Ethan Hawke goes to bat for "offensive art"

At the Berlinale, Hawke urged audiences to care about works that are "punk in their sensibility."

By Mary Kate Carr | February 18, 2025 | 11:00am

Screenshot: The Late Show/YouTube

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At a press conference for Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon at the Berlinale, the filmmaker and his stars were asked if art must carry more offensive themes to contend with the “offensive times” we live in (via Deadline). Ethan Hawke took the opportunity to champion so-called “offensive art”—in this case, his examples include “great punk music or some early Brecht plays that are punk in their sensibility.” That kind of offensive art doesn’t sell these days, Hakwe argued. “You guys, the community, has to make it important. For offensive art to have a place in our conversation, it has to be cared about.”

He continued, “And when we prioritize money at all costs, what we get is generic material that appeals to the most amount of people and we’re told that’s the best. It’s a dance we all do together. If you love offensive art and you want it, demand it. Right now, people don’t think they’ll make any money off it so it doesn’t get made.”

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In Blue Moon, Hawke plays Lorenz Hart, the former creative partner of Richard Rodgers. Struggling with alcoholism and depression, Hart attends the opening night after party for Rodgers’ first collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II, Oklahoma. “Offensive times conjure up offensive art maybe,” Linklater mused in Berlin, “But movies particularly have always been escapism, and in our movie he’s accusing Oklahoma! of being escapist in the middle of the horrors of WWII. So I don’t know, I think most human psyches want to escape a bit. There’s probably less offensive art now than there has been in the past.”

At the same festival where juror Todd Haynes warned about the dangers of artists and studios yielding to political pressures, Linklater said he doesn’t feel much pressure from the powers that be in Hollywood: “They gave up on me a long time ago,” he joked. “I don’t think I’ve compromised at all. It’s a low-budget film. There’s no pressure. I don’t have complaints about compromise,” he went on (via IndieWire). “You hope everybody likes the movie, but there was no test screenings. You hear the horror stories, and the film industry can be a collision between art and commerce, but I’ve largely been spared that over these years.”