Richard Linklater likes to joke that if he Ethan Hawke didn't know each other that well, Hawke probably would have hit him during the filming of Blue Moon.
The two Texans have been friends and collaborated for more than 30 years. They had made eight films together when they began filming Blue Moon, about the poet Lorenz Hart, set over one evening at Sardi's restaurant. This is a project they have been talking about for over a decade.
It can be assumed that everything between them will be the old fashioned way. And yet it was a film in select cinemas on Friday it will require a completely different dynamic.
“I was nitpicking. I used his (expletive). I don't usually work like that,” Linklater said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “The film is small in scale. It feels minimalistic. But what Ethan was given was quite big.”
This punching thing, Hawk said in a separate interview, was completely true. He realized that Linklater was channeling his inner Sidney Lumet – an excellent acting director, but tough.
“It was a shock to me. He didn't want us to take our jobs for granted or that we were friends,” Hawk said. “He had been listening to me talk about acting for 30 years and wanted to give me a chance to actually do it. Stop talking about it and do it.”
Hawk has never shied away from a challenge. When they were filming Before Sunrise in Vienna in 1994, Linklater recalled Hawke looking at the script and saying, “This probably won't work,” but diving into it anyway. It was then that he was sure that he had found a kindred spirit, a person who strives for the impossible.
“You have to be in this territory if you want to do something unusual, something no one has seen before,” Linklater said. “You have to feel like you're in danger and say, 'We're at risk of a colossal failure.'
But Lorenz Hart was not Jesse, the screenwriter of the Before films. He was a man of small stature (the most generous reports put him at 5'2″), balding, extremely self-conscious about his appearance, and had the biggest personality and wit in the room. He was a genius and an alcoholic who lost his job. And in the midst of it all, times changed and he was left behind.
Every couple of years for the last decade, they would get together and read the script. Hawke loved the character and felt deeply that he was the right person to play the role, but when it came time to go beyond the theory, he said, “it became very scary.” During the first couple of days of rehearsals, Hawk became terribly ill.
“It was like my body knew this was going to be something really stressful,” he said. “The film is set in motion by Lorenz Hart, and everyone is really rooting for that portrait.”
This included himself and his ego. Blue Moon will require the deconstruction and disappearance of movie star Ethan Hawke.
Writer Robert Kaplow's screenplay takes viewers to the famous Sardi's on Broadway, located in the Broadway theater district. premiere of “Oklahoma!” in 1943. Hart talks to a bartender (Bobby Cannavale) who is waiting for his old associate Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) to arrive at a party.
For more than 20 years, Rodgers and Hart were a prolific and successful songwriting team, writing musical hits and hundreds of classic songs, including “My Funny Valentine,” “Isn't It Romantic?” “The Lady is a Tramp” and “Blue Moon”. This is one of the greatest creative partnerships of all time. This film is about that breakup.
With “Oklahoma!” Rodgers found a new lyricist in Oscar Hammerstein II, and they continued to write hit after hit, including “South Pacific,” “Carousel,” “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music.” Meanwhile, Hart died eight months after Oklahoma! opening at 48 years old.
“The country is changing, the jazz era is ending and a new era is beginning, and one of these people will continue to lead and the other will be completely left behind,” Hawk said. “And the fact that he's so funny in the face of tragedy? That's where the script really shines: the duality of this man. He's both absurdly jealous and also very supportive and loving. He's wickedly funny and suicidal. He's a homosexual in love with a woman. The balance of opposites is Larry Hart.”
The filming used old Hollywood techniques to make the 5ft 10in Hawk look tiny on a small budget. He shaved his head to give himself a balding appearance. And they built the Sardi set in Ireland.
“I always describe it as a little howl in the night when an artist is left behind. It's experiencing your own extinction,” Linklater said. “I hope people respond to it the same way they react to a great Rodgers and Hart song. It's lyrical, beautiful in a way, but it leaves you empty.”
A life in the arts requires enormous sacrifice, no matter how you look at it. And there is always a chance that culture will pass you by. Hawk, for example, said there were three high points in his career when he was almost certain he was being cut.
“You can’t do this for over 30 years and not feel it,” Hawk said. “They come like waves and you have to try to survive.”
The experience made him think about the many people he met who mentored him when he first started working in theater in the 1980s. Many of them, like Hart, were introverted and saw their calling not as a job but as a kind of spiritual calling. One theater actor he thought a lot about was the late Richard Easton, with whom he performed several plays before passing away.
“When I was young, he told me: 'One life is not enough. There's not enough time to learn what you need to learn to be the actor you want to be,” Hawk said. “It's a great approach. It creates a constant sense of learning and ongoing process, and this part really took everything I've learned so far.”
Blue Moon is actually one of two Linklater films about artists that will be released in theaters this month. “New Wave” (out Oct. 31) about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's “Breathless” chronicles the beginning of a career. “Blue Moon” is the end of one of them.
“There’s a spice to a career in the arts,” Linklater said. “I think we all think we'll just run the table and do it until the day we die. But something gets in the way.”
One thing we don't have to worry about (yet) is the creative gap between Linklater and Hawke. Linklater may have been tough on his friend, but they never argued and it was worth it in the end. Hawk stood the challenge and no one was hit.
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This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Richard Linklater's last name in the headline.
