Terry Gross

We don't have to pander to what's easy.

Richard Linkletter, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Congratulations on your new films.

So Blue Moon reads like a play.

It's set in one room in the bar at Sardi's.

And all the action is in the dialogue and the expression on people's faces and their body language.

How did you make it into something that actually feels like a movie?

It makes me sad that Hart, who was so brilliant, lived at a time when if you were gay, as everybody thinks he was, you had to hide that from the newspapers, from the gossip columns.

You had to hide it from the public.

And on top of that, he was very short.

He was like five feet or under.

So at least the way the story is told in the movie, Hart thinks Oklahoma is corny and sentimental and that the lyrics aren't very good.

The opening scene, the first words we hear out of his mouth are really funny.

We're in the theater on opening night of Oklahoma.

The cast is singing the song Oklahoma.

And as they sing, we know we belong to the land.

Hart says, here comes grand.

And of course, the next line is, and the land we belong to is grand.

It's a great opening.

opening for his character the way the characters portrayed in the movie so there's this ongoing argument between rogers and heart in the movie about what's sentimental and what's real and authentic in terms of what humans really are like what's pandering and what's earned are these questions you've had to ask yourself in the making of your movies