“I’ve written a handful of words that are going to cheat death!”
—Lorenz Hart, from Blue Moon
Before Rodgers and Hammerstein, there was Rodgers and Hart. Before “People Will Say We’re in Love” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “Edelweiss,” there was “My Funny Valentine” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and, of course, “Blue Moon.” The twosome wrote hundreds of songs to wide acclaim before the relationship strained, and Richard Rodgers eventually moved on with Oscar Hammerstein II to produce that glorious run of musicals, on stage and screen. Though his contribution to the Great American Songbook is undeniable, who nowadays, apart from enthusiasts, knows the name Lorenz Hart?
A faded reputation is the fate of most artists—good luck getting Joe Schmoe to recognize even Rodgers and Hammerstein—but it’s one thing to fade, and another thing to be overshadowed. The first occurs one way or another, despite the desire to stick around; the second seems to happen in spite of that desire, and more often than not involves the backhanded adulation of a premature eulogy.
Such transience is the concern of Blue Moon (2025), Richard Linklater’s latest film about a night in the life of the lovelorn lyricist Lorenz Hart, played by Ethan Hawke. He has just come from the opening performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! (“Oklahoma Exclamation Point,” he remarks snidely), March 1943, parking himself at the bar of storied Broadway watering hole, Sardi’s. There, he chews the fat with bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), a young GI pianist and aspiring composer Morty Rifkin (Jonah Lees), and, unexpectedly sitting in the corner, the essayist/children’s writer E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy).
Conversation ranges from cinema to poetry to Hart’s resentments about being discarded by Rodgers for the ascending Hammerstein—though Hart is keen to avoid discussion of his problematic alcoholism, which was a major factor of Rodgers’s refusal to continue their partnership. Also in discussion is Hart’s infatuation with Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), a college girl more than twenty years his junior. An aspiring dilettante, she will be arriving with the rest of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s entourage for the Oklahoma! afterparty, also at Sardi’s; while she angles for an introduction to Rodgers via Hart, Hart seems to believe they will consummate their relationship after a forestalled fling the previous summer.
Blue Moon is an engrossing character portrait, in large part due to screenwriter Robert Kaplow’s script. It is tight—owing to its relatively small cast and single location, very much in the vein of a stage play—but littered with little witticisms and period-specific lingo, taking the viewer along its 100-minute length with charming aplomb. Hart as essayed by Kaplow and Hawke is a brilliant, gregarious persona who hides his insecurities behind genuine artistic talent and a smattering of bullshit; not only was the historical Hart an alcoholic, but he hovered somewhere around 5′, quite literally dwarfed by the hefty, 6’3″ Hammerstein. But Hart simply dominates, here, steering others into his orbit—whether they like it or not—and persuading them to engage with his enthusiasms and views. That Kaplow begins the narrative with Hart’s death (from complications of pneumonia, after being found drunk in the rain on the night of his and Rodgers’s final team-up, a revival of their A Connecticut Yankee) adds pathos to whenever his personality threatens to overbear.
Linklater’s (and cinematographer Shane F. Kelly’s) camera is, for the most part, unobtrusive, letting the performances take precedence. It’s rather workmanlike direction, sure, but that’s no great knock against the film, as it’s still competently put together, and very much a “script-centric” feature. The staging is well done, particularly when it comes to artificially shrinking the 5’10” Hawke down a whole foot, mostly by means of oversized costuming, set design, and forced perspectives.
And what of Ethan Hawke’s rendition of Hart, specifically? Other outlets are, quite predictably, raving about the performance, but in truth, it is very good, though certainly nothing close to mind-blowingly transformative. Hawke is of course a fine actor, and he delivers Kaplow’s lines with class and verve, but all the movie-magic trickery and make-up implemented to hide Hawke’s true height/appearance is far too distracting; and despite his skill, Hawke simply isn’t all that believable as Hart, from his accent (or lack thereof) down to the unconvincingly “fey” mannerisms.
But, on the whole, it is good enough, and the supporting cast more than pull their weight: Cannavale is right at home as the NYC bartender-cum-therapist, and Lees does well in the Morty role, who provides a de facto soundtrack as the cocktail pianist, tinkling off showtunes on Hart’s request. Andrew Scott as Richard Rodgers does a fine job conveying the casual condescension of a man moving on to better things, though the affection he still feels for Hart is obvious; Scott and Hawke are good whenever they verbally spar over past slights and the pair’s uncertain future. Kennedy, as White, is a standout, despite having comparatively few lines; it’s more in how he carries himself as the wise and watchful writer that draws a viewer’s attention.
Qualley as Weiland (more or less a fabrication on Kaplow’s part, though he supposedly based the character on some archived letters to Hart) is also quite solid, and holds her own in her big scene with Hawke, when Weiland and Hart retire to the cloakroom to have a tête-à-tête. There isn’t much to the role other than representing yet another symbol of unattainability for the dissipated lyricist—Hart was known among his peers as a discreet homosexual, though apparently he did (unsuccessfully) propose marriage to a couple women. In Blue Moon, Kaplow molds him as a Keatsian worshipper of Beauty, even having him call himself an “omnisexual,” in order to express the whole range of human emotion, and taking love wherever he might have the good fortune of finding it, regardless of sex.
Richard Linklater has always favored peripheral characters, whether they be societal outcasts or individuals just a bit too quirky for their own circle(s). In this regard, Hart is not so different from Linklater’s down-and-out slackers or the artsy kid from a broken home. “It was this little howl into the night of an artist being left behind,” the director says, concerning his attraction to Kaplow’s script. But Blue Moon is less a howl than a valedictory whistle, giddy in parts, melancholy in others, and to a tune only the departing artist seems to care for, from an old show others have all but forgotten; as the rain falls, and the brighter music plays on…
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More from Ezekiel Yu: Level Changes: On Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine” (2025), ¡Viva la Exageración! – Reviewing Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” (2025), Refusal’s Art: On Yasujiro Ozu’s “Late Spring” (1949)