This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Ethan Hawke stars on two new movies. In Blue Moon,

he plays lyricist Lorenz Hart. In the horror film Blackphone 2, he's a serial killer,

who dies and becomes a spirit, and he haunts people's dreams. He also stars on the current FX streaming

series, The Lowdown.

It's a loving but humorous take on film noir, created by Sterlin Harjo, who also directed Hawk in an episode of the popular series Reservation Dogs.

Hawk just completed a new documentary called Highway 99, a double album, about country music star,

songwriter, singer, and guitarist Merle Haggard.

It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival earlier in the fall, where he received the

actor tribute. That film is expected to be released sometime next year. Hawk was in his early

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

He was in his late teens when he co-starred in the 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 film director,

and a novelist. Let's start with a clip from Blue Moon, directed by Richard Link later.

It's set on the night of the opening of Oklahoma, the first musical that Hart's longtime

songwriting partner Richard Rogers wrote with another lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein.

There's an after-party at Sardis, where theater people would go on opening night and wait until the reviews came out.

Hart gets there first and talks with the bartender, feeling he's become insignificant because he was abandoned by Rogers.

Rogers had moved on because Hart had been drinking too much and was no longer a reliable partner. In this scene, after Rogers

arrives, he talks with Hart. Hart's trying to convince Rogers to collaborate on a satirical

musical about Marco Polo. Rogers is played by Andrew Scott.

Ethan Hawke as Hart speaks first.

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