Richard Lin­klater: Colos­sal Youth

Stand­ing in line to see Richard Linklater’s sev­en­teenth film, Boy­hood, at South By South­west fes­ti­val in the director’s adopt­ed home­town of Austin, Texas, a com­plete stranger off­sets the unsea­son­ably cold weath­er by strik­ing up a con­ver­sa­tion. It turns out the man, a native Aus­ti­nite, worked as an extra on Boy­hood, and on top of that, he attend­ed the mid­dle school in which Lin­klater filmed sev­er­al key scenes. The same school played a star­ring role in the writer/director’s third fea­ture, Dazed and Con­fused, 20 years ago.

Talk to folk around town about Richard Lin­klater and chances are they’ll have a kind word to offer or an anec­dote to share. Though orig­i­nal­ly hail­ing from Hous­ton, Lin­klater is regard­ed as one of Austin’s own — his work with the Austin Film Soci­ety, which he co-found­ed in 1985, has been a major fac­tor in the city’s post-Mil­len­ni­al cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic boom. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the good will is mutu­al. ​“Austin is the place I escaped to,” explains Lin­klater. ​“I came here as a high school kid, I had a lot of friends here and it’s where I first start­ed see­ing live music. It felt like a place of free­dom and cre­ativ­i­ty. There were all these peo­ple in bands and a lot of artists. Where I came from, I didn’t think I need­ed to go to LA or New York, this was the big league.” What made him stick around? ​“I guess I just like the way folks’ brains work around here.”

Lin­klater first came to Austin in 1984, and as any­one who’s lived here that long will tell you, the city has changed a lot since then. ​“Back then you could have bought down­town for a nick­el,” he jokes. ​“It was com­plete­ly burned out and board­ed up. I can point to loca­tions where these huge build­ings are now and say, ​‘that used to be a ware­house’, or ​‘we used to go and watch bands there’.” Despite the glint of nos­tal­gia in his eye, Lin­klater stress­es that he sheds no tears for the good old bad old days. ​“I kind of like the new Austin. Back then there was noth­ing going on. There are more oppor­tu­ni­ties now for peo­ple to stay here and express them­selves and make a living.”

He may be the uncrowned king of Amer­i­can indie cin­e­ma, but direct­ing wasn’t an obvi­ous career choice for a young Lin­klater. ​“I was on sports teams,” he recalls, ​“so my youth was very dif­fer­ent to how a lot of peo­ple might imag­ine.” Lin­klater grew up play­ing foot­ball, but went on to earn a schol­ar­ship at Sam Hous­ton State to con­cen­trate on his first love, base­ball. Though injury forced him to sur­ren­der his dream of mak­ing it to the Major Leagues, he still enjoys step­ping up to the plate in his spare time, and even occa­sion­al­ly trains with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Long­horns’ team – he once described hit­ting a base­ball as ​“maybe the best thing about life.”

Look­ing back at Dazed and Con­fused, it’s strange to think that Lin­klater osten­si­bly had more in com­mon grow­ing up with Ben Affleck’s pad­dle-wield­ing jock than any of the film’s lov­able mis­fits. He wasn’t an alpha male or a bul­ly by any stretch, but his tac­it con­nec­tion with that world undoubt­ed­ly added to the film’s authen­tic­i­ty. ​“The truth is, that stuff actu­al­ly went on in my school,” smiles Lin­klater. ​“All the seem­ing­ly bar­bar­ic rit­u­als and tra­di­tions that are in the film, it’s all stuff that real­ly happened.”

While Lin­klater was ini­tial­ly more inter­est­ed in sports than cin­e­ma, he acknowl­edges that he has always been a pas­sion­ate writer. ​“I was the kid in fifth grade whose short sto­ry would end up get­ting read to the prin­ci­pal,” he says with a lin­ger­ing sense of pride. It was around this time that Lin­klater relo­cat­ed from Hous­ton to the small­er blue-col­lar com­mu­ni­ty of Huntsville with his moth­er, a move that inspired his deep-seat­ed fas­ci­na­tion with the con­trast­ing minu­ti­ae of city and small town life. Add to the mix the fact that he didn’t cross the state line until he was 20, and you start to get a clear­er pic­ture of the parochial world­view that would inform both Slack­er and Dazed. Lin­klater remem­bers grow­ing up in awe of the sheer scale of America’s largest main­land State. ​“We’d take these long five-hour dri­ves with­out ever leav­ing Texas”, he says. ​“I felt like I’d been every­where, seen every­thing there was to see. But despite how big Texas is, I always had this feel­ing of being trapped.”

Even in the ear­ly days, Lin­klater was clear in his mind about what it meant to be an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er. Despite yearn­ing for his voice to be heard, he was equal­ly wary of play­ing into Hollywood’s hands. Fol­low­ing 1991’s Slack­er, made for a pal­try $23,000, Uni­ver­sal gave Lin­klater $6m to make Dazed, which is what he need­ed ​“to do that film right”. Although a sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater bud­get was required to secure the rights to the songs that would appear on the film’s icon­ic sound­track, Lin­klater claims that he nev­er came close to mak­ing a bar­gain with the dev­il. The stu­dio sys­tem is a dif­fer­ent beast today, and Lin­klater con­tin­ues to keep his dis­tance. ​“I avoid the indus­try as much as pos­si­ble,” he says. ​“The focus on busi­ness you get in Los Ange­les is just so depress­ing; everyone’s focused on the com­merce end.”

While Linklater’s anti-estab­lish­ment mind­set is admirable, has he ever been tempt­ed to work as a gun-for-hire in order to fund his next project? ​“Nev­er,” he insists. ​“I think any­one who’s on the path to be a gun-for-hire prob­a­bly deserves to be. They prob­a­bly don’t have a burn­ing pas­sion or enough of their own sto­ries.” He con­tin­ues, ​“I’ve turned down so much mon­ey, but my best films always came from turn­ing down a lot of mon­ey.” Bot­tom line: ​“I nev­er did any­thing to get some­where else. I always just dug in my heels and did what I want­ed to do next. That gets hard­er and hard­er, but I’ve nev­er approached my work as a means to an end.”

That, in a nut­shell, is the key to Linklater’s longevi­ty. But there’s more to it than that. His keen sur­vival instinct aside, Lin­klater has always been good at mak­ing the most of lim­it­ed resources. Even his most com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful movie to date, 2003’s School of Rock, was a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est stu­dio com­e­dy. Lin­klater goes one fur­ther. ​“No one thought it was going to be a hit. It was just me and Jack [Black], goof­ing around. And you have to remem­ber, Jack wasn’t real­ly a big star yet, so it was far from a sure thing. Nowa­days, if you have a movie that does well at Sun­dance it’s like, ​‘Well, you can do that again, or you can come do this $100m vam­pire movie’. I meet film­mak­ers who are hot right now and I just think, ​‘Go make your next film’. Just do it, don’t sit in LA devel­op­ing it for four years because it’ll just drain you. They don’t even real­ly pay you prop­er­ly while you’re devel­op­ing a film. Work with your hands, that’s my advice.”

For all the notch­es in his belt, for every wild exper­i­ment and unlike­ly tri­umph, it says a lot about both Linklater’s ded­i­ca­tion to his craft and his desire to push him­self cre­ative­ly that he’s nev­er lost his abil­i­ty to sur­prise. In 2006 Lin­klater became the first direc­tor to have two films screen at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in the same year – the dis­tinct­ly sub­ver­sive Fast Food Nation and the Roto­scoped Phillip K Dick adap­ta­tion, A Scan­ner Dark­ly. Boy­hood tops that feat.

Con­ceived in ear­ly 2001 while Lin­klater was con­tem­plat­ing mak­ing a film about child­hood but hav­ing trou­ble sin­gling out a peri­od he felt was worth explor­ing, Boy­hood start­ed life, like most of Linklater’s films, as an ​“imprac­ti­cal idea”. From the moment the seed of that ini­tial thought took root, how­ev­er, he was deter­mined to see it through. What quick­ly became known as ​‘The 12 Year Project’ gath­ered steam when Ethan Hawke and Patri­cia Arquette enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly signed on, and Linklater’s next chal­lenge was to secure the required fund­ing – a stum­bling block that arrived with an unan­tic­i­pat­ed twist. ​“IFC Films gave us some mon­ey to get things going, but at one stage they want­ed to turn the project into a series. That was nev­er an option for me.”

Lin­klater knows how the game works. He accepts that no one wants to write a cheque they know they won’t be able to cash for 13 years. And yet it’s pre­cise­ly because Boy­hood seemed like such an unre­al­is­tic prospect, not in spite of the fact that so many peo­ple – from film stars to financiers – com­mit­ted to it long-term. You get the sense that Lin­klater intrigues the peo­ple he works with as much as he inspires them. From his descrip­tion of the film’s pro­duc­tion as feel­ing like ​“a sum­mer camp art project”, you start to under­stand what it is that peo­ple love about work­ing with Linklater.

As an uncon­ven­tion­al ven­ture that required an immense group effort, it was impor­tant for Lin­klater to ensure that every­one kept the faith, even though he admits qui­et­ly think­ing, ​“it was an abstract notion that any­one would ever see what we were doing. I was con­vinced no one would ever see it.” So Lin­klater worked out his logis­tics, sketch­ing out the archi­tec­ture of the sto­ry, giv­ing IFC an out­line and telling the team his plan: each year they would reassem­ble, shoot a few scenes and edit what they had. ​“The momen­tum built over the years”, Lin­klater reflects. ​“You could feel the invest­ment grow.”

So, you’ve got your leads, mobilised a crew and found a backer. What’s next? Just the small mat­ter of find­ing the boy whose sto­ry you’re going to tell – what Ethan Hawke equat­ed to ​“time lapse pho­tog­ra­phy of a human being”. Cast­ing a child with a view to how they might devel­op both phys­i­cal­ly and social­ly dur­ing their for­ma­tive years may sound like a daunt­ing task. But Lin­klater had a nifty solu­tion: ​“I was secret­ly cast­ing the par­ents,” he reveals. ​“Ellar had cool par­ents; both artists who both had strong Austin/​Texas ties, which was impor­tant because as an ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion I need­ed a cer­tain amount of access. I very much need­ed them to see it as an artis­tic project that would have a pos­i­tive affect on their son’s life, and not become a neg­a­tive bur­den. And they got that from the outset.”

From pres­i­den­tial elec­tions to glob­al con­flicts to Star Wars sequels and Har­ry Pot­ter, Boy­hood also serves as a time cap­sule of 21^st cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. But if any of these cul­tur­al snap­shots feel con­trived or self-con­scious, Lin­klater insists that they’re pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal. In fact, while crit­ics and aca­d­e­mics have long her­ald­ed Lin­klater as a cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gist, he rejects the idea of being a mouth­piece of a gen­er­a­tion. ​“It’s a ridicu­lous notion”, he asserts. ​“The notion of Gen X is so abstract; it’s always tied to these arbi­trary dates. That kind of think­ing real­ly doesn’t appeal to me. It’s so reduc­tive. I’ve nev­er con­scious­ly posi­tioned myself to be that guy.”

The inter­est­ing thing about Slack­er and Dou­glas Coupland’s 1991 nov­el, which helped pop­u­larise the phrase ​‘Gen­er­a­tion X’, is that both were observ­ing a lifestyle that was hard to define in its day. Lin­klater nev­er intend­ed to cap­ture the Zeit­geist; he sim­ply want­ed to make real­is­tic films that peo­ple could relate to. Still, he accepts that main­tain­ing a cer­tain styl­is­tic and the­mat­ic rhythm lends itself to peo­ple attach­ing labels. ​“That’s what we do as a species,” he says. ​“We cre­ate boxes.”

To some, Lin­klater might be the indie god­head who spawned the Slack­er gen­er­a­tion, but to oth­ers he’s the Roto­scop­ing pio­neer of Wak­ing Life, the man behind rau­cous main­stream come­dies like School of Rock and Bad News Bears, or the vision­ary direc­tor who brought us the Before films. Yet aside from that lat­ter tril­o­gy, each part of which was released in nine-year inter­vals, Lin­klater claims to have nev­er fol­lowed a spe­cif­ic career path. Appar­ent­ly, he’s made a habit of get­ting lucky. ​“Every film I’ve made has been the result of dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances com­ing togeth­er at the right time.” He con­tin­ues, adding that he’s had it far from all his own way. ​“Some projects take a lit­tle longer to hap­pen, I’d been try­ing to make Bernie for 10 years. When you’re the kind of film­mak­er I am, you find your­self liv­ing moment to moment.”

On a tech­ni­cal lev­el, the tonal and aes­thet­ic con­sis­ten­cy achieved on Boy­hood is aston­ish­ing. But it shouldn’t real­ly come as a sur­prise. Lin­klater may rel­ish hop­scotch­ing between genre, peri­od and place, but whether he’s direct­ing a spunky live-action com­e­dy, a trip­py ani­mat­ed thriller, or an enchant­i­ng roman­tic saunter, his films all feel like part of the same big fam­i­ly. So what’s his secret? ​“I hon­est­ly don’t think I’ve changed as a film­mak­er over the last 18 years”, says Lin­klater with just a hint of self-dep­re­ca­tion. ​“I’m always try­ing to push myself, but I feel con­fi­dent in my abil­i­ty to be con­sis­tent with a project over a num­ber of years.”

So where does Richard Lin­klater go from here? How do you top a project as ambi­tious in scope and exe­cu­tion as Boy­hood? To answer those ques­tions, you have to regard Boy­hood as a major career mile­stone, and that’s sim­ply not how Lin­klater sees it. Each of his ​“big fam­i­ly life­time projects” may feel like notable book­marks in his 26-year career, but to Lin­klater each new project sim­ply rep­re­sents the next thing. So, to rephrase the ini­tial ques­tion, what’s next for Richard Lin­klater? ​“I’ve got a tonne of scripts that will prob­a­bly nev­er see the light of day”, he con­fess­es, ​“but actu­al­ly the next film I’m try­ing to make is a big fam­i­ly com­e­dy. If that comes off it’ll be so dif­fer­ent, a com­plete palate cleanser.”

With that project still in the ear­ly devel­op­ment stage, Lin­klater is under­stand­ably stay­ing tight-lipped. He can reveal, how­ev­er, that he’s also lin­ing up his spir­i­tu­al sequel to Dazed, which he describes to LWLies as ​“a col­lege ver­sion of The Wolf of Wall Street”. Even more excit­ing, how­ev­er, is the moot­ed return of Celine and Jesse. ​“Anoth­er Before film? Who knows?” Lin­klater teas­es. ​“There’s noth­ing to say we won’t be back in anoth­er eight years. I could keep mak­ing the Before films, but, you know, I’ve got dif­fer­ent sto­ries to tell. I’ve been lucky to be able to fol­low what­ev­er sto­ry I’ve been com­pelled to tell, and that’s how I think I’ll see it out.”