`BEFORE SUNRISE' TO KICK OFF 1995 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Ethan Hawke was in New Orleans last Friday for a photo shoot for Rolling Stone magazine when a publicist disturbed his sleep to remind him that he had agreed to a telephone interview with the Deseret News.

Hawke was gracious enough, but there's no question that he was still waking up when he made the call. And during the 15-minute conversation he could manage little more than "yup" and "nope" answers most of the way. "Sorry," he said a couple of times, "I'm just tired.""Ethan is not a morning person," explained Richard Linklater later in the day. "You weren't getting him at his best."

Linklater is co-writer/director of "Before Sunrise," which stars Hawke and French actress Julie Delpy. The film kicks off the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday, Jan. 19, at the Crossroads Plaza. It's the showpiece of the festival, the opening night event - and Linklater, Hawke and Delpy are all expected to be in attendance.

And, in truth, Hawke's night-owl tendencies perfectly suit his character in the film, which is a 24-hour romance about a young American man who meets a young French woman on a European train. Hawke's character is going to Vienna to catch a plane back home; Delpy's character is heading for Paris.

After some stimulating conversation, however, they are getting along so well they don't want it to end. So, when they arrive in Vienna, she agrees to get off the train so they can spend some more time together.

For the rest of the day and night - and the rest of the film - they walk and talk and get to know each other while wandering around the city.

The two-character comedy-drama is the perfect Sundance vehicle, according to festival program director Geoff Gilmore. "What's exciting about this is that it's so different from anything Linklater's ever done. You look at `Slacker,' you look at `Dazed and Confused,' and then you see this. It's romantic, it's a melodrama, it's almost European in its sensibility. It's two people talking to each other for 90 minutes."

"It's a big honor," says Linklater, whose first film, "Slacker," was in competition at the 1991 festival. "I had no expectations. We had our one preview in L.A., and Geoff was at the screening."

Linklater adds that the Sundance Film Festival "is really important, besides being the most prestigious. And it's great as a filmmaker to go there, because you meet a lot of other filmmakers who are in the same place in their careers. It's very big on camaraderie."

Hawke says working on "Before Sunrise" got him excited about making movies in a way he hadn't felt since he began his career. "It was one of the most creatively fulfilling since I first worked on a movie, because Rick kind of makes his own world.