If anyone knows her way around protests, it’s Daryl Hannah. The actress and director has been arrested a half-dozen times protesting for environmental causes. But even she can have a hard time getting her head around the almost daily chaos of the second Trump administration.
“There are too many horrible things to even talk about,” she says from California, where she’s been helping her family deal with the loss of their home from the L.A. fires. “A lot of my focus has to do with the environment and the potential destruction, considering what we’ve been facing already with these fires, floods, hurricanes, and global devastation. To not take that seriously and start going in the other direction is just so fucking stupid. Sorry for my French, but it’s just so short-sighted on behalf of all living things.” And don’t get her started on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who once joined Hannah in protesting the Keystone XL oil pipeline (both were arrested). “So disappointing,” she says, “because he was such a good, powerful environmental advocate for so long. The fact that he would be part of this administration is shocking to a lot of people.”
How does she make sense of it all? “We’ve taken to not watching the televised news so much because it can be way too overwhelming,” she says. “We just choose our reliable outlets, because it definitely is better for our mental health.”
By “we,” Hannah means herself and her husband, Neil Young. More than just Young’s partner, Hannah has also taken an active in role in his work, working on his stage backdrops and album covers and documenting his music. In the roughly decade since they became a couple, Hannah has made a movie about the making of his Barn album with Crazy Horse, has filmed all his tours for his archives (including every show on last year’s tour with the Horse), and even made what she calls an “improved imaginary goofball home movie” (2018’s surreal Western Paradox, starring Young, Promise of the Real, and Willie Nelson).
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Her new film, playing in theaters April 17 with a possible wider distribution after, offers another perspective on Young and his life. Filmed on the bus, backstage, and onstage during his 2023 run of solo shows on the West Coast, Coastal provides a pretty intimidate look at Young on the road during his first tour in four years. Filming the bus scenes on her iPhone, Hannah captured him just before and after shows interacting with his son Ben (who was born with severe cerebral palsy) and his small crew. “It’s not even a new iPhone,” she says. “It’s not the latest model. But I didn’t want to have a big camera or anything, because I didn’t want to make Neil feel self-conscious at all. I wanted to him forget about it.”
Hannah says she’ll be filming this year’s run of Young shows with the Chrome Hearts, but has no plans to turn that into a doc at the moment. Instead, she’s shopping around her first feature script, what she calls “a homage to Sunset Boulevard, but kind of more a dark comedy instead of a film noir”; she also hopes to direct herself. “Because this [Trump 2.0] is so overwhelming, it’s actually quite important to focus on the things we love, because that’s what keeps you refueled,” Hannah says. “It’s important not to just get lost in the depression and the fear and all that. It’s really important to stay focused on the things that bring you joy.”
You’ve been filming most of Neil’s recent tours. What made you want to turn this particular footage from 2023 into a doc?
Well, usually I film the tours so Neil has archival footage. I don’t necessarily make them into documentaries. I usually film everything, tours and recording sessions. That’s how the Barn documentary happened as well, because I was filming it. A lot of that was shot on my iPad, but they were like, “You can’t be seen!” Crazy Horse is very, very private when they’re making music. They don’t want to be self-conscious at all.
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How did you get around that?
Hide? [Laughs.] Neil says that sometimes I just become a camera lump. I fold into my sweatshirt and just turn into a little lump with my iPad.
This [2023 run] was a solo tour. I’ve been thinking for a long time that I would like to show certain aspects of what it’s like for him. Even friends of mine will be like, “Oh, can I come to the party after the show?” I’m like, “Party? We get on the bus and start heading to the next town.” If people think it’s a rager, I wanted to share how sort of human it really is, at least for us. I wanted to show that it’s very solitary and kind of almost, you know, normal existence in some ways.
I especially was kind of stunned myself by the fact that after a show, he almost can’t talk. He’s drained. He has to just sit there and stare out the window for a while, and re-enter his body. I think, in the end, I kind of somehow miraculously got what I was hoping to get, which was sort of a mix of almost the loneliness of being on a solo tour, where you have a little moment of pensive, maybe even melancholy after the show, or just sort of a drained feeling. I kind of wanted to dissuade people of their notion of what rock & roll tour is.
The closest we get to backstage guests are shots of Joni Mitchell and Lukas Nelson at one show.
That was the first show in L.A. Joni and my mom and Lukas came. That was the only time we had people backstage. My mom and Joni are both in their eighties. It was so funny, because when my mom was saying, “I was singing at the end,” Joni was like, “I was singing louder! I was the loudest!”
What was it like to go back on tour with him after four years?
He was really nervous, actually. He talks about it in the film. He said, “I don’t know if I can do this — we’ll see.“ But he’s been obviously making music for so many decades that it’s kind of in his DNA at that point. So even though he was nervous, it was very second nature once he got onstage and started to play. It’s hard for him to not be playing music in some way, shape, or form. I don’t think there was ever a concern that he was never going to tour again. I don’t think it’s possible. He’s so engaged with music, I just don’t think there’s some point where he’s going to say, “That’s it for me.”
Daryl Hannah
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Many of his peers are doing farewell tours now.
He’s not that person. The venues may change. I don’t know how things are going to evolve, but he’s never going to not play music. I can’t ever foresee a moment where he’d do something like that.
When you said you “miraculously” got what you needed for this film, what did you mean?
We placed the cameras [at the concerts] in front of the instruments we thought he might play and some nights he would never use them. [Laughs.] Neil never has a set list. He just plays what he feels in the moment. Well, there’s no way to accommodate that, so some nights we’d set the cameras for one of the three pianos on stage, or for a certain guitar and the organ maybe. And he wouldn’t play any of them! So there were great versions of certain songs I would have liked to have used, but we didn’t even capture them because he didn’t even go to those instruments the whole night. We would have literally nothing for an entire night sometimes, you know, because of him choosing to do different songs.
Were you allowed to get mad at him over that?
Well, that’s his forte, you know. That’s just who he is. I’m not going to start saying, “You have to play …!” [Laughs.] That would be horrible, right? He only listens to his muse. That’s kind of what he’s known for in some ways, because it has to be authentic for him, or he won’t do it. So I’m not going to mess with that.
I was absolutely determined to have “I’m the Ocean” at the beginning and “When I Hold You in My Arms” at the end. Those are really the heart of it to me. “I’m the Ocean,” even though it was written a long time ago, for that record with Pearl Jam, resonates with all of the shit we’re facing today and all of these crises. And even in the ways we have to stay positive and remember that we don’t need to focus on all the negativity all the time too.
With “When I Hold You in My Arms,” once again, it’s one of those songs that resonates with what’s going on in the world today: “New buildings going up/Old buildings coming down.” And how important it is to lean on someone you love or someone you care about to have that refuge. The fact that he plays both the electric guitar and the piano in that song, I’ve never seen him do that. And I’ve been around for a while. [Laughs.]
Given you’re both the filmmaker and the spouse here, what are the challenges of making a movie like this in terms of what you do and don’t include? You even slipped in a few scenes of Neil addressing you behind your iPhone and saying he’d missed you.
That was a little bit hard, because I really wanted to make a cinema verité film; that’s my favorite style of documentary. And when I was in the editing room, I really was fighting those kind of moments because I didn’t want to have myself or the camera acknowledged in order for it to be true cinema verité. You’re supposed to be a fly on the wall.
But all of those moments, when he’s looking in the camera, even when he’s talking to Ben, I find them really moving. So, even though I fought it and fought it for months during editing, I finally decided to put them in because there was an aspect that you would never catch otherwise. When Neil looks in the camera, there’s such a beautiful openness and vulnerability and charm. You really see so much more into his soul.
At one point, we see Neil talking to Jerry, his bus driver, about how the fans want to hear the hits because those are often the only songs they know. That’s an unusual comment to hear in a movie like this.
But it’s pretty true. People go to a show and want to hear the song they’re familiar with, their favorite song played at their wedding or whatever. So I think that’s kind of true for everybody, but Neil specifically decided on this tour that he was going to do songs he’d never really played before, “hidden by hits,” as he calls it. It was like people were hearing them for the first time, and in many cases, they really listened. I mean, you could hear a pin drop in all of those theaters.
Does Neil have any sort of approval over the finished film?
He doesn’t get any approval. Another thing that is specific to him is that if he sees something, he gets attached to it. So if I showed him the film in an earlier form and then changed something, he’d be like, “What happened to that part?” So I didn’t show it to him until I was really done with it, because I don’t want him to lock in on something, and then I’ve changed it.
But he really liked it. I was a little bit nervous because I don’t think we’ve ever filmed him with Ben before. I said to Neil, “Are you going to be comfortable with that?” But he absolutely loved it.
Sometimes I film a lot of things for him, like messages to people for when someone’s getting celebrated for something and they want him to film a video message. I did one for Paul McCartney, since he was receiving some kind of award, or maybe it was his birthday. We did one take, but the birds in our backyard were really loud. And I was like, “Could you do it again?” And Neil’s like, “Nope!” He does not do a take two.
The film is black and white, but at the very end, as we see the next highway in front of the bus, it turns to color.
My favorite movie in the world is The Wizard of Oz. I have to do something from that in every one of my movies, something a little magical.
In the end, what do you think you captured about him that’s not in other documentaries, even the ones he’s made?
People generally think of him as a sort of kind of inscrutable guy. It’s funny how many people are intimidated by him; they go, “Scary!” Before I knew him, I was like, “Oh, God, he’s so scary.” So I wanted to dissuade people of that notion. And those moments of intimacy really show something that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in any documentaries.
At the Oscars last month, you presented the editing award and gave a shout-out to Ukraine: “Slava Ukraine!” Was that spontaneous?
I’d been planning it, but I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t know until I got there that night that they had a 10-second delay so they could bleep people. So I was trying to sneak it in there so they wouldn’t bleep me. I didn’t tell a soul. I didn’t even tell Neil. I didn’t want anyone to try to talk me out of it. I was just trying to disguise my intentions until the last second. I’m not sure why they didn’t bleep me, but I’m glad they didn’t. I think possibly it was because people cheered, and then people [watching] would have thought, “Why are they cheering?”
Afterwards, many people wondered why more presenters that night didn’t say similar things.
I 100 percent agree. It was weird, especially because it was just a few days after that horrific meeting in the Oval Office. You’d think more people would have wanted to send a little bit of love to the Ukrainians. I went to Ukraine many years ago for a film festival, in 2014, and I cried when I left, because I fell in love with those people. They have a great sense of humor. They’re full of heart and soul. Even then, people in Ukraine were struggling economically and there were still bullet holes in some of the buildings. It was not a super-groovy, wealthy country. But people were happy and full of love. I really have a beautiful, deep connection with the people of that country. And I’m just horrified at the decisions that are being made now on behalf of us.
Neil announced a free show in Ukraine but then canceled.
Yeah, everybody wanted to go, the whole band. But [authorities] just said they could not possibly allow it to happen because of the danger, to the audience as well as to us and the band members. When many people gather in one place it just becomes the obvious target. We were both really disappointed. But we will definitely try to go at some point.
When you were at the Oscars and once more in such a Hollywood scene, did you flash back to your life in the Eighties and Nineties, when you starred in so many hit films?
No! [Laughs.] Well, kind of. You have to go to a rehearsal, where they show you where to stand and whatever. I brought my sister and told her I was going to change the script. Not the part about Ukraine, but I rewrote the whole part about editors too, because they had me saying something I didn’t feel reflected editing. I really have a lot of respect for editors and for the process and how important and challenging that work is, and how it really is where the film is created.
But I was really, really nervous. My sister was with me in the Eighties and Nineties, when I would do those [shows]. And when I would even suggest changing an “and” or an “if,” they would give me hell! I’d be called into the producer’s office and they would berate me. It was intimidating. Sometimes even the other actors I was co-presenting with would join in on the berating and say, “Well, I’m absolutely fine with all of that. You don’t have to change a thing for me!” Thanks a lot for the support, mother …!
But this time it was really interesting, because, first of all, I noticed the backstage was full of women. I’ve never seen that before. There was not even one woman that I remember ever [in the past shows]. Also, all the writers were women. So when I told them I wanted to change one line, they were like, “Fine.” When I told them I wanted to change the whole thing, they were like, “Great.” I was shocked. To a certain degree, a lot of that patriarchal, misogynistic style of producing that show seems to be gone. I didn’t expect it at all, because I obviously have a lot of bad flashbacks from things I experienced in my career. I love, love making movies and I love the work, but the other parts of it can be really a nightmare. A lot of the personalities you have to deal with, and certainly the sort of old-school, misogynistic structure of the industry, especially when you’re a young girl, you’re drowned in it.
Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d decided to play the game and keep taking roles in films like Steel Magnolias and such?
I don’t even think that’s a possibility. In a certain way, I’m very similar to Neil. I am who I am. I’m not going to be able to fake it. That was part of the problem for me, too, when I had to do a lot of press and stuff. If I had a bad experience on a movie, I couldn’t do the press. I can’t really say, “Oh, it was so great!” It’s not possible for me. I’m not that good at lying. I’m not good at self-promotion either. I love the idea of disappearing into a character. But I want it to be about the character, not about me and my daily life. That was the reason I wanted to do movies in the first place, to disappear into these fantasy worlds.
Speaking of which, did the makers of Splash Too offer you a part in that sequel?
They did. And I don’t think any of us really liked the script, but I particularly didn’t. A lot of times, they’ll try creating sequels just to try to squeeze a little more juice from the stone, see if they can get some more money out of it. And it’s not organic to the story.
You went public about your terrifying experiences with Harvey Weinstein in The New Yorker in 2017, talking about how he was pounding on your hotel room door and later asked to touch your breasts.
That was the tip of the iceberg. I experienced stuff like that in almost every movie. It was gnarly to be a young woman in those times. I never had an agent or a publicist or anything like that. So I was really kind of not protected.
You’ve worked since Kill Bill, on TV and indie movies, but that seems to be the last major film we saw you in.
It totally was. It was my last real movie. I mean, I’m fine with it. But I never really got any offers after that either. I was offered one other movie that was not a very good part, but that was [makes a sound like a car stopping]. I think some of it definitely had to do with Harvey, because he was like, “Oh, she’s difficult,” or whatever he said.
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It was pretty gnarly blowback. We were going to the Cannes Film Festival, and I had agreed to host some charity events. This was right after he tried to come into my hotel in in Rome. He took off on the plane with all the other actors and left me there. I not only had to find my own way, my own flights back and forth, but I still had to go to Cannes — and they’d canceled my hotel room and there was nothing available. He canceled everything, the hair and makeup, everything. So I had nothing. I arrived in order to do all these things, and I was dragging my suitcase on the cobblestones, trying to go from person to person’s room, sleeping on people’s couches each night. It was really a screwed-up situation. It was a bad time.
So it was probably a combination of that and the fact that I turned 40: an “oh, my God, how dare I turn 40!” thing. Who knows, but it’s just the way it is. I’ve never been comfortable with being a known personality. I put my creative energies elsewhere, and I’ve been directing for years now, and I love it. At least I’m still making films, but it doesn’t have to be about me.
