Men on the moon

As their 11th movie together is released actor Ethan Hawke and director Richard Linklater discuss power, status and combovers

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“I LIKE THIS, IT’S GOOD,” ETHAN HAWKE TELLS RICHARD LINKLATER, midway through a lively digression that has already hopped from politics to the Beatles to the late films of John Huston.

“What’s good?” asks Linklater. “All of this,” says Hawke, by which he means the London hotel suite with its coffee table, couch and matching armchairs; the whole chilly machinery of the press junket. “I like that we get to spend a couple of days in a room,” he says. “It feels like a continuation of the same conversation we've been having for the past 32 years.”

It's all about the conversation with Linklater and Hawke.

The director and actor first met backstage at a play in 1993 and wound up chatting until dawn. The talk laid the ground for what would eventually become Before Sunrise, a starcrossed romance that channelled an off-screen bromance as it sent Hawke and Julie Delpy wandering around mid90s Vienna.

Blue Moon, Linklater and Hawke's 11th collaboration, might be their splashiest to date - a tale of 1940s Broadway.

Hawke plays the jilted lyricist Lorenz Hart, propping up the bar on the opening night of Oklahoma! as his former writing partner, Richard Rodgers, celebrates alongside Oscar Hammerstein. Hart dresses sharp and talks fast but he's barely holding himself together, and so it was with the production itself. Blue Moon was shot at speed in 15 days on an Irish soundstage that masqueraded as midtown Manhattan.

For Hawke in particular, it was a tough film to get right. In previous collaborations, he has essentially played a version of himself, or some amalgamation of himself and Linklater, whereas Hart was a stretch and required a much bigger performance. It was as though he'd grown used to being a member of the band and then suddenly had to learn a whole different instrument.

"Yeah, you play the drums on this one," says Linklater.