“I wanted to make a movie that I wanted to see. I am a very spiritually minded person. It’s the most important thing in my life. And I don’t see much about it (in film)” -Ethan Hawke (Wildcat Screenwriter and Director)
“Don’t let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story — just like the typewriter was mine.”
“Make me a mystic, immediately.” -Flannery O’Connor
Long before Maya Hawke was crowned the Queen of the Ingenues, the actress-singer-songwriter discovered Flannery O’ Connor. As a junior at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights, Maya’s English teacher introduced the class to Our Lady of Milledgeville. Fighting ensued. Some hated Flannery. Others loved Flannery. Some thought they shouldn’t even be reading Flannery. Secretly wanting to impress her English teacher — a Northwestern PhD who had published a book on Hegel — Maya marched to Books Are Magic to discover more Flannery. A fifty-year-old hidden revelation appeared in the indie Brooklyn bookstore that day — Flannery O’Connor’s A Prayer Journal.
Buried amidst O’Connor’s Milledgeville archives for nearly fifty years after her early death from lupus in 1964, A Prayer Journal was discovered by O’Connor’s old friend William A. Sessions. Composed between January 1946 and September 1947, when Flannery was a twenty-year-old MFA student at the University of Iowa, the Journal reveals another ingenue wrestling with faith and vocation. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the printing house of O’Connor’s two novels, short stories, and nonfiction works, published O’Connor’s short book of prayers and musings in 2013.
These intimate and funny prayers of O’ Connor such as, “Make me a mystic, immediately,” became the muse for Hawke’s audition monologue for the Julliard School. After winning entrance into the prestigious theater program at Julliard with her A Prayer Journal monologue, Hawke contemplated creating a one-woman Flannery O’Connor play. Upon landing the roles of Jo March in the BBC’s adaptation of Little Women and Robin Buckley in Netflix’s Stranger Things, Hawke continued to “manifest” her Flannery O’Connor project in press interviews. In true millennial “manifestation” mode, Hawke talked about her desire to play Flannery O’Connor until her agent finally met the man who held the film rights for O’Connor’s work — Joe Goodman (yes, that’s his real name) of Good Country Pictures. After securing the film rights, Maya hired her father, Ethan Hawke, as the screenwriter (with Shelby Gaines) and director of Wildcat.
Significantly influenced by the intimate and sometimes comic meditations found in O’Connor’s A Prayer Journal, the narrative architecture of Wildcat weaves a semi-historic ‘biopic’ within five adaptations of O’Connor’s well known Southern Gothic tales, including “Comforts of Home,” “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “Revelation,” “Parker’s Back,” and “Good Country People.” In addition to A Prayer Journal, the dialogue of Wildcat relies heavily on O’Connor’s essays and lectures found in Mystery and Manners and letters found in The Habit of Being. Combined, these three books helped to illuminate O’Connor’s theology, literary influences, and legendary humor on screen. While theological musings and prayers about Kafka, Proust, Bloy, and Bernanos aren’t usually the foundation for blockbuster Hollywood success, Maya and Ethan Hawke knew their film would find an independent audience. Who wouldn’t laugh out loud at dialogue like, “Sickness is a place more instructive than a long trip to Europe” or “Whoever invented cocktail parties should be drawn and quartered”?
Speaking at a recent Wildcat screening and Q & A session, Ethan Hawke commented:
It’s a difficult subject matter for a lot of people. They don’t know what to make out of it. I wanted to make a movie that I wanted to see. I am a very spiritually minded person. It’s the most important thing in my life. And I don’t see much about it (in film).
The audience Hawke had in mind when creating their independent film included literary audiences, devout Catholics, spiritual seekers, and fans of Maya’s burgeoning acting and musical work (Maya’s Aimee Mann-influenced third album Chaos Angel drops on May 31). Wildcat neither proselytizes nor sensationalizes O’Connor’s pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic faith, but rather seeks to capture the mystery in faith, suffering and creativity that influenced O’Connor’s short life and writing style. Elizabeth Coffman, co-director of Flannery the 2019 American Masters documentary featured on PBS, recently told OSV News the connection between faith and creativity was a central theme in the actors’ discussions of Wildcat. “The storytelling they (Hawkes) accomplished, with her (O’Connor’s) commitment to both her faith and writing, will end up converting people” even though “evangelization” was not their intent, according to Coffman.
Image credit: Oscilloscope Laboratories
Capturing the mystery of faith, suffering and creativity has been a more recent theme in Ethan Hawke’s acting work as well. After pursuing more Gen-X icon roles, Hawke’s portrayals as Rev. Ernst Toller in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed and John Brown in The Good Lord Bird have revealed more of Hawke’s inner life in the last decade. In a September 2020 New Yorker article about Hawke’s portrayal of abolitionist John Brown, Hawke spoke of his own ecclesiastical and contemplative life as a teenager volunteering “under the auspices of the Episcopal Church, in Haiti, during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and in Appalachia.” Beginning in 1981, Ethan’s childhood and family social life centered around Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton, New Jersey. His mother, Leslie Green Hawke, a former book editor in Manhattan who first introduced her son to Flannery O’Connor’s works, ran the youth group at Trinity Episcopal when Ethan was in high school. A 1988 graduate of The Hun School of Princeton, an experience which prepared him for his breakout role in Peter Weir’s 1989 Dead Poets Society, Hawke was also confirmed at Trinity Episcopal Church. In recent interviews, Hawke has disclosed his grandmother hoped he would pursue a vocation as an Episcopal priest.
The issue of vocation and its relationship to the arts beautifully permeates both A Prayer Journal and Wildcat. Can writing and other art forms also be acts of worship? Can personal ambition rise above ego and self-centeredness to serve God and the greater good? These were some of the original questions Maya Hawke had while reading A Prayer Journal – ones that lead directly to the production of Wildcat.
In the film, a feverish and pain ridden O’Connor poses this question of vocation to her parish priest: “My writing is scandalous. Can it still serve God?” The priest assures her that if her writing is honest then her conscience should be clear. Both then and now, O’Connor’s literary vocation serves God through its scandalous honesty. As the French painter Georges Braque mused: “Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. Truth exists; only lies are invented.” In this way, O’Connor believed her disturbing work pointed to the truth in a world full of absurdity and lies. For her, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally” and “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”
One wonders how many Stranger Things afficionados or Before trilogy fans will start reading Flannery O’Connor or visit a church service because of Wildcat? While the film only portrays a very small time in the writer’s short life (and doesn’t attempt to address more recent criticisms of racism), it nevertheless provides an impetus for a deeper dive into her literature and letters of shocking and unthinkable grace. In her Journal O’Connor prayed, “Dear God please help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You. Don’t let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story — just like the typewriter was mine.” A profound challenge and prayer for us today just as it was for Flannery O’Connor in 1947.
Molly Collins Phelps once lived a few doors down from Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton, New Jersey where Ethan Hawke reaffirmed his Baptismal Vows of Confirmation. In The Fall Guy parlance, she wonders if Flannery O’Connor used nihilism as her “sexy bacon” to entice the “cultured despisers.”
Featured image credit: Oscilloscope Laboratories
Thanks, Molly! I loved reading about her journey to making this film and the way you held up the conversation between faith and creativity that took place.