We Got This Covered: Julie, what do you relate most to about Celine and where she is now in her 40s?
Julie Delpy: I really wanted to make sure that she is a strong woman and she is looking towards the future. She is not someone who dwells in the past, and she’s a very active person. She could seem at times very vindictive and she’s not going to let someone tell her what to do or how it should be done. She also believes that if they moved to Chicago that it will destroy their relationship, and I personally think she’s right. To me it was very important that she’s not the wife of the writer, she’s her own person. Otherwise it’s out of balance and then it’s a film about a guy with a French girlfriend. That’s our goal; to make sure that it’s neither macho nor feminist.
We Got This Covered: Where do you think Celine will be in her 50s?
Julie Delpy: We don’t know yet. I don’t think about the future, that’s how we operate on these films. We might not even do a fourth film, this could be it.
Ethan Hawke: We’re so happy to be done with the third film (laughs). It was so much work!
Richard Linklater: If it ends up a trilogy, we never planned it in the first place. I think were fine with it as it is. It’s impossible for us to know anything until a few more years go by.
We Got This Covered: Since you first started playing these characters 18 years ago, how have these films changed you?
Ethan Hawke: I like to say that I learned how to speak on camera on Before Sunrise. As a young actor you get asked to pose or affect an emotion, but Richard wanted Julie and me to gab and to talk and to be present in the front of the camera, to not act. This adventure in not acting started then.
Julie Delpy: You are rarely asked to do that as actors in a movie, to have a big monologue telling the story. You might have it once every 10 films, but usually it’s like dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, but here it’s like we have big chunks to where you should see the screenplay. It can sound really boring if we’re not super-duper natural at saying it like it sounds like we’re telling the story to someone we care for. So that’s the real challenge of these films and that’s been the challenge for the actors every time; to tell a story on camera without being boring is the hardest thing. It’s about finding the right tone to do it.
We Got This Covered: Another great thing about this film is how emotionally raw you two get especially in the hotel sequence. Did you ever feel like you were going too far or that you had to stop and cry it out between takes? As audience members we were really freaking out when we watched that.
Richard Linklater: Usually in the script phase if we think we’ve gone too far, that’s usually a spot we should explore because what people think is too far is usually not that far.
Julie Delpy: What’s funny is that when you do the scenes at are emotional and stuff, it’s pleasurable for an actor. That’s what we’re trained for. When you see an actor crying and being hurt, they are actually enjoying it. But actually what’s most painful is the simple things; that’s the hardest thing to find as an actor. The walk in the village where we were is actually more draining as an actor. It is draining to do scenes where you’re emotional and stuff, but there’s a certain pleasure about it.
Ethan Hawke: It was challenging. We dove into it. We were locked in that room for a long time and we came out with a scene. The whole film had been building to that. We filmed that part of it in sequence so for us it was so challenging and yet we were so glad to be there and do it. It took nine years to get to that point.
We Got This Covered: Is there anything that has surprised you about doing these films?
Ethan Hawke: The idea that we would have this lifelong collaboration and that we would’ve poured so much of ourselves into it, that’s the thing that’s a surprise. The fact that we get to do this and that somebody’s interested, that’s the surprise.
Julie Delpy: It’s a strange feeling because we’re not trying to please anybody when we do the films. We’re really just trying to be as true as possible. The last film especially, while we’re writing it, you go so deep into certain things that it’s like moving a lot of things within us because we have gone through those emotions in a relationship. We just try to be as genuine and as honest as possible, and what’s amazing is that people relate to it. I guess that’s what cinema’s about.
Richard Linklater: The second film we felt no one wanted. We made the first film and no one ever asked “is there going to be another film?” That was not a logical question. When we were making the second film in Paris, every day we looked at one another and asked “how are we getting to do this? This is amazing!” We’re getting to make this very personal film that no one really even cares about except for three people, and you’re in a good spot if you can ever be making a film like that. We have gotten questions over the last nine years of Jesse and Celine being together, and we stubbornly rebelled against that in our minds. But once we let that go and put out of our minds that there were even three people cared about this, we just dug into ourselves and concentrated on that.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Richard, Julie and Ethan for talking with us. Be sure to check out Before Midnight, out in theatres this Friday!
