What Was the Girl in Before Sunrise Reading
'Before Sunrise': The Making of an Indie Classic
On a tiny budget and at the mercy of Viennese trains and Ferris wheels, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke managed to create '90s film magic.
No ane knew how "Before Sunrise" would terminate. In improver to leaving the audience on a cliffhanger — would the visiting American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and the French pupil Céline (Julie Delpy) see again after i nighttime of passionate chat on the streets of Vienna? — the filmmakers themselves were at a loss until the last infinitesimal.
"We shot in chronological order and worked on the script every weekend throughout the shoot," the director and co-author Richard Linklater said. "We went pretty far into this thinking they weren't going to plan to meet again, and the night before, nosotros were up until 3 in the morning rewriting the concluding scene."
Made for just $two.v million, "Earlier Sunrise" opened the 1995 Sundance Movie Festival and formed a collaborative partnership between Linklater, Hawke and Delpy that led to 2 sequels, "Earlier Sunset" (2004) and "Before Midnight" (2013), and decades of friendship.
In honor of the commencement moving-picture show'southward 25th anniversary, I interviewed the stars and creators about making the unconventional indie romance. Here are edited excerpts from those conversations.
The idea for the movie came to Linklater during a night spent with a woman he met in a Philadelphia toy store in 1989. Years subsequently, he would acquire she had died in a motorcycle blow just before "Before Sunrise" began filming.
RICHARD LINKLATER This girl was flirting with me while I waited for my sister [to finish shopping], then I wrote a little note like, "Hey, I'grand in boondocks for one night if y'all desire to hang out." Somewhere in the night I said to her, "I want to make a film about this. Just this feeling." That's really all it was trying to e'er capture — that rush of coming together someone and that undercurrent of amour and romance.
In 1993, he asked the extra Kim Krizan, who had appeared in his Texas-ready films "Slacker" and "Dazed and Dislocated," if she would help write the screenplay.
KIM KRIZAN (co-writer) I'd never written a script before, merely he'd read my primary's thesis on Anaïs Nin and thought I could write.
LINKLATER In my previous films, I felt the male view overwhelmed. So my accented goal was to take a strong female perspective. Kim was the kind of person y'all'd run into and within 30 seconds yous're talking about something substantial. I liked that.
KRIZAN Nosotros were thinking about the management information technology could go, and I said, Well, I've met really interesting people traveling on trains in Europe. I'd had fantastic conversations where I knew I'd never see them again. Things tend to happen in the space of a twenty-four hour period in Linklater stories, so that instantly created a structure.
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LINKLATER Information technology was a wonderful collaboration over an intense xi days, simply I always knew the process would eventually include the 2 actors. And so I was upfront that this was a template of a script, and it was going to be deepened later.
Linklater considered a version prepare in America, merely funding and an interest from Castle Rock Entertainment allowed them to shoot abroad.
LINKLATER On i hand, the picture show could be set anywhere. I thought, if I don't take any money, in that location'south a train station in San Antonio and we could do this close to home. But I ended up going to the Vienna motion picture festival with "Dazed" and found out they had some European subsidy money. And and so Martin Shafer read the script and was similar, "Hey, this could be good."
MARTIN SHAFER (a co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment) The script came to me and it was very curt. I think only about 35 pages. It had a lot of dialogue just was more of a blueprint. Information technology was so different from the so-called romantic comedies of the time, which were often very contrived, and information technology had such a naturalistic experience to it.
It took a bicoastal casting telephone call and more than six months to notice the perfect leads.
LINKLATER That was the biggest casting choice imaginable. It wasn't articulate if information technology was going to be a European male and American female person [or vice versa]. In the first draft, we named the characters Chris and Terry because both are kind of genderless. It was that open.
JUDY HENDERSON (casting director) I kept all the Polaroids considering so many of the people who auditioned are superstars today. Nosotros saw Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston, before she was on "Friends."
LINKLATER Anthony Rapp invited me to run across a play he was in with Ethan Hawke in New York. I had never met Ethan, merely at that moment, he was the biggest star in his historic period range. I ended up at a bar with him after the play.
ETHAN HAWKE (Jesse) We hung out until 4 a.k. After that, Rick sent me the script, and I thought he was offering me the role. I was really excited and had all these questions, and I realized later talking to my agents that he was non offer — he was request me to audition with about x,000 other people.
LINKLATER Julie was the 2d actor I met on the offset day of our big L.A. casting session. I remember liking her, and her résumé was impressive. She'd worked all over Europe. She was just getting started in the U.S., but she immediately went to the meridian of the list.
JULIE DELPY (Céline) I like the idea of people coming together over ane night and falling in beloved. Linklater conspicuously stated that he wanted the actors involved in the writing, and I liked that. It wasn't merely a part.
HENDERSON In the end, it came downwards to ii women and two men: Ethan, Julie, Michael Vartan ["Never Been Kissed"] and Sadie Frost ["Bram Stoker's Dracula"]. I think they went with Julie because she was wonderful, and they thought the French accent gave a definite feeling that Jesse was meeting someone who was non from his world. And with Michael and Ethan, information technology was a tough pick because they were both really good. You could almost toss a coin.
LINKLATER I was looking for two artistic partners. I wasn't looking for simply two pretty faces.
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HENDERSON Ethan and Julie had a chemistry that was electric and charming at the same time.
HAWKE Meeting Julie was like meeting a graphic symbol from a novel, like Anna Karenina or something. She's a very deep person. I'd never felt so American and then dumb in my life.
DELPY He was like a puppy, and so young and sweet. He hates that, but actually he had a beautiful naïve quality about him. I mean naïve in a adept way, naïve but very smart at the same time.
Delpy, Hawke and Linklater headed to Vienna for a three-calendar week intensive workshop alee of the summer 1994 shoot and continued revising the script throughout 25 days of filming.
HAWKE Revising is fashion likewise mild of a word. Rick wanted to make a movie about living in the moment. And to do that we were all going to have to live in the moment together to create the movie. For every scene in there, we wrote, like, 17 that didn't make the cutting.
DELPY Information technology was intense, and a lot of my personal feelings went into information technology. I was an extremely romantic person, very pure and full of dreams. The writing was very organic. The guys would heed to me as I was really the merely adult female in the room, specially when we got to Vienna.
LINKLATER To this solar day, they don't really get the credit as actors because everybody thinks they're improvising.
HAWKE It didn't piss me off [that at that place wasn't a give-and-take to credit them every bit writers]. Information technology felt similar such a chiliad gamble. I used to joke at that place were times when Julie and I didn't desire credit because we were so sure information technology was going to exist so bad.
Regular trains were used to motion-picture show Jesse and Céline's run across-cute, besides as Céline's send-off in the closing scene.
LINKLATER It was hell. Nosotros rode the trains from Vienna to Salzburg and back for iii days to get the outset scene and the shots out the windows. Y'all're good when the railroad train reaches a certain speed, merely if information technology's jumping around, you're screwed.
HAWKE My stepfather had given me this burgundy turtleneck, and I was in love with it. I don't know why. And and so I just immediately regretted it because it was really hot. What idiot thinks they await expert in a turtleneck in summer in Vienna?
LINKLATER The very last shot of the movie, when Julie walks onto the train, we had that timed to the 2d and nosotros got ane hazard to do it. It was like, the train's going to leave here at 8:37:xxx. I'm going to say action at 8:twenty. She'southward going to go on a non-moving train. Then when she gets to her seat, the railroad train is going to be moving. It was tense, simply nosotros rehearsed the hell out of it and information technology worked.
DELPY Information technology was insanely hot. I had not slept in days because we shot [mostly] at nighttime. I remember being miserable. Information technology was the end of the shoot, and I felt I was never going to run across Rick and Ethan again.
When the pair almost kiss while listening to Kath Bloom's "Come Hither" in the tape store booth, Delpy and Hawke's reactions were authentic.
LINKLATER That's the but time I withheld anything from the cast. The lyrics were in the script, merely they had never really heard the song. Then yous can run across them actually listening because they'd never heard that yearning, creaky thing in Kath Bloom'due south voice that'due south so moving.
HAWKE It's probably my single favorite take of anything I've been involved with.
DELPY That was really special. It was similar magic — each time I felt Ethan looking away, I would expect at him and vice versa. I almost savage in love with him right there, but then Rick said cut.
Jesse and Céline's showtime osculation takes place on Vienna's Prater Ferris wheel at sunset, only was hard in more means than one.
LINKLATER We tried to shoot it at sunset, but they would but stop the Ferris bike for 10 minutes, and then we'd have to go effectually and practice it again. We had iii different light levels past the time we finished. And so we went back a week later and reshot that in the morning when they let united states of america stop it for an hr. When you meet their get-go buss, that was shot in the a.m.
HAWKE Julie is afraid of heights. Attempt making out with somebody who's admittedly petrified. Information technology was challenging, and I don't think she was terribly impressed — she'd been with a lot more interesting men than me.
DELPY I've never been on [a Ferris wheel] since. When you act, you have to go over your fears constantly. I'1000 also shy with men, and I had to kiss someone who was a friend at this betoken. Information technology was scary.
HAWKE I remember laughing a lot because Julie merely kept making fun of me, "That'southward the wait you requite girls? You've got to do better than that!"
Linklater intentionally left several elements of the moving picture up to the audience's imagination, namely did Jesse and Céline have sexual activity?
LINKLATER Technically, you could see information technology any fashion you want. If you expect closely, she'due south dressed a trivial differently. So if yous really do the math, you lot go O.Thou., that dress had to come off to become that shirt off. Something happened. I remember all the hints are there.
"Before Sunrise" made simply $five.nine meg domestically and $17.2 million internationally, but they had created something that would outweigh the box-office receipts.
LINKLATER Ethan was the Gen Ten histrion later on "Reality Bites" and I was the Gen X director, and nosotros didn't really evangelize a Gen Ten film. There'due south no pop-civilization references, no hipster types. You pay the price at the time, but now I'm kind of proud yous tin can go to Vienna and have a "Before Sunrise" walking tour right next to a "Third Human" walking tour.
DELPY After the third film, now people think of me as Céline, and information technology'due south sometimes hard to become out of this "ideal" adult female role. Some people detest me for even trying to do anything dissimilar. Information technology'due south a scrap frustrating.
Last twelvemonth, Delpy said she was paid almost a tenth of what Hawke made on "Before Sunrise" and didn't achieve equal pay until "Before Midnight." (She wouldn't annotate on the subject in our interview.) Linklater issued a lengthy statement in response, noting that "nobody was getting paid much at all."
LINKLATER I got paid a lot less than I had on ["Mazed"]. Ethan, at the superlative of his popularity, took a huge pay cut. I won't go as far as to say the film would not have happened without him, but it wouldn't have happened in the same way.
HAWKE Information technology was kind of a wake-up phone call for me after "Before Sunrise." When information technology's a boyfriend who's got ideas and wants to be a filmmaker and write — [people] find that really interesting. But a lot of men are really intimidated when that'south coming from a young female person voice. Julie has e'er been one of the most remarkable film minds I've ever come in contact with, bar none. It's astonishing how much I just learned nearly how gender has played a office in defining and limiting her experience. The "Earlier" trilogy is a bad example of pay gap because nobody got paid. I accept no idea what Julie got paid or what I got paid. On those movies none of us were doing it for the money.
Afterward 25 years, the foretime era of "Before Sunrise" has taken on new significant for the actors.
DELPY I was then young and vulnerable. I wish I could travel in fourth dimension and tell Julie and so to non self-destruct so much with feet and insecurity. Tell her to take care of herself. "Before Sunrise" is a very romantic picture show, and somehow I never had that romantic, dreamy run across in my life. Movies are magic a flake, life isn't.
HAWKE My daughter [the actress Maya Hawke] decided to watch the movie with some of her friends, and at that place was a certain green-eyed they had for a time where you didn't have email. Life insisted that you live in the moment more. There's something near always being digitally present that allows you lot to not exist present, and part of what Jesse and Céline try to do in that movie is actually be present with each other.
Every nine years, there's been a sequel. Just information technology's unlikely a fourth moving-picture show, if it happens, would arrive on schedule.
HAWKE There was a feeling I had in my gut when nosotros finished "Earlier Midnight" that I'd never had earlier, which was that we were done. "Sunrise, "Sunset," "Midnight" is ane work in its ain strange way. That doesn't mean at that place won't exist some other work, similar an epilogue. I would be curious about an "Subsequently" series, nigh something where you really deal with the 2nd half of your life.
LINKLATER Mayhap we'll look until they're in their 80s and do a comic remake of "Amour," where one euthanizes the other in old age. I'm not ruling that out.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/movies/before-sunrise-ethan-hawke-julie-delpy.html
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