Richard Linklater Had to Be a ‘Naggy Director’ to Get Ethan Hawke to ‘Transform’ for ‘Blue Moon’ Role: ‘If He Didn’t Know Me So Well … He Would Have Punched Me’

In order to get Ethan Hawke to fully transform into songwriter Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon,” Richard Linklater had to become a “naggy director.”

During a conversation at the BFI London Film Festival on Friday, Linklater discussed Hawke’s impressive performance in the film, in which he appears unrecognizable with a combover, fake teeth and standing 10 inches shorter.

“It was such a challenge. It was like, Ethan had to transform,” Linklater said. “He’s five feet tall, he’s bald with the combover, just everything about him had to change. I called it like, a kind of erasure of Ethan.”

Because “every gesture of Ethan” had to “go away,” Linklater said he felt himself becoming a “naggy director,” to the point where Hawke — his frequent collaborator of three decades who has starred in nine of his films — got annoyed.

“I mean, he said if he didn’t know me so…