Richard Linklater developing a film about Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, BLUE MOON

https://deadline.com/2024/06/richard-linklater-developing-blue-moon-film-richard-rodgers-lorenz-hart-1235958137/
 

This is great subject matter for a film with two incredibly complicated, depressed men at the center of this partnership.

The MGM musical WORDS & MUSIC is a very loose adaptation of the Rodgers & Hart partnership. So this one will definitely be more factual!

Let the casting brainstorm begin! Hart was 47 when he died in 1943; Rodgers was seven years younger. 

Updated On: 6/4/24 at 09:54 AM

The problem with a Rodgers & Hammerstein biopic is that I don’t know if there’s a way to make it without Rodgers seeming like a huge asshole in contrast to the cuddlier Oscar Hammerstein.

They’re centering Hart here, which feels like a smart idea: “the film follows Hart as he attempts to save face while celebrating his former partner Rodgers’ great success on the night of his musical Oklahoma!‘s Broadway opening.”

I recall Todd Purdum’s book writing vividly about the breakup of the Rodgers & Hart partnership. 

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired worldwide rights to Blue Moon, and has announced that it will star Ethan Hawke as Hart alongside Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott.

Blue Moon profiles the final days of Lorenz Hart, part of the hit songwriting team Rodgers & Hart. The film is set primarily in Sardi’s Restaurant on March 31, 1943, the opening night of Oklahoma!, which marked Rodgers’s first collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II as Hart’s replacement.

Production will commence in Dublin, Ireland this summer.

 

I wonder if Andrew Scott is Richard Rodgers and Cannavale is Oscar Hammerstein?

Also wonder if this is being done with the blessings of the estates or not (which may impact if music by Rodgers/Hart/Hammerstein can be utilized).

Reactions from its premiere at Berlin:

Indiewire is positive

Variety is positive on the script, but thinks Erhan Hawke is fatally miscast

The Hollywood Reporter is positive

Slant is positive

3/5 from The Independent

4/5 from Ion Cinema

Deadline is positive

7/10 from Next Best Picture

I like this trailer a lot. Gives me Woody Allen vibes kind of. Ethan Hawke is unrecognizable, and the rest of the cast seems strong too. I'll be checking it out.

It really is an extraordinary film. I saw it with a very full audience and it was interesting to hear reactions to those “Easter eggs” you mentioned. Only about 20% of the people in my screening reacted to some of them so you knew who the other real theater nerds were. 

I saw this yesterday in a theatre with four other people present here in New Orleans.

It's essentially a monologue for Ethan Hawke, who is very good indeed.

The inclusion of Hart inspiring a lyric for Sondheim (who seems to be Young Sheldon), a children's book character,  and a movie genre could have been discarded.

The special effects for Hart's diminutive height were at times distracting.

However, I overall liked it because of Hawke's performance.

Bobby Cannavale was good as well. 

I wanted to like this more than I did. Hawke does a lot of work as Hart and has the ability to disappear into a role, even if the attempt to make him look short felt like a lot of effort. It’s a sad story but I didn’t feel like I learned enough about Hart that wasn’t established early on.

Margaret Qualley’s character may be based on a real person who corresponded with Hart but I didn’t find her character all that interesting. I saw what the writer was going for but it felt labored, especially as it’s portrayed as a pivotal scene.

Hawke’s interactions with Andrew Scott’s Rodgers had a nice mix of politeness, sadness, tension and desperation. His ‘dancing as fast as I can’ efforts to entertain everyone had a believable sadness, especially when mixed with his understandable defiance in defending his own work.

I enjoyed this a LOT (even as someone who doesn't know much of Hart's personal life).  The early scenes with Hart and the bartender and pianist (and later E. B. White) were really wonderful and I loved seeing the camaraderie they established.  And of course, the two scenes with Richard Rodgers are so layered, and I loved seeing the complexity of emotion from both sides about their shared history.  I agree that the Elizabeth Weiland stuff was by far the least interesting part of the movie, and I thought her extended conversation with Hart went on for a lot longer than I wanted it to--I definitely felt my attention drifting and wanting to get back to interacting with just about any other character.  I see the story beat it sets up, but it also felt like that beat was broadcast from pretty much the beginning and didn't seem to land with the gravitas that they might have wanted it to.

But all in all, I thought this was a really great portrait of an artist at a pretty pivotal moment in his career.