I should confess at the outset that Richard Linklater's Blue Moon — an often funny valentine to Broadway's wittiest lyricist before Stephen Sondheim — might as well have been written specifically for me. As a musical comedy fan who thinks in song lyrics and hums show tunes in the shower, I ate up the basic premise: Lorenz Hart, the lyric-writing half of the 20th century songwriting team Rodgers and Hart, is sitting in Sardi's nursing way too many drinks as that legendary showbusiness watering hole hosts the opening night party for Oklahoma!, the first musical by composer Richard Rodgers and his new partner, Oscar Hammerstein II.
That the film brings together Linklater and his longtime collaborator Ethan Hawke — as Hart, who penned the lyrics for hits including "Manhattan" and "My Funny Valentine," — seemed like icing on an already-rich cake. And the reality turns out to be a treat for Broadway buffs that could well convert folks who aren't already fans.
The tension starts building at the St. James Theater on March 31, 1943, a historic night for Broadway, but a difficult one for Hart, who is sitting in the audience, muttering about Oscar Hammerstein 's lyrics. Finally, he can take no more, and hightails it for Sardi's just down the block, hoping to inoculate himself before the cast and creators get there, and he has to offer congratulations.
At Sardi's, he's greeted by Eddie the bartender (Bobby Cannavale) with a line from Casablanca, which the two treat as a routine that seems well-practiced, until it leads to a request for a drink that clearly breaks the pattern.
"Larry, you told me under no circumstances," Eddie responds.
"I'm just gonna look at it — take the measure of its amber heft in my hand," says Hart, who then starts talking about anything and everything — bad movie writing, the price of flowers — except the show opening down the block. Also, to a degree that suggests he's overcompensating, talking about a college co-ed with whom he's trying to convince himself he's smitten, though he's widely known to favor men.
Elizabeth, a live wire as played by Margaret Qualley, turns out not to be a figment of his imagination, but his devotion to her is also clearly masking this evening's insecurities. If she's a prize worth prizing, then he won't have to think about the breakup of his near quarter-century partnership with Rodgers (Andrew Scott).
Also hanging out in Sardi's is E.B. White, co-author of the writers' bible The Elements of Style, and a soon-to-be-celebrated children's author of Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web.
"I'm in love with your punctuation," gushes Hart as he begins a witty tirade about love, and the art of turning love into lyrics like, say, "bewitched, bothered and bewildered."
"Three perfect words in the perfect order. Just the sound of it, that's what a writer does. We wear our vulnerability like a cloak for all the world to witness."
That, I submit, is lovely writing about writing, and so is the rest of Robert Kaplow's screenplay. The situation has been mostly invented — because unlike many of the era's songwriters, who left behind shelves and shelves of material for archivists to rummage through, Hart left scraps.
When I consulted a music specialist at the Library of Congress who's familiar with the library's thousands of Oscar Hammerstein letters and its trove of music manuscripts and other papers by Rodgers, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and others, he told me that he's aware of only about a dozen pages of lyric sketches by Hart — anywhere. The man is an enigma. So Linklater and Kaplow's guesses are as likely as anyone's.
And theatricalized with Hart trash-talking the show that's the talk of the town, and character cameos by up-and-coming celebs from the worlds of film and theater, they're also feverishly entertaining.
Linklater keeps things intimate and steadily more awkward, so that by the time Rodgers finally speaks with Hart, nerves are raw. And he varies the pacing as much as he can with something that's basically all talk.
You'll realize at some point that while hanging with the smartest guy in the room is certainly exhilarating, it can also be exhausting after a while. Still, how often do you get the chance … maybe once in a Blue Moon?
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