The first trailer for the upcoming Lorenz Hart biopic Blue Moon has dropped! Watch above to see a newly diminutive Ethan Hawke starring as the "The Lady Is a Tramp" and "My Funny Valentine" lyricist. Fellow stage vet Andrew Scott is co-starring as composer Richard Rodgers.
The film is set to get a limited cinematic release beginning October 17 in Los Angeles and New York, with a nationwide roll-out to follow October 24. The film premiered February 18 at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. See what critics are saying about the film here.
In the film, Hawke plays Hart, who was around 5 feet tall in real life. Hawke told the Hollywood Reporter that his transformation into Hart involved shaving his head and, "We did it with old stagecraft thing, to make me look shorter, but all day long, I was lower than I am in real life, doing scenes just staring up at Margaret Qualley,” said Hawke.
Directed by Richard Linklater (also at work on a multi-decade project to bring Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along to the screen), Blue Moon depicts the final days of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, Rodgers' primary collaborator before his groundbreaking partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II. The film mostly takes place on the March 31, 1943 opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! The show would revolutionize the art form of musical theatre and establish Rodgers and Hammerstein as one of Broadway's most influential and lucrative writing teams.
The trouble is, before Oklahoma!, Rodgers had primarily been half of Rodgers and Hart, a partnership that produced 28 stage musicals (including On Your Toes and Pal Joey) and such standards as "Blue Moon," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "My Funny Valentine," and "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered." By 1943, Hart's alcoholism had sent Rodgers looking for new collaborators, and Hart would see an untimely death November 22, 1943.
The film also features Margaret Qualley as Elizabeth Weiland, Bobby Cannavale as Eddie, Jonah Lees as Knuckles, Simon Delaney as Hammerstein, and Cillian Sullivan as Stevie. Robert Kaplow wrote the screenplay. Scott won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for his work in the film.
