Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon Is a Film for Musical Superfans
Richard Linklater must have extraordinary pull to get big-screen releases for his two esoteric period movies this year, because only a small group of avid American musical superfans will find Blue Moon interesting.
Blue Moon, the new Richard Linklater film starring Ethan Hawke, follows the American lyricist Lorenz Hart’s agonizing and very public fall from grace, but it fails to hit the heartbreaking notes it is aiming for. (Sony Pictures Classics)
I went to see Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon because I’m one of the extremely niche group of people still living who care about the life and work of lyricist Lorenz Hart. Hart was a scintillating talent and a tormented man who wrote the lyrics for the scores of many hit musical shows from the 1920s and ’30s with his longtime friend and songwriting partner, composer Richard Rodgers.
Just to give you an idea of the extent of my interest in this subject, when it comes to the Great American Songbook standards written by Rodgers and Hart and recorded by a rotation of top singers through the early 1960s, I have favorite versions of the songs. Here’s a partial rundown: “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” (Ella Fitzgerald); “My Funny Valentine” (Chet Baker); “Blue Moon” (Elvis Presley); “I Could Write a Book” (Frank Sinatra); “Little Girl Blue” (Judy Garland); “Lover” (Peggy Lee); and “The Lady Is a Tramp” (Lena Horne).
This movie’s gotten a remarkably wide release considering the fact that, when it comes to who its audience might be, there’s . . . me. And, y’know, a smattering of others.
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