Blue Moon: Richard Linklater Makes a Movie That Doesn’t Last a Week... And It’s Terrific!

March 2026

 

Did Ethan Hawke film this entire movie on his knees?

 

Because that’s what it looked like...

 

As 5’10” Hawke tried to play someone who was 5’0 ...

 

But no matter...

 

Hawke was fantastic as the sad, lonely, physically unattractive, alcoholic Lorenz Hart...

In Blue Moon...

 

A film which also proved that Richard Linklater could make a movie that didn’t feel like it lasted a week...

( See Before Sunset, Before Midnight, and Boyhood...)

 

And how did Linklater find Robert Kaplow?

 

That little known New Jersey High School English teacher...

Who wrote such a marvelous screenplay...

 

That truly deserves to win Best Screenplay...

 

But maybe only an English teacher...

Who has spent years trying to teach teenagers how to write...

Could unpack so skillfully how Hart used words...

And analyzed syntax like he was reading the Talmud...

 

But Kaplow does so in ways that are entertaining...

Which makes Blue Moon a wonderful movie...

 

And this is no small achievement

Because this film...

Is really a play...

 

With Hawke definitely deserving the Best Actor award...

For his portrayal of the verbose, clever, and massively insecure...

Lyricist...

 

Who... as part of the Rogers and Hart team...

Wrote such classics as My Funny Valentine, Blue Moon, and Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered...

 

And Hawke does so in a film that has many wonderful performances...

 

Andrew Scott as Richard Rogers...

Bobby Canavale as Hart’s bartender/ therapist...

 

And Patrick Kennedy...

Who not only physically resembles EB White...

But nails his quiet, reserved nature...

 

And Margaret Qualley is so effervescent as Hart’s unrequited love interest...

That I’ll forgive the fact that at that time...

No blue blood going to Yale...

Would ever have sounded like she just stepped out of a South Carolina roadhouse...

 

Plus, women couldn’t go to Yale in 1943...

They weren’t allowed in until 1969...

 

But this plot line did allow Linklater to introduce...

George Roy Hill as Qualley’s fellow Yale student...

Who angles for an introduction to Richard Rogers...

Because he wants to be a director...

 

And Hill is told to think about doing stories that involve friendships...

Which turned out to be good advice for the man who would later make Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting...

 

So Blue Moon has lots of foreshadowing...

Whether these encounters really happened or not...

 

But besides Hill...

Little Stevie Sondheim shows up as Oscar Hammerstein’s guest at the post-performance party...

And Hammerstein did indeed mentor Sondheim when he was a young boy...

 

And EB White did eventually write a children’s book...

That used the name in the movie Hart suggests for the mouse... Stuart...

 

And this all takes place at Sardi’s...

The favorite watering hole of the Broadway crowd...

 

During the Golden Age of the Broadway Musical...

 

Because...

 

Besides Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, Carousel, The King and I, and The Sound of Music...

There was Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot and My Fair Lady...

And West Side Story... which was Leonard Bernstein at his finest as a composer...

 

But it all started to fade...

 

With Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin marking the end of an era...

 

Because since then the musical on Broadway has had a sad decline...

With only Wicked... which was also written by Schwartz...

Having any staying power...

 

Sure Le Mis, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Lion King keep touring...

And Disney is working hard to keep Broadway alive...

 

But name me one song from any of those musicals that you can... or do... hum....

 

And although everyone felt like they had to see Hamilton...

Then rave about it...

 

Much as they did with Rent...

 

Both these musicals were known more for their message than their music...

 

But you can actually do both...

As was done so well with racism in South Pacific...

 

Because over half a century later...

 I can still recite the words to “You Have To Be Taught”...

While I don’t remember any of the songs from Hamilton or Rent...

 

Now Blue Moon explores why Hart was not part of Broadway’s Golden Age...

And not just because he was such an alcoholic...

That by 1943 he could no longer work...

 

Or because he didn’t write book musicals...
Which were just beginning to be made...

 

The key is an interchange in the film where Hart...

Who is a product of the Ivy League like Rogers and Hammerstein...

Tells Rogers he could never write a musical like Oklahoma! ...

Which has just become Rogers and Hammerstein’s first hit

 

Because he would rather die than write about the folks in flyover country...

 

But Rogers tries to tell Hart to read the room...

There is a war on...

And the country is not in the mood for the kind of satire Hart wants to write...

 

One can almost imagine Dwight Macdonald sitting over in the corner

Clutching his chest...

Over how Rogers was choosing to embrace the middle-brow culture...

That Macdonald so despised...

 

But guess what...

 

Rogers and Hammerstein were on to something...

That sold...well

For a very long time...

 

And we still remember many of their songs...

 

While men like Hart and Macdonald faded away...

 

So there is a lesson here that Hollywood might want to take to heart...

About choosing to ignore large parts of the country...

Because you don’t really like the folks who live there ....

 

Now Rogers is surprisingly kind to Hart in this film...

Even when Hart is being cruel...

 

So Blue Moon is like watching the end of a marriage...

Where there is still love...

But the relationship is no longer tenable because of one partner’s addiction...

 

Which brings me to my only criticism of this film...

 

Which is that Hawke’s Hart is surprisingly coherent throughout the movie...

Despite the massive amount of alcohol he is consuming...

 

But that is small beer...

 

(I know... bad pun...)

 

For a film that is so well done on many levels...

 

But also made me a bit sad...

For the passing of an age...

That produced so many great musicals...

 

While all that is left these days

Are Aladdin and Hairspray...

 

Kill me now...

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