Retired English teacher. Metuchen local. Oscar nominee.
That trio of identifiers has a nice ring to it, right?
Picture this: it’s the mid-2010s and your creative collaborator-turner-friend — the award-winning filmmaker Richard Linklater — is talking with you on the phone, asking what you’re currently working on.
“I’m trying this thing about the last days of Lorenz Hart,” Robert Kaplow responded.
“I’m really interested in Lorenz Hart. Could I read it?”
Linklater’s curiosity is the reason the movie “Blue Moon” exists today.
Imagine working on a script for over a decade, reading the same screenplay every year with the same passionate team, tinkering with it, and still having it be an “entirely rewarding experience” throughout.
Kaplow was even nominated for Best Original Screenplay for the movie at this year’s Oscars.
“It’s a little movie — low-budget, character- and dialogue-driven — and everyone seemed to be making it as a labor of love,” said Kaplow. Apparently, the actor Ethan Hawke fell in love with the character of “Larry” from the first draft. (For his portrayal of Hart, Hawke received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.)
“I’m not particularly sentimental about awards and ceremonies, but that was a genu- inely emotional moment,” Robert Kaplow said of his Oscar nomination for Best Origi- nal Screenplay for “Blue Moon.”
“We kept that [editing] process going right until the moment when the cameras started rolling,” Kaplow said. “The film was shot in Ireland, and I was right there with my notebook and my pen trying to sharpen the words and accelerate the pacing.”
Kaplow left Ireland when shooting actually started, so he never saw the actors in costume or anything that would spoil the final product.
“To actually see the first rough-cut of the movie was astonishing,” Kaplow said. “I watched it at home on my computer with my girlfriend, Lynn. We both were crying by the end.”
Kaplow said that getting an Academy Award nomination was a total surprise, but that Michael Barker, the co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, strongly believed in the movie from the beginning.
“I met him at the world premiere in Berlin a year ago. He kept telling me the screenplay was going to get noticed,” Kaplow said. Amazingly, he was right.
Kaplow watched the awards nominations reveal on television the morning of January 22. When the nominations for Best Original Screenplay were announced, his name was read first.
“I’m not particularly sentimental about awards and ceremonies, but that was a genuinely emotional moment,” Kaplow shared. “I found myself on the edge of tears. I called up Lynn immediately and said, ‘You’re not going to believe what just happened!’”
Kaplow explained that, even though he’s worked with some high-profile celebrities, including Claire Danes and Zac Efron, who both starred in the screen adaptation of Kaplow’s novel “Me and Orson Welles,” he’s not really “in the business.” As a writer, he spends most of his time alone.
When he visited Los Angeles in February to attend the Oscar Nominees Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton, where he did fielded questions from the likes of Turner Classic Movies, he “felt very much like a stranger in a strange land.”
“Now that was the business. Publicists, cameras, TCM, Reuters, movie stars dressed like models. I enjoyed soaking it all in,” Kaplow said.
There was a point when all the nominees stood on stage — about 200 of them, he estimated — and right in front of Kaplow stood Leonardo DiCaprio, while Steven Spielberg was a mere 10 feet away. And after the ceremony, Paul Thomas Anderson, the Oscar-winning director of “One Battle After Another,” went up to Kaplow because he said he “really wanted” to meet the writer of “Blue Moon.”
“That was remarkable. And deeply rewarding,” reflected Kaplow.
As a Metuchen local for nearly 40 years — and the publisher of “The Metuchen Times,” a local print-only newspaper — Kaplow loves living a stone’s throw away from the library in this “beautiful small town,” calling it his home, his past, and his present.
As for what’s next, Kaplow’s been working on two scripts: a buddy comedy about two male co-workers drifting into middle-age — with themes of friendship and loss — and a romantic comedy about “very young people.”
“I hope my work is both funny and poignant,” Kaplow said, adding that it’s a fine line he strives to walk.
Judging by the reception of “Blue Moon,” he’s more than proven he can hit that mark — and audiences everywhere are eagerly awaiting more of his particular kind of movie magic.
