For theatre aficionados, Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon is a rich cornucopia of backstage gossip and Easter egg name dropping galore—including a brief glimpse of a 13-year-old intellectual braggart who would go on to become our greatest American composer/lyricist.
Blue Moon is also the portrait of a tortured artist whose career and life ended way too early.
The film takes place on March 31, 1943, the night the groundbreaking Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma! opened on Broadway. However, the film’s main character is lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke), Rodger’s partner for decades. Their songwriting output is the stuff of legend (including the titular song) as were their successful Broadway musicals (Babes in Arms, Pal Joey). But by the date above, Rodgers had moved on to Hammerstein—and, together, they would pen some of most acclaimed, and in my opinion, gasp, overrated, shows of all time (Carousel, South Pacific, The Sound of Music).
After an unnecessary, death-fall opening, Blue Moon flashes back to the diminutive Hart in the opening night Oklahoma! audience, hating on it with glee. He is then off to the famous restaurant Sardi’s, the only other location used in the film, where the Oklahoma!creatives will eventually gather to await the reviews and celebrate.
Hart wastes no time seizing center stage, joking with Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) the congenial but very straight house bartender. Hart also greets the pianist who he dubs “Knuckles” (Jonah Lee) and who he coyly flirts with. Sitting at a nearby table is New Yorker scribe EB White (Patrick Kennedy), one of the few people, it seems, that Hart actually respects. Hart chatters away incessantly about what he likes (Casablanca) and dislikes (almost everything else). He also shares his theory that Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains walking away together at the end of Casablanca, can be interpreted in a very gay way.
He then starts in about a gorgeous young gal, Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), a writer and the daughter of one of the Oklahoma! producers, who he is crushing on hard. He can’t seem to shut up about her. (more on that below)
As the Oklahoma! team begin to pour in, Hart becomes more and more manic, insincere and pitiful and indulges in more and more whiskey. And as much as he loathed the show, to Rodgers (a dapper Andrew Scott) and anyone in hearing range at Sardi’s, he heralds, “This is one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen, and it’ll be playing twenty years from now!”
It took me a bit of time to get used to what I felt was a grating and disconcerting central performance by Hawke, reeking of a wince-inducing combination of overbearingness and desperation. Hart was known to struggle with bouts of depression, often behaving erratically, and going on alcoholic binges. But here he comes off as pretty unbearable, certainly charming but also repulsive. I’m still mixed on the caricature-style portrayal, but I applaud Hawke his daring.
The casting of out, gay actor Andrew Scott as Richard Rodgers is a rather brilliant backhand to the famous composer since he was a rabid homophobe (according to Stephen Sondheim, among other sources). So, bravo, Linklater and Scott, who won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance at the Berlinale, earlier this year.
Qualley is effervescent in an undercooked part.
While the movie is based on the real letters between Weiland and Hart, written by the novelist Robert Kaplow, Hart’s droning on about her incessantly in the film reeks of a gay man desperately needing to convince everyone around him he’s straight—or in Hart’s admitted case—bisexual. He certainly could have been but, according to most accounts, from people who knew him, he was a closeted homosexual. The truth seems to lie in the persistent repetition, which adds to Hart’s being seen as pathetic.
Kaplow wrote the novel Me and Orson Welles, later made into a terrific film, directed by Linklater. His script here plays more like a stage play, but Linklater keeps the camera ever so busy, you hardly notice it’s all talk. So much talk.
Blue Moon is both part of the Spotlight Series at the New York Film Festival as well as the Opening Night Feature at NewFest.
Sony Pictures Classics is releasing Blue Moon in theaters in New York & Los Angeles on October 17, 2025, expanding nationwide on October 24, 2025.
