Composer Richard Rogers and lyracist Lorenz Hart worked together on 28 musicals and more than 500 songs, many of which are legendary classics of the Great American Songbook. Among them are My Funny Valentine, The Lady is a Tramp, Manhattan, and the song of the film’s title, Blue Moon. Their partnership ended when Rogers, fed up with Hart’s unreliability, moved on and began working with Oscar Hammerstein II. Blue Moon takes place in 1943 on opening night of Rogers and Hammerstein’s first musical, the smash hit Oklahoma!. Hart has left the theater after watching only the first half, retiring to a theater district hang out to contemplate his life while waiting for the show to end and Rogers to appear for his congratulations.

Oscar Nominee, Best Original Screenplay
Oscar Nominee, Best Actor
Boston Society of Film Critics, Best Original Screenplay
Boston Society of Film Critics, Best Actor
Los Angeles Film Critics, Best Lead Performance
National Society of Film Critics, Best Actor
Toronto Film Critics, Best Actor
New York Online Film Critics, Best Actor
Women Film Critics Circle, Best Actor
SF Bay Area Film Critics, Best Actor

“Filming a sparkling script by Robert Kaplow (known for 2008’s Me and Orson Welles), Linklater works his wizardry with another single night’s articulate drama as he and Hawke did in Before Sunrise (1995).” – Nicolas Rapold, Sight and Sound

“Blue Moon may essentially take place inside a single room, but it rarely feels stagy. It captures the connivance and conviviality of theater people – the way they come together, if only for a night, with a spiritedness that is both forced and entirely genuine. A success like “Oklahoma!” makes them feel anointed.” – Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor

“It’s the kind of film a director and actor make when they’re completely simpatico, as Hawke and Linklater are, having sustained a working partnership since 1995’s Before Sunrise—you can’t make a movie as simultaneously joyous and melancholy as this one is without being fully in tune with each other.” – Stephanie Zacharek, TIME

“Linklater really nails the atmosphere here; watching Blue Moon feels like sitting with smart people in a retro bar, covered in a gentle blanket of cocktail piano. And Hawke, often surrounded by wafting symphonies of cigar smoke, gives a beautifully shaded performance, of equal parts bravado and vulnerability.” – Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times

“Although Blue Moon works on a small canvas, Linklater uses it to explore big things – shifting cultural tastes, professional jealousy, the vagaries of artistic collaboration, the weight of passing time. And he gives us an indelible portrait of a man who, for all his uncommon self-devouring brilliance, is driven by feelings that are all too human. Larry is lonely and frightened and looking for love, just like the rest of us.” John Power, Fresh Air (NPR)

“Portraits of great men given the movie-star treatment usually accentuate the positive. Linklater finds it more interesting to look at a self-sabotaging artist’s greatest misses. It’s a tribute that’s really a cautionary tale. The fact that the film is named after its subject’s most beloved — and most despised by Hart himself — hit tells you everything.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone