Ethan Hawke was 'humiliated' after a close encounter with Springsteen - USA Today
Spoiler alert! We're discussing the ending of Ethan Hawke’s new movie “The Weight” (in theaters now).
NEW YORK – After a perilous trek smuggling gold through the wilderness, Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke) is finally a free man.
And in the last moments of 1930s-set thriller “The Weight,” the recently incarcerated widower is emotionally reunited with his only child, Penny (Avy Berry). The film ends with the father-daughter duo driving off into the sunset to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s scorching toe-tapper “Call Me the Breeze.”
Hawke, 55, is a lifelong fan of the Southern rock band, and he even appeared on a 2012 episode of “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” where they happened to be performing. Although, he couldn’t muster up the courage to say hello backstage.
“They’re rehearsing and you pass in the hallways and stuff,” Hawke tells USA TODAY. “I remember one time when I was on some talk show, Bruce Springsteen was on and I brought my copy of ‘The River’ for him to sign and security guards wouldn’t let me. So I’ve never approached musicians backstage since. I felt kind of humiliated.”
The actor credits “The Weight” director Padraic McKinley for picking "Call Me the Breeze," whose lyrics reflect the start of a new chapter for Murphy and his daughter. (“Well, I got the green light, baby / I got to keep movin’ on.”)
The song was originally written and recorded by blues pioneer J.J. Cale, before it was made famous by Lynyrd Skynyrd on the group's 1974 album “Second Helping.”
“It’s a period movie, so in a way, it’s really incongruous to play a Lynyrd Skynyrd song at the end of it,” Hawke says. “But I thought it worked perfectly.”
Hawke’s affinity for music courses through many of his films. He was Oscar-nominated earlier this year for playing Broadway composer Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon,” while he played legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in 2015’s “Born to Be Blue.” He even made an (unofficial) compilation of The Beatles’ solo material titled “The Black Album,” which was memorably featured in 2014’s “Boyhood.”
He also sat down with Dolly Parton for his 2025 documentary “Highway 99: A Double Album,” about country icon Merle Haggard. Parton died last month at age 80 after a brief battle with cancer.
“I got to interview her,” Hawke recalls. “She went on tour with him in the early ‘70s and he was in love with her. It was a very interesting interview. It’s so hard not to just sit there and be in awe, isn’t it? I felt like she’s some secular version of a saint. She just radiates. You leave her feeling so good about yourself and the world.”
