Ethan Hawke had recently wrapped filming Great Expectations with Alfonso Cuarón when he was approached with a proposition: “They came to me and asked, ‘Can you make a movie for $100k?’” Excited by the possibilities of the newly emerging digital-video technology, and inspired by Cuarón’s use of colour and saturation – as well as by his longtime friend and creative collaborator Richard Linklater – Hawke took the leap. “They gave me the equipment and editing resources and I ran with it,” he tells us. The resulting film, Chelsea Walls (2001), has since become a cult gem. Now, more than two decades later, it returns to the city, screening as part of this year’s Downtown Festival programme, featuring a live Q&A with Hawke.

Written by Nicole Burdette and based on her 1990 play of the same name, Chelsea Walls unfolds through a series of vignettes, following a group of drifting artists over the course of a single day inside New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. Its ensemble cast includes Kris Kristofferson, Uma Thurman, Robert Sean Leonard, Rosario Dawson, Vincent D’Onofrio and Tuesday Weld, in her final film role, alongside a cameo from Linklater. “I had a passion for the Chelsea Hotel,” Hawke says. “I thought it was a deeply mysterious place and full of ghosts.” The film captures that mythology with atmosphere and feeling, presented through the interwoven stories of a new set of residents mixing behind the hotel’s storied walls. There are characters who are stuck, struggling and unstable; those trying to reignite their spark, and lovers who have long since lost theirs.

Made at the dawn of the digital-video revolution, the film was shot on MiniDV cameras over just eighteen days, embracing the new technology’s ease, flexibility and early texture. “I was deeply intrigued by how digital cameras would change filmmaking,” Hawke explains, “even exponentially increase the possibilities for filmmaking… If you saturated the digital image with colour it started to look beautifully underwater, kind of like a watercolour.”

In light of the Downtown Festival screening of Chelsea Walls, we sat down with Hawke to revisit the film’s origins, its enduring legacy and how the experience continues to inform him.

Alex James Taylor: It’s the 25th anniversary of Chelsea Walls, what are your feelings towards the film looking back?
Ethan Hawke: Ideally, the movie should be seen in its context. Digital video cameras had just been released and Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration had just come to the United States, so at that moment I was deeply intrigued by how digital cameras would change filmmaking – even exponentially increase the possibilities for filmmaking. In its infancy, digital didn’t look great, but if the writing was strong enough and acting was skilled enough, you could create an extremely interesting movie for a significantly cheaper budget.

I also noticed at this time that if you saturated the digital image with colour it started to look beautifully underwater, kind of like a watercolour – back then, the cameras weren’t as sharp and the image tended to blur. I had just made Great Expectations with Alfonso Cuarón, who was obsessed with the use of colour, and it opened my eyes to new possibilities (the entirety of Great Expectations was saturated green). I had this idea that if I braided each of the storylines with a different colour palette, I could make something really unique.

John Sloss and Gary Winnick had this idea for a company called InDigEnt where they were going to make ten films for $1 million total, across all ten films… So they came to me and asked, “Can you make a movie for $100k?” They gave me the equipment and editing resources, and I ran with it. I had seen Nicole Burdette’s play Chelsea Walls and loved her writing. I had a passion for the Chelsea Hotel. I thought it was a deeply mysterious place and full of ghosts. So I felt I could take the DV camera, go into the hotel, make the building itself the main character, and just have the other characters be passing through (as we all do in hotels… or perhaps anywhere?) This made the budgetary restrictions possible, since I wasn’t going to need any other locations. The trouble, of course, was that everyone had to work for free. Luckily I wasn’t the only one intrigued by the possibilities of digital video. So it was pretty easy to gather a cast and crew together for the experiment.

“So much of my cinema education was given to me by Richard Linklater. It’s really hard at this point in my life to separate his ethos from mine.”

AJT: When you watch Chelsea Walls now, what do you see in it that you recognise immediately as the young filmmaker you were – and what surprises you?
EH: What I see first is Tom Richard and Richard Ruchowski, who are both credited as cinematographers. Tom was my friend, and a brilliant photographer. He had no idea how to use a digital camera. Richard was younger and hungry and was teaching Tom what the equipment could do. I feel quite pleased with the whole watercolour effect we were going for. It’s not for everybody, but it’s the look we were after. Also, the people in the film, some of whom have become, in recent years, the ghosts they were playing (little Jimmy Scott, John Sites, Natasha Richardson. Kris Kristofferson) and others, all were extremely important to me. Their performances are almost more valuable now, because we always saw these characters as ghosts in the first place.

What surprises me most is that we took the gamble. It seems like an insane idea now to try to make the movie for $100k. But I’m so glad I did it. It was a huge learning lesson. So much of it was valuable. Kris Kristofferson and Tuesday Weld acting together is worth the price of admission alone. It was thrilling in the moment and thrilling now. DV’s gotten so good they shoot almost everything on it. I don’t think I knew in 2000 when we were doing this that in just a few years shooting on film would be the exception.

AJT: How did that experience go on to influence your future work as a director?
EH: My life as a director has been extremely eclectic. I’ve never been terribly interested in making commercial work as a director. I’ve done it as an actor – making populist art – but as a director; the collaboration with Nicole Burdette, with her writing, with Jeff Tweedy on the score, with Tom and Richard’s photography, with the actors and their performances, this all kind of kickstarted my adult life. I took a lot of the energy of the theatre company I founded earlier and poured it into that movie. Steve Zahn, Frank Whaley, and Robert Sean Leonard were all members of that company (Malaparte).

AJT: The film has such a strong relationship with music – you previously described it as a “double album.” Music has been a constant throughout your filmmaking, from Highway 99 to your music video work. How does music guide your filmmaking?
EH: I wanted the film to function as a jazz experiment. So if the building was the main character,  a pressing question became, “What does the building sound like?” Score was going to be a massive part of the movie. How does the hotel communicate with the characters and audience? DV had a compromised visual, but the sound wasn’t bogged down by any constraints. One of my favourite bands was Uncle Tupelo, who had broken up and Jeff Tweedy had formed WILCO a few years earlier. I thought he was brilliant. So I reached out to him to be the sound of the movie and to give the Chelsea Hotel a voice.

One of the frustrating things about the life of an actor is the terrible music that often accompanies your performances. One of the joys of directing is being able to be a part of the sound of the film. It’s so important. Many audiences don’t realise the importance of music and sound design. You have to choose what you look at, but sound is an experience that happens to you.

“One of the frustrating things about the life of an actor is the terrible music that often accompanies your performances. One of the joys of directing is being able to be a part of the sound of the film.”

AJT: You were surrounded by an amazing group of actors – Kris Kristofferson, Uma Thurman, Natasha Richardson, Robert Sean Leonard, Tuesday Weld and others. What did you learn about directing actors from that particular cast?
EH: It’s counterintuitive, what I learned. Since I had started as a young actor, I had always wanted to be a director. Until I directed, then I realised for the first time how much the actor contributes. I had taken that for granted. When someone like Steve Zhan walks on set, you look like a great director. But when an unprepared actor walks on set, you look like an unprepared ding-a-ling. Up until Chelsea Walls, I didn’t know that directors were following actors, I thought we were following them. So the experience of directing strangely inspired my life as an actor. Immediately after this film, I did Tape (another InDigEnt project) and Training Day. Both were a giant step forward in my life as an actor, and greatly informed by the lessons I learned wearing a new “director” hat on set.

AJT: You’re currently working on Camino Real, what can you tell us about this project?
EH: I’ve been working on a film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real for a long time. When it finally happens, it’ll owe a great debt to Chelsea Walls. With Camino, I want to push all the same ideas from Chelsea Walls further.

“When someone like Steve Zhan walks on set, you look like a great director. But when an unprepared actor walks on set, you look like an unprepared ding-a-ling.”

AJT: Is there a specific film you can cite as being fundamental in your directorial career, or perhaps a filmmaker you have worked with and whose work you feel close to?
EH: So much of my cinema education was given to me by Richard Linklater. It’s really hard at this point in my life to separate his ethos from mine. But at least I’m smart enough to realise that I stole much of it from him. Beyond that, Wim Wenders and Elia Kazan have always been huge influences on my career. Wim for the way he commands photography, and Elia for his masterful deployment of performance.

“Kris Kristofferson and Tuesday Weld acting together is worth the price of admission alone.”

AJT: What are your current feelings about the independent film landscape, and how important is it for platforms like The Downtown Festival to exist? Particularly in New York, a city so vital to independent cinema.
EH: One of the hard things about being alive right now is that with vast catalogues of media available to us at all times at the click of a button, it becomes so difficult to know what to watch. We’re so indebted to people who continue to curate intelligently, who can champion art of interest. When I was young, I was first introduced to the Terence Malick movie Badlands at an art house cinema. It was the kind of movie that was thoughtfully curated in arthouse theatres across the country. Now it’s available easily online, but in the vastness of the movies available on the Internet, it seems hardly anyone knows to watch it. Champions of independent cinema are needed now more than ever to cut through the noise and guide curious viewers to movies that might otherwise get buried.

Chelsea Walls is screening as part of The Downtown Festival on Thursday 15th October, featuring a live Q&A with Ethan Hawke.