The evening essentially became the "break-up" of longtime musical collaborators Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart... just before Rodgers's career exploded with his new partner, Oscar Hammerstein.
Andrew Scott plays Rodgers and Hawke plays Hart.
"A 25-year working partnership that created over 1,000 songs is a level of intimacy much higher than most love affairs. To watch time and life and the world pull them apart, and their own behavior pull them apart, I found it heartbreaking," said Hawke.
A longtime working relationship is familiar territory for Hawke. "Blue Moon" marks the actor's eighth time working with director Richard Linklater. Scott said he was welcomed with open arms.
"Of course, you go, 'Wow, that's a partnership that I greatly admire,'" said Scott. "Just incredibly generous on every front. I just had a genuinely fantastic time. We shot the movie in a very limited time. The whole thing, we shot it in 15 days. Sometimes, I feel like that can be quite a good thing because everybody's like... you just feel alive."
While Hawke and Linklater have a strong career connection, Hawke found another interesting one while working on his latest FX series, "The Lowdown," with director Sterlin Harjo.
"It's so mysterious, our job," said Hawke. "The only thing that's really in common with these is that I'm now at the point in life that I'm working with this director who's much younger than me, who loves Richard Linklater movies. I feel really lucky."
"Blue Moon" opens in theaters on Friday, Oct. 17, and expands nationwide next week.