the traveler's resource guide to festivals & films
a FestivalTravelNetwork.com site
part of Insider Media llc.
Interviews
Starring Ethan Hawke, The Film “Blue Moon” Documents The Night Lyricist Lorenz Hart Realizes His Partnership with Richard Rodgers is Over
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Interviews
- Published on Tuesday, 17 March 2026 14:16
- Written by Brad Balfour
Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart
Inspired by the letters of legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart and Elizabeth Weiland, director Richard Linklater developed the biographical drama “Blue Moon” — with a script written by Robert Kaplow. It stars veteran actor Ethan Hawke playing the diminutive Hart in his waning days before his untimely death at 48. Linklater and Hawke have worked together before — in the film “Boyhood” where it won significant notice and for the “Before” trilogy which also garnered award noms as well. After debuting at The New York Film Festival this Fall, the film is getting further attention and has led to various nominations of Hawke again including the Oscar short list for Best Actor.
Born Lorenz Milton Hart, the American lyricist was half of Rodgers and Hart — the legendary Broadway songwriting team. Some of his more famous lyrics include those for such standards as “Blue Moon,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Manhattan,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and “My Funny Valentine” among many others. Born on May 2, 1895, in New York’s Harlem, to German-Jewish immigrant parents, Max M. and Frieda (Isenberg) Hart. Through his mother, he was a great-grandnephew of the German poet Heinrich Heine. (The elder of two sons, his brother, Teddy Hart, also went into theater and became a musical comedy star.)
On March 31, 1943, Hart slipped away from the opening night of “Oklahoma!” — the new hit Broadway musical his former creative partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) had written with Oscar Hammerstein II. Hart arrived at Sardi’s restaurant, where preparations were underway for the opening night celebration. The film follows Hart as he reflects on himself, his failed partnership with Rodgers, his obsession with 20-year-old beauty, Weiland (Margaret Qualley), and delusional hopes for the future. A few months later, the masterful writer was found dead on the streets.
In June 2024, Sony Pictures Classics acquired its worldwide distribution rights in addition to joining the project as co-financier. Principal photography took place over 15 days on a soundstage in Dublin, Ireland, wrapping by September. Now this film, celebrating the music of another era, is being celebrated as well with star Hawke and director Linklater enjoying various accolades and positive reviews.
The following conversation is an edited version of a discussion that took place after a screening at the Museum of Modern Art as part of their Contenders series.
Q: Have you ever heard the musical “Oklahoma!” on stage?
Ethan: No. My first musical was a little known one called “Annie” that I saw in Atlanta. I went home and immediately wrote a sequel to it called “Arthur.” You remember how she had a little half heart? Well, the truth is, she had a twin brother. He also had red hair, and lived in a boy’s orphanage. He really had the other half.
So what happens at the start of my musical is she’s on the fire escape, and sings, “maybe far away,” but the other boy was like, “or maybe real nearby.” Her parents taught them that song to reunite them. It was the story of their reuniting. It was very sad.
Rick Linklater: It felt like “Oklahoma, as well as all the music of Hammerstein’s, were just there in my whole life. My mom was listening to the cast recordings so the music was there. But I think I saw it somewhere along the way. I saw it numerous times, but it was in schools.
Q: You not only made “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” out this year, you’ve also produced 200 movies, have five in production at least, including a film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and George Forrest’s “Merrily, We Roll Along, “which is coming out in 2040.
Rick Linklater: Five in production? Not that I know of. I think things get listed online, throw out an idea.
Q: Ethan, you have two films in release right now. In addition to “Blue Moon,” you have “Black Phone 2” out, and a multi-episode television series, “The Lowdown.” You’re also executive producer of a podcast series, Fish Priests and you’re making films of your own.
Ethan Hawke: We do work a lot.
Q: How do you juggle all of these projects?
Rick Linklater: We haven’t worked together in 10 years. We figured out, we have a big gap. But, that’s my answer.
Q: How do these films and projects inform each other? how do you shift roles, because you’re obviously adept enough to do that. Is it just the way that you’re thinking about certain projects at a specific moment in your world?
Rick Linklater: This had a long gestation. we’ve been on this for like 13 years, we figure, somewhere in there. Also, that’s the same for “Nouvelle Vague,” the French New Wave film. Ethan has made films, documentaries, and narratives about artists. You could put them together. I think you had seven films.
Ethan Hawke: The two of us both like to work. Maybe it’s part of our friendship. We both are restless, and really enjoy it. One of the things I love about Rick is how curious he is, that you could be in love with punk rock and Rogers and Hart. That you can make a baseball movie and a movie about Jean-Luc Godard. His interests are comprehensive; it’s really one of the most wonderful things about us being friends is how curious you are about all different walks of life. It informs your movies. We both are really restless, I think.
Rick Linklater: Yeah, and we meet without any ideas. Like, it’ll be, “what are you reading? When are you coming? Hey, I read this thing on Tumblr. Yeah.” We’ve just always been like that. Ethan and I met in 30, what was is, oh, it was 1993, fall of ’93, 32 years ago, whatever. We started talking then, and I just said, “Yeah, we’ve been talking ever since.” We’ve made movies along the way, too, a lot. We didn’t even realize it had been 10 years, because not only are we developing this, there’s other things we’re talking about. So, it’s just ongoing.
Ethan Hawke: We just got the script for this while we were finishing “Boyhood.” That’s how long we’ve been talking about this.
Rick Linklater: We’ve been talking about this thing.
Q: One of the films that comes to mind is the collaboration you did on tape, which was an adaptation of a play. I think it was a kind of chamber piece, set in real time, in a motel. it does have a certain kind of affinity for this single location film.
Rick Linklater: Sorry, this is a more fun location than a crummy motel. It’s nice to be here. But, yeah, that was kind of a real time movie in one location. So, I think that informed this. We’ve been talking about that a few times here.
Ethan Hawke: The “Before” Trilogy has an aspect of real time to it as well. There’s a lot. Rick likes to say that if you don’t have a plot, you need to make it very concise.
Rick Linklater: I think that’s a fact. People mentioned it in something else.
Q: Interestingly, you were not the first to play Larry Hart, Mickey Rooney came before you.
Ethan Hawke: Mickey Rooney and I play a lot of the same parts.
Q: Did you watch the film “Words and Music?” It’s rather a powerful take on their lives [released in 1948].
Ethan Hawke: It’s pretty silly.
Rick Linklater: Yes, that’s an excuse to have it, in 35 mm with some really nice performances. It’s silly, of course.
Q: It’s a heartbreaking story, really. When you read this book about Hart, “A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart,” his final months are just absolutely devastating. The question everyone, of course, has been throwing out in the context of this film, is the physicality of this performance and the transformations you have to go through for it.
Rick Linklater: Everybody gives actors a lot of credit when they put on a lot of weight or lose a lot of weight, but no one ever gives them credit for losing a lot of height.
Ethan Hawke: I’m proud of myself about it. The history of cinema has spent a lot of energy making small, diminutive men look large and powerful, and we just had to invert it. But it was his physical appearance that says a lot about his relationship to himself and to society. It was an important aspect to the character. He’s the smallest person in the room with the biggest personality, and I’d like to think that it almost felt like if he stopped talking nobody would see him, That’s how he felt. We knew it was important, and how to do it was extremely tricky.
We knew we didn’t want to use computers or anything like that, but that wasn’t the only thing, it’s the dyed hair and the comb-over, he has arthritis, and he’s going to die in a few months. But in truth, those superficial things are only valuable if they’re unlocking his soul in some way. If the movie became about that, it would be to his detriment. We were trying to look for things that would unlock him, and unlock me as an actor, to become somebody else.
Rick Linklater: I had a front row seat for that unlocking, and when you were five feet tall looking up at everybody, you’d be like, “Holy shit, it’s a whole different world.”
Ethan Hawke: None of my attempts to flirt with Margaret Qualley went over with anything but a ridiculous nickel.
Rick Linklater: Technically, it was a real pain in the ass, of course, but the actor who played Oscar [Hammerstein], who’s notoriously a tall guy, was probably, Ethan’s around six feet tall, that guy was like five nine. Elevating him – but he was perfect for Oscar – so we would have him up on some boxes, and Ethan kind of lower, and everybody trying not to fall in, trickle in.
Q: It was a good capture. It was said that Larry Hart didn’t even think he was capable of seducing his own shadow, which is beautiful and heartbreaking.
Rick Linklater: That was a big leap for Ethan to be able to get to that headspace. No, never, never has anyone ever wanted to do it that way.
Ethan Hawke: But the thing is, all that’s funny, but the truth is, from the get-go, this is a screenplay that I spent, whatever, 40 years of acting. On the one hand, I can count the amount of screenplays that knocked me back so much that I was like, have to do this. The quality of the writing, learning the lines was fun, because I would sit there and giggle and be moved. Every turn of phrase was fascinating and so well-built.
The way it really does function, the whole movie, and we came to this pretty early in the process. Years ago, when we first started reading it out loud, we said, the whole movie needs to feel like a 90-minute Rodgers and Hark song. It’s got to float, and it’s got to have a bridge, and it’s got to have dissonance and resolve, and have that same wit and the same soulfulness that they carry. And if we could do that, then we felt like we could sustain the audience’s attention with this period. The target of this movie is so small. It’s such a fragile film, and Robert’s writing is so exceptional. It would be impossible without it.
And so, Seven Minutes in Heaven in the Coat Room is one thing, but when the quality of writing is so high, it makes it thrilling for us. And then our job became about how to make sure we believed it, and how to make the song take off.
Q: When you’re playing real-life figures, are there ground rules for what you feel comfortable doing or not doing? I’m not talking about historical figures like Marco Polo in this case, or Jesus, or Joan of Arc. I’m talking about people in recent memory. Do you feel, do you do copious amounts of research? Do you try to emulate the mannerisms, the hand, the famous hand rubbing that Larry Hart would do in the kind of nervousness?
Ethan Hawke: Well, you say famous, but most people haven’t heard of Larry Hart. We start off
Rick Linklater: Even going to the height of people’s heads. No one’s going to, first off, no one even knows who Larry Hart is, much less how tall he is. Like ,it matters to us. It matters to that character. So we try to be as exact as possible.. There’s footage of him. They shot a lot of little short bits, kind of promotional bits with Rogers. So you can see him kind of walking around.
Ethan Hawke: He’s kind of an awkward guy at his height.
Rick Linklater: Yeah, a lot of photos, he’s a pretty handsome guy. He would always position himself kind of up, and Rogers would be sitting. But you see him walking around. It’s like, he isn’t awkward. He’s awkward in his body, for sure.
Ethan Hawke: I felt a sense of relief that I had all the benefits of these specific details about the real man to draw from, create dynamics in the movie, without the albatross of, if you play Johnny Cash or Muhammad Ali, or, some of these more famous figures where the audience has a huge backlog of expectations about what the person looks and sounds like. I didn’t have to deal with that, so I could choose what would help me in this performance, and help Robert’s writing, and help Rick.
Q: You’re more inclined to be John Brown or Nikolai Tesla or Larry Hart than taking on Muhammad Ali anytime soon, but you never know.
Ethan Hawke: It frees you up as an actor. It’s more exciting. if you were to play JFK or something like that, everybody has such awareness of how he moved and looked, and you start having to do an imitation, and then that would scare me.
Q: One of the things that is very poignant about this film is that it marks the passing of a moment in New York life. It is very moving to see Sardis, for example, a place that doesn’t exist like that anymore.
Ethan Hawke: It still exists. It’s funny you say that, because Bobbie, Kim, Bobbie and I, we shot a little Sardis in Ireland, and Bobbie and I were like, “before we get in the plane, let’s go to Sardis. Let’s break bread in Sardis and just try to bring New York with us.” And we sat down there, and there was Patti LuPone sitting there, having a martini and talking, and all this different theater. It’s different. Broadway is so different. Broadway used to be the absolute fulcrum of the entertainment world. Everything started here. The power of it has been diminished, and the romance of it has been diminished, but there’s still the likes of Broadway showing up.
Rick Linklater: I feel the ghost there. I’ve been doing old theaters. They’re still here.
Q: So many of your films, though, are about these kinds of inflection points in history, whether it’s the life of an adolescent, or it’s the life of a city.
Rick Linklater: This kind of works on a couple levels, I think. In Broadway history it’s kind of a before and after moment, in musical theater history. But, I always thought, well, gosh, it’s just the end of an era. But it’s really from Larry’s perspective, like, the way it’s moving on without him, that was so poignant. I always thought this thing was like this sad little howl into the night from the artist who’s being left behind. specifically by his partner, who’s moved on, but the times, too, even more, kind of crushingly, at his taste and what he’s about is kind of becoming a thing of the past. So I don’t think any artists kind of think of what they do as having an expiration day or taste changing, but it does. It evolves, particularly in music where you can just, it’s just the idea that something was ending and he was aware enough to feel it.
Q: With “Nouvelle Vague,” it’s obviously a turning point in filmmaking. And so, the young Turks of the Cahiers thumbed their noses at the ’40s and ’50s generation of French filmmakers. there is a tense sense of a passing of the baton, in a way.
Rick Linklater: With that one, it’s kind of out with the old in a good way, for sure. It’s like independent-spirited movies and you need these new ways. You need kind of punk rock moments where things get reinvigorated. In musical theater, it changes, but people still argue, is that good? You know “Oklahoma.” Even in films, when “Sound of Music” came out, Hitchcock famously said, “Oh, shit, this thing moves movies back about 20 years,” when that became a huge hit.
Q: Richard Rodgers is not a villain by any stretch. He was driven up the wall by Larry. He did everything he could to encourage Larry to work on “Oklahoma,” to say nothing of “Connecticut Yankee.” But the performance is also really moving, because you get the sense of [not only that] he’s driven up the wall, but at the same time, he knows that Larry’s days are numbered.
Rick Linklater: I think that’s what’s heartbreaking about it, that he’s not coming, he’s done everything. He’s probably hung on another 10 years past and was getting exasperated with Larry’s drinking behavior. But it is heartbreaking to see that coming to him, really just because of Larry’s problems. I told Andrew, “It’s like, don’t worry, I’m Rodgers. I’ve had a couple of people who just have problems, and you have to do it for the team.”
It’s painful to be in that position. You can see it on his face. There’s love there. There’s a triumph over the relationship. There’s all that respect for his talent. It’s sad to see it coming to an end. Not really even for artistic reasons, but just personal reasons like that. But that’s how life is. People have problems, and they can’t outrun their demons quite often.
Q: Given how long this project was gestating, did you talk to someone about it? Did you talk to someone about that?
Rick Linklater: I just missed it. There’s another just brief quote from him in this book, he was often calling Hart sloppy in the way he wrote the lyrics and the way they landed on the music. And it’s hard to imagine only somebody like Sondheim could even perceive such a thing.
Q: It’s unimaginable.
Rick: His loyalty is so clearly Oscar talent. When you talk about Rodgers to people anywhere near a music theater, it’s like, okay, Hart or Hammerstein. And everyone says Hart, except one person. Because he’s like his uncle, like his dad. He just had to carry the torch for him.
Q: He did say one thing. He said, Hammerstein pointed out something to me, which at the tender age of 14, I didn’t fully comprehend, which is that Larry Hart freed American lyrics from the stilted Middle European operetta technique into a natural form of speech. And you can really appreciate the-
Rick Linklater: we’ll paraphrase that in the movie,
Q: Yeah, the absolute connection between Hart’s songwriting, his lyrics and Sondheim’s.
Rick Linklater: Oh, absolutely. It’s fun too.The greatest lyricist ever from having been in a conversation just for a bit. And that is something, that’s the kind of leap we would take, like Robert took with the screenplay. It’s like young Sondheim didn’t say that, old Sondheim said that. But he said it. it’s just kind of funny to have that throw that in Larry’s face.
Q: How conscious were you of marrying certain kinds of implicit lyrics to the action on the scenes? Or, even just the way that they are, even your delivery of lines, which is so rapid-fire and so unceasing, how do you marry the dialogue to kind of the sensuousness of the music at the time?
Rick Linklater: That was so fun to have a piano, just a happy soundtrack going. to work it where he mentions Gershwin, or he’ll say a line, and then the piano can kick in something that’s related, or he starts playing from Casablanca, and he realizes, so that was so fun. I just picked all my favorite songs that could possibly be played on the piano that night. It’s obviously not just Gershwin’s part. It’s everything.
Q: It’s everything you perform while you’re delivering lines.Sometimes.
Rick Linklater: A lot of it. But one of those grand moments, my friend, also a composer, he played. We went to the studio, he did over 100 songs. So, and then you can kind of sprinkle them throughout. But that was so fun to work in, to get a soundtrack.
Ethan Hawke: The whole movie is 90-minute raptures in our song. That’s what we’re trying to do. I was, , the filmmaking is kind of Rogers applying the structure, skeleton, and musculature of the movie, and my job was to sprinkle these lyrics on top. I think that’s a brilliant job.
Candace Bushnell Tells True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City at Her Upcoming One-Person Show This Friday
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Interviews
- Published on Thursday, 04 December 2025 21:02
- Written by Brad Balfour
Event: Candace Bushnell performs “True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City”
When: Friday, December 5, 2025
Time: 8 pm
Where: Adler Hall
New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 W 64th St.
New York, NY 10023
Tickets: $59, $79, and $99 (plus applicable fees)
When scribe Candace Bushnell created Carrie Bradshaw as her alter-ego while writing her “Sex and the City” column, she didn’t want her parents to know that she’d just been to a sex club. She had often appeared on TV, starting back in 1996, when she had her own reality show, “Sex, Lies and Video Clips" on VH1, where — sure enough — Bushnell and a co-host had to go to sex clubs.
From that auspicious start to this week, the acclaimed novelist brings her one-woman show, “True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City,” to Adler Hall at New York Society for Ethical Culture on Friday, December 5th, 2025 at 8 pm. In addition, a limited number of VIP Meet and Greet tickets are available that include a photo opportunity with Bushnell.
This best-selling novelist and TV producer is The “real life Carrie Bradshaw,” and, most recently, star of this one-woman show. Originally performed off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theater in Manhattan, the New York Times declared it a “critic’s pick.” Born in 1958, this 60-something has now performed an international version of the show in over 10 countries, including South Africa, and the UK, where Bushnell performed to a sold-out crowd at the London Palladium. The Times of London choose True Tales as their must-see show of the week.
She has appeared on dozens and dozens of chat shows, including Oprah and Charlie Rose and is currently scheduled to tour “True Tales…” in Europe and the US in 2026.
Famously the author of “Sex and the City” — published in 1996 by Atlantic Monthly Press — it became the basis for “Sex and the City,” spawning six-seasons on HBO, two movies and the reboot series “And Just Like That.” Also an acclaimed novelist, Bushnell has authored the international best-selling “Four Blondes,” “Trading Up,” “One Fifth Avenue,” “Lipstick Jungle” and “The Carrie Diaries.” The last two each became network TV series (on NBC and The CW) for two seasons.
Recently, I spoke with Candace in advance of the show. The following is an edit of that conversation.
Q: Being a literary figure on the scene, did you think of that as an achievement and were glad that you got noted for it, or did you just see yourself as another newspaper reporter?
Candace Bushnell: It just seemed very natural because I was in that business, and most of my friends were also somehow in the media business. They were novelists or others like Morgan Entrekin, who published “Sex and the City” (Atlantic Monthly Press). It just seemed very natural. I didn’t particularly think of myself as being part of one scene or another, but part of the New York scene [overall].
Q: At that time when you were just beginning to get known and ascending in the universe of personalities, had you expected it to take off the way it did? Do you get into discussing this in your show? Tell me about the show and how it connects to your history.
Candace Bushnell: The show is the origin story of Sex and the City, mixed with my life story. It’s how I created "Sex and the City," how hard I worked to get there, why I invented Carrie Bradshaw, and what happened to me after. It’s about how I first came to New York in 1977, and went to Studio 54, had a couple of other little adventures, and then we get into how I created “Sex and the City,” the story of the real Mr. Big, and then there’s a game, real or not real, because there’s so many things that happened in the TV show that happened in my real life — they’re either better or worse.
Q: How did you manage to structure it? Is it merely a chronological thing, or more thematic, how you’ve been doing this as a show as opposed to writing it as a book?
Candace Bushnell: It’s a proper stage show with a set and you know, I watched a couple of one man, one woman shows, and some stand up comics, but that wasn’t really, you know, that helped. There’s one stand-up comic who I watched a lot. I think her name is Hannah Gadsby. She’s an Australian comic. I started doing it because I met somebody named Mark Johnson, and he did David Foster’s show.
Foster does a one-man show, and Mark Johnson said “You could do it, a one-woman show.” So I wrote something during Covid, like so many other people, and it just took off from there. We developed it at Bucks County Playhouse. We had a director, Lauren Lataro, who works a lot on Broadway, and an associate director, a guy named Nick Corley, and we developed it. Originally it was probably two hours long, so I was rehearsing, and performing it. There were costume changes, and then we ended up doing it off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theater. Yes, and it was a New York Times critics’ pick.
Q: You knew you were on the right route.
Candace Bushnell: Yes, so it was, and that was very exciting. It was probably November or December of 2021. And then Covid came back.
Q: Once you had Covid back, did that cause you to rethink things?
Candace Bushnell: No, the show ended, because I got Covid. Yes, first the stage manager got Covid, then several other people got it. That’s how the theater works. So a lot of shows shut down.
Q: I had Covid right at the beginning then I got the first vaccination. Were you already vaccinated, or you hadn’t been vaccinated?
Candace Bushnell: I was vaccinated.
Q: And you still got it?
Candace Bushnell: Well, people do.
Q: Having had Covid and having the show shut down, were there things that you decided to add, subtract, refine, change?
Candace Bushnell: No, no, no. The show is, I’ve done it all over the world, I think in 12 countries so far. I’ve done it twice at the London Palladium to a sold-out crowd. I’ve done it in South Africa. I have done it in Italy. I’ve done it in Denmark, Norway, Prague, Budapest, so I’ve done it in different countries. It’s the same, because, obviously, it’s in a different theater every time I do it. They have stage managers, et cetera, and people who do the lighting, and they want those, they want you to be perfect. there’s often a translation. They don’t want you to change a word.
Q: When you do the show, you’ve had it before all these different audiences. Do they react differently, or do they already have a conception given that “Sex in the City” is a global phenomenon?
Candace Bushnell: I’d say the audiences are pretty consistent, across all of these different countries. The audience is mostly women. They are well-heeled and intelligent. They’ve got it together. It’s a girls’ night out. They love it. They find the show really inspiring. They all pretty much laugh at the same things. there’s some parts that are maybe a little sad or poignant, and then there are other parts that are funny, and it’s pretty consistent.
Q: Did you find that when “Sex in the City” came out, first the column, the book, then the TV series, did you find that you were being driven to become a more of, how do I say it, a primary personality, as opposed to somebody who was reflecting on other people, or did that all come very naturally?
Candace Bushnell: it all came very naturally. I always feel like writers are as interesting and Important as actors, so that was not ever, there wasn’t, I didn’t feel like I was reporting on people. I always felt like I had a voice, and that’s really the most important thing. Having a voice and a point of view.
Q: A lot of times writers don’t think of themselves as the primary person, but the person that’s reporting on them or in the background reflecting on them, or more insular, or not so much but more inward. Then there are other writers who are the most outward people you could ever meet. Salman Rushdie is somebody who’s a very stage-friendly person. You have these writers, personalities out there, happy to get in front of a crowd, and then there’s other writers that are terrified of it.
Candace Bushnell: No, I’m definitely in your camp.
Q: I came to New York in ’78, so we have a lot in common. We crossed a lot of paths and different people. Do you find that now that you’re doing this stage show and you’re rediscovering people you hadn’t seen in a long time? Or Do you find that people are coming to you that you never realized identified with Sex and the City to such a degree?
Candace Bushnell: Sex and the City has a huge audience and I have had so many women from all over the world come up to me and tell me the impact that Sex and the City has had on their lives. It’s given them a different way to think, a different way to think about their lives , and that’s really probably one of the most rewarding aspects of it is that it’s touched so many women’s lives and it’s very important to so many women.
Q: Do you think it brought sex itself to the forefront in a way that hadn’t been done much before?
Candace Bushnell: It’s not about sex. It’s not about sex. It’s about real friendships, relationships, all of that. It’s about being an independent woman.
Q: I realize that for a lot of women, Sex and the City reframed the discussion about friends and how women react to each other as friends and how they bond or don’t bond or where conflicts come in. Do people come to you to be very confessional?
Candace Bushnell: Yes. I do have people who come up to me and say, have I got a dating story for you? I always want to hear it. I do. You know, it’s such, it’s really like such rich material. And, you know, I just wrote a piece for New York Magazine about dating over 60.
Q: I just read that.
Candace Bushnell: relationships are important. relationships are still, you know, one of the big topics of importance to people. Even if you don’t necessarily want to be in a relationship yourself, you’re still interested in relationships. That’s what I found. I could be wrong about that, but, so yes, people do come up to me and tell me their stories and I’m, honestly, usually fascinated. I find people fascinating.
Q: Do you think you’ve become a bit of a therapist to people not in necessarily a direct way, but when people meet you in a way you’ve helped them define themselves in some sense?
Candace Bushnell: Probably not. I’m usually pretty straightforward. Sometimes people say, what should I do to find a relationship? I just say, don’t bother. I can be sarcastic about it. I don’t think people really come to me as a therapist, but they do like to tell their stories. I think that’s wonderful.
Q: In some ways, you were able to, in writing those characters, describe archetypes of relationships or archetypes of dynamics that occur between women in various ways. Obviously, I’m only speaking secondhand, but I’ve met a few women in my day. I find that people react that way with “Sex in the City.” I have the complete DVD set, so I’ve watched a lot of episodes.
Candace Bushnell: Wow! That’s crazy!
Q: I interviewed the actors that played your character in the movie and also got to talk to Darren Star, the series creator.
Candace Bushnell: Yes, I love Darren.
Q: That was a fascinating day, It opened up my eyes to the series. When you wrote that New York Magazine article about dating after 60 what revelations did you find or have obviously thought about your men friends and whatnot? Have men said things to you since that article came out that you didn’t expect or did expect?
Candace Bushnell: As I like to say, I think that women have changed a lot and men really haven’t. I talked to a lot of men when I was writing “Sex and the City” and I always talked to a lot of men. They’re pretty straightforward about saying the things that women want to hear. The biggest change in dating, I think, has more to do with the fact that everybody’s on their phone all the time viewing their social media, but more importantly, it’s things like gaming and porn. I always say this, technology is largely created by men for men to take their money and I feel like a lot of men are lost to the internet.
Q: I have a different perspective with have one foot in the analog world and one foot in digital. In think you do as well. It’s a very different point of view in many ways.
Candace Bushnell: Yes. I think that that’s really what’s going on. The other thing is, one time, 60 years ago, people needed to be in relationships. There was no soup for one and now people can be single and they are single. I always look back to, I don’t know if you remember this, but, a family of five or six was sharing one bathroom. Now everybody has their own bathroom.
Q: They don’t have the big families like they used to.
Candace Bushnell: They don’t have big families and it’s much easier to be single now and so a lot of people are.
Q: In fact, millennials and younger people don’t have sex as much as our generation did.
Candace Bushnell: That’s supposedly true. I’ve heard that too. But you know what? There’s a lot of other things to do now.
Q: Do you think people are diverted by all these other interests and so sex has less prominence, and there’s less interest in procreation for sure.
Candace Bushnell: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that because I don’t know. It’s just a theory. There are many more things that take up time in people’s lives. You didn’t have to answer a whole bunch of emails or a whole bunch of texts back then. You didn’t have to be working 24-7. I remember weekends in the ’90s just spending the weekend with friends and not even thinking about work. Now, I think that would never happen.
Q: One of the lessons that certainly came out of the ‘70s, ‘80s, even into the ‘90s, is that you had to get out and meet people. You had to go to events and do things. You couldn’t just sit at home. you didn’t have the devices. You had to get on the phone and say, where am I going to meet up with other people and actually do it?
Candace Bushnell: Yes. You had to see people in real life…
Q: Getting back to your show, how many drafts did it go through before you finally refined it to the version that will be seen in December?
Candace Bushnell: I was tweaking it. It was six weeks working on it at Bucks County Playhouse. I was probably tweaking and changing it every day, 20, 40 drafts. It’s jut a constant kind of tweaking. But then, once I got it down, that’s what we use. It’s basically our bible. There’s like one version that’s a little bit shorter and then there’s a longer version that’s like 10 minutes longer, but it’s pretty much the same.
Q: Given that you’re performing, do you find yourself able to come back home and then want to write or do you find yourself having the performance bug in you and it makes it harder to sit down and write?
Candace Bushnell: I find it harder to sit down and write. It’s harder to find the time. I used to write for six hours a day, six days a week. Some days it’d be like eight hours. Now, I just think, do I feel like I have that much time?
Q: It’s good to go out because you’ve got to exercise yourself. You’ve got to make your body function in many ways.
Candace Bushnell: Yes. I also think it’s very healthy to go out and interact with other people. I still go out five days a week. Sometimes when I’m in the city I’ll go to a few different things. Sometimes I do things or if I’m in the Hamptons, you know, just go to dinner with some friends.
Q: I noticed your area code is in Connecticut?
Candace Bushnell: Yes, I had a house in Connecticut.
Q: Oh, but you don’t have the house anymore, so you’re back to being based in Manhattan?
Candace Bushnell: No, New York and Sag Harbor.
Q: Ah, I love Sag Harbor.
Candace Bushnell: It’s actually a really pretty good place to be.
Q: I got to appreciate Sag Harbor in many different ways. Are you involved with the movie theater there or any of those arts organizations? There’s some great ones out there like The Church [a home for art and creativity on the East End in Sag Harbor]. I’ve been friendly with noted Sag Harbor artist and organizer April Gornick. I get notices of things going on out there. I keep wanting to get out there.
Candace Bushnell: Yes, she’s amazing. She’s done so much.
Q: She’s really in charge out there, very much so. Are you going to return with your show out there?
Candace Bushnell: Well, I did. I probably do it once a summer. I did it at WestHampton Beach, and at the Church. I did it at Canoe Place Inn and at Guildhall. Usually, I do it once a summer.
Q: with this show that’s coming up, is this kind of a relaunching of a tour or setting yourself up to have more of a residency? What’s the plans following this show?
Candace Bushnell: Well, I have an agent who books these shows. it’s a whole different category. There are theaters all over the country, and they book various shows, and Adler Hall, and they have different programs, so they are one-night only kinds of performances.
For tickets go to: https://www.candacebushnell.com/news-and-events/
Swiss Filmmaker Beatrice Minger Grapples with the Legacy of Irish Designer Eileen Gray
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Interviews
- Published on Friday, 15 August 2025 13:33
- Written by Brad Balfour
Irish designer Eileen Gray built a refuge on the Côte d‘Azur in 1929. Though she built the house for herself, it turned out to be a masterpiece and many people wanted to experience it years after she was gone. This first house was a discrete, avant-garde masterpiece. She named it E.1027, a cryptic marriage of her initials and those of Jean Badovici, with whom she built it.
Upon discovering the house, Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer Le Corbusier, a pioneer of what's now considered modern architecture, became intrigued and obsessed. He later covered the walls with murals and published photos of them. Gray described these paintings as vandalism and demanded restitution. He ignored her wishes and instead built his famous Cabanon directly behind E.1027, which dominates the narrative of the site to this day.
Swiss director Beatrice Minger decided to make a film, “E.1027-Eileen Gray and the House By the Sea,” about this narrative and transform it into a story about the power of female expression, and men’s desire to control it. Sleek and serene, the film captures the poetry of the house and of Gray's vision.
In order to make the film — a hybrid of documentary and fictional narrative performed by actors — she cast Natalie Radmall-Quirke — an Irish actress, articulate in French. As Minger said, “She struck us as capturing a nucleus of Eileen Gray in a way that felt right. We didn’t look for a one-to-one representation, but instead sought a more abstract, more free interpretation. With Axel Moustache as Jean Badovici and Charles Morillon as Le Corbusier, we found the perfect counterparts.”
With co-writer/director Christoph Schaub, they crafted an unusual film to tell about a very unusual woman and creator. Writer /director Minger is based in Zurich and it was there, and in Berlin and Lausanne, that she studied Film, German Studies and Modern History. After graduating, she worked as Assistant Director and Script supervisor on various projects and directed short films and video clips.
Though the film enjoyed a short theatrical run, in coming to Amazon, Apple and Kanopy it is now having its streaming & home video launch on September 9, 2025.
Q: It took a lot to break out of the restraints of society at the time. What do you think made her such a different person?
Beatrice Minger: I think a big part of it comes from her personality. She was a nonconformist and a non-heterosexual who tended to stay out of any artist groups or associations. She was an introvert with an ambivalent relationship to the public. Coming from an aristocratic background, she had the privilege of not having to get married or make a living from her art. That doesn’t mean she didn’t have collaborators. She opened a workshop with Ethel Wyld and later opened a gallery to sell her furniture and carpets. Yet, she wasn’t dependent on making a profit. She didn’t have to comply with any commercial standards or business rules. This allowed her to be very independent and create outside the system, making her truly avant-garde.
Q: Making any film is hard enough but choosing to do this story takes a lot to get it made. What led you to be convinced to make this?
Beatrice Minger: I was fascinated by her life, spirit, strong artistic voice, and choices. She spoke to me. The same was true of the story surrounding the house and Le Corbusier’s violent intervention at its center. I had very strong and complex feelings about it and wanted to understand it. Moreover, I felt that the 1920s and the 2020s had a lot in common. There are many historical parallels, as well as similarities in terms of what preoccupies and moves people. I felt that I could tell a story with a deep emotional connection to the present day.
Q: How much do you think that Gray’s Irish heritage and experience informed her as an artist and as an individual?
Beatrice Minger: As I am not Irish myself, I can only make assumptions shaped by my conversations with Natalie Radmall-Quirke and Jennifer Goff. Goff is the curator of the NMI and is probably most familiar with Eileen Gray’s Irish heritage and her life in general. First, her aristocratic heritage shaped her life on an existential level. Although she never identified with the title, she felt the great responsibility that comes with being born into wealth.
She was well aware that without her privilege, she might not have been able to become an artist. She left Ireland early in life, supposedly because she disapproved of the renovations to her childhood home by her brother-in-law, which she considered completely tasteless.
This seems to have started a pattern throughout her life: once she left, she never went back, except when her mother died. Once she arrived in Paris, her life was also shaped by being a foreigner, albeit she had a network of mostly English-speaking artists. Being a foreigner always comes with a feeling of not belonging, which I think was part of her motivation to create “E.1027.” It was a place far away from home, different in light, colors, and climate, yet it was a place where she could belong. Yet, as we know, she left this house, too, and never went back.
Q: How did her family react to her iconoclastic ways and behavior?
Beatrice Minger: As far as I know, there wasn’t as much friction as one might assume given Eileen Gray’s nonconformist lifestyle. Her mother was eccentric and decided to marry outside her class — to a painter. Her father, who presumably shared her sensitivity and introverted character, supported her decision to become an artist. He often traveled to Europe to paint and took her with him. She was the youngest of five siblings, and, as she says in the film, nobody really cared what she was doing all day. This gave her a great sense of independence, as well as a sense of self-sufficiency — and probably also loneliness.
Q: I would assume that commercial consideration didn’t play much of a role in the making of this film but did you have an idea of what audience it would find?
Beatrice Minger: From the beginning of the project, the producers considered commercial aspects, such as appealing to an audience in the field of design and architecture. This audience appreciates artists’ biographies and the experience of seeing films in theaters. As the film changed topics and perspectives, we felt that we could bring the same audience with us and also speak about discourses around gender, patriarchy, and, not least, the formative decade of modernism: the 1920s.
There are many parallels between that time and today. I hoped the film would speak to a broader audience, mostly women who are hungry to see their point of view represented on the big screen. However, these are mostly conclusions from hindsight. To be completely honest, I was prepared to accept that an experimental film like this one would perhaps find its audience at film festivals, but who dares to dream of this response in cinemas?
Q: What kind of a response have you had now that the film has been released?
Beatrice Minger: The film was overwhelmingly well-received. It was popular at festivals and in cinemas across Europe and is now popular in the UK, Ireland, and the US. Most reviews were positive, appreciating the fascinating story told in such a different, experimental form. But I must give most of the credit to her. Her life and art continue to speak to us decades later.
Q: Looking back, were there things about her life and history you would like to have included?
Beatrice Minger: Oh, I had to leave out so many things! It’s always painful because you want to paint the most complex character possible. However, we didn’t want to simply create an artist’s biography; we wanted to weave the story threads around “E.1027.” This focus made it easier to leave things out and gave us the freedom to create space for other things –– for architecture and reflection.
Q: It must have been tough to organize all this info and make it coherent — who all the players are, etc. How did you meet the challenge?
Beatrice Minger: I read everything I could find and talked to everyone who knew her work better than I did. I absorbed all the information like a sponge. From all this information, I created something of an amalgam. Then, at one point, I had to let go of all the knowledge and create something from it.
Yet, I made sure to check in with the documents to ensure that I wasn’t getting carried away. I was careful to always have a document or story at hand that I could tie the text back to. I didn’t want to impose my own narrative on her; I wanted to listen carefully to what was there and follow her lead.
Music Promoter Chris Keaton Launches a New Venture “The Song Inside You” For 2025
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Interviews
- Published on Wednesday, 30 July 2025 14:01
- Written by Brad Balfour
Through Chris Keaton’s efforts as a song promoter, his writers have had songs recorded by George Strait, Brooks and Dunn, Reba McIntyre, Trisha Yearwood, Sir Cliff Richard and more. As a 30-year voting member of The Recording Academy (Grammys) and a 2016 inductee into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame, this Nashville resident puts his experience to use.
Thanks to his savvy, Keaton has also written three books — “Seven Stupid Mistakes People Make Trying To Break Into The Music Business,” “Dapper” and “Confidence on The Fly.” In addition, he began hosting a podcast series, Random Acts.
As he explained, “From March to late September 2021, I recorded and released 22 episodes (Season 1) of my podcast. In January, 2025, Season Two begins. Season 1 was audio only and the second season will be available in audio and video formats. The Random Acts podcast will include upcoming guests: Warner Music artist, Cale Dodds and Grammy-nominated Dance/Remix Producer, Dave Aude.
But I now have a new venture going live called “The Song Inside You.” This is meant to be an unparalleled experience for those who started out as songwriters but parked their dream to focus on a career. Now that they are nearing or at retirement age, they have realized that one never ages out as a songwriter. This once in a lifetime experience is for them.
The following day, our clients fly home with a copy of the co-written song and memories to last a lifetime. Packages, which start at $5,000, also include two nights at a deluxe hotel on Music Row, just minutes from the famous downtown honky tonks and nightlife attractions.”
Q: Have you done this already as a test case?
Chris Keaton: No. It’s a brand new idea. The sign-ups for registrants so far have come from my social media feed.
Q: Do you have people already booked for this?
Chris Keaton: We began on January 1 to take bookings of registrants.
Q: Obviously, this is something you curate. What’s the process of picking who you focus on and how are you promoting the idea (beyond a story I can write)?
Chris Keaton: Yes, I curate only to make sure that the talent level of the registrants is at least adequate (my judgement call) and they are agreeable to terms created by my attorney. The registrant does share ownership of the copyright with the hit songwriter.
Songwriters already committed to the project include Kent Blazy (hits with Garth Brooks, Chris Young, etc.), Trey Bruce (Randy Travis, Diamond Rio), Cale Dodds (Warner Music Artist with numerous TV/blm placements including the latest ABC TV NYE commercial).
Q: Do you have ideas about how this community will grow?
Chris Keaton: Social media, advertising and focusing on meeting our audience where they are. The target demographic is professionals from all walks of life. People who are either approaching or at retirement age. Emerging songwriters who would like to engage in following their dreams by having the unique opportunity to co-write with some of Nashville’s best and most successful songwriters. Think Fantasy baseball camp or Rock and Roll Fantasy camp.
This one-of-a-kind songwriter experience allows registrants to make memorable moments and follow their dreams. The packages include deluxe accommodations on World Famous Music Row in Nashville; an in-person songwriting session with a bona fide hit songwriter in a professional setting; a recording session with top Nashville studio musicians, engineers and singers in a top tier, professional recording studio. The registrant leaves with not only a professional recording of her or his co- written song but also the memory of a lifetime. Travel to and from Nashville is not included.
Q: Will this model create a new force among the songwriting community?
Chris Keaton: I believe it already has. Several professional songwriters with whom I have shared the idea are doing similar but smaller scale versions: offering their time and expertise to emerging songwriters without access to the industry via Zoom songwriting sessions. The professionals are paid for their time, energy and talent and the emerging songwriters get a wonderful and valuable experience, a lesson in how songs get written on a professional level, and a co-written song which is better than they could have written on their own.
Most everyone understands how difficult it is to have access to those who have successful songwriting careers. It is nearly impossible. With The Song Inside You program, not only do registrants gain this one-to-one access. They can also learn how to grow their songwriting craft.
Q: Do you think it will create an online distribution network out of the result of the songwriting creations?
Chris Keaton: That remains to be seen.
Q: How did you get involved with music in the first place?
Chris Keaton: On February 9, 1964, along with millions of other young people, I saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Their performances that evening shaped my life and career path like nothing else. The very next day, my brother and I started lip syncing to The Beatles. About a year later, we started a neighborhood band.
At the time, I was learning to play piano but the band already had a piano player. They insisted I play something, so my dad took me to the local music store. He pointed out a trumpet and I was like, “Not so much.” He pointed out a sax and before I could object, he said “Ladies love sax players.” So I said “Let’s get one of those!” I learned to play sax in band classes in school and never looked back. I was a touring musician for many years — playing in bands with Gary U.S. Bonds and then Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, among others.
Q: How did you become a song plugger?
Chris Keaton: When I moved to Nashville in 1993, I noticed that people in the business with the nicest houses, nicest cars and year-round tans were music publishers and song pluggers. I immediately decided that was for me and found my way into the business. The fact that I didn’t have a clue about what to do never stopped me from learning.
For more information or to sign up for a free weekly newsletter at www.chriskeaton.com. Registrants can reach out or get more information including pricing via: www.thesonginsideyou.com. You can see more at https://www.youtube.com/@chriskeatonrandomacts
More Articles...
- Singer/Songwriter Kyla Nicole Healey Discovers Herself Through Making Music And is Bringing It To The World
- Filmmaker Beth Lane Celebrates her Family As Holocaust Survivors in the Documentary “UnBroken”
- Rocker-turned-Writer Larry Kirwan Debuts His Latest Novel, “Rockin’ the Bronx” and Spurs ’80s Recollections
