Actors Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette admit it was intense to watch themselves age in the groundbreaking movie "Boyhood," which was filmed over 12 years.
"Boyhood," which hits theaters Friday, follows 6-year-old Mason over "life's most radically fluctuating decade, through a familiar whirl of family moves, family controversies, faltering marriages, re-marriages, new schools, first loves, lost loves, good times, scary times and a constantly unfolding mix of heartbreak and wonder."
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The R-rated movie, directed by Richard Linklater, debuted in January at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim.
The actors were filmed over a 12-year period, beginning in 2002. The story primarily revolves around the boy, Mason, played by Ellar Coltraine, from the age of 6 to when he leaves for college.
Hawke said shooting the movie with the growing Coltraine,
watching his “voice and body morph,” Star Pulse reported, was similar to time-lapse photography. But Hawke and Arquette also watched as they grew and changed over the years.
Arquette said she appreciated how the movie showed the reality of how time impacts a family.
“I love that human-ness about it,” she told Radar Magazine, according to Star Pulse. “We represent a family, and hopefully you believe what the characters are doing. But you have seen us in movies before — movies in which we were younger — and are familiar with how we looked then. It’s as if actors are supposed to freeze in time, but that’s inauthentic.”
Hawke said while he was initially surprised to watch how he aged over the shooting of the movie, he was proud of the film.
"It was pretty intense,” he told Radar. “When the movie started, I was like, 'Man, I still look good!' But by the end ... Everybody acts like it's surprising (when humans age), but it's happening all the time to everyone. We act freaked out about it but it's just the reality. The second you buy a car, it's a used car. That's the way we are: This machine is in action. I tried to be proud of it."
Linklater said the 12-year project was something he had wanted to do for a long time.
"I've long wanted to tell the story of a parent-child relationship that follows a boy from the first through the 12th grade and ends with him going off to college,” he said. “But the dilemma is that kids change so much that it is impossible to cover that much ground. And I am totally ready to adapt the story to whatever he is going through."
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