Our underachieving careers make the friendship easier': Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on Blue Moon and their 32-year friendship

"I like this, it's good, Ethan Hawke tells Richard Linklater, midway through a lively digression that has already hopped from politics to the Beatles to the late films of John Huston. What's good? asks Linklater. All of this, says Hawke, by which he means the London hotel suite with its coffee table, couch and matching upholstered armchairs; the whole chilly machinery of the international press junket."

"The director and actor first met backstage at a play in 1993 (Sophistry, by Jon Marc Sherman, says Linklater) and wound up chatting until dawn. The talk laid the ground for what would eventually become Before Sunrise, a star-crossed romance that channelled an off-screen bromance as it sent Hawke and Julie Delpy wandering around mid-90s Vienna, walking and talking and stopping to kiss. Yeah, that was the moment. That set the tone, says Linklater, remembering. Meeting Ethan backstage, then flying out to Vienna."

"Blue Moon, Linklater and Hawke's 11th collaboration, might be their splashiest number to date in that it's a posh period drama a tale of 1940s Broadway. Hawke plays the jilted lyricist Lorenz Hart, propping up the bar on the opening night of Oklahoma! as his former writing partner, Richard Rodgers, celebrates alongside Oscar Hammerstein. Hart dresses sharp and talks fast but he's barely holding himself together, and so it was with the production itself."

Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater maintain a decades-long creative partnership rooted in extended conversations that often become the basis for their films. Their relationship began backstage at a 1993 play and produced Before Sunrise, a dialogue-driven romance that mirrored off-screen camaraderie. Their eleventh collaboration, Blue Moon, is a posh period drama set on 1940s Broadway featuring Hawke as lyricist Lorenz Hart. Blue Moon was shot in 15 days on an Irish soundstage doubling for midtown Manhattan. The production’s ritzy appearance belies its indie, fast-made roots, and Hart presented a distinct acting challenge for Hawke.

Read at www.theguardian.com