Terry Gross

Hi, it's Carrie.

Our co-host Tanya Mosley and I will be doing an end-of-the-year Fresh Air Plus bonus episode, answering listener questions about the show and about ourselves.

You can send the questions now to freshairplus at npr.org, with plus spelled out.

That's freshairplus at npr.org.

This is Fresh Air.

I'm Terry Gross.

My guest Ethan Hawke stars in two new movies.

In Blue Moon, he plays lyricist Lorenz Hart.

In the horror film Black Phone 2, he's a serial killer who dies and becomes a spirit, and he haunts people's dreams.

He also stars in the current FX streaming series The Lowdown.

It's a loving but humorous take on film noir created by Sterling Harjo, who also directed Hawke in an episode of the popular series Reservation Dogs.

Hawk just completed a new documentary called Highway 99, a double album, about country music star, songwriter, singer, and guitarist Merle Haggard.

Hawke was in his early teens when he made his first film, Explorers, co-starring River Phoenix, who was about the same age.

He was in his late teens when he co-starred in The Dead Poets Society, which starred Robin Williams.

Hawke seems to have done it all, a child star who survived the experience intact, an Oscar and Tony-nominated actor, a documentary film director, and a novelist.

Let's start with a clip from Blue Moon, directed by Richard Linklater.

It's set on the night of the opening of Oklahoma, the first musical that Hart's longtime songwriting partner Richard Rogers wrote with another lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein.

Hart gets there first and talks with the bartender, feeling he's become insignificant because he was abandoned by Rogers.

Rogers had moved on because Hart had been drinking too much and was no longer a reliable partner.

In this scene, after Rogers arrives, he talks with Hart.