Over the last thirty years, Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have cemented their status as one of cinema's all-time great director-star duos with t
Over the last thirty years, Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have cemented their status as one of cinema’s all-time great director-star duos with their work on movies like the Before trilogy, Boyhood, Tape, and Waking Life. Their latest team-up, Blue Moon, finds Linklater and Hawke turning the clocks back to the evening of 31 March, 1943 for a historical chamber piece centred around feted lyricist Lorenz Hart (a bald-cap sporting Hawke) and the drama that unfolds at the afterparty of his former collaborator Richard Rodgers’ (Andrew Scott) recent show, Oklahoma! Check out the trailer below;
“We write together for a quarter of a century and the first show he writes with someone else is gonna be the biggest hit he ever had,” bemoans Hawke’s Hart to Bobby Cannavale’s Sardi barman at the start of this slick first Blue Moon trailer. “Am I bitter? Yes!” As tone-setters go, played out against a sprightly, waltzing score, it’s a pretty neat one. Cue an evening of high tension, loaded conversations, and revelations ahead as Hart finds himself tête-à-têteing with Scott’s dapper Rodgers, fielding questions about his sexuality, pining for rising starlet Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), and ruminating on all that was and could’ve been, all delivered in Linklater’s signature fast-paced, witty style.
Hailed as a triumph already at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, with Hawke’s performance being touted as one of his best to date, Blue Moon — whose cast also includes Simon Delaney as Oscar Hammerstein and Cillian Sullivan as Stephen Sondheim — is already shaping up to be another must-see Linklater-Hawke joint. American audience can look forward to seeing whether their latest hits all the right notes when Blue Moon hits US cinemas on 24 October, while over here in the UK we’ll have to hang tight just a little longer as we wait for news on when we’ll be able to take a trip to Sardi’s with Hart and Rodgers.
COMMENTS