Jimmy Fallon isn’t afraid to bust out his guitar at any given moment; the Tonight Show host seemed to always have it on hand during his time on Saturday Night Live, and as host of the popular late night talk show he’s made music a priority. He’s also pretty skilled at impressions, which keeps fans tuning in every evening. Earlier this week, Fallon sat down with Boyhood star Ethan Hawke to talk tunes and kids, and both brought out their instruments to channel a little Bob Dylan.
Hawke did a very passable impression of Dylan using “Rock-a-bye Baby” as an example, saying he uses the technique to get his two young kids to sleep at night. Fallon then felt compelled to pull out his own impression with “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”, which Hawke said was a bit too upbeat to really do justice to the Dylan impression.
Hawke often shows off his musical skills in his film projects (remember Hey, That’s My Bike from Reality Bites?), including Boyhood, which garnered a slew of Oscar nominations and the respect of just about everyone in Hollywood due to its use of real-time during filming. Hawke wrote and performed two songs for the film, which he says was originally more a way to get in touch with his character than anything else.
“We didn’t know at that time whether they would be in the movie or not, but it allowed me to take some time and get into character. It was just an exercise for me to find my character. I wrote a song for my kids and wrote a song for my wife imagining from the standpoint of my character. That way, if we wanted to get to know Mason Sr. as a musician the material was there. At one point in the film we see him playing an old Guy Clark song, so we had this image in mind of the kind of musician he would be: a Townes van Zant wannabe. If it had been a normal movie I never would have been able to come up with two songs, but I had 12 years!” Hawke said.