As artistic partnerships go, it’s hard to beat Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke. In nine films across three decades, the pair have collaborated on all-time classics like the Before trilogy, Boyhood, and, in Hawke’s animated cameo, Waking Life. Their latest, Blue Moon, once again with Linklater directing and Hawke as the star, is about the dissolution of a creative duo’s partnership. Being in the room with them as they make each other giggle, I could tell the film wasn’t autobiographical.
In fact, chatting to Linklater and Hawke can feel like being in a Richard Linklater movie itself. Philosophical theories and personal anecdotes are exchanged; tangents pop out of nowhere. Linklater, a 65-year-old director, has rarely acted on screen, yet is as garrulous as Hawke, a 54-year-old movie star (and occasional director) whose daughter in Boyhood was played by Linklater’s real-life daughter. The synergy between them is infectious.
In Blue Moon, a tragicomedy written by Robert Kaplow, Hawke plays Lorenz Hart, the lyricist from Rodgers and Hart, a duo whose songs include “Blue Moon”, “Manhattan”, and “My Funny Valentine”. Unfolding in real time, the story is set in New York’s iconic Sardi’s restaurant on March 31st, 1943, the night Oklahoma! made its premiere on Broadway. For Hart, it’s like crashing an ex’s wedding: the musical is a hit for Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney), the latter replacing Hart in the creative partnership.
As expected from a Linklater/Hawke collaboration, Blue Moon is fuelled by rapid, witty dialogue that’s spat out by Hawke with elegance and fury. Hart, a man with unspoken anguish across his face, delivers one-liner upon one-liner, only pausing to consume more whiskey. Yet, beneath the humour, Hart is bitter at the world, at Rodgers, and himself. A closeted, five-foot-tall homosexual whose advances are turned down by Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), Hart was once described by Mabel Mercer as “the saddest man I ever knew”. In real life, Hart died of alcoholism at the age of 48, seven months after the events of Blue Moon.
In October, I sat down with Linklater and Hawke to discuss the musicality of Blue Moon, the gender-neutral gaze of the Before trilogy, and what their version of a horror movie would be.
You waited a decade to do Blue Moon because Ethan needed to age into the character. Is there a filmmaking version of that, where you need to be the right age to write and direct a story? If you did Slacker now, it’d be very different – that feels like a young person’s film.
Richard Linklater: I’ve made some films recently that I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a young person’s film,’ but I felt like I could pull them off. Nouvelle Vague and Hit Man felt like they were decades younger for me, in my spirit. But this film felt age-appropriate for me. I couldn’t have done this film 30 years ago. It’s a weird concept. No one wants to feel like you’re pigeonholed by your age. Actors hear that from the world. The world tells them, ‘You’re too young for this part. You’re too old for this part.’
Ethan Hawke: I went to a benefit a few years ago, and Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline did a reading of Romeo and Juliet. They played Romeo and Juliet. It was so beautiful. They were definitely too old for the parts, but intellectually, they were staggering, because they really understood the characters in a way a young person might not have done.
Richard Linklater: There’s an innate depth to having lived those extra few decades, and knowing what that means. It’s one thing to know something, but it’s another to have lived it and really felt it for so many years. Hart is an old 47 [laughs]. He dies at 48. There have been a few lives that were lived there already.
Would you say you play and direct Hart as ‘the saddest man alive’, to quote the description at the start?
Richard Linklater: But there are two descriptions. Oscar Hammerstein said he was dynamic, fun to be around, and witty.
Ethan Hawke: He was a great party guest.
Richard Linklater: People loved Larry Hart. You don’t hear bad things about him. The Mabel Mercer quote is getting one aspect of him: ‘He was the saddest man I ever knew.’ I’m sure she saw the exuberant side, too. He was sitting on this bedrock of forlorn sadness. His sexuality was against the law. He was such an unusual physical specimen. We came to the conclusion that he never had the adult relationship that he dreamed of. It was never his to have – a loving, supportive relationship. He didn’t have that, and yet he wrote about it. It’s tragic. But he’s so witty, so smart, so biting. That’s what gives those songs their heft forever. Even if you’ve had the best life, you remember the ones that got away. You remember the rejections and the sadness. Those stay with you emotionally.
The dialogue in the film is so fun, punchy and full of one-liners, yet it’s not like a sitcom. The rhythm is like this special alchemy you’ve created.
Ethan Hawke: The movie really needed to have a musicality to it, like a Rodgers and Hart song.
Richard Linklater: It’s tough for Ethan. You’re playing a genius. You’re playing a wordsmith of the highest, wittiest order. You have to match his quickness. Rodgers wrote melodies really fast, and Hart wrote lyrics really fast.
Even if you’ve had the best life, you remember the ones that got away. You remember the rejections and the sadness. Those stay with you emotionally
In order to deliver the words, do you need to feel like you’re someone who can come up with the words in your brain? As opposed to someone who’s just learned a tricky script phonetically?
Richard Linklater: Ethan’s blessed because – I knew he could do it – he’s got a quick neural firing. He has that verbal ability. Not every actor has that. You don’t believe them as someone who’s a witty, brilliant human.
Ethan Hawke: It’s easy for Larry Hart to talk for 10 minutes straight. 10 minutes go by like that to him [clicks fingers]. That’s how fast his mind is working. That was the challenge for me.
Richard Linklater: We had to erase Ethan and get to Larry. Larry – he’s not a physical specimen. All he is, is his wit, intelligence, mouth. He is words and personality. That’s all he’s really offering the world.
Do you agree with Hart that artists have to be omnisexual?
Richard Linklater: You have to be omni-voracious about everything. You have to be curious about everything. I do like what Larry says: to know the world, you have to have experienced it.
Ethan Hawke: Rick’s very good at that. He can get into his scientist brain about seeing a scene from multiple points of view. One of the things I really like about the Before trilogy, for example, is that it doesn’t seem to have a male gaze or a female gaze. It doesn’t have one point of view. That’s what Larry is talking about there: to see where everyone is coming from.
Before Midnight has a 30-minute argument in a hotel room. Did that help with setting Blue Moon entirely in Sardi’s restaurant?
Richard Linklater: I think a lot of things we’ve done in the past have built up to this. We did a film almost 25 years ago called Tape. It all takes place in a motel room smaller than this [points to our hotel room].
Ethan Hawke: That scene in Before Midnight, people think of it as a fight scene, but we always tried to see it as a love scene. They don’t want to fight. The same is true in Blue Moon. Larry wants to heal with Richard Rodgers. Rodgers wants Larry to get better. The movie’s about all these hearts breaking, but nobody wants them to break. Nobody’s there to be mean. They’re there to make things better. The inertia of their own energy, creates this friction.
Richard Linklater: Like all breakups, it’s probably been slow. They say it sometimes takes 10 years to get divorced [laughs]. This has probably been 10 years in the making. Rodgers has been like, ‘Larry, you’re late. We didn’t get anything done today.’ How long can you push that?
Elizabeth is so sensitive when she romantically rejects Hart. I was wondering if Hart secretly wanted that to be the outcome.
Ethan Hawke: That’s where the writing gets really excellent. It’s really complicated and messy, like real life. On a very simple level, yeah, this is a breakup film between Rodgers and Hart, but the pain of that breakup is so intense that he’s distracting himself with a new pain. He’s creating a pain that is lesser, so that it can be managed at all. There was something about it that just feels deeply human and strange to me.
Richard Linklater: We have this young co-ed, this Yale 20-year-old who has her own life. She has her own passions, her own dreams. It’s the only time Larry shuts up. He gives her a lot of space. He’s truly intrigued by this young woman. He’s infatuated. It’s fun to feel like what it must have felt like to be her in that moment.
Ethan Hawke: It’s funny, structurally, as a film, that the biggest, most difficult scene I have in the movie is when he finally stops talking, and he’s forced to listen. That’s when he gets shattered.
Do either of you identify with the film’s theme of professional jealousy? Ethan, do you ever watch Jack Black in School of Rock or Bernie, or Glen Powell in Hit Man, and think, ‘I wish I could do that’? And Richard, do you watch things like Ethan in Training Day, and think, ‘Man, I wish I directed that’?
Richard Linklater: Never!
Ethan Hawke: Rick was the most supportive person at the Training Day premiere. He was the first person who really made me believe that the movie was special. When I watch Cate Blanchett or Jack Black or Glen Powell excel, I’m excited for Rick.
Richard Linklater: Artists shouldn’t be possessive. You don’t own anything. I always say that until Ethan falls off the wagon, we have this going. But, no, artists work so hard. They’ve all sacrificed a lot to get where they are. There’s a mutual respect. It’s like what Larry says – it’s kind of in jest, because you know he might not feel it. He says, ‘Your success is everybody’s success.’
Ethan Hawke: He means that, but it hurts.
Richard Linklater: It still hurts, but it’s true. People are watching shows again. If five people make great films and everybody goes to them, that’s good for everybody. You hope there’s a trickle down for your art form. You want it to be flourishing.
Ethan Hawke: It’s funny, when I was younger, there was a sense that there’s only one pie, and if someone gets a piece, it’s a piece that you’re not getting. Like, Sam Rockwell, Billy Crudup, myself, a whole gang of us in New York – it’s fun to see each other now, because we do remember when we’d be competitive with each other.
Richard Linklater: You were all up for the same parts?
Ethan Hawke: The last time I hung out with Matthew [McConaughey], we had a huge laugh about it. Now we have a depth of understanding, that you’re like, ‘I’m so happy to see them do excellent work. Because if you’re still here, then I can still be here.’ [laughs]
Richard Linklater: If you ever felt that slight competitiveness…
Ethan Hawke: Age beats it out of you.
Richard Linklater: I know. Even studio execs who I didn’t necessarily like – 30 years later, you’re like, ‘I admire that you’re still here.’
Like all breakups, it’s probably been slow. They say it sometimes takes 10 years to get divorced. This has probably been 10 years in the making
Did you get your 19th century film financed? I read that might be your next collaboration. [It’s since been revealed that it’s about the “hippies of the 1830s”, and would potentially star Hawke, Oscar Isaac, and Natalie Portman.]
Richard Linklater: It’s in process. We hope that it’s a 2026 film.
It’s like a prequel to your Before films. The ancestors.
Richard Linklater: Very much the ancestors. The ancestors to a lot, actually.
Richard, you directed Nouvelle Vague, which is about the making of Breathless. If you had to do a Nouvelle Vague about one of the nine films you’ve done together, which would it be?
Ethan Hawke: Before Midnight would be the most interesting.
Richard Linklater: [laughs] Ooh, you went dark.
Ethan Hawke: [laughs] I went dark.
Richard Linklater: That was a tough film to make on so many levels! How about the moment I cracked my ankle playing basketball? That set the tone. Before production, I’m doing the whole film on crutches.
Ethan Hawke: We played basketball, a couple of days before shooting. Rick had to go up for a rebound against this huge dude…
Richard Linklater: …I didn’t have to go up for a rebound. The world wasn’t in balance right that moment.
Why don’t the three of you make a film about the making of Before Midnight?
Richard Linklater: Ooh. Go totally meta.
Ethan Hawke: That would be wild. We play ourselves? That would be such a weird movie!
Richard Linklater: That’s a good idea, actually.
Ethan Hawke: We should do the making of the fourth – a fictional movie, the one that doesn’t exist.
Richard Linklater: There are times when it hangs in the balance. That’s why I thought Nouvelle Vague was funny. It’s just funny to make a movie. Like, what are you doing? It’s such a weird thing to do.
How many times a day do people ask you when, or if, you’re making a fourth Before movie?
Richard Linklater: It’s often the last question. Like, after the interview. ‘Oh, one more question…”’But it’s in half the interviews.
Ethan Hawke: I would say 50 per cent of my interviews end that way. And, on the street, twice a week.
Richard Linklater: In conversation with people, I get asked that a lot.
So I’m ending this by asking: why don’t you make a film about the making of the third movie?
Ethan Hawke: That’s more interesting to me.
Richard Linklater: That’s what we’re going to say. We are doing it, but it’s about the making of.
Because Ethan’s now the king of horror movies, would you ever do a horror movie together?
Richard Linklater: [laughs] Well, that’s the movie we’re talking about. The making of Before Midnight! That is a horror film. Just no vampires.
Blue Moon is out in UK cinemas on November 28
