Yahoo Lifestyle Richard Linklater’s ‘Blue Moon’ Lights Up Berlin as Crowd Goes Wild for Ethan Hawke’s Unrecognizable Transformation Into Lorenz Hart
Ethan Hawke’s transformative turn in “Blue Moon” — the actor’s first film in a decade with longtime collaborator Richard Linklater — just brought the house down in Berlin.
The audience reactions at the Berlinale world premiere were hugely positive for the biographical musical drama from Sony Pictures Classics, which tells the story of American lyricist Lorenz Hart (Hawke) as he battles alcoholism and depression on the opening night of “Oklahoma!,” the first musical penned by his former creative partners Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.
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Following the screening, cheers erupted around the Palast for Linklater and his cast — the loudest for his “Before” trilogy and “Boyhood” star, who was dressed in a checkered suit and large multicolored tie. As Hart, Hawke is in practically every frame of “Blue Moon” and is almost unrecognizable on screen — especially concerning his height (the lyricist was only 5 feet tall). There were further cheers for his co-stars in attendance, Margaret Qualley and Andrew Scott.
“The tone of the movie we hoped would be like a Rogers and Hart song — perfectly crafted, witty, melancholic, sad, funny, all of that stuff,” Linklater said on stage afterwards, adding that he’d been working on the film for 12 years but Hawke “was a little too young for the part” originally.
“It was an exercise in simplicity — I kept thinking about music or a Matisse line drawing, it was incredibly simple,” Hawke said about his approach to the role. The actor, however, had to contend with a superfan in the front row, who shouted at him several times while he tried to speak. “Thank you so much, I love you too. I feel the same way, let’s meet later,” he responded as she continued to try to speak. He did later stop by to sign an autograph for her and smiled politely as she patted him on the arm.
The standing ovation for “Blue Moon” was long by local standards, coming in at just over a minute. But here in Berlin, nobody’s counting or comparing, at least not according to festival director Tricia Tuttle, who told Variety earlier that “everyone I know who likes cinema cannot stand the clap-o-meter.”
Clap-o-meter or not, “Blue Moon” — which is competing for the Golden Bear — looks to have brought the festival its first big, buzzy and starry hit to have actually world premiered in Berlin, which has so far seen the likes of Robert Pattinson and Timothée Chalamet swing by as part of their “Mickey 17” and “A Complete Unknown” tours, respectively.
Sony Pictures Classics has “Blue Moon” for the U.S. and is reported to be planning a release in May.
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