For the director Richard Linklater, the tone of his new film Blue Moon, about the lyricist Lorenz Hart, was obvious from the jump.
“It’s like, well, perhaps a Rodgers and Hart song,” he says in a video call not long before the movie’s Oct. 17 limited release. “Kind of beautiful and super sad and forlorn and all those things too. A catchy tune where you’re devastated by the end.”
Blue Moon chronicles a quietly tragic evening near the end of the life of Hart, played by Linklater’s frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke. Written by Robert Kaplow, it conjures a scenario in which Hart, known for songs like “My Funny Valentine,” attends the opening-night party for Oklahoma! in March 1943. That venerated show would mark the first collaboration between Richard Rodgers, formerly Hart’s longtime musical partner, and Oscar Hammerstein II. Dramatic irony means we know that Hart will die just a few months later, and Rodgers and Hammerstein will revolutionize the Broadway musical.
On screen, Hart holds court at the Sardi’s bar where the tender, played with warmth by Bobby Cannavale, is reluctant to serve him, knowing his battles with alcoholism. Hart waxes about his obsession with a college student named Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), and awaits what he knows will be a tense interaction with Rodgers (Andrew Scott), who is frustrated with his delinquency when it comes to writing. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival where Scott won the Silver Bear for best supporting performance, and since then it’s continued to garnered acclaim and Oscar buzz for Hawke’s transformative work.
Linklater calls the movie a “little howl into the night from an artist being left behind.” He adds, “That’s what it felt like then. That’s what it feels like now. That’s what Ethan captured.”
Blue Moon, for what it’s worth, is not a historical document. It’s an “imagined” evening, Linklater says. It has been documented that Hart attended the opening night performance of Oklahoma!,…
