Blue Moon

 

Director Richard Linklater

Linklater on the set

actor Ethan Hawke

Lorenz Hart/Ethan Hawke

Richard Rodgers/Andrew Scott

BLUE MOON            B                                                                                                             USA  Ireland  (100 mi)  2025  d: Richard Linklater

It’s like, well, perhaps a Rodgers and Hart song, kind of beautiful and super sad and forlorn and all those things too.  A catchy tune where you’re devastated by the end.                              —Richard Linklater describing his film

While the film doesn’t have the romantic scope of his Before Trilogy, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013), where the first two are among the best romantic love stories of the modern era, thriving on the spontaneity of the moment, he’s also made films like Dazed and Confused (1993), 2014 Top Ten List #1 Boyhood, or even Everybody Wants Some !! (2016), which feel like anthems to childhood, as well as the mind-bogglingly funny Hit Man (2023), yet this is something different altogether, with Linklater releasing two films at the same time, an ode to the French New Wave from Godard’s Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) (1960) in Nouvelle Vague, and this 1940’s tribute to songwriter/lyricist Lorenz Hart.  Working again with Ethan Hawke for the first time since the Before Trilogy in what is essentially an elegiac character study in a film about art, artists, and meaning, this is a chamber drama revealing the dark sides of success, a biographical drama that focuses on a crucial night in Hart’s life, where what stands out is the heavily staged theatricality, with nearly the entire film taking place in real time at one location, a national landmark in Sardi’s restaurant, a historical spot in the heart of New York’s theater district, considered the toast of Broadway for more than 100 years.  Yet that’s simply the backdrop for what amounts to a non-stop, heavily-scripted discourse out of the mouth of lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke, nearly unrecognizable with a slick comb-over), a tortured artist who is deeply hurt by what he views as a betrayal from his longtime partner and friend, Richard Rogers (Andrew Scott), among the best composers of American musical theater, who decided instead to work with a different writing partner, Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney), and lo and behold they turn out the biggest hit of Rogers’ career in Oklahoma!, a kitschy portrait of Americana that completely revolutionized musical theater in the early 1940’s by integrating songs, dances, and plot.  For Hart this is tragic, as he hates the musical they’ve created, pandering wholesomeness to overly white audiences, creating a completely inaccurate and inauthentic portrait of America, missing the humanity of the human soul, but the upbeat songs are catchy and audiences seem to love it.  Hart leaves the theater early and wanders into a nearly empty Sardi’s restaurant before the theater crowd comes crashing in, where this is a very dialogue-heavy work, as the camera remains almost exclusively in the bar, and the plot is driven by sprawling conversations and monologues that thematically jump back and forth with the bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) and lounge player “Knuckles” (Jonah Lees) clinking on the piano, whose musical selections often compliment whatever the hell Hart is babbling about, beautifully evoking the era of the 1940’s.  That pretty much defines the picture, as the closeted gay Hart is a chatty Cathy, as they say, as he philosophizes and mocks, blasphemes and complains, lectures and analyzes, while catching the attention of whoever is sitting within earshot, told in a frenetic, screwball-comedy pace, where the entire film captures his every syllable, where he just goes on endlessly about everything under the sun to whoever is willing to listen, raising profound questions about the nature of art, the price of success, and the transience of fame.  But viewers may space out after a while, finding a bitterly exposed Hart a bit too much, while it can also become tedious and repetitious, with witty yet heavy-handed dialogue that doesn’t have the naturalness and light-as-a-feather airiness of a Linklater-written script, which makes all the difference in the world, and can instead feel forced down our throats, with few, if any, pauses to offer a moment of relief.  While there have been other successful musical biopics, like Mike Leigh’s TOPSY-TURVY (1999), Taylor Hackford’s RAY (2004), James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (2024), and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Bob Marley: One Love (2024), this feels more like a one-man play, with the suffocating presence of Hart onscreen for nearly every shot.  Linklater doesn’t sanitize Hart’s addiction or despair, yet never loses sight of the brilliance behind his pain, as snippets of his songs drift through scenes like ghosts, reminders that even as Hart’s life crumbled, his words have endured.

If Hart ever imagined his life as a stage play, hurling words like thunderbolts, or exploding bombs, then the rest of the cast are just silent extras.  Often feeling like we’re in the middle of a Woody Allen movie, packed with textual cross-references, self-deprecating jokes, and sardonic commentaries, and just a touch of self-reflection, with wall-to-wall piano music of American standards and screwball comedy dialogue spewed fast and furiously, Hart is an alcoholic plagued by self-doubt, yet is recently sober, attempting to retrieve the essential purpose of his life that he feels has been dumped on the curb, already considered a has-been, as Rogers has found himself another successful partner, who’s much easier to deal with, by the way, making him the odd man out.  Nonetheless, whether he’s raving about the best line in the movie Ingrid Bergman Tribute: Casablanca (1942), Bogart’s “Nobody ever loved me that much,” another wartime film about two men and a girl, sharing many of the same thematic connections of a bar, friendship, dashed hopes, and a melancholy finale where the protagonist is left behind, or whether anyone else knows just how terrible Oklahoma! is, with its ridiculous use of an exclamation point to draw attention to itself, Hart is a force of nature waxing eloquently about the unequivocal allure of Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley as a blond, a baffling choice, since she’s a decade older), a Yale art student who just turned 20, hoping for a career as a production designer.  After months of correspondence and a mysteriously beautiful (for him) yet unconsummated weekend, he believes this may be the night to finally win her love, where he’s planning a grand soirée afterwards, hiring a string quartet, and even inviting the delivery boy in what he promises will be a memorable evening.  Eddie is confused (as are we), believing Hart prefers the company of men, but Hart defies all expectations, claiming he is “omnisexual,” with the film all but ignoring any hidden homoerotic tension, which CASABLANCA was filled with, by the way, if you believe Hart.  For a gay figure, the film strangely and mysteriously devotes a considerable amount of time to a heterosexual relationship, which may reflect the depths of his own existential loneliness.  Describing Elizabeth as his protégée and muse, suggesting she’s too sexy and smart for boys her own age, he goes on a rhapsodic rant about how much she means to him, suggesting it might be love, despite their age difference.  It sounds like a pipe dream, one of those long-winded alcoholic excursions of prosaic virtuosity in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, as Hart is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, where his alcohol-fueled tirades are a mask for his deeply repressed insecurities, basically an open book for anyone to read, yet reality rarely lives up to those long suppressed hopes, which are so easily dashed in an instant.  Off in a corner he spots E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy), a fellow writer who also has a clever and witty way with words, where their dialogue together is an endless stream of carefully calculated phrases where every word is aptly grandiose, filled with underlying meaning, as the two effortlessly hit it off.  Nonetheless, Hart singlehandedly holds court for the first half of the film, sneaking a shot of bourbon every now and then to bolster his courage, tossing off philosophical maxims like “How can you give voice to the whole world if you don’t have the whole world inside of you?,” gearing up to meet the eye of the storm when all the theater well-wishers show up in an entourage surrounding Richard Rogers, all offering unanimous praise, claiming it’s the greatest musical of all time, with Hart forced to offer his own disingenuous congratulations in this chorus of effusive praise.  Probably the weakest aspect of the film is the digital cinematography by Shane F. Kelly, a Linklater regular since A SCANNER DARKLY (2006), but it lacks spatial depth, never really capturing the claustrophobic, closed-in feeling of the room, often having the artificial staginess of a filmed play.  

Having worked together for more than 20 years from the 20’s to the 40’s, writing 28 stage musicals together, along with over 500 songs, Rogers can see through Hart’s obvious disdain for Oklahoma!, yet he’s willing to set that aside in the interest of being magnanimous, having put up with all of Hart’s emotionally insecure mood swings and alcoholic doldrums for all those years, where he was simply a pain in the ass to work with, always flying off the handle, something of a drama queen grabbing all the attention, while he was left with doing the hard work.  Nonetheless, he offers him a chance to write a few new songs for a revival of A Connecticut Yankee, their successful musical from 1927, but Hart is more interested in his delirious idea about creating a grand musical spectacle around adventurer Marco Polo, which sounds like an exotic journey into the strange and undiscovered lands of King Kong (1933), filled with the same kind of extravagance.  “It’s the thrill of a lifetime,” which he believes is infinitely more interesting than the homogenized and overly predictable Oklahoma!  “Who wants inoffensive art?” he exclaims at one point, but the war years may have taken a toll, with a weary nation preferring something more safe and conventional.  While the ever-eccentric Hart is stealing his limelight, Rogers calmly returns to his party of well-wishers, reminding him to think about the new songs.  While Ethan Hawke’s deliberately showy performance of Hart is the centerpiece of the film, breathing life into the role, something should be said for the saintly grace shown by Rogers (Scott won the Best Supporting Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival), and the endless patience on display, shown through a myriad of changing facial expressions, where it’s clear their paths are on different trajectories, as he looks so effortlessly polite in such an obviously uncomfortable situation, moving his way upstairs to an afterparty that leaves Hart behind.  As an aside, Hart also meets a young Hammerstein prodigy dressed in a tuxedo named Stephen (Cillian Sullivan), a foreshadowing reference to Stephen Sondheim, who would go on to redefine Broadway musicals with his virtuosic wordplay while also introducing darker themes, becoming theater's most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century, and just happens to be the subject of Linklater’s next project, MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, which will be filmed over the course of the next 20 years, with actors aging naturally, not to be confused by the upcoming holiday release by the same name.  By the time Elizabeth shows up, Hart is all aflutter, his nerves on edge, yet his manners are impeccable, as he curiously gives her all of the attention, wanting to hear everything since they last met, as he’s all ears, literally hanging on every word.  While she’s flattered by his near-obsessional infatuation, coming from a man who is more than twice her age, she makes it clear her interest is “not in that way.”  Perhaps the title of the film says it all, as this is not some sunny remembrance, but is instead a collision course between the high-wire act of being a celebrated artist who may already be on a downward spiral, but just doesn’t realize that yet, and the inescapable success of his ex-partner, who along with Oscar Hammerstein would go on to become the greatest writing team in American musical history, leaving Hart behind as yesterday’s news.  It’s a savagely despairing story written by Robert Kaplow, whose novel was the source material for Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles (2008), adapting the material from Hart’s letters that he wrote to an unidentified woman named Elizabeth, which Kaplow bought at an estate sale, accentuating the ups and downs that occur in the ever-evolving life of a melancholic artist, becoming a mournful tale of a man whose career was cut too short, with Ethan Hawke capturing the contradictions of his character, where everything is secondary to his performance, whose heightened mood swings have a profoundly dark emotional impact. Described at the beginning of the movie as “the saddest man I ever knew,” one of three quotations from companions who draw a picture of a sociable but devastatingly lonely person, within seven months Hart would drunkenly collapse in a rain-soaked back alley and die (which is actually the opening sequence, with a radio broadcast obituary playing over it), with Linklater deserving credit for generously reviving his spirit in this Irish wake-like, tragicomic sendoff, where, perhaps coincidentally, the film was actually shot in Ireland, specifically in and around Dublin, recalling, of course, John Huston’s The Dead (1987).            

David Byrne's American Utopia

 

 

 

David Byrne and Spike Lee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAVID BYRNE'S AMERICAN UTOPIA                   B                                                            USA  (105 minutes)  2020  d:  Spike Lee

This film is a joyous antidote to the supreme narrowmindedness of the current political climate which verges on white nationalism to white supremacism, including a closing of our borders, a growing contempt for immigrants, with petty grievance issues cropping up everywhere, so instead of a united country, we are more fractured than ever along racial lines and class differences, disseminating falsehoods with regularity from the highest authority in the land, undermining any hope of unity and trust.  The American Dream of a safe haven inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, literally a beacon of light shining across the globe, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” has been summarily dismissed.  America has reneged on its promise, replaced instead by fear and acrimony, and what might be described as divisive hate politics, creating unending frustration for a nation that refuses to live up to its ideals of freedom and equality, as conceived by the original Founding Fathers and paid for in blood in Abraham Lincoln’s most eloquent Civil War Gettysburg Address, “Our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”  That dream is withering as we speak.  Trump and Southerners from the Republican Party have expanded on the racialized Southern Strategy, now adopting it as a national strategy, creating this whole notion of agitating white fear, also to marginalize, to racialize the elections, and suppress the power of the black vote.  Enter Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and his collection of percussion-oriented global rhythms, featuring an international cast of 11 musicians, including two primary dancers, Chris Giarmo, owning his queerness, wearing a glaring excess of facial make-up, and the ever-limber Tendayi Kuumba, one white and one black, one man and one woman, both seemingly in their own worlds when it comes to modernist dance interpretations, where it’s strange to see dancers wearing suits, yet their presence is not unlike the free-form dancers from the old Sun Ra Arkestra, attuned to a cosmic philosophy, channeling interplanetary forces.  Entirely minimalist, without an ounce of overkill, the visual conception recreates Byrne’s quirky concert film STOP MAKING SENSE (1984) directed by Jonathan Demme when Byrne partnered with choreographer Twyla Tharp, devising his own stage lighting, and even includes four of the original songs, like David Byrne's American Utopia - Burning Down the House YouTube (4:20).  What you’d never know is that this film is directed by Spike Lee, perhaps his whitest venture since 25th Hour (2002), though both are love letters to the city of New York, yet few of his typical signature effects are present, feeling like a more conventional recreation of a Broadway show that happened to run for 6-months during fall and winter of 2019 before the Covid pandemic closed down all theaters earlier this year.  There is no sign of Covid here, no masks, no social distancing, so it’s an expression of an earlier time when performances were sold out and audiences were free to express their wild enthusiasm.  There is a very brief strobe light sequence, turning figures into black and white, a throwback to earlier music videos, and the film stock changes from high-def to a commercial grade at the end when performers go into the audience, greeted enthusiastically by patrons capturing the experience on their phones, yet few special effects are employed, instead emphasizing a collective humanity from the performers.  There’s a curious postscript showing cast members on bikes making their way through New York City traffic, all bundled up in winter attire, reflecting Byrne’s avid cycling activism, using a bike as his main means of transport throughout the city, even writing a book on cycling in 2009 entitled Bicycle Diaries, N.Y./Region: David Byrne: Live on Two Wheels | The New York Times YouTube (4:27).

Spike Lee has done this sort of thing before, filming an earlier Broadway musical in the rarely seen PASSING STRANGE (2009), running just a few short months in 2008, winning a Tony Award for Best Book, yet that film was unlike anything the director had ever done before.  In stark contrast to his earlier concert film, David Byrne is older now (aged 67 during the filming), with a wave of white hair that he constantly brushes away from his face, seen wearing a microphone, where he continually interacts with the audience, maintaining a running dialogue, beginning with the idea that there are many more neuro brain connections in babies, that we tend to lose them as we age, which may mean we’re not as bright, but may also mean we simply discard the ones not deemed essential.  With that in mind, the show explores the ideas of human connection, self-evolution, and social justice, where the main thrust is one of empathy, where we can all improve ourselves by learning to respect others, suggesting listening and learning is the road to acquired knowledge, where the songs advocate a welcomed unity in spirit, literally rejuvenating many of the lost connections, reaffirming many of the ideals that have been cynically rejected by this political regime, where Trump and his group of loyal followers are more of a cult group than an organized political apparatus, spreading misinformation while endorsing every known conspiracy theory that was previously only published in disgraced tabloids like The National Enquirer, which regularly published stories of UFO sightings and Martian invasions.  Who knew that fearmongering would become the prevailing mantra from an American President and his minions, suppressing any and all contrary views that don’t coincide with his own, creating an alarmist autocratic dive into the gutter of utter despair where dreams only die from disuse.  Byrne reminds us that a mere 55% of eligible Americans voted in the 2016 Presidential election, while only 20% vote for local elections, suggesting a vast majority remain indifferent to the outcome.  While this lacks the imagination of the Jonathan Demme film, which was a revelation when it was released, it does reaffirm just how valuable artists are on the global landscape, as they offer alternative paths to the dreary road we’re on, wherever we may be.  Featuring strangely robotic choreography by Annie-B Parsons, with Alex Timbers as production consultant, the film is an immersive experience offering the best seats in the house, adding an element of intimacy, though its fascination with close-ups may detract from an overall conception, yet it jettisons the viewer away from any conformist mindset, even as all performers are dressed exactly the same in standard gray suits, everyone barefoot, featuring a grey-lined stage, where it may as well be imagined futuristic prison attire, yet the songs themselves attempt to break free of the hermetic bubble we all seem to be living in, liberating our minds and hearts that seem to have slowly atrophied from disuse in Trump’s America, David Byrne - One Fine Day with Brooklyn Youth ... - YouTube (5:07).  Byrne reminds us of our better selves, where the people around us matter, growing ecstatic simply by just being together, becoming a Whitmanesque ode to America, viewed as a work in progress, extolling the virtues of a utopian community that never seems to materialize, that may exist only in our imaginations.  As he introduces the song “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” that unbridled joy is also met with the thought that some people might be overstaying their welcome, like Buñuel’s THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962), where in some part of your mind you might actually wish they’d leave, David Byrne Performs 'Everybody's Coming To My House' (4:13, with Byrne and the cast literally taking over the set of The Stephen Colbert Show).

More than 30 years ago Byrne was described in The New Yorker by film critic Pauline Kael, Stop Making Sense | The Stacks Reader, “Byrne has a withdrawn, disembodied sci-fi quality, and though there’s something unknowable and almost autistic about him, he makes autism fun.”  Perhaps with that in mind, he conceives a song like this, knowingly awkward and decidedly different, but accentuating his own individuality, suggesting he is who he is, David Byrne's American Utopia - I Dance Like This YouTube (3:29).  While acknowledging “We’re only tourists in this life,” Byrne has a way of singing in character, where he openly questions everything, identifying with various points of view, as if providing an existentialist travel guide, at times a psychopath, a televangelist, a domestic terrorist, where he has a knack for making the familiar feel strange and mysterious.  Continually pursuing various trains of thought, he recalls how the Dadaist Movement of the 30’s was a response to rising fascism while occurring during the economic blight of the Great Depression, using nonsense and absurdity to make sense of the times, while early on in his young, still developing life it seemed healthy to watch plenty of TV, holding out hope that it might set him free, literally stepping into the television in one musical number, like a scene out of David Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME (1983), but there are no apocalyptic insinuations.  The most harrowing revelations come from a borrowed Janelle Monáe protest song that he saw her perform at a 2017 woman’s march in Washington, Hell You Talmbout - David Byrne's American Utopia YouTube (4:44), wondering if it would be equally effective when told from a white point of view, shouting out the names of black victims killed at the hands of the police, updated to include the more recent deaths driving the George Floyd protests, with Lee including photos of the deceased, along with photos of their mothers, just like Monáe did when she brought the mothers onstage with her when she initially performed the song.  The call and response effect is profoundly moving, a cathartic release from the incurred trauma of having to lament a neverending line of victims going back to slavery times (Police shoot, kill nearly 1,000 yearly – Investigative Reporting ...), breaking into a percussion-led marching band format, like a procession of New Orleans second-liners, instilling the idea of boldly choosing freedom over fear.  Lee’s cinematographer Ellen Kuras intercuts front row shots of the entire stage, moving back and forth to each side, along with shots from the back of the stage, and even a ceiling provided camera, but there are no dazzling Busby Berkeley formations.  Arguably the best shots are close-ups on Byrne’s face, pensive, absorbed, seemingly void of emotion, yet his calm demeanor dramatically contrasts with the enthusiastic musical energy happening onstage. The origins of this show, oddly enough, happened to be Byrne’s reading of French historian and political writer Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th century two-volume Democracy in America while on tour, where many of the chapter titles are actually open questions, anticipating many problems that still lay ahead, where a new nation at the time was viewed as an experiment, but the future was open-ended, offering a utopian sense of what could still be achieved.  It is this sense of optimism that drives the Broadway production, and while there are occasional lapses, especially towards the end, mostly it provides a sense of well-earned urgency, with the entire band marching off into the audience in the rousing finale, David Byrne - Road To Nowhere - New York - Hudson Theatre - 10/4/2019 - American Utopia YouTube (5:21), reminding us exactly where we currently find ourselves, where the last four years have felt like living in a black hole, or maybe the dark ages.  

Post Script

One sticking point in the show is that David Byrne uses several songs made popular by the Talking Heads as if they are his sole and exclusive property, yet they were written in collaboration with other artists who aren't being credited.  It seems to me that in a Broadway show that questions our humanity and our shared connections with others, this misappropriation would be rectified.