Hi, it's Carrie.

Our co-host Tanya Mosley and I will be doing an end of the year Fresh Air Plus bonus episode

answering listener questions about the show and about ourselves.

You can send the questions now to Fresh Air Plus at NPR.org with Plus spelled out.

That's Fresh Air Plus at NPR.org.

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Richard Linkletter, has made several films that

have left a lasting mark on pop culture. Slacker, dazed and confused, School of Rock,

the Before Sunrise trilogy. His movie Boyhood was groundbreaking.

Linkletter shot the film over the course of 12 years, so we literally see all the actors,

and therefore the characters, get older. He's doing the same thing now with his film adaptation

of the Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, which takes place over 20 years,

so that is a very long, ambitious project that I am very excited about. Now Link Letter has two

new films, both about brilliant but difficult artists. Blue Moon is about the great lyricist

Lorenz Hart. The other new film is Nouvelle Vogue, and that's French

for New Wave. It applies to the new wave of French filmmakers in the late 50s and early 60s,

who were experimenting with new ways of telling stories on film. Link Letters' Nouvelle Vogue

is about the making of the landmark New Wave film Breathless, directed by Jean-Luc Goddard.

Let's start with Blue Moon.

Lyrist Larry Hart and composer Richard Rogers wrote some of the best-known songs in the American songbook, like Blue Moon, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine, Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered, and Where or When.

But Hart had become an unreliable songwriting partner. He drank too much. He didn't show up on time and missed

deadlines. No longer able to count on Hart, Rogers teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammastine.

Together they wrote Carousel, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, and more.

...