Terry Gross

Happy retirement, Danny.

Over the years at NPR's Fresh Air, we've gotten to talk with a lot of great filmmakers.

Now we've made a playlist of some of our favorites, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Ava DuVernay, Mel Brooks, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, and others.

Find all our new playlists and more at freshairplus at plus.npr.org slash freshair.

This is Fresh Air.

I'm Terry Gross.

My guest Ethan Hawke has just been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his starring role playing lyricist Lorenz Hart in the movie Blue Moon.

It's his fifth nomination.

The others were for Supporting Actor and for Adapted Screenplays.

Hawk had other roles in 2025.

He starred in the horror film Black Phone 2 as a serial killer who haunts people's dreams.

And he starred in the FX series The Lowdown, a loving but humorous take on film noir created by Sterling Harjo, who also directed Hawk in an episode of the popular series Reservation Dogs.

The Lowdown has been renewed for a second season.

I spoke with Ethan Hawke in November.

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

That film is expected to be released sometime this year.

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

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

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

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