Moviegoers who attended an Oklahoma premiere for the Ethan Hawke-directed motion picture “Wildcat” were treated to a question-and-answer session that delved into (A) the film’s origins and (B) the bromance between Hawke and Oklahoma filmmaker Sterlin Harjo.
Hawke is in Tulsa to film a pilot for “The Sensitive Kind,” created and directed by Harjo. They carved out time to join 300-plus attendees at the Tulsa Film Collective’s sold-out “The Big Night” event — a Sunday night screening of “Wildcat” with a post-film Q&A moderated by Harjo.
Hawke visited Tulsa in 2023 to guest star in a final-season episode of Harjo’s groundbreaking and critically acclaimed series “Reservation Dogs.” He returned to star in “The Sensitive Kind,” described as a Tulsa noir about a guy who knows too much.
Hawke and Harjo are tight. Hawke had previously shown Harjo a rough cut of “Wildcat.” When you’re done, Harjo told Hawke, we can screen it for you. “We” ultimately meant the Tulsa Film Collective (Harjo is a co-founder) and Circle Cinema. The movie will return to Circle Cinema beginning May 24.
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“Ethan is a community guy,” Harjo said before introducing Hawke. “I am a community guy. I love bringing people together. I love making art here. I love sharing art here, and I love being able to work with Ethan right now in Tulsa. It’s been a really beautiful experience.”
Hawke thanked people for attending and said, “Do you know how lucky you are to live here?” He called Tulsa a “badass place” with many amazing people.
Before “Wildcat” was shown in a packed theater room and in an overflow theater, Hawke said, “If you hate it, don’t let me know.” That generated laughter. The lead in “The Sensitive Kind” followed with “If you love it, you let me know. I’m very sensitive.”
Hawke also should be a proud father. Daughter Maya Hawke does heavy lifting as the star of “Wildcat,” a different breed of biopic about celebrated Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor, who died at age 39 in 1964.
“Wildcat” invites moviegoers to weave in and out of O’Connor’s mind as she ponders the great questions of her writing: Can scandalous art still serve God? Does suffering precede all greatness? Can illness be a blessing?
O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus when she was 24.
Said a “Wildcat” synopsis: Struggling with the same disease that took her father’s life when she was a child and desperate to make her mark as a great writer, this crisis pitches her imagination into a feverish exploration of belief. As she dives deeper into her craft, the lines between reality, imagination and faith begin to blur, allowing O’Connor to ultimately come to peace with her situation and heal a strained relationship with her mother.
“It’s this like examination of the process of writing, which I relate to so much,” Harjo said, adding that he loved the film.
“I thought it was really powerful,” he said. “It was so, so good. And Maya is so, so good.”
It was Maya (an executive producer) who pitched the idea for the movie to her family. Ethan’s wife, Ryan, is a “Wildcat” producer. Ethan said making a movie about O’Connor “scared the hell out of me, but you can’t say no to your own kid, right?”
There was a 10-minute break between the end of “Wildcat” and the Q&A session. During the break, people who had seen the film were given an opportunity to use a QR code to submit questions for the Q&A. They apologized for not using any of the questions.
“I was going to take questions, but I thought we could just talk,” Harjo said. “We’re like friends at this point.”
Providing a prelude to their current relationship, Harjo had just seen the 2015 film “Boyhood” (a film that earned Hawke one of his four Academy Award nominations) when he randomly spotted Hawke at the Denver airport. Harjo felt compelled to say something, and Hawke was “really nice.”
Later, they met professionally because of Hawke’s interest in telling a Native story. Hawke wrote a script about the Apache wars from the Apache perspective. It was the story of Geronimo.
“Hollywood, no surprise, wouldn’t make it,” Harjo said. “They were like, you’ve gotta get some white generals as the lead and things like that. So, to Ethan’s credit, he quit trying to get the script made and he turned it into a graphic novel and published it. That’s how we met. I found this graphic novel (“Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars)” and I just thought it was such an interesting idea. The artwork’s beautiful, and I really love the story.”
That led to a face-to-face chat at the famed Chateau Marmont.
“Now we’re meeting for real,” Harjo said. “So we talked and we decided let’s try to give this a go... It became this really cool story called ‘Indeh’ that is about storytelling. And it’s about who gets to tell your story. ... You know, does Hollywood get to tell your story? Does a white general get to tell your story? Do you get to tell your story? What happens when different voices try to tell that story? And it’s something that’s in development, and that’s how we became friends.”
Hawke said it was wonderful to meet Harjo years before “Reservation Dogs.” He watched Harjo’s film “Mekko” after meeting him, “and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this guy’s real.’ But I didn’t even almost need to watch it. I knew by the way that you talked that I liked the way that you thought about stories and that we were simpatico.”
Added Harjo later: “Sorry we’re talking about our love affair here. But, you know, it has been just a really great collaborative relationship where like now we’re working and he’s the lead in this show that I’m directing.”