New Delhi, Oct. 17 -- Richard Linklater likes to joke that if he and Ethan Hawke didn't know each other so well, Hawke probably would have punched him during the making of "Blue Moon."

The two Texans have been friends and collaborators for over 30 years. They had made eight films together when they started "Blue Moon," about the lyricist Lorenz Hart set over one night at Sardi's restaurant. It's a project they'd been talking about for over a decade.

One might assume that it would be all old hat between them. And yet this was a film, in select theaters Friday, that would require a vastly different dynamic.

"I was nagging. I was riding his (expletive). It's not the way I work usually," Linklater said in a recent interview with The Associ...