Ethan Hawke on Richard Linklater’s ‘Blue Moon’ and Playing Lorenz Hart: ‘Offensive Art’ Won’t Get Made Unless We ‘Demand’ It
Richard Linklater is back at the Berlinale 11 years after he won the Silver Bear prize for his Oscar-winning “Boyhood,” this time with “Blue Moon,” a wistful chamber piece set on the opening night of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” in 1943. But the period comedy, which premieres in competition tonight at the festival, assumes the perspective of Lorenz Hart, the great American lyricist who was one half of Rodgers and Hart before a creative split.
The film takes place in or around the same bar at Sardi’s, where Rodgers (Andrew Scott) is greeting his rapturous public after the musical’s Broadway premiere while trying to keep a distance from his former creative collaborator, whose boozing and insecurities (and often wild overconfidence) make people uncomfortable. Ethan Hawke undergoes a unique physical transformation to give a theatrical but never overplayed performance as a five-foot-tall, sexually ambiguous alcoholic perched precariously on the wagon. For context, Mickey Rooney had previously played Hart as a manic burnout in 1948’s MGM musical, “Words and Music.” The actor, opposite Scott and Margaret Qualley as his bright-spirited protégé (she plays her character like a sad starlet of the Jazz Age), relishes Robert Kaplow’s bouncily witty and yearning-filled screenplay, wherein Hart bemoans how “life has become superannuated.” Qualley gets a great, juicy monologue about a busted sexual encounter with another guy she’s in unrequited love with, even as Hart appears to be falling for her, too, or at least irrationally adoring her.
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Several journalists at the film’s press conference screening on Tuesday out of Berlin praised “Blue Moon” as a “masterpiece.” It’s easy to see why Todd Haynes’ jury might end up considering “Blue Moon” for a screenplay or even an acting prize for Ethan Hawke, whose collaborations with Linklater span more than three decades and include the “Before” films as well as “Boyhood,” and many more. Sony Pictures Classics brought “Blue Moon” to Berlin with North American distribution in place; expect an awards push here, following a planned late spring release.
“When I was 16 or 17 trying to figure out who I was, I turned a lot to Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke movies as part of figuring that out. For me, it was very surreal to have the opportunity to work with them having grown up on their films and their collaboration. To prepare for this, I just did what they told me to,” Qualley said.
As Hart rails against the standardization of taste and audiences becoming desensitized to art that rankles the psyche in this film, accusing Rodgers of going too mainstream or emotionally broad for something like “Oklahoma!,” the conversation of art vs. commerce in Hollywood storytelling came up more than once in the press room.
“One of the dangers of offensive art, if we want to talk about great punk music or some early Brecht plays that are punk in their sensibility. Some of the great offensive art is audiences have to care. They don’t sell. You guys, the community, has to make it important,” Hawke said. “For offensive art to have a place in our conversation, it has to be cared about, and when we prioritize money at all costs, what we get is generic material that appeals to the most amount of people, and we’re told that’s the best. It’s a dance we all do together. If you love offensive art and you want it, then demand it, then you’ll get it. It’ll get made. Right now, people don’t think they’ll make money off of it so it doesn’t get made.”
Linklater, whose last film “Hit Man” streamed on Netflix but who has largely eschewed making traditional studio movies in his 40-year-career, said, “Movies have always been escapism, and our movie, he’s accusing ‘Oklahoma!’ of being escapist in the middle of the horrors of World War II. Most human psyches want to escape a little bit. There is probably less offensive art than there has been in the past.”
The filmmaker added, “I don’t think I’ve compromised at all. It’s a low-budget film. There’s no pressure. I don’t have complaints about compromise. You hope everybody likes the movie but there was no test screenings. You hear the horror stories, and the film industry can be a collision between art and commerce, but I’ve largely been spared that over these years.”
Hawke quipped that’s maybe because Linklater has never made a commercial movie. Linklater said the goal of “Blue Moon” was to make it like a Rodgers and Hart song, that’s “beautiful and kind of sad and funny.”
“You prepare for a part like this by playing Macbeth,” said Hawke. “What Robert Kaplow wrote for us, this absolutely beautiful script, that if done right is basically a film that’s one scene. It starts, and all the dominoes fall in one gesture, and if it can have that simplicity, but to make the verbiage come alive, to make the dynamics, the musical quality Rick is talking about, when is it fast, when is it slow, when is it arresting, when is it heartbreaking? How can it keep changing? I could say I prepared by shaving my head or preparing Lorenz Hart songs. That’s not really true. It’s a long time figuring out how to stage scenes and how to make a seven- or 11-page scene dynamic enough for you to watch it.”
Sony Pictures Classics releases “Blue Moon” in 2025.
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