Chad Perman

@chadperman.bsky.social

2360 Followers 391 Following

writer | editor | therapist* | human | founder/eic @brightwalldarkroom.com | curious about everything | 🏀 ⚽️ *posts ≠ professional advice

“Here's a simple rule that reinforces this idea: Your writing should be your own. The strain required to craft a clear memo or report is the mental equivalent of a gym workout by an athlete; it's not an annoyance to be eliminated but a key element of your craft.”

Especially as regards historical-cinematic treatments of queer suffering, Blue Moon is too spritely to capitulate to self-tragedy. It's also nimbly elegiac about a certain strain of art, both its making and and criticism. It's the rare life-story written in the parlance of its subject, inoculated from phoniness seemingly contradictively-via pure performance itself. It is an essay on art performed by a narrative feature film that nevertheless maintains a near-urgent sense of unease regarding its subject's operating philosophies. Here is the biopic rendered in contradiction, storytelling under realistic, realtime conditions that occasions spontaneous song and occasionally ascendent poesy.

The fallout of Blue Moon is an assertive, pile-driving movie star performance from Ethan Hawke, but most compelling is how Linklater and his collaborators have rendered this occasion to tell about a life (even a night's life) in the terms one uses to speak about art itself. Which is just living and dying by another name. Which is what a song does. Live and die. It all would have been enough for a film to remember how "I Wish I Were in Love Again" swings.