From
Universal Pictures , the horror
thriller The Purge illustrates
the government’s response to an America overrun by escalating crime and
overcrowded prisons. For a 12-hour period, once a year, any and all
criminal activity, including murder, becomes legal. And on this one
particular night, James (Ethan
Hawke) and Mary Sandin (Lena Headey), and their two children, will learn just how vicious the
outside world can be.
Actor
Ethan Hawke talked about why the subject of families in peril make for good
suspense and horror films, what he enjoys about making genre movies, getting to
film somewhat chronologically, how much fun the fight scenes were, what he
thinks this film says about society, and whether he believes humans are
inherently violent.
Why
do you think families in peril make for good suspense and horror films?
ETHAN HAWKE: Well, the
family in peril trip is kind of obvious, in that it’s everybody’s biggest
fear. There’s a moment in the movie where you see the husband and wife
loading guns, and he teaches her to take the safety off. It’s every
parent’s worst nightmare. Nightmares are a strange thing. Your
worst fear is sometimes something you enjoy thinking about, for some strange
reason. I don’t know why that is, but it’s some kind of fantasy that
people play out. “What would I do to protect my children? I’d do
anything.” And then, you watch it play out. I’m petrified of such a
thing. I don’t really enjoy thinking about it.
Did you guys
rehearse, at all, to cement the family dynamic?
My favorite element of the script
is Lena Headey’s character. She and I did a movie together when I was 18,
and she was 14, or something, in England, and I always thought she was a
magical actress. We didn’t even have any scenes together. It was a
movie calledWaterland. But, I remember thinking that there was
something really special about her. I’ve watched her from afar, her whole
career, and she’s just a terrific actress. And she plays this part so
interestingly. It’s my favorite aspect of the movie. I think,
partly because I’ve known her for so long, it made the whole family dynamic
really easy.
Sinister was your first voyage into this type of genre. What
was it that you liked about doingSinister and being in that type of movie, and what was it in the
script for The Purge that made you want to return to this genre?
Well, I got this script when we
had just finished Sinister. Jason Blum gave me this script.
Over the years, we have both loved James DeMonaco, the guy who wrote and
directed this movie, so Jason said, “Hey, you’re not going to believe it, but I
just read this crazy script by James DeMonaco,” and I was like, “Let me read
it.” And I had so much fun on Sinister. I loved genre
movies, when I was younger. One of my first directors was Joe Dante, who
had directed The Howling and Piranhaand Gremlins,
and he had taught me a real love of what was possible with a genre movie.
He taught me that a good genre movie is a really scary, really fun thing to go
see on Friday night, but also that it can have some subterranean political
message. And The Purge is perfect for that. In a
way, Sinister was, too.
I’ve always wanted to flirt with
genres. I also did Daybreakers and, in a lot of
ways, Training Day is a genre movie, too, because it’s the cop
genre. Good genre movies are a little bit like trying to write a
haiku. There are certain things that you have to do to fulfill the
audience’s expectations, but inside that, you have complete freedom to talk
about whatever you want. In a way, it’s wonderful because you get to make
a movie that deals with all these socio-political issues. Who wants to
see a movie about gun violence in America and class? But, if you set it
in this terrifying, fun, roller coaster ride of a movie, you can talk about
whatever you want. That’s been the game that genre movies play, when they
do it well.
As a writer
yourself, did you have any input into the script, or did you want to stay
hands-off, in that regard?
I have a lot of respect for James
DeMonaco. It’s very difficult to make a movie like this with this budget,
and he had his work cut out for him. I couldn’t begin to write a movie
like this. I could try to help him, or help myself create a full
three-dimensional character. This character was very hard to play, in a
lot of ways, because he’s not overtly a bad guy. He thinks he’s a good
guy. It’s easy to play a villain, and it’s easy to play a hero.
This guy is in this weird gray zone of a person, who is culpable for a lot of
negative things in his life, but isn’t aware of them, and he slowly wakes
up. But, I certainly didn’t assist in the writing. I just worked on
my own character.
There’s such
a transformation in your character, throughout the film. Did you film
chronologically?
Yeah, we pretty much did.
That was one of the more fun aspects of the movie because the movie was all
shot in one location. It was not exactly in sequence, but more than
usual. It was really nice to be able to do that because, once we got
things up and running, we could do it like a play. It was all in one set.
You have a
lot of crazy, really great fight scenes in the film. Was there a lot of
training to prepare for that?
The fun of it was doing the fight
scenes in such a domestic environment, and imagining those situations, being
hunted in your own home. I think all of us can imagine that. I
secretly would love to do one of those crazy fight movies, where you have to
have all this training. I’ve done just enough, my whole life, that I’ve
always had some training in it, but I wish I was Jackie Chan. Then, we
could have gotten really crazy, running through the house.
We
have seen, in real life, what happens when there is no law enforcement, and
what kind of anarchy that creates. How realistic do you think this
premise is, and what do you think it says about society?
I think it plays into an age-old
human fear. Whenever any of us see glimpses of revolution or riots on
television, or absolute anarchy, or when you’re younger and kids in the
schoolyard act like a pack of wolves, it can be really terrifying. It’s
extremely violent film with an anti-violent message. It’s almost an
oxymoron. Our country is obsessed with violence and our right to protect
our violence, and people call you unpatriotic, if you’re not violent.
This film heightens it. It just exaggerates it. That’s what the
best Philip K. Dick stuff does, and that’s what this is trying to do.
Considering
the ending of the movie, would you want to have a gun or weapon to defend your
family, if you were attacked?
I’d really rather that nobody had
a gun, and then nobody would have to worry about it. That would be more
my theory. In America, there’s this knee-jerk response that more walls
and more guns make people safer, and I’m entirely suspect of that way of
thinking.
Do you think
humans are inherently violent?
It’s moments like this that I wish
I was an anthropologist, so that I could answer that. If you study the
history of mankind, it seems to be a history of violence. It’s kind of
terrifying. Certainly the history of art, whether you look at paintings
or movies or plays or whatever, is just a litany of murder and death. But
somehow, I’m always optimistic. We’re fascinated by things that scare us,
and one of the things that scares us is violence. But, if you think about
it, the great mass of us never performs any act of violence. For every
crazed kid in Boston who wants to blow something up, there are a hundred people
running to stop it, and thousands of people crying tears over the fact that it
did happen. It’s a conundrum. Violence exists. It’s a real
part of our lives. We are obsessed with what we’re scared of, but it
certainly doesn’t define us.
Does
it blow your mind that both Before Midnight and The Purge are rated R?
It’s amazing. It’s almost
like something out of The Purge that Before
Midnight would be rated R. It’s fascinating to me, because of a
breast. I see PG-13 movies with my son, that have a death count in the
thousands, it seems like sometimes. I never know how they come up with
it. Our country’s relationship to sex and violence is a fascinating
conundrum to me. It’s both puritanical, on one level, and libertarian, on
the next. It’s funny. As we did interviews and stuff, it was only
the American press that was so concerned with Julie’s breasts. We did
interviews with people all over the world, and they didn’t ask her about her
tits. But here, everybody was like, “By the way, can we talk about your
breasts?” It’s fascinating. We’re like little, abused children who
never saw a titty. But yet, The Purge is absolutely
terrifying.
It’s just the truth of what we
prioritize. I don’t even know what to say about it. Sex is a lot
scarier to us than violence. For some, intimacy is scary. We could
write essays about it. I don’t really understand what it is, but it’s an
interesting observation. On Sinister, Scott Derrickson worked
so hard not to get an R. Any time I did an improv that had the F word in
it, we would have to go again. He wanted no cursing. There’s no
blood in the movie. But, it was just so damn scary that they gave it an
R. I never know the rhyme or reason for what we decide children should
and shouldn’t see. My mother would let me see anything.
You’re a movie star, but you also work on smaller
projects.
What is it about small projects that make them
attractive to you, as opposed to getting involved with a superhero
franchise? Is it the freedom?
I’ve always done small projects,
my whole career. There’s nothing recent about that. I’ve always
been interested in creative freedom, and the truth is that the more you get
paid, the less freedom you have. They never pay you for nothing.
That’s just always the way it is. I’ve managed to do this for more than
20 years, and keep dodging and weaving and not being one thing.
I’ve always resisted that. I wanted the freedom to do something
else. I didn’t want to try to do Long Day’s Journey into
Night and have the audience go, “Oh, there’s Batman.” You know
what I mean? But in many ways, as I get older, I wish I had made other
decisions, but I’ve just tried to do things that interested me,
sincerely. They don’t all turn out good. I haven’t made all perfect
decisions. But, I’ve tried to stay interested in my job, and I’ve
succeeded at that. Doing little projects helps me because I feel like I
don’t work for anybody.
Is there a
movie of yours that you would want your kids to see?
No. They don’t want to see
me in a movie. I’m their dad, and they want me to be their dad.
They don’t care. I would much rather them see To Kill a
Mockingbird.
“The
Purge” is released and
distributed by United International Pictures
through
Solar Entertainment Corp.
