Terry Gross

Blue Moon is about the great lyricist Lorenz Hart.

The other new film is Nouvelle Vague, and that's French for New Wave.

It applies to the new wave of French filmmakers in the late 50s and early 60s who were experimenting with new ways of telling stories on film.

Linkletter's Nouvelle Vague is about the making of the landmark new wave film Breathless, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

Let's start with Blue Moon.

Lyricist Larry Hart and composer Richard Rogers wrote some of the best-known songs in the American songbook, like Blue Moon, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine, Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, and Where or When.

But Hart had become an unreliable songwriting partner.

He drank too much.

He didn't show up on time and missed deadlines.

No longer able to count on Hart, Rodgers teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein.

Together they wrote Carousel, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, and more.

Blue Moon is an imagined version of what happened on the opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein's first show together, Oklahoma, when after the show, everyone heads to Sardi's.

Hart is feeling rejected and deeply wounded because Rodgers is no longer working with him.

He's bitter, but sarcastic and funny.

He thinks Oklahoma is corny and sentimental.

In this scene, he's talking to Rodgers about doing a new musical together about Marco Polo that would be a send-up of musicals with a hard-earned joy.

They disagree about what makes a show too sentimental.

Ethan Hawke plays Hart.

Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers.

I'm just saying that you and I can do something so much more emotionally complicated.