Richard, there's an irony in having just a few minutes to talk to you about something
that took you 12 years to make.
On the logistics of it, so it's a movie that was 12 years in the making, and you met up
with Ellar, was it once a week every 12 years?
-No no. -Once a year.
Yeah we shot it roughly every year. We shoot every six months to 18 months, but we shot
12 times over 12 years. And, but yeah we lived in the same town. You know, I would... He
was like a family member. I would kind of check in with him and see where he was at
developmentally, and my own daughter obviously is much more close. I always knew where they
were at any given time. You know, I could work up that year's material around kind of
where they were.
Now the heartbreaking thing, and the beautiful thing about the movie, and there's lots of
them, is the subtlety of the passing of time. And you've captured that in a way that I don't
think many filmmakers get to do. The way time passes is so subtle and so gentle, the little
differences. So that was very deliberate, that you didn't ever want to put 'One Year
Later' on the movie, did you?
No. If anything I've found that, that wouldn't work. The transitions were meant to be very
subtle and just observational. I didn't want the audience to be led in any way, other than
their own observation. Like you would notice the hair's different or someone's grown a
little or there's something new, you know, would kind of have the connotation of the
passing of time, but I wanted the film to feel like a memory, almost like you're older
looking back. You know, your memory doesn't... No one throws up a sign or tells you too much.
It just all kind of flows. So that's what I was going for.
And I like how you didn't try to make it overly sentimental. Like the sentiment is there,
and the melancholy is there because life just is melancholy.
Mmmhmm.
But there's trauma in his life, but you didn't make it too histrionic. He takes a lot of
this stuff in his stride, and I guess that's because children are resilient in that way.
Yeah, I wanted to represent that, and it's hard to say what's traumatic. It would be
hard to predict, like oh, something big happens, and it might be traumatic, but little things
are traumatic too. Moving, being the new kid in class. Is that as traumatic as...? Things
can be pretty dramatic when you're a kid. On the surface, a lot of the film doesn't
look that dramatic, but who knows? Some of it actually is.
Yeah, I also wanted touch on, in the UK, we don't move around all that much. Like if you
moved, you move an hour down the road. You're not ever too far from your family members.
There's kind of a wistfulness and a romance in your movie because moving across town in
America is such a big vast thing, and you capture that, the kind of that wistful feeling
of upping sticks, packing your bags and moving on.
Yeah and leaving friends behind. You don't really know that as a kid. Like will we see
him again? And you realise, oh we didn't. You know, those kids were gone from your life,
and that's how it felt when your parents get a new job and you move somewhere. So that
kind of up-rootedness, I wanted to depict that.
Now it lingered long in my memory. I only saw it this week, so it kind of like - it
stays with you. When you're making it, when you're editing it, how's the whole process
made you feel over the years?
It was great subject matter to hang out with for 12 years. I mean, you pick your subjects
carefully, but I knew there would be so much here, not only thinking about childhood because
we all have that, but also thinking about parenthood. There was so much there, and I
don't know. There were some deep wells there to always be drawing from I felt. So it was
a good life project. It was about life. It was about these relationships, about parents,
siblings, just life itself. So it felt like something I knew I would be there for 12 years with.
Are you the Ethan Hawke character?
Not really, no, no. I mean, I'm a little bit of everybody. Probably... Certainly, it was
an expression of kind of bumbling through... He's trying to figure out how to, you know,
be a dad, and I think every parent feels that way, like you feel like you know something,
and you feel like you really don't. So everybody kind of feels that way to some degree, but
yeah.
It's a testament to Ethan and Patricia that they're able to portray people who change,
but again it's that very little quiet differences as the years roll by. They just show signs
of maturity, the theme of responsibility comes up.
Always.
Quite a lot. How much of it do you feel like, did you push on them characters, or did you
let them develop? Did Patricia say okay, this is the kind of woman I think I'd like to be?
Yeah, no. You know, we talked about it. It was just this active collaboration of where
we felt that character was going, and we were always in agreement. We never had an argument.
It was always like well, here's where I see it, and we just kind of built on each other's
ideas. That's how I collaborate. You know, it is kind of... They both kind of come into
their own in their own way. You know, she professionally and academically. She's this
kind of great woman on one level. I think by the end, and he kind of accepts that responsibility.
It's a little sad. He's driving a muscle car, and he's got shades on. He's kind of this
cool dad, and by the end he's got the mini-van, the new kid and the moustache and the suit.
You know, it's like these subtle things and who knows about his own dreams for his life?
But you know, life gives you this much.
What do you want to be, Mason? What do you want to do?