"I picked up a camera like 40 years ago," reminisces Richard Linklater, "but the first 10 years is really just learning. I was lucky to get a few features made then, but I was really just teaching myself film." The Texas native, who attended college on a baseball scholarship but dropped out and worked on an offshore oil rig, developed his love of movies and taught himself to make them at the same time. He created the Austin Film Society to learn the history of cinema; Linklater also bought a Super-8 camera and, over the course of a year, shot his first feature, 1988's It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books.
"It's like learning a language, and you use that language the rest of your life, right? It was all formative. It was all make or break, really," he says. "You learn a little bit every time. You hopefully get a little better. I get a little more confident — but not too confident. You still got it nervous, because they're all challenging in their own way. There's always some insurmountable thing about every movie that makes it difficult."
Over the decades, Linklater has established himself as one of the foremost indie filmmakers of his generation, although he's also directed studio projects and films of just about every shape and size in between. He is an auteur of hangout movies and a poet when it comes to exploring the passage of time, having helmed such films as Dazed and Confused (1993) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), the Before trilogy (1995-2013) and Boyhood (2014). He received Best Adapted Screenplay nominations for both Before Sunset and Before Midnight, which he shared with his co-writers and leads Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, and a trio of nods for Boyhood: Best Picture, Best Directing, and Best Original Screenplay.
His latest is the darkly comedic riff on true crime, Hit Man, a Texas tall tale that he wrote with star Glen Powell. (The film is something of a departure for Linklater, but perhaps alike 2011's stranger-than-fiction comedy Bernie.) His next film — at least, at some point in the future it will be his next film — is Merrily We Roll Along, an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical that he is shooting over the course of 20 years.
"I've never done a film like, 'I got this. I know how to do this. This is going to be easy.' I've never thought that," the filmmaker shares. "That means you're not digging in very far. Yeah, no, each one's a little scary. You hear that about pilots, they've been flying forever, and they say, 'Landing still scares the hell out of me.' I'm like, 'I don't want to hear that from my pilot!" But they said, 'No, in a good way. That means I'm dialed in. I'm paying attention and totally focused. You don't want me to think, Oh, I got this. You want me to be a little scared.' There's a constant there."
The other constant thread in Linklater's life is his unwavering passion for cinema. Here, he shares with A.frame five films that he wants everyone to check out. "It's weird to see some films fall out with a new generation, who is not quite picking up on them. Time does that, so it needs a little booster shot," he explains. "On this day, this afternoon, it's these five films. And if I did it tomorrow, it could be five different films!"
Directed by: Irving Lerner | Written by: Ben Simcoe
Well, since my movie now is called Hit Man, I'll take one from the hitman genre. Murder by Contract is a lesser-seen film from the late '50s starring Vince Edwards, who was also in Kubrick's The Killing. He plays one of the criminals who comes in and does the shootout at the end. Anyway, this film was directed by Irving Lerner, who was an editor in the biz, and it's really great. It's a New York City indie, about this guy who's kind of Dostoevsky figure or like Nitzsche's Übermensch, and he's a killer. He's a hitman for hire. It's wonderfully dark, but it's still really funny. I have a good poster to it, too.
There is a little snippet of Murder by Contract in Hit Man, in the montage of hitman movies. I said, "Oh, we got to get Vince Edwards in there."
Directed by: Lindsay Anderson | Written by: David Sherwin
If.... is a film that I loved so much when I was first getting into film. They used to show it a lot on campuses, and I feel like it's falling out a little bit. I was just in London, and a lot of people I was talking to hadn't heard of it. I saw it again with my kids recently, and they really fell for it. It's Malcolm McDowell's first film, and it's the film that Kubrick saw and went, "Oh, he's got to play Alex in Clockwork Orange." Now, Malcolm is most known for A Clockwork Orange, but If.... is truly stunning, and it's a radical, radical work. It's funny and satirical, and Brechtian, and so real and surreal at the same time.
Lindsay Anderson was a great filmmaker. He only made a handful of films, but that one is part of a trilogy. So, when people say, "Oh, you made the best trilogy of all time," I say, "B******t!" Well, first of all, have you ever seen The Godfather Trilogy? And have you seen the Mick Travis trilogy of If...., O Lucky Man!, and Britannia Hospital? They were made over about 13 years; with Malcolm McDowell playing different characters but with the same name. It's brilliant. But I love that trilogy, I love Malcolm McDowell, and I love that film in particular. And I saw how my youngsters are affected by it to this day. It's a really beautiful, radical film that should never be forgotten. And I knew Lindsay a little bit, and I'm missing him.
Directed by: Jane Campion | Written by: Laura Jones
I was thinking of Janet Frame, the writer who's depicted in Angel at My Table. It's just a beautiful movie, and it evokes a period, a life, a really complex upbringing, and the birth of an artist. It's a young woman's psyche evolving, and she's someone who's overcoming her own background and who's surviving amidst that. It is a wonderful work that I do love very much, and it's an early work by the great Jane Campion that just has her human touch.
I like movies about artists. There's a film out right now by Ethan Hawke with Maya Hawke called Wildcat, which is also about a young writer, Flannery O'Connor. It would be the American version of Angel at My table. Somebody overcoming their own, let's say, damage to become a great writer is always a good story.
Directed by: Robert Altman | Written by: Joan Tewkesbury
I gotta throw a Robert Altman film in here, and on this day, let's go with Nashville. That's the ultimate ensemble movie. It's so complex, so of its moment. You go, how could that work as a film? It's just amazing. The spirit, and the cast. It's one of those things where it throws everything out there, and it all sticks beautifully. A lot of films do that, but few land it the way that film does. I'm forever kind of amazed by that movie. Forever and ever.
Written and Directed by: Mike Leigh
I'm trying boost up some things, and one of my heroes along those lines is Mike Leigh. I mean, a lot of people have seen his films, so how about I pick one of his films from the '90s? It's a close one between Naked and Secrets & Lies, but I'm going with Secrets & Lies. That one's just devastating. Well, I could say that about a lot of Mike Leigh's films.
I picked a couple British films there. One is from New Zealand, two are from America. I barely touched some continents. I didn't pick a French film. I didn't pick anything from Martin Scorsese or Francis Coppola or Peter Bogdanovich. I mean, there's so many. Let's face it: five is an impossible task. But if anyone maybe hasn't heard of some of these films, I'm just going, "Hey, these mean something to me, so feel free to check them out!"
