In “Blue Moon,” lyricist Lorenz Hart attends the opening night of “Oklahoma!” — the first musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Rodgers, a composer, used to be Hart’s own creative partner, but the early 1940s saw their relationship fractured as they drifted apart.
Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke can’t relate.
“It feels like a blessing,” Hawke said of his decades-long friendship and collaboration with Linklater in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday with TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman. “A lot of it we’re not in control of. Like, our interests are the same. A lot of people grow apart, it’s just what happens. But we’ve stayed passionate about the same things.”
“Yeah, we’re kind of interested in a lot of the same stuff,” Linklater interjected.
“And also we became friends, and we both already knew what we wanted to do with our lives,” Hawke added, as if finishing Linklater’s sentence. “I think sometimes, with Rodgers and Hart for example, when they first started collaborating, they were really young … they were kids. So when they hit 30, they went through a massive change … We found each other as collaborators when we already knew what we wanted to do.”
“As young as Ethan was, he was fully formed at 23,” Linklater joked of when the two first worked together on 1995’s “Before Sunrise.”
But that’s not the full truth. Linklater and Hawke had tossed around the script of “Blue Moon” for years, knowing it was a project they would one day pursue in earnest. Hawke simply needed to age into it. Every so often, they’d reassemble to read through it and discuss the story — one of an artist struggling under the weight of alcoholism and depression as he sees his former partner ascend, without him, to the next stage of their once-shared career. As far back as 2004’s “Before Sunset,” they would listen repeatedly to Rodgers and Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” performed by Ella Fitzgerald, while filming on the streets of Paris.
“Once I was young,” the song opens. “Yesterday, perhaps.”
It wasn’t until recently that Linklater felt it was truly time for Hawke (now six years older than Hart was when he died) to take on the role. Hawke stars in “Blue Moon,” which screened at TIFF ahead of its Oct. 17 limited release from Sony Pictures Classics, opposite Andrew Scott as Rodgers.
“The last time we did a read through-” Hawke started.
“In New York, at your apartment-” Linklater added.
“We finished it and we were like, ‘Wow,’” Hawke continued.
“It’s time,” the two said in unison.
“We just felt it,” Hawke said. “Let’s just make it. The script is ready.”
“Ethan had aged into the part also,” Linklater said.
“Yeah, sadly,” Hawke joked. “But I was ready. Also, I’m grateful. I’ve learned so much about my own profession in the last 10 years. One of the things about getting older is you constantly get forced to keep digging into your toolbox and see if you have any more things to do, and so I was ready for this. I was ready for this challenge.”
And a challenge it was. It’s been a while since the pair worked together, with their last collaboration being 2014’s “Boyhood” (which, famously, filmed across more than a decade). “Blue Moon” is one of two films by Linklater in 2025, followed closely by “Nouvelle Vague” — which, like last year’s “Hit Man,” will release on Netflix.
More than a decade after their last film, Linklater wanted Hawke to take on a completely new type of performance, moving him away from the charming, slick leading man that he so often portrays. For this, Hawke dug deep into that aforementioned toolbox, yielding one of the most transformative performances of his career.
“That’s to Rick’s credit,” Hawke said. “If you’re directed by the same person several times, they kind of know your entire arsenal, your whole toolkit. And Rick was basically like, ‘I don’t want you to use any tool you’ve ever used before.’ He robbed me of my vanity. He robbed me of everything.”
“You’re gonna look so weird,” Linklater laughed of their conversations about Hawke’s physical transformation.
“‘You’re gonna shave your head, and we’re gonna make you 5’2,” Hawke recalled Linklater saying.
“‘Ethan, no one has ever wanted to sleep with you. Ever. Not now, ever. Start from there,’” Linklater recalled.
“‘My Funny Valentine’ takes a whole new meaning when you see the man who wrote it and what he was living through,” Hawke said. “It’s always powerful, but you realize how personal it is.”
“Forlorn, left behind, it’s there in the lyrics,” Linklater said. “They’re so poignant. I mean biting, funny, witty, but oh so sad.”
Catch up on all of TheWrap’s TIFF coverage here.
