Best Of: Ethan Hawke / Tim Robbins

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Speaker 3 From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.
Today, Ethan Hawk.

Speaker 3 He stars in the new movie Blue Moon about lyricist Lorin's Hart, half of the Broadway duo duo Rogers and Hart. Hawk also appears in the new streaming series The Lowdown.

Speaker 3 Now 55, he's been making movies since he was 13, and sometimes he says he forgets just how old he is.

Speaker 2 Now I'll be sent a script and it says, Billy, age 19, skateboarding down the street. And I always think, oh, that's my part.

Speaker 2 It takes me a while to realize, oh, Billy's father, age 55, gruff and weathered around the edges. I'm like, oh, that's me.

Speaker 3 Also, we hear from actor and director Tim Robbins. He reflects on 30 years of making films and why he believes live theater can sometimes speak to us in more profound ways than film can.

Speaker 4 I know that as a child, when I saw something transformative, something that blew my mind, I can still remember those plays. That's the power that theater has.

Speaker 4 It can actually transform a consciousness.

Speaker 3 That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

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Speaker 3 This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.
Here's Terry with our first interview.

Speaker 6 My guest Ethan Hawk stars on two new movies. In Blue Moon, he plays lyricist Lorenz Hart.

Speaker 6 In the horror film Black Phone 2, he's a serial killer who dies and becomes a spirit, and he haunts people's dreams. Let's start with a clip from Blue Moon, directed by Richard Link later.

Speaker 6 It's set on the night of the opening of Oklahoma, the first musical that Hart's longtime songwriting partner Richard Rogers wrote with another lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein.

Speaker 6 There's an after-party at Sardi's where theater people would go on opening night and wait till the reviews came out.

Speaker 6 Hart gets there first and talks with the bartender, feeling he's become insignificant because he was abandoned by Rogers, and he's complaining about how false and sentimental Oklahoma is.

Speaker 6 Rogers had moved on because Hart had been drinking too much and was no longer a reliable partner. Hart claims to have become sober, but he ends up drinking a lot at Sardie's.

Speaker 6 In this scene, after Rogers arrives, he talks with Hart. Hart's trying to convince Rogers to collaborate on a satirical musical about Marco Polo.
Rogers is played by Andrew Scott.

Speaker 6 Ethan Hawke, as Hart, speaks first.

Speaker 2 Marco Polo is going to be a show about joy, but a hard-earned joy, an unsentimental joy. Something wrong with sentimental? What is too easy?

Speaker 2 Oklahoma's too easy?

Speaker 7 The guy actually getting the girl in the end is too easy? You've just eliminated every successful musical comedy ever written, Larry.

Speaker 2 It's too easy for me. Did you hear the audience tonight?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 7 1,600 people didn't think it was too easy. You tell me 1,600 people were wrong.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying.

Speaker 2 You and I

Speaker 2 can do something so much more emotionally complicated. We don't have to pander to what...

Speaker 2 Pandering? No, I pandered. Berbing Berlin is pandering? I love Berlin.
White Christmas is pandering. Well, I I don't believe white Christmas.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe audiences have changed. Well, they still love to laugh.
They want to laugh, but not in that way. In what way? In your way.

Speaker 2 They want to laugh, but they also want to cry a little.

Speaker 2 They want to feel.

Speaker 6 Ethan Hawk, welcome to Fresh Air and congratulations on all the new work you've been doing. I've been really enjoying it.

Speaker 6 You said that Making Blue Moon stretched you and the director, Richard Linkliter, to like the boundaries of your abilities.

Speaker 6 What made it so hard for you and so different?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 first off, I guess the emotional complexity, I mean, there's the verbiage.

Speaker 2 Larry Hart is at this opening night party, and it's kind of like he feels if he ever stops talking, he's going to be shot and killed. And so he just cannot stop talking.

Speaker 2 So there was the amount of text I had to learn. But then there's the complication.

Speaker 2 He's incredibly,

Speaker 2 what is it? It's called the correlation of opposites.

Speaker 2 He's two things simultaneously all the time. He is incredibly jealous and he's incredibly happy and proud of his friend.
He's

Speaker 2 gay and in love with a woman. He's the most diminutive.
smallest person in the room, and he's the biggest personality in the room. The whole

Speaker 2 experience of making it, I felt I was being asked to play two things at the same time, which is, of course, why I want to do it. It was wonderful and it was like the way real people are.
But

Speaker 2 it's challenging. Every now and then you do, you bump up against a part that presses you to the wall of your ability and you know you can never be as good as the part is demanding of you.

Speaker 2 And that's a kind of thrilling spot to be in.

Speaker 6 Trevor Burrus, so you're playing someone who thinks that their height, their hair makes them really ugly and unappealing. Plus he's gay and

Speaker 6 he has to hide that from the public.

Speaker 2 It was illegal in 1943.

Speaker 2 He does have to hide it.

Speaker 6 No, absolutely. Right, right.

Speaker 6 So in a way, like talking all the time is a distraction from all the things that he thinks are

Speaker 6 unappealing about him.

Speaker 6 And he's also very short. I think he's like five feet or under.

Speaker 6 You're pretty tall, and you had to have a comb over for it,

Speaker 6 which is literally not attractive.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 you had to feel very much not like yourself.

Speaker 2 Well, it was interesting. I was being directed by a man who's directed me, and this is our ninth film collaboration.
So

Speaker 2 he knows every trick in my toolbox. And he was really asking me to disappear.

Speaker 2 He just wanted me to be Larry Hart. And so

Speaker 2 the man has spent years of his life editing my performances. So anytime he would see me, he would say, I saw you, I saw you, I saw you.
And he was...

Speaker 6 I saw you, Ethan Hawk, and not Larry Hart.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and not Larry.

Speaker 2 And so the physical things are kind of,

Speaker 2 you know, they're kind of easy. They're superficial ultimately if they don't unlock the soul of the man, right?

Speaker 2 Anybody can shave their head and do a comb over.

Speaker 2 But it was really the soul soul of a person who is loathing themselves and at the same time thinks they're smarter than everybody else. And his intellect is his only power.

Speaker 2 His pride in his work is his only self-worth. And that is being stripped from him on this night.
I mean,

Speaker 2 imagine if you only worked with one other person for 25 years and you achieved incredible heights and this person now doesn't want to work with you anymore.

Speaker 2 So it's truly heartbreaking for him because I think he's smart enough to know that the world is changing. We're in the middle of the war.
The jazz age is being left behind. Something new is happening.

Speaker 2 And he's not going to be a part of it. And he feels a titanic plate shifting, you know, and he's being sent away to Antarctica or something.
I mean, that's what I think he feels. Aaron Powell.

Speaker 6 So I'm under five feet tall, and I might be shorter than he was. So how to playing somebody short and having to look up at people what did you learn about my life at my height?

Speaker 2 The world is so stupid in the way that it

Speaker 2 imagines power and intelligence and grace and, you know,

Speaker 2 tall and handsome, tall equating power, tall equating authority. It doesn't.
Beauty is as beauty does. We all know this.

Speaker 2 It was... As a male, I think it's even more different because

Speaker 2 I remember there was a man who was really helping me with the height and how to achieve it. We were kind of trying to do it with old school stagecraft, and

Speaker 2 he had built a floor that he could put his feet through and then wear his shoes on his shins, so he really appeared a foot shorter than he did.

Speaker 2 And his wife, who they'd been together for decades, came to him and was looking at him. She's like, wow, if you were this tall, I wouldn't love you.

Speaker 2 And it was really a heartbreaking experience for him that he really wanted to share with me that

Speaker 2 confused him deeply

Speaker 2 about

Speaker 2 how what we associate is sexuality, what we associate with strength.

Speaker 2 And it did unlock

Speaker 2 for me,

Speaker 2 I mean, just even all my normal ways of flirting.

Speaker 2 I have all these scenes with Margaret Qualey, who's a beautiful young woman, and she would just giggle at everything I say and pat me on top of the head, and it was extremely patronizing.

Speaker 2 And you had to find a different set of tools to get her attention.

Speaker 2 So I don't know that I could speak intelligently about it, but I could feel it in my guts.

Speaker 3 We're listening to Terry's interview with Ethan Hawk, who stars in the new movie Blue Moon about lyricist Lorraine's Hart, and also stars in the new streaming series The Lowdown.

Speaker 3 We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

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Speaker 6 So you've played at least two brilliant but self-destructive artists.

Speaker 6 Chet Baker, the great jazz trumpeter and singer, who had several addictions, and Larry Hart, who died of complications from drinking way too much. It's not uncommon for talented artists.

Speaker 6 Oh, and River Phoenix, who you worked with, died of an overdose.

Speaker 2 Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Speaker 6 Oh, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Speaker 2 Yes, right.

Speaker 6 It's not uncommon for talented artists to have a self-destructive side or a need for the kind of medication that they believe

Speaker 6 the addiction provides for.

Speaker 6 Do you feel like you understand why those two things so often go together?

Speaker 2 Aaron Ross Powell

Speaker 2 Well, first off, I think issues of addiction are complicating and destroying so much of society, and so many people are in pain, and these are painkillers. And

Speaker 2 I think the artistic community, to be driven to create

Speaker 2 usually is motivated by some sensitivity. And extreme sensitivity,

Speaker 2 I don't know, I have seen it my whole life.

Speaker 2 You mentioned River, and that was an extremely complex and upsetting thing that happened in my early 20s, his passing.

Speaker 2 And then middle age brings its own demons,

Speaker 2 which happened to my friend Phil. And it's

Speaker 2 I think part of

Speaker 2 my collaboration with Rick and part of why I love working with Richard Linkletter is he has so much joy in his life.

Speaker 2 And he didn't, when I was young and becoming friends with him, he was one of the first artists I met who really didn't see self-destruction as a romantic

Speaker 2 well to draw from. He had so much joy and love of life.
But I...

Speaker 2 I do enjoy playing these parts because I do understand it. I grew up with so many men of the theater who were in so much pain.

Speaker 2 And they were some of the most ferociously intelligent and kind and good people that were full of so much self-loathing. And when I first read the script, I just was desperate to play this guy.

Speaker 2 Larry Hart? Yeah.

Speaker 6 So River Phoenix,

Speaker 6 you made your first movie with him,

Speaker 6 The Explorers.

Speaker 6 So he died at age 23 in 1993 of an OD of morphine and cocaine. Was that a warning for you? You know, like, don't touch this stuff? Were you ever seduced by the relief of addictive drugs?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 What flashes through my mind is when River and I were doing the explorers, we both were at a...

Speaker 2 We both loved James Dean, and James Dean smoked Cam-on-filtered cigarettes, and we thought it would be cool to go out, and we stole a pack of Cam-On filters and went out in this field and smoked three of them.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 River turned green and he vomited.

Speaker 2 And when he passed, I thought about that moment that

Speaker 2 we all have different bodies and some of us can press the limit and our bodies can handle it and we can learn from it. And some of us turn green.

Speaker 2 And River was very sensitive, extremely sensitive, and it's part of his his genius.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Does that make sense to you what I'm trying to communicate? Yes, yes.
And some of us get second chances, and some of us, our DNA is hardwired to protect ourselves.

Speaker 2 And some people don't have those guardrails. And I don't understand it.
And I know that the answer is you have to know yourself.

Speaker 2 And yes, to your question, was it a warning? Of course it was a warning. But we all get warnings.
And I sometimes

Speaker 2 think a lot of it is accident. And

Speaker 2 I wish. I remember when we were 23, I felt that we had lived.
And now here I am, and I've lived twice as long as River.

Speaker 2 River didn't get to be a dad, and River didn't get to have the experiences of the roller coaster ride, of the ups and downs of a profession. I almost feel sadder about his death now,

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 I would love to see him. I'd love to see what he thinks now.

Speaker 2 He was such a political young man, and he was such an idealist. I would love to see what that looked like at 55.

Speaker 2 And I would love to see the artist that he would be and the art he would have made.

Speaker 2 I can't believe that Phil's gone.

Speaker 2 Half of why I act sometimes is to impress those two men that I was friends with.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, I think about them all the time when I'm performing because they were the gauge by which I judged myself, and they still are.

Speaker 6 I want to ask you about time. The film Boyhood was shot, directed by Richard Link later, who just directed you in Blue Moon.

Speaker 6 It was shot over 12 years, and as this family aged, as the children and the divorced parents aged, the actors aged. So that was a long-term commitment.
Blue Moon takes place on one evening.

Speaker 6 It's practically shot in real time.

Speaker 6 So making movies that play with time like that, especially boyhood over 12 years,

Speaker 6 I'm wondering if that has shaped your understanding of time,

Speaker 6 what time means to you.

Speaker 2 It has so much, and you're not even mentioning the Before trilogy, which is

Speaker 2 shot over 18 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 And each movie was separated by a few years ago.

Speaker 2 Nine years, yeah.

Speaker 2 I think it's part of the hook of Link Letter and I's friendship as we both have an obsession with it, think about it all the time, all the time.

Speaker 2 It's omnipresent in our awareness. And I think that acting,

Speaker 2 Dead Poets Society came out and I started being sent scripts. I'm 18, 19 years old.
And now I'll be sent a script and it says, Billy, age 19, skateboarding down the street.

Speaker 2 And I always think, oh, that's my part. It's just the way I read script.
It takes me a while to realize, oh, Billy's father, age 55, gruff and weathered around the edges. I'm like, oh, that's me.

Speaker 2 I'm forced always to look at that. I remember watching the first screening of Boyhood with Patricia Arquette and I were sitting next to each other.

Speaker 6 She closed ours with you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and she leans over to me and says, wow, they're growing up and we're aging.

Speaker 2 And it's funny, I don't know where that turn happens where we stop thinking of ourselves as growing. But acting forces you to be aware of time.
Cinema naturally does it.

Speaker 2 The stories I gravitate to, particularly in the films with Richard Linkletter, seem to be, I often think, Father Time is the main character of all the films we've done together.

Speaker 6 So how is getting older affecting your relationship with the passage of time?

Speaker 2 Well, you're just hitting me with some real lightweight questions.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you're welcome.

Speaker 2 Well, it's arresting for anybody. You know, I think when you get over the age of 50, it is.

Speaker 2 I feel it very powerfully. I feel a desire to work.

Speaker 2 Um, I don't know if you feel that, but I feel

Speaker 2 I'm aware of how much of the road has already been walked, and I'm very conscious of,

Speaker 2 I find myself often thinking, How old was Jeff Bridges when he did True Grit? Am I older than him now? Am I younger than him?

Speaker 2 How old was Peter Weir when he directed Dead Poets Society? I'm older than he was now. I thought he was an old man.

Speaker 2 I'm very aware of how many more years I might have to contribute, and I don't like wasting time anymore. I'm very aware of how many people mentored me and cared for me, and am I doing that for others?

Speaker 2 Am I meeting my responsibilities as a citizen? Those questions are on my mind all the time. Then there's this other voice, which is, am I enjoying my life?

Speaker 2 And I, because I do want to enjoy it too.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 how much of this work that I'm obsessed with is

Speaker 2 eroding my sense of play and joy and spontaneity and living and being in the moment.

Speaker 2 And it is strange. The older you get, I have no awareness of wisdom.
I only have awareness of how many things I thought I understood that I don't understand. And more questions come in the door.

Speaker 6 I want to talk with you about the lowdown. I'm really enjoying this.
And you play an investigative journalist for a kind of underground

Speaker 6 paper. I can't remember whether you correct the person,

Speaker 2 whether he says it's a magazine. It's a

Speaker 2 long-form magazine.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he calls it a paper, and you say, no, it's a long-form magazine.

Speaker 6 And you are very, very eccentric. You investigate power and corruption in Tulsa, where this is set.
And you also break all the rules of journalism. You get beaten up a lot.

Speaker 6 And unlike like the tough guys in a lot of hard-boiled film noir and in novels, like when you get beaten up, like you hurt.

Speaker 2 And like you're crying out in pain. I cry.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And so I want to play a short scene. This is toward the beginning of the first episode.

Speaker 6 So you're investigating a powerful, wealthy guy who runs an investment company, has been buying up a lot of black-owned businesses, and you're wondering, like, what's this about?

Speaker 6 Tracy Letts plays that guy.

Speaker 6 You've walked into his office, dressed way too casually for a meeting like this, and you start looking around the room, picking up things, examining them, sniffing the carafe of brandy, and being intentionally sarcastic and rude.

Speaker 6 So let's pick it up with the clip.

Speaker 2 Nice to meet you in person. Yeah.
We do have a lot of other business. Yeah, I'm sure you do.
This place is so fancy. I've never even been back here.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just some of the perks. Yeah, I should have gone in the investment firm business, huh, instead of rare books.

Speaker 4 But you are a journalist, too, though, right?

Speaker 2 Or some kind of writer?

Speaker 2 I'm a truth storian.

Speaker 4 Sorry, say again?

Speaker 2 I am a Tulsa truth storian.

Speaker 2 A truth storian? What exactly is a truth storian? I'm glad you asked. I read stuff.

Speaker 2 I research stuff. I drive around and I find stuff.
And then I write about stuff. Some people care, some people don't.

Speaker 2 I'm chronically unemployed, always broke, but let's just say that I am obsessed with the truth.

Speaker 2 How about that?

Speaker 6 So, Ethan Hawk, the series is inspired by Film Noir, but it's also kind of a satire of the genre.

Speaker 6 Your character talks tough, but as I said, gets beaten up a lot. Are you a fan of noir novels, you know, hard-boiled novels or film noir?

Speaker 2 I am. I love it.
I mean,

Speaker 2 I'll never forget the first time I saw Chinatown or The Long Goodbye or The Big Lebowski, for that matter, or some of the other Philip Marlowe Bogart. You know, I love all that stuff.
And,

Speaker 2 you know, one of the things I love about genre films is you can use the genre to be entertaining. And you can fill the story up with substance and message and ideas.

Speaker 2 But it's still entertaining because you're inside the genre.

Speaker 6 So what was your take on this character? Like, what did you model him on?

Speaker 2 I loved this character. It's been a funny year for me because...
Blue Moon is probably the most different I've ever pushed myself outside the framework of my own identity.

Speaker 2 And then the lowdown is just,

Speaker 2 I just relate to Lee. He's Quixote chasing windmills, running into propellers.
He's a dreamer and an idealist and self-centered and doesn't see his own blind spots. And he's a moron.

Speaker 2 And I just completely relate to him.

Speaker 2 And he can say the right thing all the time and do the wrong thing all the time. And out of that, obviously, comes a lot of humor.
I kind of saw Lee as a guy who's frozen in 1996 or something.

Speaker 2 I'm still wearing the same pants I wore back then. I got the same bell buckle I wore back then.
He's still listening to the same music he listened to back then. And I admire him.

Speaker 2 And I also identify with his shortcomings. And Sterling is really fun to work with.
I had a great time on Reservation Dogs. We got along like a house on fire.

Speaker 2 I can't remember a time I just ran with the character like I did with this one.

Speaker 2 Ethan Hawk, it's just been great to talk with you.

Speaker 6 Thank you so much. And again, congratulations on all the work you've been doing.
Thanks, so many.

Speaker 2 I'm tired after all the questions you asked me. I love your show, and I love NPR, and I really appreciate what you guys do.
And I'm just thrilled to be on your program. So thanks for having me.

Speaker 6 Oh, thank you for saying that. It's so great to have you.

Speaker 3 Actor Ethan Hawk speaking with Terry Gross. He stars in the new movie Blue Moon about lyricist Lorraine's Hart and also stars in the new streaming series The Lowdown.

Speaker 3 Four years after their Oscar-nominated comedy, The Worst Person in the World, the Danish-born Norwegian director Joachim Trier and actor Renata Reitzfei are together on a new drama, Sentimental Value.

Speaker 3 The movie, which also features Stellan Skarsgård and El Fanning, won the Grand Prix at this year's Cannes Film Festival and will represent Norway in this year's Oscar race for Best International Feature.

Speaker 3 Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

Speaker 2 Few filmmakers are as attuned as Joachim Trier to the inner lives of young people.

Speaker 2 In superb movies like Raprise, Oslo August 31st, and The Worst Person in the World, he has probed the artistic dreams and frustrated desires of characters trying, and often failing, to figure out who they are.

Speaker 2 Trier's thoughtfulness is apparent, even in his more middling films like the Jesse Eisenberg drama Louder Than Bombs and and the supernatural thriller Thelma, both of which were keyed into the profound ways our families can mess us up.

Speaker 2 Complicated parent-child relationships are also at the heart of sentimental value, a new drama that many have hailed as Treer's best movie to date.

Speaker 2 But I've seen the film twice now, and although it's thoughtfully crafted and well acted, it strikes me as one of Treer's lesser efforts, the kind of lofty, self-consciously mature work that often gets more praise than its richer, livelier predecessors.

Speaker 2 Renata Reinzwe, the radiant star of the worst person in the world, here plays Nora, an accomplished stage actor whose mother has recently died.

Speaker 2 As she grieves with her younger sister, Agnes, wonderfully played by Inge Ibsdotter Lilias, Nora must deal with the return of their long-estranged father, Gustav, played by Stellan Skarsgård.

Speaker 2 Gustav, a film director of some note, abandoned the family when the girls were still young. Now years later, he surprises Nora by presenting her with a new script and asking her to play the lead role.

Speaker 2 Nora turns him down, and so Gustav casts a Hollywood star, Rachel Kemp, played by L. Fanning.

Speaker 2 Gustav's movie is being financed by Netflix, which allows Trier to introduce some delectable film industry satire.

Speaker 2 Rachel is game and loves Gustav's work, but she's clearly ill at ease with the material, partly because she isn't Norwegian, and partly because the character seems based on Gustav's mother, who died tragically when he was just a boy.

Speaker 2 In this scene, Rachel meets with Nora, hoping to gain more insight into not only the role, but also Gustav's family dynamics.

Speaker 3 Why didn't you want to do the role?

Speaker 2 I can't work with him.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 3 We can't really talk.

Speaker 3 But he wanted you to do it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I just can't.

Speaker 3 I can't get a handle on her, you know.

Speaker 3 The more that I study her, the more lost I feel trying to be her. It's like her sadness is...

Speaker 2 It's such an overwhelming part of her.

Speaker 2 In this scene and many others, Trier directs us to pay attention to his actors' shifting expressions and silences, all the pointed things they leave unsaid.

Speaker 2 When Nora has an unexplained attack of stage fright on the opening night of her play, we wonder if it's rooted in a certain ambivalence about acting, a profession that connects her to her father, whether she likes it or not.

Speaker 2 Agnes and Gustave get along better, possibly because she starred in one of his films when she was a young girl, a brief bonding experience that her sister never had.

Speaker 2 Gustave, it seems, is the kind of father who can only parent through a camera lens. It's bittersweet that he treats Rachel with a paternal warmth, that he seldom shows his own daughters.

Speaker 2 In the uniformly strong cast, I liked Fanning the best. Her character has a bracing and very American directness that cuts through all the wry Nordic reserve.

Speaker 2 Treer clearly respects the audience's intelligence, which earns our respect in return. But for every sensitive, perceptive moment in sentimental value, there's another that feels coy, even complacent.

Speaker 2 Treer and his regular co-writer, Esquil Vaut, seem strangely incurious about their character's art. I wanted to see more of Nora's acting, and to hear more of Gustave's script.

Speaker 2 In lieu of this, the movie floats a lot of whispery notions about how art and life converge.

Speaker 2 Even when artists turn out to be lousy parents, it suggests, art itself can be a vessel for reconciliation and healing.

Speaker 2 This idea is not exactly the stuff of revelation, and the movie basically rubber stamps it, without developing or dramatizing it anew.

Speaker 2 A big part of the story involves the beloved family house where Nora and Agnes grew up, and which Gustav wants to use as the shooting location for his new film.

Speaker 2 We're meant to see that our homes become repositories of memory, filled with the ghosts of generations past.

Speaker 2 But there's something a little precious about these themes, just as there's something pat and predictable about the way the drama resolves.

Speaker 2 In building toward a redemptive ending, sentimental value lets everyone off the hook too easily, especially Gustave.

Speaker 2 You can't blame Skarsgård, who plays the role with his typically irresistible, irascible charm.

Speaker 2 But it's hard not to feel that Trier, in indulging this character, is favoring the priorities of art over the tougher questions of life.

Speaker 3 Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. Coming up, we hear from Academy Award-winning actor and director Tim Robbins.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

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Speaker 3 This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.

Speaker 3 And my guest today is Tim Robbins, Academy Award-winning actor, director, and founder of the Actors Gang, a theater company he started in Los Angeles back in 1981 with a group of fellow UCLA students.

Speaker 3 We sat down in October in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, after a live performance of his new play, Topsy Turvy, at the Kohler Art Center.

Speaker 3 Sheboygan itself is a small lakeside city right next to Kohler, a place with a rich art scene.

Speaker 3 The performance was part of the city's first film festival, which wrapped with a 30th anniversary screening of Dead Man Walking, the second film Robbins directed.

Speaker 3 Topsy-Turvy is about a chorus that's lost its ability to sing together after the pandemic's long isolation, a metaphor that hits uncomfortably close to home for many.

Speaker 3 And in a way, it connects to what Robbins has explored for more than 40 years, impossible reconciliations between people with opposing beliefs, between guilt and redemption, between isolation and connection.

Speaker 3 From the Shawshank Redemption to Bob Roberts to his prison theater work with the Actors Gang, he circles around one question.

Speaker 3 How do we find harmony when we've forgotten how to listen? Robbins and I talked about why he's taking an experimental play on the road instead of making another prestige TV show.

Speaker 3 And I asked him about how the COVID lockdown and the isolation that followed affected him. Here's our conversation.

Speaker 4 Well, in many ways, the lockdown was illuminating to me. Things that I had held sacred or had held as truths were challenged during that time.
And what it made me do was it made me

Speaker 4 question myself and question what my beliefs are. And I think that's a very healthy thing.
As a writer, I need to do that all the time. As an actor, I have to do that.

Speaker 4 So drama is about finding the complexities and the conflicts that we all have within ourselves. I think that's the way to approach these discussions about society at large.

Speaker 4 When you're dealing with them in a play or in a movie, you have to give respect to the other side.

Speaker 3 So, for your writing process,

Speaker 3 how does the idea of the chorus, because topsy-turvy, they're a chorus, this collective voice, help us think about the division.

Speaker 3 What was it about that particular way of being able to tell the story that you felt was a way to be able to get at that division?

Speaker 4 So just a reminder that in Greek theater, which was kind of the start of what we think of as Western theater, the purpose of these plays that they did, both comedies and dramas,

Speaker 4 were to involve the citizenry in a dialogue with the gods.

Speaker 4 So the citizenry in those plays were represented by the chorus. And the chorus would

Speaker 4 have a big dilemma. And the dilemma usually had something to do with something that had happened recently in Athens or in Greece.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 what we were seeing on stage was a way for the society to look at what had just happened.

Speaker 4 and be able to explore that, ask questions about it, and see the story told through

Speaker 4 the dialogue between the chorus and the gods.

Speaker 4 And I felt the subject matter of those plays, recent wars that had taken a lot of lives, plagues, different conflicts within the societies, I felt that this was such a unique and extraordinary time that we were living in, that it was up at that level of Greek tragedy and Greek comedy.

Speaker 4 The degree to which this whole world

Speaker 4 locked down,

Speaker 4 this has never happened in human history before.

Speaker 4 The coordinated locking down of societies throughout the world.

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 4 I was, you know, as I was seeing this develop, I was like, there's got to be one country that just says, ah, we're not doing this.

Speaker 4 And I just was blown away, but it had this kind of coordinated

Speaker 4 unanimity, and that scared me a little bit. And I was like, well, what is this really about?

Speaker 4 What is this about? And so those questions led me to ask those questions in the play, using the chorus as a means to

Speaker 4 figure out

Speaker 4 these people who lovely singing together at the beginning of the play, they sound beautiful, and then

Speaker 4 they are told they have to separate. And so how does a chorus harmonize

Speaker 4 when they are kept from each other?

Speaker 3 I'm just curious,

Speaker 3 Tim,

Speaker 3 I mean, you're an Oscar winner. You can do anything.
You could be in movies. You've done prestige television.

Speaker 3 What is it

Speaker 3 about playing in 100-seat theaters and devoting your time to it?

Speaker 3 What do you think it is about the theater to be able to articulate the story that you're telling in topsy-turvy that can't really be told anywhere else?

Speaker 4 I have complete freedom.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I've always, from the very start,

Speaker 4 held that to be the most important thing.

Speaker 4 We started the Actors Gang out of UCLA in 1982.

Speaker 3 And when you say we,

Speaker 4 I'm talking about about eight or nine

Speaker 4 young punk rock-infused actors

Speaker 4 that just wanted to make some noise and have fun and tell stories.

Speaker 4 And we did this play called Ubu Wah, Ubu the King. This was the first play we did, and we did it in this

Speaker 4 dark street in Hollywood at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. And it was a big success, and it told us that

Speaker 4 we have this great opportunity. And we started doing other plays.

Speaker 4 But then I started, right around the same time, I started getting work.

Speaker 4 And I had financed Ubu the King

Speaker 4 on my salary from delivering pizzas in Beverly Hills.

Speaker 4 If you're going to deliver pizzas, by the way,

Speaker 4 that's the place.

Speaker 2 Good tips, yeah. Good tips.

Speaker 4 And so then then I started working and I realized, oh, well,

Speaker 4 I can fund the next play with this one

Speaker 4 paycheck, right?

Speaker 4 And so I started this kind of dance and my agents hated it because they're trying to build momentum.

Speaker 4 And I would say to them, well, I'm happy to work through this time, but then I'm going to do a play.

Speaker 4 And they're like, oh, Broadway? I'm like, no, no, I've got this theater company and we're going to do this thing. So I need like three months free, four months free.

Speaker 4 And what happened was my perspective was one of

Speaker 4 use that great gift that you're getting from working in TV episodics and sitcoms and make art with that. So this continued for the past 43 years.

Speaker 3 Let's go back to a young Tim Robbins. Is it true that you started acting with a street theater group at 12? Yeah.

Speaker 3 First off, how does a 12-year-old find a live theater group on the street? Like, how did that happen?

Speaker 4 So my sister Adele, who is in the play,

Speaker 4 so she was working as a stage manager at this place called the Theater for the New City.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 they were doing weird theater. You know, this is like late 60s, early 70s, Greenwich Village.
You know, there were plays with nude people in them.

Speaker 4 And so I got kind of interested in what she was doing.

Speaker 2 Of course you did.

Speaker 4 And so Crystal Field, who ran that theater company and still runs it to this day,

Speaker 4 invited me to be in a play called Undercover Cop.

Speaker 4 And I was to play a gang member.

Speaker 4 And it was, you know, this kind of satire about what was going on in New York City at the time.

Speaker 4 And I found myself acting on the streets of New York, and what that meant was that they would pack a truck with four four by eight platforms raised up about two feet, which was the stage, a couple iron bars that held a backdrop, and a truck that had all the costumes in it.

Speaker 4 So we would go to a different neighborhood every Saturday and Sunday in the month of August

Speaker 4 and set up our stage,

Speaker 4 set up an audience area, do a little parade in the neighborhood to get more audience, and then do this play for 45 minutes to an hour.

Speaker 3 What was the reception like? Do you remember how people received you?

Speaker 4 Well, you have to understand, most of these people are seeing theater for the very first time.

Speaker 4 We're not going to wealthy neighborhoods. We're going to, you know, all kinds of neighborhoods in New York.
And

Speaker 4 the reception was always great.

Speaker 4 One thing those audiences didn't have was the filter that you learn when you go to theater a lot.

Speaker 4 So there was an awful lot of talking back.

Speaker 2 Call and response.

Speaker 3 Was it kind of like a call and response, though?

Speaker 2 Yeah, which is great.

Speaker 4 And by the way, you learn very quickly that that's a reality you have to deal with. Not only that reality, you have to deal with mama up four flights yelling for her her kids

Speaker 4 or someone yelling

Speaker 4 or some guy that's drugged out who's just wandering onto the stage all of a sudden and he's there and like, oh, what's he doing?

Speaker 4 We had one scene where George Boteniev, this actor, plays this guy named Dogfiend and he's like, he's a thief. And he grabs one of the characters on stage's purse and runs away, right?

Speaker 4 And we had three guys chasing him.

Speaker 2 He's running faster than I've ever seen him run.

Speaker 4 He comes backstage and we're all like no no it's just the play it's just the play

Speaker 4 ready to kick his ass it was so funny

Speaker 4 those were some really good lessons for you as an as an actor as a performer yes and I didn't learn till much later how rooted the street theater of that theater for the new city was in the comedy dell'arte

Speaker 4 which is what that was back in the 15th and 16th century it was basically street theater they wouldn't do comeda dell'arte plays in fancy theaters they would do them in a public square and they were itinerant companies they were they would do their show they'd pack up and they'd go to the next town and so i've done a lot of exploration into that whole world of comedia dell'arte since and have come to understand how vital an art form it was because they were telling stories that were absolutely relevant to the world around them at the time.

Speaker 4 I know this about theater. I know that as a child, when I saw something transformative, something that blew my mind,

Speaker 4 I can still remember those plays. They're still with me.
That's the power that theater has. It can actually transform a consciousness.
It can change an opinion. It can illuminate a truth.

Speaker 4 that in an immediate way, not in a manipulative way.

Speaker 4 Because film can be very manipulative. And it's how long does it last? Is it candy or is it a substantial meal?

Speaker 3 Shawshank Redemption is one of your most popular works. I'm sure just about everywhere you go, someone talks to you about it.
Is that true?

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, it's very nice.

Speaker 4 It's very nice.

Speaker 4 I was joking with a friend of mine, you know, because we were out and

Speaker 4 about three or four times someone someone came up about Shawshank.

Speaker 4 And they were like, does that bother you? And I said, not at all.

Speaker 4 If I got famous for a movie where I played Kookie Magober,

Speaker 4 that would really bother me.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Hey, Kookie Magoober.

Speaker 4 That would be horrible. That would be a nightmare.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 as it is, this is something, this is a movie that really moved people.

Speaker 3 What do you think it is about this movie?

Speaker 3 Because it wasn't a box office hit when it first came out. What people are relating to really are like the ability to see it over and over again.

Speaker 3 I was on the phone with my mom and I told her I was coming to do this and she got really quiet and she said, Shawshank Redemption's my favorite movie.

Speaker 3 And I said, yeah, I know, everyone's favorite movie. But what do you think it is about it that people keep going back to it over and over again? And it hits the tender place within them.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I think we all want to believe

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 4 despite the challenges we have in our lives, the obstacles that are placed in front of us, that there is

Speaker 4 a spot on a beach in Ziwatana for us.

Speaker 4 I think that prison can be a metaphor for other things in life. There's many people that are in jobs that they, you know, have to have, but are not particularly liberating, shall we say.

Speaker 4 There's people in relationships that they should be out of. And I think there's various ways that we can close walls around ourselves in our life and

Speaker 4 imprison ourselves mentally and emotionally.

Speaker 4 And I think the idea that Andy

Speaker 4 had

Speaker 4 the long plan

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 4 could see a future that was brighter,

Speaker 4 I think that's something that people want to believe in.

Speaker 4 I also believe that it's one of the very few rare stories where you see a male friendship that is not contingent upon car chases or skirt chasing.

Speaker 4 It's not a buddy movie, which I've done a few of.

Speaker 4 It's a movie about a real friendship between two men.

Speaker 4 A love story in a lot of ways.

Speaker 3 Does your view of that role and that film evolve as you grow and evolve?

Speaker 4 I just appreciate it for everything it is.

Speaker 4 What a gift it has been. Because

Speaker 4 when people come up to me and talk to me about about that film, it's not like I love that film. It's that that film changed me.

Speaker 4 That film made me think in a different way. Not to mention the times that I've talked to people that have been incarcerated.
And I do work with people in L.A.

Speaker 4 and California that have been incarcerated. The Actors Gang has prison programs.
We do rehabilitation inside the California correctional system.

Speaker 4 And what that movie means to those that have been incarcerated is profound. This idea of hope,

Speaker 4 this idea that freedom can be achieved even in the direst circumstances.

Speaker 4 So that it's about what's inside. That's why Andy survives.

Speaker 3 Tim, thank you so much for your work. your honesty,

Speaker 3 and this time that you've spent with us to tell us just a little snippet about your life and your career. Thank you so much, Tim.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Tanya.

Speaker 3 Award-winning actor Tim Robbins.

Speaker 3 Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

Speaker 3 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Crinzel, Monique Nazareth, Baya Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman.

Speaker 3 Our digital media producer is Molly Seeing Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

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