I Should Have Stayed At The Bus Station: The Richard Linklater Thread

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Welcome to the human race...


In light of that thread I bumped recently, I figured it might make more sense to make a thread dedicated to discussing the noted Austin filmmaker that is Richard Linklater. He's easily one of my favourite filmmakers for managing to weave his way through a variety of genres throughout his thirty-odd years as a filmmaker while still managing to balance his own intellectual curiosity with the ability to create compelling films. He has notably experimented with Tarkovsky's idea of filmmaking as "sculpting in time", whether it's the notorious "12 years to make" coming-of-age experiment that is Boyhood or checking in with a pair of romantics at significant points in their decades-long relationship with the Before series (to say nothing of the ways in which he revisits and reworks earlier films by making spiritual successors, most notably by following Slacker with Waking Life). Science fiction, sports, music, road trips, and bank robberies are just a few of the topics he's tackled over the years and he's managed to put his own distinct stamp on all of them, so I thought that warranted further consideration when it comes to talking about specific filmmakers.

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Welcome to the human race...
To get started, my quick breakdown on all the films of his I've seen (which should include all the features) in chronological order...

WOODSHOCK - An early short that Linklater shot with frequent cinematographer Lee Daniel at the eponymous Texas indie-rock festival. A simple enough early effort that only runs a few minutes and is mainly notable for featuring an appearance by indie legend Daniel Johnston (The Devil and Daniel Johnston).

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO LEARN TO PLOUGH BY READING BOOKS - Technically Linklater's feature debut, this $3,000 experimental film consists of a nameless protagonist (played by Linklater himself) traveling or hanging out at home. Notable for its incredible lack of dialogue (a defining Linklater trait), so watching it does get a little tedious and feels like watching someone else's home movies. Still a worthwhile document for completionists.

SLACKER - Linklater's breakthrough film takes place over 24 hours in Austin, Texas. Notable for its emphasis on having a cast of over a hundred characters that never spends more than a few consecutive minutes on any of them before moving on to the next point of interest. The lack of overarching plot and a focus on a wide variety of eccentric characters who often espoused peculiar worldviews or did strange things came to be a defining aspect of Linklater films. It is that variety and affably shiftless approach to the proceedings that makes this my personal favourite of his films.

DAZED AND CONFUSED - Another 24-hour film, this time about the last day of high school in 1976 and the students' plans to party it up later that night. A more focused affair than Slacker that puts together a collection of archetypes (jocks, nerds, bullies, etc.) and just lets them mingle in a way that is not necessarily intended to conjure '70s nostalgia but does a commendable job of creating a time and place, making it a prime hangout movie and one of Linklater's best.

BEFORE SUNRISE - Even more focused than Linklater's previous films due to its focus on a journey involving two twenty-somethings - the American Jesse and the French Celine - as they decide to spend a night hanging out in Vienna and gradually fall for each other. The cornerstone for what would become what is arguably Linklater's definitive cinematic achievement and perhaps overtaken by at least one of its sequels, but it's a superb film in its own right.

SUBURBIA - Linklater adapts someone else's material, this time a stage play by Eric Bogosian about a group of Generation X nobodies forced to reckon with their dead-end lives when an old friend who became a rock star arrives in town. At once reminiscent of Linklater's other day-in-the-life films but still distinctly different (and darker), in the end his sensibilities don't entirely match with Bogosian's and the result is one of his more middling films.

THE NEWTON BOYS - Perhaps Linklater's first true misfire, this high-grade passion project follows four brothers as they become notorious bank robbers during the Prohibition era. It is fascinating to see Linklater stretch so far outside his comfort zone with a crime/Western epic that features multiple action sequences, but the resulting film is a disappointment more than anything else due to its weak deployment of Linklater's usually-strong flair for character work.

TAPE - At the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Linklater dropped not one but two films shot entirely on early DV cameras. One of them is Tape, a spiritual successor of sorts to SubUrbia in how it is a stage play adaptation centred on the tensions between high school friends (one of whom has gone on to be a successful artist) and is among the darker films in Linklater's filmography. It's an improvement, however, thanks in no small part to the tighter ensemble (three characters in a motel room) and a genuinely novel use of digital cameras to capture the sheer discomfort of the drama on display.

WAKING LIFE - The other shot-on-digital film Linklater dropped at Sundance in 2001 is the spiritual successor to Slacker, another free-associating film about eccentric characters espousing their personal philosophies (with a major through-line involving the nature of dreams as the entire film essentially takes place inside its protagonist's dreams). Especially notable for its use of rotoscope animation to lend visual flair to the proceedings (especially various talking-heads monologues), which may be an eyesore to some but does prove a worthy sign of Linklater's capacity for experimentation.

SCHOOL OF ROCK - What seems like it could have been an easy sell-out for indie nobility like Linklater proves a surprisingly good fit for his sensibilities as it gives Jack Black a good outlet for his rock-loving exuberance as the fake substitute teacher who decides to teach a precocious class of schoolkids about the magic of rock-'n'-roll.

BEFORE SUNSET - The sequel to Before Sunrise picks up nine years later as Jesse and Celine finally reunite and hit it off once again, though not without the various complications caused by the passage of time and lives lived without one another. Certainly a more emotionally mature film than ...Sunrise and that's enough to make it at least as good, if not better. Potentially his best film.

THE BAD NEWS BEARS - The easy pick for the worst film in Linklater's filmography, this comes across as a poor attempt to repeat his success with School of Rock by remaking the Walter Matthau vehicle about a deadbeat dad having to coach a bottom-of-the-ladder baseball team to success.

A SCANNER DARKLY - Linklater adapts Phillip K. Dick's dystopian novel about an undercover narc who is so undercover that the suspected drug dealer he is assigned to tail...is himself. A faithful translation of Dick's 1977 novel about drug culture and the ineffectual (if not totally absurd) nature of the war on drugs ages all too well and is definitely improved by the reintroduction of the same rotoscope animation seen in Waking Life, bringing the drug-addled future world of the novel to extremely colourful and disturbing life.

FAST FOOD NATION - Another adaptation, this time a book that tackled the state of the fast food industry and its various shortcomings. Here, it is seen through a variety of eyes - Mexican immigrant labourers, disillusioned teenage burger-flippers, even the idealistic white-collar worker trying to fix a health code violation. Perhaps Linklater's most didactic film, often to a fault, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make good points.

ME AND ORSON WELLES - A piece of biographical fiction based around a New York teenager who finds himself caught up in the hustle and bustle of Orson Welles staging a production of Julius Caesar in the 1930s. Definitely worth a look simply for Christian McKay's appropriately bombastic turn as Welles, but the underlying story about Zac Efron's naive teen getting such a life-changing experience proves decent enough on its own terms.

BERNIE - Linklater does true crime again, this time a bizarre murder case involving the eponymous mortician and his curious relationship with an embittered widow. Presented as a docudrama that alternates between interviews with the citizens of Carthage, Texas (blurring the lines between what is real and staged well before A-listers like Matthew McConaughey or Jack Black show up), Linklater's own laid-back approach certainly fits with the unusually calm state of affairs that surround Bernie (Black, in what is easily one of his best performances) both before and after he commits a crime.

BEFORE MIDNIGHT - The third film in the series so far picks up nine years after Before Sunset with Jesse and Celine having finally settled down, but that doesn't mean they're going to live happily ever after. Much has been made of how this film opts to get into the nitty gritty of a real relationship after the idealised romanticism of its predecessors, which is at once a strength - showing that these films are able to change along with their characters and authors - and a weakness - pushing these freewheeling conversational pieces into more conventionally confrontational conflict. While I would consider it the weakest of the three, I still maintain that it is another solid film of his.

BOYHOOD - Linklater's notorious exercise in reinventing the coming-of-age film is mostly known for taking 12 years to film in order to capture its characters age in real time, capturing the protagonist's formative years at their most tumultuous. The audacity of this approach obviously begs the question of whether it was worth it in the end, especially if it is still defined less by any kind of conventional narrative than a more traditionally Linklater looseness (which I appreciate in his other films but is definitely stretched to breaking point due to this film's considerable length - it is no coincidence that it is also his longest by some distance). I would still say that I like it, but even I can concede that there are moments where its status as a cinematic stunt does get the better of it.

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! - The spiritual successor to both Boyhood and Dazed and Confused centres on a weekend in the lives of a team of college baseball players, which they mostly spend partying at the house they share or at various venues around campus. Though it might be easy enough to dismiss as inessential due to its similarity to Dazed, I do think Linklater mines enough new material from the concept to make it one of his more worthwhile efforts (perhaps even my favourite Linklater of the 2010s).

LAST FLAG FLYING - Linklater's best (or most well-known) films tend to deal with youth as their subject so it was always going to be interesting to see how he would handle the topic of old age once he got there himself. Here he adapts the sequel to The Last Detail, which sees three Vietnam veterans reunite decades later after one of them loses his son in the Iraq War. It certainly plays to his strengths as it maintains the same loose road-movie vibe of its acclaimed predecessor, but it does still play like he feels he has something to prove that his previous ventures into more serious territory apparently didn't demonstrate.

WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE - It's a shame that Linklater's latest film is readily a contender for his weakest as it tells the story of Bernadette, an extremely neurotic architect whose antics start causing trouble for everyone around her and prompt her to eventually disappear without warning. Considering how the film is essentially about the protagonist struggling with a creative block and being unable to function as a result, I have to wonder how much of the film is essentially Linklater trying to get rid of his own creative demons (most readily reflected in the anonymous direction on display). Hopefully he's managed to deal with them now and is ready to move on to something that's up to his usual standard.



Hard to argue with any of those reviews, and I'm glad that my personal faves - Slacker, Tape, Waking Life, Scanner Darkly, Bernie - are all kindly appreciated.



I remember being very unimpressed when IndieWire did a Linklater ranking and put Tape in last place.
That is weird. It's obscure but most people who have seen it tend to like it. On the other hand, people who have seen Linklater's more studio output (Newton Boys, School of Rock, Bad News Bears) tend to forget that they were Linklater films after a couple of weeks.