Ethan Hawke returns to the Telluride Film Festival this year with a double feature of kinds: a tribute for Lorenz Hart in the acclaimed Blue Moon, and a deep-dive documentary project about Merle Haggard, Highway 99: A Double Album. As Hawke enjoys festival season across Telluride and Toronto, he’s also preparing for a new FX series, The Lowdown, which debuts on September 23 at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In Blue Moon, Hawke embodies Lorenz Hart, the brilliant but tormented lyricist who partnered with Richard Rodgers. The film places Hart at the center of a crucible of heartbreak and creative tension, culminating in the final stretch of the Rodgers & Hart collaboration. Hawke explains that the project demanded a fierce attention to language and rhythm, because Hart’s dialogue and lyric-driven sensibility needed to feel like spoken versions of song lyrics. The setting shifts around Sardi’s on the opening night of Oklahoma!, a moment that underscores Hart’s self-destructive strain and his longing for approval even as alcohol and sorrow pull him away from the love he’s chasing.
Cast and production notes reveal a collaborative, almost musical approach to crafting Hart’s portrait. Hart’s onscreen counterpart is played opposite Rodgers by Andrew Scott, with Margaret Qualley offering a poignant counterpoint as Hart’s love interest. Bobby Cannavale, who has a history with Hawke, serves as the bartender who anchors the scenes and keeps Hart grounded. Hawke describes the performance as a study in voice, speech, and precise word choice; he even recounts shaping Hart’s physical presence—down to a distinctive combover and a carefully staged trench on the floor to convey Hart’s diminutive stature and crushed spirit. The director-actor notes that he spent time “monk-like” in his dressing room, listening to Ella Fitzgerald perform Rodgers & Hart tunes to inform Hart’s cadence and emotional range.
The project is part of Hawke’s larger mission to explore how songs and lyric writing illuminate a life. He has long regarded his craft as a form of apprenticeship, a through-line he weaves across his acting, directing, and music-focused projects. This season marks Hawke’s ninth collaboration with Richard Linklater; the pair previously created a body of work that blends cinema with a musical sensibility. The intense, real-time nature of Blue Moon’s production demanded clarity from Hawke and a tight, well-rehearsed team—qualities that Hawke says are essential when bringing a legendary figure like Hart to life.
Alongside Blue Moon, Hawke is presenting Highway 99: A Double Album, a two-part documentary devoted to Merle Haggard that he describes as a love letter to music. The film traces Haggard’s life and the songs that defined him, including a revealing look at the unrequited love story between Haggard and Dolly Parton. Hawke invited a lineup of notable vocalists to interpret Haggard’s songs, selecting tracks based on how the songs could illuminate the life being told. Performers such as Norah Jones, Valerie June, and Steve Rowe participate, with Hawke matching their interpretations to the archival material and the storytelling he wants to achieve. He emphasizes that using Haggard’s own writing as a narrative tool helps him tell the life story with musical resonance.
Hawke frames Highway 99 as a project that complements his previous documentary work, including The Last Movie Stars, and reflects his preference for slow, deliberate construction over quick, here-and-now storytelling. He notes that documentary work offers a balance to the demanding cycle of acting and writing, letting him step away for stretches of weeks, then return to embody new personas or craft new narratives. The two projects—Hart’s pain and Haggard’s life—reflect Hawke’s ongoing fascination with human stories told through music, language, and performance.
Looking ahead, Hawke is set to appear in Sterlin Harjo’s FX series The Lowdown, in which he plays a renegade truth-teller. He describes the character as a chance to collaborate with a dynamic, younger voice in the industry and to explore a different tonal register within the same broad creative world.
Summary and takeaways: Hawke’s current festival slate underscores his deep, interdisciplinary approach to storytelling. He continually explores the lives of musicians and lyricists through film, documentary, and television, using music as the connective tissue. The Telluride showcase of Blue Moon and Highway 99 illustrates Hawke’s commitment to intimate, rigorous character studies grounded in performance, language, and song. The festival circuit and upcoming FX collaboration signal a busy, creatively rich period for a filmmaker who has long balanced acting, directing, and documentary work with a clear devotion to the craft of storytelling.
Additional value notes:
– The intertwining of Hart’s lyric craftsmanship with Hawke’s own dialogue-heavy approach could inspire audiences to see scriptwriting as performance art in its own right.
– The inclusion of contemporary vocalists to interpret Haggard’s songs may attract both fans of classic country and new listeners, expanding Highway 99’s reach beyond traditional documentary audiences.
– Hawke’s positive emphasis on the artistic process and collaboration backstage offers insight into how high-caliber biographical stories are built—often across years of readings, rehearsals, and intimate study of a subject’s life and work.
Overall, Hawke remains a force of cross-disciplinary storytelling, using music, biography, and performance to illuminate human truths on screen and beyond.