U.S. actor Ethan Hawke recalled on Tuesday how he had to wait more than a decade for director Richard Linklater to decide he was old enough to star in his new music movie "Blue Moon."
The film, which is competing for the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival, follows lyricist Lorenz Hart, one-half of the legendary U.S. songwriting duo Rodgers and Hart, on the opening night of the musical "Oklahoma!"
The Broadway hit marked the first time Hart's partner, Richard Rodgers, collaborated with another lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom he went on to create several successful musicals.
Hawke told Reuters the Oscar-nominated director had sent him the script for the first time about 12 years ago, and he loved it.
"I called him up: 'Let's make this movie.' And he said, 'No, we have to wait a little while,'" Hawke said.
Linklater is famous for his patience. His 2014 coming-of-age drama "Boyhood," in which Hawke starred, took 12 years to film.
After repeated calls to Linklater, Hawke finally got the answer he craved last year, and the two embarked on their ninth feature film together.
Linklater said he wanted the film to capture the tone of a Rodgers and Hart song – beautiful, witty but also sad.
Hart was an outsider who was looking at love but was not experiencing it himself, which "makes those songs poignant; everyone can relate," said Linklater.
The film, shot in 15 days, is mostly based on the characters' real lives, which were well-documented given their fame.
Only Hart's relationship with Elizabeth Weiland, played by Margaret Qualley, is partly fictional and is inspired by letters to Hart from a young woman that screenwriter Robert Kaplow found at an auction.
"Blue Moon," which also stars Irish actor Andrew Scott, is closer to a stage play than a typical film in that it takes place on one night in the same setting.
"Most people would say this isn't a movie and nothing happens. It's just people talking," Linklater said.
"But I've made 30-plus years of movies that I think are cinematic, that I believe that can be cinema."
