Over the Moon

Ethan Hawke reteams with director Richard Linklater to give a performance unlike any he's done before in a new movie portraying Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart

- by KYLE MCGOVERN

MAGIC TRICK Stagecraft and perspective helped Hawke appear only 5 feet tall, especially obvious when beside Qualley, who towers over him while playing the ingenue Elizabeth.

COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS; TOP RIGHT: ROSDIANA CIARAVOLO/GETTY

ETHAN HAWKE HAD TO WAIT ABOUT A DECADE to begin filming his latest role. Blue Moon stars Hawke as a fictionalized version of Lorenz Hart, the brilliant lyricist who worked alongside composer Richard Rodgers before Rodgers teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II. In this less well-known partnership, Rodgers and Hart wrote Great American Songbook standards like “My Funny Valentine,” “Manhattan” and the titular “Blue Moon.” And the film itself is the latest outgrowth of another long-running creative partnership—between Hawke and director Richard Linklater. Opening nationwide from October 24, Blue Moon marks their ninth feature-length collaboration and the first since 2014's Boyhood. Despite the lengthy layover, “We’ve been talking about making this movie that whole time,” Hawke says.

The idea for the film dates back a dozen or so years, when screenwriter Robert Kaplow originally brought the concept to Linklater. At the time, the filmmaker felt Hawke was too young to begin production; Hart was a longtime alcoholic and Blue Moon focuses on a specific moment near the end of the songwriter's life, just months before his death at the age of 48 following a pneumonia diagnosis. After years of workshopping the material with Kaplow and periodically checking in with Hawke, Linklater finally gave the go-ahead. But even though Hawke had aged into the role of Hart, he still had to stretch to channel the weathered veteran of musical theater.