Knicks Owner James Dolan Cut Off Ethan Hawke’s Free MSG Tickets Due To Critical Comments
First of all, Ethan Hawke’s interview on the latest episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast is great entertainment. If you haven’t checked it out, you should go do that when you get done here. As usual, Simmons does the filmography rundown, and Hawke doesn’t really hold much back. Another thing Simmons likes to talk to his actor guests about is sports, obviously. In Hawke’s case, he’s been photographed at Madison Square Garden sporting events and starred in the 2o16 baseball movie The Phenom; he’s the perfect guest to chop up some sports with Simmons. What normally turns out to be an actor over-matched in sports knowledge turned out to be Ethan Hawke dropping gems of behind-the-scenes dialogue. Most notably, the time he called up the Knicks to get his normal free tickets only to get shot down by orders from James Dolan.
Here’s the transcript from The Bill Simmons Podcast:
(edited and condensed)
Hawke: The point is I’m not wanted and I don’t go where I’m not wanted. It’s hard to be a fan for a place that doesn’t like you…
Simmons: But one person (James Dolan) doesn’t like you!
Hawke: You have to understand I’ve been going since Reality Bites (1994). I would call up and say ‘Hey! Can I get tickets?’ and they’d go, ‘Oh, welcome Ethan’. Sometimes, they wouldn’t have tickets but they’d always hook me up and maybe the seats weren’t great or maybe they were great depending on the night. Then I called up one time and they said, “that’ll be $7,800”. I was like, “Oh! Uhh, why is this the first time you guys are charging me?”. They said, “You should of thought of that before you went on The Jimmy Fallon Show…“. And I was like, “Wow, this (banning) is real.”. I’ve apologized publicily to try and get my seats back..
Hawke went on to say he was “exaggerating” but Simmons didn’t buy it. I certainly believe him. I mean, if there is one person out there that’s spiteful, it’s James Dolan.
I’m not sure what he said on Fallon, but earlier in the episode he mentioned that it related to Dolan’s handling of the Mike D’Antoni-Jeremy Lin-Carmelo Anthony situation.
First Reformed, the film Hawke was promoting, will hit theaters on May 18th.
You can listen to the entire episode below: