<\/p>\n
For a filmmaker once synonymous with slackerdom, Richard Linklater<\/a> has proven to be one of the most prodigious and consistently excellent American filmmakers. A small but rich vein of the two dozen features he\u2019s made have been portraits of artists, including \u201cMe and Orson Welles\u201d and, if you like, \u201cSchool of Rock.\u201d<\/p>\n This fall brings two more, one set at the dawn of a great career ( \u201cNouvelle Vague,\u201d<\/a> about Jean-Luc Godard and the birth of the French New Wave) and another on the cusp of its tragic end: \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d<\/a> about lyricist Lorenz Hart. Both are, in their way, joyous celebrations of brilliant, stubbornly uncompromising creative visionaries. And both are a grand time at the movies.<\/p>\n \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d the first to arrive of the two, is one of the more sheerly delightful movies of the year. It takes place at Sardi\u2019s, in New York, on March 31, 1943. Down the street, \u201cOklahoma!\u201d is premiering, a debut that for Hart (Ethan Hawke) stings. His longtime collaborator, the composer Richard Rodgers, has made it not with Hart but with his new songwriting partner, Oscar Hammerstein II. Six months from this night, Hart will die from pneumonia after spending a cold night passed out outside an 8th Avenue bar. He was 48.<\/p>\n But while Broadway\u2019s focus is on \u201cOklahoma!\u201d ours is on Larry, as everyone calls him. He\u2019s holding court at Sardi\u2019s before Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and the \u201cOklahoma!\u201d crowd rushes in. There, he is regaling Eddie the bartender (Bobby Cannavale) and a few others (including E.B. White, played by Patrick Kennedy) in a free-flowing monologue, as he tries to resist the glass of whiskey on the bar, laments the imminent sensation of \u201cOklahoma!\u201d and waxes poetic about some of his best lines.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve written a handful of words that are going to cheat death,\u201d says Larry. Hart’s best work included American songbook standards like \u201cMy Funny Valentine,\u201d \u201cThe Lady Is a Tramp,\u201d \u201cBewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and, of course, \u201cBlue Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n But his appreciation for language goes far beyond himself. As much as he does a warm sip of bourbon, Larry savors any good quip, turn of phrase or mot juste. His favorite quote from \u201cCasablanca,\u201d for example, is a telling one: \u201cNobody ever loved me that much.\u201d Larry adores the movie and, in particular, Bogart, whom, he notes, is both short and a leading man. \u201cWhich proves you can be both,\u201d Hart says.<\/p>\n Larry is, himself, diminutive, with greasy strands of hair combed over his bald head. The physical transformation for Hawke is a little extreme and potentially distracting. There\u2019s little superficial in the role \u2014 including that Hart was a closeted gay man \u2014 that screams Hawke. Yet the actor has simply never been better. Hawke\u2019s Larry is a magnetic raconteur and an increasingly desperate has-been whose last-ditch attempts to reingratiate himself to Rodgers are limited as much by his excessive drinking as his refusal to hold his tongue. He is, to put it simply, extraordinarily good company.<\/p>\n \u201cOklahoma!\u201d Larry realizes, is going to be performed from that moment \u201cuntil Doomsday.\u201d Even that exclamation point irks him. But more than that, the success of \u201cOklahoma!\u201d \u2014 a musical Larry deems a \u201cfraudulent\u201d portrait of America \u2014 casts his sorry situation in a poignant light. This is the dawn of a mainstream Americana that doesn\u2019t have room for an unconventional man like Larry or his blue songs.<\/p>\n That makes this night at Sardi\u2019s a bittersweet salvation and a tender eulogy. Larry has an audience of only a few, but they\u2019re a fine crew (Cannavale is perfect) and their quiet, quip-filled toasts have an abiding warmth. On the outskirts of this group is Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), a 20-year-old Yale student with whom Larry is infatuated. To others, Larry\u2019s obsession seems incongruous with his sexuality, but he retorts that he \u201cdrinks beauty wherever he finds it.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Kaplow, whose novel \u201cMe and Orson Welles\u201d was the basis of Linklater\u2019s film, drew from the real-life correspondence between Hart and Weiland for his script to \u201cBlue Moon.\u201d In the film, Elizabeth is ambitious and busy mingling with the \u201cOklahoma!\u201d party. That she\u2019s destined to join them, not Larry, is obvious to us. But his oblivious, irrational hope is one of the reasons to love him.<\/p>\n Linklater\u2019s \u201cNouvelle Vague\u201d is a wider story that, while the focus is on Godard, makes room for all the central characters of the New Wave. It\u2019s a teeming movie, bursting at the seams with personalities. \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d though, is a solo act. And a magnificent one, at that. In its finest moments, Linklater’s film pays homage not just to Hart but to all the forgotten writers who couldn’t cheat death, but could tell one heck of a yarn.<\/p>\n \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d a Sony Pictures Classics release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language and sexual references. Running time: 100 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a filmmaker once synonymous with slackerdom, Richard Linklater has proven to be one of the most prodigious and consistently excellent American filmmakers. A small but rich vein of the two dozen features he\u2019s made have been portraits of artists, including \u201cMe and Orson Welles\u201d and, if you like, \u201cSchool of Rock.\u201d This fall brings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2093888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[366683,345013,312614,395172,367018,366684,321294,366687],"class_list":["post-2093887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-blue-moon","tag-bobby-cannavale","tag-ethan-hawke","tag-french-new-wave","tag-jean-luc-godard","tag-lorenz-hart","tag-richard-linklater","tag-richard-rodgers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Blue-Moon-is-a-poignant-funny-valentine-and-Ethan-Hawke.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2093887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2093889,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093887\/revisions\/2093889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2093888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2093887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2093887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2093887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}