Ethan Hawke reunites with Richard Linklater in their latest collaboration, Blue Moon.
The film finds Hawke playing lyricist Lorenz Hart in a story that takes place over the course of one night. Hart’s former artistic partner, Richard Rogers, has just opened the classic musical Oklahoma! on Broadway. Hart faces the future of his professional life, as well as the unraveling of his personal one, in this new film, which Hawke says required something different from him.
“This movie falls very much in what I would call, like, a Richard Linklater film. This is what he does. It’s real time, it’s real people. It’s emotional. It’s a hangout movie. But what he was asking of me in this collaboration was very different,” Hawke told ABC Audio.
The actor believes Linklater is the only director who would have cast him as Hart. “I often told him, ‘You sure you don’t want to cast somebody else?'” Hawke said.
Hawke wanted to take on the challenge, but wasn’t confident he could pull it off.
“I was desperate to do it, but it was just outside of my normal comfort zone,” Hawke said. “We’d known each other so long that he was the right person to push me. He knew how much I loved this man, how much I loved this character and how badly I wanted to do it, and he knew it was in me. But I don’t think anybody else would have even had the idea.”
Andrew Scott takes on the role of Rogers. He says to embody the celebrated artist, he thought about what it would be like to portray an artistic genius right before they finally reach success.
“Some of the great geniuses that I’ve known — and there aren’t many — but they’re as nervous, sometimes even more neurotic and deep feeling, as any other human being.”
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