Native Texan filmmaker Richard Linklater has amassed an interestingly diverse assortment of films. Low-budget narratives such as "Slacker" and "Waking Life" have gone on to a successful life outside the film festival circuit and have inspired independent filmmakers such as Kevin Smith to follow suit. Films such as "Dazed and Confused," "School of Rock" and this summer's "A Scanner Darkly" have satisfied production companies yet stayed loyal to the filmmaker's core. Tuesday, Linklater visited the University to speak with Charles Berg's radio-television-film class.
Linklater could have been mistaken for anyone of the University's students, clad in a T-shirt and jeans with long shaggy hair, nervously sitting in the Burdine auditorium. However, as the questions from students became movie-oriented, the filmmaker enthusiastically opened up. "Waking Life," Linklater's 2001 film, which had just been screened, began the afternoon's discussions
"When you go to a movie that isn't plot-driven, it is open to whatever," he said about the dialogue-heavy film. He said that he had no idea the film would be so geared toward its characters' conversations, but when he turned on the camera, that was what came out. This laissez-faire narrative structure allowed Linklater to put characters from other films into his animated scenes.
"Characters from other movies would come into my mind as wanting to be in this film," he said.
When the discussion turned to the success of "Before Sunset," the sequel to "Before Sunrise," the filmmaker expressed his desire to follow the characters played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy through many more of life's critical stages, borrowing the idea Francois Truffaut had with actor Jean-Pierre Lèaud, saying he would not mind revisiting them in seven or 10 years to catch up.
On the subject of Linklater's seemingly impersonal studio movies such as "School of Rock" or the upcoming remake of "Bad News Bears," the director said he never feels pressure to do movies for anyone but himself and that he would not direct a film that meant nothing to him.
"Every time I make a movie, I like to feel like I'm getting away with something," and in what might be the understatement of the week, "I can never trust the studio system." When asked his opinions on the old Scorsese philosophy of "doing one for them and one for me," Linklater said it's just not the way things work; production companies don't give carte blanche to a filmmaker after he caters to them with one film. Each film is basically an uphill struggle.
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