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, Stephen Spielberg,

Ava DuVernay, Mel Brooks, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, and others.

Find all our new playlists and more at Fresh Air Plus at plus.npr.org slash fresh air.

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 started in the FX series, The Lowdown, a loving but humorous

take on film noir, created by Sterling Harjo, who also

directed Hawke in an episode of the popular series Reservation Dogs. The lowdown has been renewed

for a second season. I spoke with Ethan Hawk 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. Hawk was in his early teens when he made his first film Explorers, co-starring River Phoenix,

who was about the same age.

Hawk 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. 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

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