As a lifelong fan of Rodgers and Hart's music (see below), I was predisposed to like this story of lyricist Lorenz Hart on one of the last nights of his life. Jack and I both did. Ethan Hawke was Oscar-nominated for playing Hart and is ably supported by Margaret Qualley as his young friend Elizabeth Weiland, Bobby Cannavale as the bartender, and Andrew Scott as Richard Rodgers.
Richard Linklater directs from the script by Robert Kaplow, who was in turn inspired by the letters of Hart and Weiland. The sparkling dialogue is worth the price of admission (your Netflix subscription and a scant hour and 40 minutes). If you know any of Hart's lyrics, you will understand why the dialogue had to be clever to make it believable. The movie takes place on March 31, 1943--the opening night of the Broadway musical Oklahoma, which Hart's former partner Rodgers composed with his new lyricist Oscar Hammerstein.
Graham Reynolds' score on Apple Music includes many piano solos of Hart's tunes. To elaborate on my fandom, I have in my possession two hardcover Rodgers and Hart songbooks. The first was given to me when I was in elementary school so I could play the chords and sing along to songs from our family's oft-played album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook. The second was in my stepmother's belongings when she died in 1979, and is autographed by Rodgers. You, too, can buy one from this link, with a dust cover that I don't remember ever having.
The movie earned 17 wins and 74 other nominations, including the two above. You'll notice that Hawke remains seated throughout most of the movie. That's because Hart was "barely five feet tall."
Hawke was last blogged for Raymond & Ray, Qualley for The Substance, Cannavale for Ezra, Scott for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Linklater for Nouvelle Vague, and Reynolds for Hit Man. I briefly mentioned Kaplow for the source material for Me and Orson Welles, his only other imdb credit.
Rotten Tomatoes' critics are full with an 89% average, while its critics are waning slightly at 76. We streamed it on Netflix on March 11.
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