Anticipate Richard Linklater's BLUE MOON, starring Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart

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The definition of "okay" except for the squid ink pasta for hair on Hawke's head.

https://i.imgur.com/KpvZt0t.jpeg

I actually enjoyed this quite a bit, especially Hawke's performance. I wasn't in a rush to see it, but a few critics who loved it admitted their surprise so I decided to make it out on its opening week.

What probably carries it for me is 1) the genuine goodwill amongst the cast which is appropriate and comes through in the performances, 2) a genuine love for this music that also comes through, and 3) unlike most American movies about musicians or songwriters, this one does an intelligent and spectacular job of detailing Hart's critical perspective of music (i.e. his work and his field), which is a core part of not only him as a songwriter but as a person as well.

(FWIW, there were also moments where Hawke honestly could've been mistaken for actor Ethan Phillips.)

Not enough music!

My review fwiw.

I actually thought the whole argument about Oklahoma! was one of the best parts of the film and fits in with what I said about Hart's critical view of his world. It's not just his view that gets depicted, Rodgers gets his say too, and while there's nothing about Hart's argument that sounds wrong, there's nothing insincere or clueless about Rodger's argument either. It's an intelligent and clear-eyed depiction of two formidable talents agreeing to disagree at completely opposite ends, and it says volumes about their relationship as co-writers. (FWIW, I'm inclined to agree with Hart, but I also don't doubt that Oklahoma! said exactly what Rodgers wanted to say and that he was smart enough to know that Hart would never help him achieve that.)

It's not the content, it's the beats -- we've seen this argument before. The Artist vs the Hack. While, yeah, Linklater makes clear one talent has burned out, it's also clear that the burnout gets the best lines. I'd almost prefer a movie from Rodgers' POV.

To be clear, I never got the impression Rodgers (at least in the film) was doing anything he believed was compromised or pandering, but Hart's disproval is important too. Hart's days may have been numbered, but even with his fears and insecurities on display, I think it's too simple to sort things out as either winning or losing. Ultimately no one controls which of their works speak to the times or connects with a mass audience, but I don't think that matters even if it understandably depresses Hart. If there's a statement to be drawn from his arguments with Rodgers, it's not that one viewpoint is better than the other, it's that the work they produce should be honest and be what they think music or musical theater should be.

(And also a lyricist would expectedly get the best lines over the composer!)

The movie's equivocal at best about how honesty and commerce intersect.

Well, Hart's biggest hit is one he did under orders (as he'll confess), and he loathes it. Rodgers premieres what likely will be his, but he can be completely happy with it. I don't know how many would agree, but I don't think the film's depiction of that success is cynical - Rodgers can enjoy it because it's truly what he wanted to say, not simply a commercial venture.

I really loved this movie — linklater’s best since EWS!!, and hawke’s best performance since…sunset? ever? I totally agree with birdistheword’s take, I found everything about the film — how linklater shoots hawke, the film’s and its characters’ relationship to art — so, so loving. it’s so wonderfully tender. I really felt for hart, an impossibly conflicted aesthete who can never find a way for that beauty to love him back. I thought the scenes with EB white were some of the strongest in the whole film: he’s the only one who really listens to him, and even he leaves without saying goodbye. I wonder what hart’s relationship with his mom is like

weird how this is coming out basically simultaneously with nouvelle vague. sorta like soderbergh's presence and black bag, but there were two months between those two.

while the film was, to its credit, decidedly unsentimental, I was nonetheless enraptured by its discussion of CASABLANCA (I trust its discussion of “Oklahoma!” is similarly sharp, but I’ve seen like, 3 musicals in my life), a film I can’t watch without being moved to tears even the twentieth time. “no one ever loved me that much”. fucking kill me man

I wish the script had instead focused on Hart at the peak of his success so we could've seen how he STILL remains unsatisfied and how he got under Rodgers' skin anyway.

well, that would have been a completely different movie! the script is based on the letters between hart and elizabeth, which date to the time the film was set. I also think rogers’ way of looking at hart, those pained but loving glances, speak for themselves quite powerfully. you instantly know the two have been through some very good and very bad times together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpFyr64Y7Ag

Lorenz "Larry" Hart: Patron Saint of Beautiful Losers?

I suppose this film would hit special with ILX regulars. Haven't we all at one time or another watched with bewilderment as something we find assertively mediocre rockets up the charts/best-seller list/box office tally? But the film does provide an aesthetically satisfying and tragic (specifically, rooted in the protagonist's fatal character flaws) story.

Haven't we all at one time or another watched with bewilderment as something we find assertively mediocre rockets up the charts/best-seller list/box office tally?

Never.

I saw it again this afternoon. every bit as good. hawke and kennedy will be getting some nominations I hope

some wonderfully subtle camera work I picked up on the second time too. the camera is almost always in motion, particularly when focused on hawke. also lol at hawke’s costume

the way rogers talks to him, and even the way eddie and elizabeth do, breaks my heart. the kindest anyone is to him is hammerstein, who is essentially taking his job, and white, who leaves without saying goodbye

I thought Andrew Scott was incredible playing Rodgers, doing amazing work with every perfectly calibrated expression & response, the reticence and restraint holding back all that bittersweet love, pain, and exhaustion, but keeping it grounded without being showy or actorly. Their scenes together were totally electric imo.

yes

Loved this.

My only complaints: 1) There were a couple too many "do you see?" moments with the Sondheim and George Roy Hill scenes after we'd already had Hart giving EB White the inspiration for Stuart Little, and 2) Hawke's hairpiece was kind of distractingly shoddy; you could see the seams on the top of his forehead.

This was okay, except for the central performance.

central performance was kind of 75% of the film

Yeah, too bad about that

Maybe this will at least finally make me get around to reading A Ship Without a Sail.

Looking forward to watching this since I loved "Nouvelle Vague".

Blue Moon > Nouvelle Vague, imo

Haven't seen this, but Ethan Hawke has had a packed year. Stars in this, stars (I guess?) in Black Phone 2, stars in "The Lowdown" on TV, directed the new Merle Haggard documentary.

I prefer Nouvelle Vague.

^

Thought the guy who played Godard was maybe a wee bit robotic but it ultimately didn't matter that much.

The actor who played Belmondo, though, is too handsome to play the mackerel-mouthed lead.

Yeah, that too. But Lea Thompson's daughter was excellent as Jean Seberg.

I hadn't seen too many pictures of Raoul Coutard but that guy who played him seemed like a dead ringer.

NV did a good job of presenting a well-known, oft-told story and recreating it pretty convincingly while cramming in lots of detail, some of which was less familiar.

Thinking the real Lorenz Hart would have been wittier and nastier, more like Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker in Laura or, say, Oscar Levant, than this lovable loser shtick played by a tall handsome straight guy in short, balding gay drag.

It's like he wandered in from The History of Sound

Think to cleanse my palate I will listen to Jackie and Roy as well as Tony Bennett singing the Rodgers and Hart songbook.

It's like he wandered in from _The History of Sound_

Lovely: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-joyful-mythology-of-nouvelle-vague

otm

Still recasting the other movie with, say, AI George Sanders, but maybe it's a fish-meet-barrel situation

Or AI Tom Conway, if George is too expensive.

Danny Devito!

DeVito

Or even Liberty DeVitto

Wonder what, say, Todd Haynes would have done with this.

you’ve spent about 2x minutes thinking and posting about this film than the runtime. seems like it’s really sticking with you!

Like grit in an oyster!

lol k3vin

He's even wittier than the protagonist of this film! They should take down Peter Lorre from the Sardi's wall and put up a drawing of him instead!

This film was AOK!

actually thought it was extraordinary

just so moving

central performance is a tour de force. andrew scott incred too, in the few scenes he touches

I feel like the Grinch here

Just saw this today. It took a while to get into because it feels so stylised and cliched in some ways (for example the bartender role), and it feels more like a play than a film. I admired it more than enjoyed it. I felt it ran out of energy mid-way through, and unlike comments above, wasn’t particularly impressed by Andrew Scott’s acting.

I don't dislike him but his soberly morose parts bring out the gay in me -- like, he gives performances meant to get straight approval.

Already used up my month's supply of vitrol on this supposed masterpiece so you're on your own

grinch, scrooge, and henry f potter over here!

Now got my eye on a copy of Mary Rodgers's memoir sitting on the New shelf at my branch library.

linklater says his tagline for the movie is “forgotten, but not gone”

Finally figured out that I would have liked this much better if it had been structured as a Dennis Potter-style anti-musical.

not sure I could handle how acrid a dennis potter vn would be

Haven't had a chance to see Blue Moon yet — as far as I can tell, it hasn't come to town theatrically (unless we missed some very brief engagement over the holidays). But we did watch Nouvelle Vague the other night, since it's on Netflix. It's ... OK I guess? I spent most of it wondering why he made it and who it was supposed to be for, but I guess the answer is he made it out of hero worship and it was for him. Hero worship not just or really of Godard, but of the whole New Wave scene. Or his impressions of it, gleaned from undergrad film classes or whatever. For me it never escaped feeling like a well-made class project. Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin are pretty good as Seberg and Belmondo — in a way I think their assignments are easier, because they have so much to draw on.

Also, I'm glad Linklater loves it all so much, but tbh making a starry-eyed movie about the Cahiers crew in 2025 just feels kinda corny.

yeah, i felt the same way about nouvelle vague. my snarky one-word review that i thought about posting on letterboxd was: "airless."

Hero worship not just or really of Godard, but of the whole New Wave scene.

I thought this too while watching it, but Richard Brody's essay, linked above, I think, addresses it.

Neither film is a Linklater essential, though since starting this thread I've warmed to it in memory (but not enough to watch it again).

it’s so breezy. I feel like I could watch it 100 times!

agree with the above consensus re: nouvelle vague. I’m glad linklater went for what he’s passionate about but it just struck me as a bit inessential. everything was very competent though and had his characteristic warmth

nobody ever loved me that much

if you've ever seen Me and Orson Welles it has a similar vibe: he loves watching his characters love what they do.

Brody's column on Nouvelle Vague is good and I think accurately captures what the film does. But I also agree that "inessential" is a good way to describe it, except maybe as a kind of educational text. If I were teaching a film class, it would be fun to screen it before Breathless — it would give some grounding and context that I'm sure college kids of this era would have trouble imagining otherwise.

i liked 'blue moon' but honestly it felt constrained to me by the rigidness of its form -- i don't think it quite had the juice to be set entirely in one room. i feel like i don't often like films where you can envision the director holding a big sign offscreen that says "DO YOU SEE WHAT I'M DOING HERE?" and it felt like the staging of this film entered that territory for me. that being said, i thought it was a compelling story and would agree w/ all the praise for andrew scott, i thought he was fantastic and couldn't have played that part any better

I wouldn't call it a major work, but I found Nouvelle Vague pretty enjoyable. Even the straightforward approach worked surprisingly well for me simply because the contrast with Godard's filmmaking in Breathless made its achievements still feel fresh and radical - you didn't need to be told how innovative and groundbreaking it was, it all felt that way as we watched it come together.

This was a nice write-up for it, particularly for this observation:

What question does Linklater’s latest film Nouvelle Vague, an account of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s legendary debut feature Breathless (À bout de souffle), pose? In the New Yorker, Justin Chang reports that Linklater considers the film part of an informal cycle of artist studies alongside Me and Orson Welles (2008), Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019), and this year’s earlier Blue Moon. Indeed, the first two and Nouvelle Vague were written by or alongside Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr., while Blue Moon was penned by Robert Kaplow, author of the source novel for the Welles film. Typically for Linklater, none of these films adopts the same dramatic form or register. The earliest embeds a coming-of-age drama within a backstage comedy. The second is, on one level, an abrasive Woman Under the Influence scenario and, on another, a winsome mother-daughter tale, both wrapped in a quirky parody of tech culture. Blue Moon is a tragicomedy about a man of theater that wryly obeys the Aristotelian unities. Finally, Nouvelle Vague is a simultaneous behind-the-scenes caper and period pastiche. What unites these movies is a particular thematic throughline. One of Linklater’s widely acknowledged themes is the question of time and specifically, per Jones again, “whether to seize the moment, clarify it, or just live it.” Seen through this lens, the four suggest chapters in the stages of the artist’s life. With its story of a young man’s initiation into the world of artists, Me and Orson Welles would constitute chapter one (call it “boyhood”). Nouvelle Vague, depicting an artist’s flowering, is chapter two. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, a crisis of creatively stalled middle age, chapter three. And Blue Moon, which deals with decline and death, the fourth and, perhaps, final chapter.

In each of these films, the central relationship concerns the protagonist and the art with which they have become disturbingly absorbed, even if this relationship is mediated and negotiated by other characters. Thus the question of Nouvelle Vague becomes, if not André Bazin’s eternal “what is cinema?” then the more immediate and pressing, for the young Godard, “what is filmmaking?”

It recently occurred to me that RL was much more respectful of and detail-oriented as to what actually happened in Nouvelle Vague whereas with Blue Moon he felt he could just make stuff up.

Film bro fetishizes French cinema but makes a cartoon of Great America Songbook history shocka

I liked both a lot. Both are a bit too cute with the references - could have done without Sondheim or Seberg and Belmondo doing the dance from Bande à part - but in the end both really work as Linklater films, as always to a large extent about time and work and life. The meat of Nouvelle Vague, which is basically Everybody Wants Some with a film team instead of a baseball team, is up there with the best he has done.

you know, I’d seen someone else refer to NV as a hangout movie in that sense, which is what made me pull the trigger on watching it, but I didn’t really get that at all. I could have done with more goofing off

One way to look at Breathless is as the filming of an epic goof-off.

Kinda want to see it just to see how Eric Rohmer is portrayed.

Bend down to reach for the Yeti tumbler and you miss him.

lol