Ethan Hawke

And when I first read the script, I was desperate to play this guy.

Yeah.

What flashes through my mind is when River and I were doing The Explorers, we both loved James Dean, and James Dean smoked Camon-filtered cigarettes, and we thought it would be cool to go out, and we stole a pack of Camon filters and went out in this field and smoked three of them.

And River turned green, and he vomited.

And when he passed, I thought about that moment.

We all have different bodies, and some of us can press the limit and our bodies can handle it and we can learn from it, and some of us turn green.

And River was very sensitive, extremely sensitive, and it's part of his genius.

I don't know, does that make sense to you what I'm trying to communicate?

And some of us get second chances, and some of us, our DNA is hardwired to protect ourselves, and some people don't have those guardrails.

And I don't understand it, and I know that the answer is you have to know yourself.

And yes, to your question, was it a warning?

Of course it was a warning.

But we all get warnings.

And I sometimes...

I think a lot of it is accident and I wish, I remember when we were 23, I felt that we had lived and now here I am, you know, I'm about to be 55 years old and I've lived twice as long as River.

River didn't get to be a dad and River didn't get to have the experiences of the roller coaster ride of the ups and downs of a profession.

I almost feel sadder about his death now

Because I would love to see him.

I'd love to see what he thinks now.

He was such a political young man and he was such an idealist.