#Abel Ferrera And Ethan Hawke On Going To War For Art In Zeros And Ones [Interview]

Ethan Hawke: We’re all a product of our generation, right? We’re only as good as our peers, as what audiences want, what people are thinking about, what audiences are demanding, and what is happening around us. The benefit of troubled times is they make for more interesting art, right? The conversation gets interesting because people have a need for serious conversation. I don’t know, I feel like these roles are just a product of a more interesting time, or maybe of me growing up. There’s a great line … I think I’m misquoting Paul Newman, but he said that we all long for a happier time when we knew a lot less, meaning it was only happier because we were dumber. The more you know, the more troubled the world is. And so this nostalgia for the past and stuff is fake news, you know?

I can definitely see that. It’s really an interesting trajectory.

Ethan Hawke: I like it, too. I mean, there are certain inevitable downsides with growing up and getting older, but there’s certain benefits. Playing substantive characters that have a lot on their mind. Makes my life more interesting.

It’s certainly refreshing. Abel, I wanted to ask you about the plot choice to have a threat to the Vatican. Is there any particular symbolic value for when you were constructing the plot of the film around that?

Abel Ferrara: The idea of blowing up the Vatican … Yeah. You know … I mean, you have to blow up something! You’re gonna blow up the World Trade Center because you think that building represents capitalism and this and that …  some 3000 year war, some big religious … some apocalyptic confrontation … whether it’s there, it’s not, to the minds of people it’s something that’s under threat. Being manipulated … maybe the threat’s real, maybe it is not a threat … so it can symbolize Christianity, [or what] the war on terrorism is about.

Ethan Hawke: It connects present day war with the wars of the past, too, that’s what it always does in my mind… seeing us as a continuation of a series of dominoes that have been falling for a long time.