a movie about her that was interesting

03:29 and that didn't artificially create plot in her life

03:32 where there wasn't one,

03:33 where you didn't make a romantic relationship

03:36 much more important than it ever was,

03:38 which is very limited in its significance.

03:42 Or create some kind of big artificial drama about sickness,

03:47 where that's the whole,

03:49 you hear the person cough for the first time,

03:50 and then you know the movie's about 30 minutes from ending,

03:53 you know, that kind of classic thing.

03:55 And so he had this incredible idea

03:59 that he spent a summer reading the collected works

04:03 of Flannery O'Connor and started to see these themes,

04:05 like you've seen a lot of writer's work,

04:06 where characters start to come back,

04:09 and those characters are often symbolically related

04:13 to people in the life of the author.

04:16 And the character that is most often in the stories

04:19 is her primary relationship, which is with her mother,

04:21 who we were lucky enough to have

04:23 the fabulous Miss Laura Linney play,

04:25 and as well as all the other characters.

04:28 And so that was kind of his vision

04:31 of how to make the movie about her imagination

04:34 was to draw from all of these stories,

04:36 where she was exploring her internal life

04:40 by fictionalizing aspects of it.

04:44 - I read a really interesting quote the other day

04:46 about how you can learn more about life

04:50 from one well-examined dream

04:53 as you can from 100 scientific experiments.

04:55 And I thought that was kind of an interesting relationship

04:59 to our movie, because we don't know Flannery O'Connor.

05:02 We didn't know her, we don't know what she was really like.

05:05 But she shared with us her dreams,

05:08 and they're beautiful, magnificent dreams

05:11 in these short stories that she wrote.

05:13 And so we can really study these dreams,

05:15 and you start to see her,

05:17 and you start to see the Jim Crow South.

05:20 You start to see the soil that she grew in.

05:25 And so different things start to appear

05:29 that are really complex and interesting

05:31 if you let it evolve.

05:32 - A therapist once said to me that he could pick out

05:35 any of his clients' patients' dreams.

05:39 If they were submitted to him without a name,

05:41 he could tell you whose dream was whose.

05:44 It was inspiring and awesome.

05:49 She just sets a bar for integrity

05:52 and preparedness and passion

05:56 that is so wonderful to have on set with you.

06:02 Because as much as you can have in yourself,

06:04 you know, there are days you're tired,

06:07 there are days, but there's no days where Laura

06:09 shows that she's just not 100% committed.

06:12 And it just made me wanna do my absolute best every day.

06:16 And just also to watch her go from character to character,

06:21 and to get to build those transitions with her

06:24 and how we were handling that aspect of the story,

06:27 and with my dad, that was amazing.

06:31 - Great actors really help you.

06:33 You know, they're both, directing and acting

06:34 are both interpretive arts, right?

06:36 You have a set script and we're interpreting it.

06:39 And Laura's and Maya are half directors.

06:42 They're so passionate about their ideas

06:45 that they help push the movie forward.

06:49 They're so committed to their ideas

06:50 that other people, the hair and makeup department,

06:52 the production design, the cinematography,

06:54 all kind of hinges off trying to capture this performance.

06:57 And when the performer is a leader, everything flows.

07:02 - It's one of the reasons it's very great

07:06 to be directed by an actor,

07:08 or someone who's primarily an actor,

07:09 is that they feel that way.

07:11 It's a really special way to get to practice acting.

07:14 Honestly, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

07:19 And what was so beautiful was to be around

07:24 so many people that I love,

07:26 working as hard as they've ever worked.

07:29 I guess everyone set an example for each other,

07:33 and every single person that came to set

07:36 just raised the bar of the level of commitment

07:41 to the project.

07:43 And I think that getting to be together

07:46 and to watch each other work in such a close way,

07:50 and to come back home at the end of each day

07:53 and laugh and cry,

07:56 and talk about how to get through the next one.

07:59 It's a great thing about independent filmmaking

08:01 is that every single night,

08:04 especially if you're staying with the director,

08:06 is like a how are we gonna make tomorrow work?

08:09 Yeah.

08:10 - So you'd have to go to bed hearing me like,

08:13 "No, change that location!"

08:15 (laughing)

08:17 - But it was awesome.

08:19 It was just, I don't know.

08:21 You said a really smart thing before we started,

08:24 which is that if you're privileged and lucky enough

08:30 to get to work with family,

08:33 you have a target on your back.

08:35 Meaning, you have to prove that you deserve that,

08:40 that you warrant that.

08:42 And as soon as you just think,

08:43 "Oh, it's so wonderful that we're together just magically,

08:46 "it's gonna be something worth somebody

08:48 "paying money to watch,"

08:49 it's really arrogant.

08:51 And to not take the generosity

08:54 that the world was showing us

08:55 to let us have this opportunity

08:57 and to try to meet that responsibility head on.

09:00 You said, "We have to work harder

09:02 "than we've ever worked before."

09:04 Because at least that way we'll know

09:08 that we did our best and didn't take this gift lightly.

09:13 'Cause the best experience was just being together.

09:16 - That's so well said, though.

09:18 - Well, you said it.

09:19 - No, well, I forgot.

09:21 (laughing)

09:23 (upbeat music)

09:26 [Music]

Wildcat | Deadline Studio at TIFF

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