“No wonder…”
Actor Ethan Hawke diverged from the Hollywood narrative Tuesday to admit that movies in which his character brandishes a firearm perform much better than gunless films.
Late-night comedian Seth Meyers noted during the actor’s appearance on the NBC show that, backstage, Hawke claimed Shakespeare movies just don’t pay that much compared to other ventures.
He said the real money is in movies with guns:
“There’s also a direct equation — you know there have been people talking so much about gun control in this country. I noticed recently, if you put in a column every movie I ever did where I carry a gun, and every movie where I don’t, and my salary… I really think it would be about 92 percent to eight percent.”
Hawke went on to claim it’s just more difficult to “sell a movie without a gun,” though one could argue at least a portion of the disparity — when it comes to Shakespeare, at least — is due to some historical ignorance.
“You realize how much our identity has been wrapped up, about what we want, and how we see people, and how hard it is to sell a movie without a gun — no wonder we’re in turmoil over this subject,” the actor lamented.
Meyers agreed with Hawke, noting the guns often end up on the movie posters.
“Devil’s advocate — I do think that if you tried to take the swords out of Shakespeare,” Hawke quipped, “it would fall apart pretty quickly.”
Tré Goins-Phillips is a writer for IJR operating out of Lynchburg, Virginia. After graduating from Liberty University, where he served as the opinion… more
