The saddest man you ever knew, or dynamic, alert and fun? Opinions on Broadway songwriter Lorenz Hart, who died of pneumonia and alcoholism in 1943, vary.

This film imagines him on the opening night of the musical ”Oklahoma!”, a triumph for Hart’s former writing partner Richard Rodgers and his new collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein. Plagued by envy and a desperate desire to mount a comeback, Hart spends the evening at Sardi’s, holding court.

Set almost entirely in one room, the film unfolds like a good play, with rapid-fire dialogue and a tour-de-force performance by Ethan Hawke as the brilliant but tragic wit.

2025-U.S. 100 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by Richard Linklater. Screenplay: Robert Kaplow. Cast: Ethan Hawke (Lorenz Hart), Margaret Qualley (Elizabeth Weiland), Bobby Cannavale (Eddie), Andrew Scott (Richard Rodgers), Jonah Lees, Simon Delaney. 

Trivia: Co-produced by Linklater.

Berlin: Best Supporting Performance (Scott).

Last word: “It was this little howl into the night of an artist being left behind. It was sad and beautiful and witty and irreverent and what a character. For over a decade, we just kind of kept working on it and eventually its time had come.” (Linklater on Kaplow’s script, NPR)