Blue Moon star Ethan Hawke thought of his latest collaboration with director Richard Linklater as a different version of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “The day they’re breaking up, only one of them’s going to start a band that’s five times bigger than the Beatles, and the other one’s going to be dead.”
The ninth project Hawke and Linklater made together is set on the opening night of 1943 musical Oklahoma! written by Richard Rodgers (portrayed by Andrew Scott) and Oscar Hammerstein II, a major turning point for previous duo Rogers and Lorenz “Larry” Hart (Hawke) as Hart witnesses his former partner start a second career with Hammerstein (Simon Delaney). Linklater and Hawke described their process of creating Larry at Deadline’s Contenders Film 2025 in Los Angeles.
“Larry Hart was not a big man, and it was part of his wonderful contradictions that I loved, which is that he was the smallest person in pretty much any room, and also the biggest person,” Hawke said. “He kind of felt like if he didn’t talk, if he wasn’t smart, if he wasn’t funny, if he wasn’t insightful, no one would see him or pay attention to him, and so it was this driving force for him.”
After joking about how Hawke lost a foot of height to portray Hart, the pair acknowledged their long history of working together and how it helped Hawke really immerse into the role.
“It was kind of a deductive process, usually you’re building something. This was taking away everything,” Linklater said. “Because Larry Hart, all he is, is his wit, his brain. I just saw him as an open wound.”
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Hawke credited Linklater with knowing all of his tics and pointing them out to get Hawke to disappear and the lyricist to come forward. The actor compared the process to building a cabinet without using the five common tools one normally uses like a hammer, etc.
Blue Moon, which also stars Margaret Qualley as Elizabeth Weiland and Bobby Cannavale — who Hawke “flat out begged” to play Eddie, arrived in theaters October 24, 2025.
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