Richard Linklater’s Boyhood coming 2014 says Ethan Hawke

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You may remember that in our interview with Ethan Hawke, we discussed Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Linklater has used the same core group of actors (Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Salmon) to make the movie since 2002, and it will depict a boy becoming a man on screen. When Hawke described the film to us, he said, “In just the period of a two-hour movie, you watch a human being grow up. It’s almost like watching a flower bloom in time-elapsed photography.”

While doing press for Getaway, Hawke mentioned to the Huffington Post that he finished his last scene for Boyhood and that the movie was on its way next year, possibly to debut at Sundance, Cannes, or Berlin. He added, “It’s the most truly original, revolutionary thing I’ve ever been a part of.” He also discussed the larger idea of Boyhood:

…this is about growing up and the little moments that define our identity that aren’t about your bar mitzvah or your first time you had sex. There are these signposts that are supposed to be meaningful — prom, or something — that aren’t really meaningful. The movie is going to be — I don’t know what people are going to make out of it — but I do know it’s the damned most original thing I’ve ever been a part of.

Before Midnight is one of my favorite movies of the year, and this just gets me even more hyped to see what Linklater does with perceptions of time on film. Check out Ethan Hawke’s full thoughts on Boyhood after the cut.

[Huffington Post via The Playlist]

From the Huffington Post interview:

On the first day of shooting, back in 2002, did you ever think, “We are never going to keep doing this”?

If it wasn’t Rick [Linklater], I would have thought that. I had already known Rick for 10 years at that point. I had already made four or five movies with him … and this is about growing up and the little moments that define our identity that aren’t about your bar mitzvah or your first time you had sex. There are these signposts that are supposed to be meaningful — prom, or something — that aren’t really meaningful. The movie is going to be — I don’t know what people are going to make out of it — but I do know it’s the damned most original thing I’ve ever been a part of.

In 2002 when it started, the parents are going though a divorce and it opens with the mom — and you don’t see me. And then I come for a weekend visit the next year. The first scene I did was with a 7-year-old boy … and I take this 7-year-old boy bowling — and I’m chain smoking in a bowling alley, which was legal then. And I finished yesterday and I’m 42 years old — I was 33 when I did my first scene — he’s 19. He’s a grown man! He’s got crazy ear rings and he’s taller than me and he’s intimidating. Just acting in the movie felt like nothing I’ve ever done.

Hubert Vigilla
Brooklyn-based fiction writer, film critic, and long-time editor and contributor for Flixist. A booster of all things passionate and idiosyncratic.