Ethan Hawke on playing a 5foottall Broadway legend in "Blue Moon": 'People are heightist!' Nick RomanoSeptember 8, 2025 at 9:48 PM 0 Sony Pictures Classics Andrew Scott and Ethan Hawke in 'Blue Moon' Ethan Hawke transforms with the role of famed Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart in a movie named after o...
- - Ethan Hawke on playing a 5-foot-tall Broadway legend in "Blue Moon": 'People are heightist!'
Nick RomanoSeptember 8, 2025 at 9:48 PM
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Sony Pictures Classics
Andrew Scott and Ethan Hawke in 'Blue Moon'
Ethan Hawke transforms with the role of famed Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart in a movie named after one of the songwriter's biggest hits, Blue Moon. The 5-foot-10 actor of Training Day and Before Sunset was tasked with channeling a man many said was barely 5 feet tall with waning hair.
Hawke talked about the challenge of that transformation in a post-screening Q&A of the film at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival with director Richard Linklater (a frequent collaborator) and costars Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott.
"The challenge is understanding the way the world looks at each one of us differently, and so much of our self-esteem is rooted in how we think other people view us, which is very difficult," Hawke told an audience on Monday night. "People are heightist! I mean, they really are."
He pointed to the terminology and idioms engrained in our collective vernacular that celebrate height, such as, "He stands tall."
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Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott, Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke at the 'Blue Moon' premiere at TIFF
Hawke added, "Everybody's looking at Larry like he's something less than, so it's driving him mad. It has been his whole life."
It's also quite the verbose role. Linklater packed pages of fast-paced dialogue for the star to perform in a tight 1-hour, 40-minute film.
"When Rick and I were first working on this, it was like, you have to understand he's not talking so much because he's trying to dominate other people. He's talking so much because he needs you to see him. Like, 'You're not looking at me.' 'You can't hear me,'" Hawke said. "It's a huge aspect of the character."
With the exception of a couple scenes, the entirety of Blue Moon takes place at Sardi's bar in New York City. The year is 1943, and it's the night Oklahoma! opens on Broadway to rave reviews.
Having just left mid-performance, Larry bursts into Sardi's, raving to the bartender (Cannavale) about this woman he's hyper fixated on, his 20-year-old college student poet protégé named Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), who's also the daughter of an actress in the new musical.
Blue Moon, written by Robert Kaplow (2008's Me and Orson Welles) was inspired by the real letters Larry and Elizabeth exchanged, as a title card in the movie states.
The evening takes a turn as the cast and crew of Oklahoma! start pouring into the bar for the afterparty, including composer Richard Rodgers (Scott), Larry's former longtime collaborator. The two had a falling out over Larry's drinking, and uncomfortable feelings stir within him now in the face of Richard's first big Broadway project without him.
The real Larry was gay, though the film depicts him as more bisexual. In Blue Moon, he says he just appreciates beauty, whether it's in men or women. Still, Hawke says Larry's fixation on Elizabeth in the story wasn't real.
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Ethan Hawke at the 'Blue Moon' premiere at the Berlinale International Film Festival
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"There's something, to me, that's so profound about a guy who's experiencing such a painful heartbreak that he actually can't look at it and distracts himself with a fictional love affair. It's not even a real love affair," Hawke said. "He can't look at this pain that's happening. I thought it was just brilliant, and it was so funny. Like Rick said, it did feel like the lyrics to a Rodgers and Hart song."
As a creative team, Rodgers and Hart wrote 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs.
"It was witty and off-the-cuff and silly and heartbreaking, simultaneously, which is a very difficult bullseye to hit," Hawke added.
Blue Moon opens in Los Angeles and New York locations on Oct. 17, followed by a nationwide release beginning Oct. 24.
on Entertainment Weekly
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