Richard Linklater

Born on July 30, 1960 in Houston (Texas), Richard Stuart Linklater studied at the Huntsville High School and later enrolled at Sam Houston State University. He did not get to graduate, because he preferred to go to work on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. As he spent long periods of time without stepping on land, he dedicated himself to devouring the great classic novels and the works of existentialist philosophers.

But when he had a few days off, he discovered good cinema in a room that used to replace old titles. Dazzled by the discovery of Martin Scorsese ‘s Raging Bull , he decided he was going to be a filmmaker, so he used all the money he had saved during his time on the platform to buy a Super 8 camera, a projector and mounting material. He moved to Austin, where he founded the Austin Film Society, along with cinematographer Lee Daniel , and a couple of film professors. The objective of this association, which over time would include filmmakers such as Robert Rodriguez , Quentin Tarantino , Jonathan Demme , John Sayleso Steven Soderbergh consists of projecting and disseminating independent cinema. It has been quite influential in turning Austin into an intense filming center on the fringes of the big industry.

After a season studying film at Austin Community College, Richard Linklater shoots his first shorts. Finally he manages to finish a long documentary in Super 8, of an experimental nature, entitled It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books , in which he himself stars. He plays a guy who walks around taking part in different activities. Almost no one saw it.

Linklater started the Detour Filmproduction company (named after Edgar G. Ulmer’s film noir Detour ). He uses it to get financing for Stacker , which took him a year to shoot and another to edit. It collects the activities throughout a day of assorted Austin characters, including idlers, criminals and musicians. The film had an impact on the ‘indie’ circuit, and gave Linklater some prestige. He then shot Movida del 76 , about three young people who have finished school in their mid-70s, so they only think about having fun. He portrays disoriented characters with enormous freshness, who invite us to think about where society is headed, a theme that was going to be repeated over and over again in his films.

Richard Linklater established himself definitively in 1995 with Before Dawn , an account of the meeting in Vienna between an American journalist, Jesse, and a French woman, Celine, who talk all night. Despite the simplicity of the proposal, Linklater (co-writer with Kim Krizan ) achieves great intensity, brilliant dialogues and, above all, heartfelt performances by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy . He wins the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin Festival.

“I wrote the script with Julie and Ethan. The three of us wrote dialogue and ideas and we sent everything by mail,” Linklater recalls. “I put it all together, from their very intimate and visceral contributions and then we filmed it in just 15 days. I had wanted to do a story that took place in 80 minutes and lasted 80 minutes for a long time. The problem is that we could only film for a short period of each day, due to the location of the sun, and we only had 15 days. It was very risky, but I had the full support of my actors.” The film has had two sequels, Before Sunset , from 2004, with the protagonists meeting again in Paris, and Before Sunset, from 2013, the final chapter in Greece.

From the rest of his filmography, Tape stands out , where he reunited his fetish actor, Ethan Hawke , with Robert Sean Leonard , his former co-star from The Dead Poets Club , in The Tape , which told also with Uma Thurman . Adaptation of Stephen Belber ‘s play , shot on digital video, documents in real time the meeting of two former high school classmates who are competing for the same girl.

The rest of the director’s independent films do not even come close to the same height. He is partially disappointed with SubUrbia , which follows in the footsteps of a group of young people without vital horizons during one night. Four young men rob banks in the western The Newton Boys , which despite having Ethan Hawke again ( Matthew McConaughey accompanies him ), and some points of interest, doesn’t quite work. Linklater delves into corruption in the American food industry in Fast Food Nation , an adaptation of a best-seller by Eric Schlosser , which doesn’t quite pan out either.

Linklater has also had time to experiment with two feature films shot in real image, later converted into rotoscopic animation (the result is drawings that are more or less close to what has been filmed). Waking Life follows a young man who gets involved in philosophical discussions about big issues like the meaning of life. A Scanner Darkly adapts a futuristic novel by Philip K. Dick , about a mole who infiltrates drug gangs. Although both generate some curiosity, they do not end up working.

A separate chapter in Richard Linklater ‘s filmography is constituted by his comedies. Jack Black starred in School of Rock , about a substitute teacher who enters his students in a contest. The central character is a bewildered guy who links to the characters in his other movies. “I found it very curious to film for the big industry after so many years being an outsider”, explains the director. “It may not be as special a film as Before Sunrise , but School of Rock has opened many doors for me. It was a team effort, obviously with less intellectual aspirations than previous films, but with the firm objective of entertaining and entertaining.”

He reprized with the comedian in Bernie , about the relationship between an undertaker (Black) and an elderly millionaire ( Shirley MacLaine ). The filmmaker’s worst work almost certainly comes down to A Bunch of Balls , with Billy Bob Thornton as a feckless man trying to coach a bunch of kids into a baseball team.

Jealous of his private life, Richard Linklater continues to reside in Houston, settling in Hollywood only temporarily to shoot some of his movies. He has a daughter, Lorelei Linklater, who has taken her first steps as an actress in her father’s films, with a cameo in Waking Life and a slightly longer role in Growing Up .

The latter is a fairly innovative project, which Richard Linklater has filmed for more than a decade since 2002. It tells of the evolution as a person of the son of a divorced couple, played by the young Ellar Salmon, who can be seen growing up in the film, while her parents are the ubiquitous Ethan Hawke , and Patricia Arquette , who have also changed significantly in that time.