‘He Just Makes The Ordinary Things Seem Mythic And Important’

Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke are one of the best actor/director duos in cinema history and for their ninth collaboration together, Blue Moon, which takes place in New York over the course of one evening in 1943, they decided to dive into the life of famous Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart.

Hart is well-known for being the writer of legendary titles such as My Funny Valentine, The Lady is a Tramp, and of course, Blue Moon.

Hawke gives a career’s best with his portrayal of Hart, as he navigates the heartbreak that represents the end of his collaboration with his former colleague and creative partner, Richard Rodgers (portrayed by Andrew Scott) as the latter celebrates the opening night of his new musical, Oklahoma!, which he co-wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II.

This creative breakup comes from the difficulties Rodgers was facing during his collaboration with Hart, who’s often drinking and unreliable, but also suffers from serious episodes of depression.

Blue Moon works almost like a play, where the audience feels like they could join the actors on stage at any given moment, as the entire movie takes place inside the iconic Sardi’s restaurant, located in New York’s Theater District.

It’s also a dialogue-heavy movie as Hart seats at the bar all night long, chatting with a very sympathetic bartender, here played by Bobby Cannavale, while waiting for the triumphant arrival of the Oklahoma! company.

Blue Moon is about a very complicated man but it is also about the condition of being an artist who is going through many heartbreaks -and a lot of anxiety- in one night. Hart sees that his friend’s career is soaring without him, while feeling like his own career is sinking. He feels that void and wards off this self-doubt by telling all sorts of stories of his past and career, -true or exaggerated, we might never know-.

I asked Hawke and Cannavale how the words and the dialogues in this movie resonated with themselves or how they viewed their work as artists.

He said, “It’s one of the things that’s magical about Richard Linklater’s movies, they all celebrate the small things of life and make you feel good about… you know, not many people would make such an epic tale, over such a fragile man and such a fragile situation! So I always walk away from his movies enjoying my own life more, you know?He just makes the ordinary things seem mythic and important. Things like getting your heart broken or jealousy or something like hanging out at a bar, talking to a friend all night long, that becomes important in a Richard Linklater universe. So I just enjoy inhabiting his world.”

Cannavale added that the condition of being an actor is a particularly vulnerable one. He mentioned the moment Rodgers enters the bar but can’t quite celebrate yet, as he anxiously awaits for the first reviews of his new musical.

He said, “And yet to your point, the specificity of an artist celebrating or being celebrated on an evening when something so major is happening, is a particular vulnerable experience, right? We do put ourselves out there I think, as artists. You know, you’ve got Richard Rodgers, who’s got people in his ear going, ‘The Times reviews are coming in!’ That could go either way right? I do think that he captured that quite beautifully! Richard Rodgers can’t enjoy that party until he knows, since he’s still waiting for The Times review. And watching somebody that esteemed, still be on the precipice of doom and gloom, is interesting to watch.”

Blue Moon was shot in two weeks but because it’s all happening in real time, I asked the actors a more technical question about the continuity of events when filming. For example, the characters smoke a lot in the film, but were the actors being extra aware of how much they had smoked that one cigarette, when picking up the scene the next day? Were they even more careful of how full that one glass of whisky on the counter was the day before?

Hawke said, “Oh, it’s a really interesting question for this movie, because as it is happening in real time, meaning you don’t cut to one scene to 25 minutes later at a different location, we had to be extremely aware of matching in a way you don’t normally are! You know, ‘How far was that cigar lit?’ Bobby was tending the bar all night, ‘How high is this glass? When did I pick up that glass? Where were the flowers? I was crushing ice over here…’ Everything has to match or else it won’t cut together!”

Cannavale added: “In that era, people were always smoking, again because of the real time aspect of the movie, you know there are people there who do this job. But we were pretty conscious of what was going on.”

Hawke also noted that because “they were so many people on that set, every actor had to be responsible for themselves.”

He added: “I really enjoyed smoking the cigars the first day of the shoot. But I just smoked a cigar non-stop for weeks, till I felt like my head was gonna pop off!”

All night long, Hart and his friends talk about life and art, and Hart particularly undermines the importance of a play like Oklahoma!, which he describes as easy and nice. They then question what art should be like or rather how it should impact the audience. Should art be inoffensive?

I asked the two actors their opinion on this topic and if they think art should reflect the time period we live in. Indeed, Oklahoma! was a success that night and yes, maybe it was nice and easy. But the Second World War was happening at the time they were having this conversation, so maybe that is exactly what the audience was craving for at that moment.

“That’s an interesting question! We were at the New York Film Festival last night, with a big, big audience, and when that line was delivered, I felt it vibrated across the room, in a way that was very interesting. I felt the room thinking about that, about what is the value of offending each other, and what is the value of placating each other and just being nice. In 1943, when this film is taking place, there is a great desire to unify people and to have a common enemy. That had real value to unify the country. Oklahoma! was kind of a dream of a beatific time that probably never existed and probably never will exist. But at least it unified people.”

He added: “And I think, right now we’re in a confusing time, because people are so divided. It’s a really… I think there’s a place for both, you know? I’ve always admired art that aspires to push the boundaries of what societal norms are, because I think it makes us think for ourselves.”

Cannavale said, “It’s hard to do in real time, though right? Usually these things take a little time, and they’re usually reflective and they don’t come out in real time. I mean Tony Kushner wrote Angels in America in the 1990s, right ? The AIDS crisis was really predominant and the time he was writing about was 10 years earlier, right? So those kind of things usually take time.”

The two actors then added that a play like The Crucible, which was written about the McCarthyism, or the “great Vietnam films, like Apocalypse Now of Full Metal Jacket were all made 10 years after these events took place.”

Hawke said, “It’s hard to have any perspective in the moment.”

Cannavale added: “But it happens sometimes, those things do break through. I think of Tom McCarthy’s movies, Spotlight was so highly regarded, it was happening in real time, right?”

Cannavale, who just like Hawke, has a strong theatre background, drew a comparison with the play he is doing right now.

He said, “But I think that there is a value of an Oklahoma! Right now, I’m doing a play called Art on Broadway, it’s a lot of fun! Thousand of people come every night, they come from all over the country, they wait afterwards for autographs, they’re from Nebraska, Florida, California and Michigan, Iowa, and they’re all there together, enjoying themselves, nobody is arguing with each other! They’re like ‘Can you hand in my program?’ It’s like this communal experience, you can feel the relief that people are just having a good time and that we get along. So I think art is just valuable, isn’t it ?”

Blue Moon is now in theaters.