A Review: BLUE MOON
by Pat Frickey

Richard Linklater, USA 2025

The film opens with a stumbling drunk, a broken man collapsing in a back alley on the rainy streets in New York City. Flash backwards eight months to…

March 31, 1943, to see the same man, Lorenz “Larry” Hart (Ethan Hawke), alive and well, prematurely exiting a Broadway theater. Hart makes his way to Sardi’s, the Broadway-goers beloved hangout…and waits and waits. All the while, the witty raconteur entertains the genial bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) and other customers with an acerbic wit that barely masks his profound sadness. This is the story of a breakup, and Hart can barely stand the pain.

March 31, 1943, is a devastating night for Hart. As the clever half of the successful Broadway songwriting team Rodgers & Hart, he had collaborated with Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) for more than twenty years. They composed songs for more than twenty-six musicals, including classics  "The Lady Is a Tramp"; “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"; and "My Funny Valentine"… and of course “Blue Moon,” which gave this film its title. The problem is Hart had been ditched by his partner Rodgers who then teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney) to collaborate on “Oklahoma!” Though Hart had left “Oklahoma!” opening night early and spoke disparagingly of a play which had an exclamation point in its title and a song with the lyrics “corn is as high as an elephant’s eye,” he sensed that Rodgers would have an enormous hit on Broadway, without him. Not that Rodgers had dropped Hart on a whim. Hart had been asked to collaborate on “Oklahoma!” but couldn’t get inspired to write lyrics for a musical set in the heartland of America. So, Rodgers had approached Hammerstein. Hart was by then on a downward spiral, undependable and chaotic, due to alcoholism and a debilitating dose of self-loathing.

March 31, 1943, Hart waits, waits and drinks, and drinks even more at Sardi’s for the conquering heroes, Rodgers & Hammerstein. They appear to the accolades of prominent theatergoers and the headlines of the press raving about “Oklahoma!” He also waits for his lovely young protégé Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley) to show up. He is desperate for a muse though he may be more romantically interested in the florist delivery boy than this ambitious Yale student. When Rodgers arrives, he shows a kindness to Hart, that makes the heartbreak perhaps a little less devastating.

Ethan Hawke is magnificent as Lorenz Hart. At first, he is unrecognizable as the extremely unglamorous, diminutive songwriter with the comic combover. Little is left of the sexy Jesse in Richard Linklater’s iconic Before trilogy, (BEFORE SUNRISE [1995], BEFORE SUNSET [2004], and BEFORE MIDNIGHT [2013]). That Linklater chose Hawke to be the lead in BLUE MOON is no fluke. The two, not unlike Rodgers & Hart, have been working together for decades. Maybe someday there will be a film featuring Hawke & Linklater highlighting their fabulous years of collaborative filmmaking with the obvious title—AFTER MIDNIGHT.