DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. In the new movie "Blue Moon," Ethan Hawke stars as lyricist Lorenz Hart on the night his former writing partner, Richard Rodgers, scores his greatest hit with the musical "Oklahoma!" The film is directed by Richard Linklater and costars Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley. It opens this week in selected theaters and then goes wide. Our critic-at-large John Powers says it's a smart, funny and touching portrait of a genius on the sly.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Artists spend their lives trying to create things that express their own personal vision. Yet, it's one of art's cruelties that the distinctive vision that makes you special today can almost overnight make you passe. This hard truth runs through Richard Linklater's aching comedy "Blue Moon," which stars Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart, the genius lyricist famous between the two world wars for his witty pyrotechnics. Along with composer Richard Rodgers, Hart wrote over two dozen musicals and turned out hundreds of songs, many of them still standards. "Isn't It Romantic?" "My Funny Valentine," "Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered" and, yes, "Blue Moon."
For all the acclaim, however, Hart was painfully insecure, a raw nerve end of a man. Closeted and Jewish, he was 5 feet tall, thought himself unattractive and had erratic, alcohol-drenched work habits that eventually sank his partnership with Rodgers. It's this damaged Hart, 47 years old and only months from death, whose soul is laid grippingly bare in Linklater's film. The action is set over a few hours of March 31, 1943, the night of the Broadway premiere of "Oklahoma!" Rodgers' first musical with his new writing partner, Oscar Hammerstein II. Hart walks out in the middle. He hates the show for being sentimental and rife with bogus Americana. He even hates the exclamation point after Oklahoma.
But he also knows it's going to be epochal, bigger than anything he and Rodgers ever did. And so, putting on a brave face beneath his unfortunate comb-over, Larry, as everyone calls him, goes to Sardi's restaurant, where "Oklahoma!" will have its after-party. He intends to nobly congratulate Rodgers, the partner who jilted him, but also to meet up with his protege, Elizabeth Weiland, a 20-year-old Yale drama student played by Margaret Qualley, with whom he dreams of sharing a grand love. As Larry waits, he starts getting sozzled, tossing off urbane, opinionated, baroquely droll patter to the bartender. That's a wry Bobby Cannavale. And to a sympathetic fellow drinker, New Yorker writer E.B. White, played by Patrick Kennedy.
While Larry can be a buoyant delight, you can sense he'd be a nightmare to work with. This becomes even clearer when he finally talks with his longtime partner, played with effortless mastery by Andrew Scott. Dapper in his tux and high on success, Rodgers treats the somewhat rumpled heart with a shifting blend of generosity, respect, sadness and the desire just to get on with things. But Larry can't stop himself from going too far. Here, he says they should do a new show together, but one that's not too easy. Rodgers responds with smiling umbrage.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLUE MOON")
ANDREW SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) "Oklahoma!" is too easy? The guy actually getting the girl in the end is too easy? You've just eliminated every successful musical comedy ever written, Larry.
ETHAN HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) It's too easy for me.
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Did you hear the audience tonight?
HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Yes.
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Sixteen hundred people didn't think it was too easy. You're telling me 1,600 people were wrong?
HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) I'm just saying you and I can do something so much more emotionally complicated. We don't have to pander to what...
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Oscar and I are pandering?
HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) No, I didn't say that.
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Irving Berlin is pandering?
HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) I love Berlin.
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) "White Christmas" is pandering?
HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Well, I don't believe "White Christmas."
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) OK.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Well, maybe audiences have changed.
HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Well, they still love to laugh.
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) They want to laugh, but not in that way.
HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) In what way?
SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) In your way. They want to laugh, but they also want to cry a little. They want to feel.
POWERS: In his real life, of course, Larry is actually a cauldron of feelings. But in his art, he likes to disguise them. The canny Rodgers appreciates that Hart's sophisticated lyrics modernized American songwriting. But he realizes that such cleverness is no longer in fashion. Now, with its confined setting and garrulous characters, "Blue Moon" often feels like an adapted play. Yet this isn't a problem. Linklater understands how to use his camera in confined spaces to keep a talkie movie visually arresting. And he's helped by the snap of Robert Kaplow's screenplay and by an immaculate cast that nails every line.
Hawke transforms himself in body and voice, turning his familiar cocky self into a physically shrinking figure, forever tiptoeing on the rim of despair. His neediness is naked when Elizabeth arrives and they share a warm, funny tete-a-tete, in which she tells him about her sexual encounter with the big man on campus she's always adored. Qualley, it's worth saying, is just terrific here, bursting with charm and vitality. Kidding himself into thinking this lanky young beauty might be romantically interested in him, Larry listens to her with the rapt attention of one who hopes to wish love into existence, just as earlier he'd hoped to wish back into existence his old easy rapport with Rodgers.
Although "Blue Moon" works on a small canvas, Linklater uses it to explore big things - shifting cultural tastes, professional jealousy, the vagaries of artistic collaboration, the weight of passing time. And he gives us an indelible portrait of a man who, for all his uncommon self-devouring brilliance, is driven by feelings that are all too human. Larry is lonely and frightened and looking for love, just like the rest of us.
BIANCULLI: John Powers reviewed the new movie "Blue Moon."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLUE MOON")
BILLIE HOLIDAY: (Singing) Blue moon, you saw me standing alone without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own. Blue moon, you knew just what I was there for. You heard me saying a prayer for someone I really could care for. And then they suddenly appeared before me, the only one my arms will ever hold. I heard somebody whisper, please, adore me. And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold. Blue Moon, now I'm no longer alone without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.
BIANCULLI: On Monday's show, Ken Burns talks about his new PBS documentary series on the Revolutionary War. It includes the perspectives of women, Native Americans and enslaved and free Black people, the people excluded from the declaration all men are created equal. We'll talk about how that war, which he says was also civil war, echoes today. I hope you can join us.
FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLUE MOON")
HOLIDAY: (Singing) Blue moon, you saw me standing alone without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own. Blue moon, you knew just what I was there for. You heard me saying a prayer for someone I really could care for. And then they suddenly appeared before me, the only one my arms will ever hold.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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