Linklater’s third film reaches new heights
Director departs from ‘Slacker’ past
By Lael Loewenstein
Daily Bruin Staff
Richard Linklater can have his cake and eat it too.
Linklater, the 33-year-old director of the cult hits Slacker,
Dazed and Confused and the new feature Before Sunrise, is in the
rare position of being able to make quirky, original, noncommercial
films with backing from Hollywood. And so far, he has no
complaints.
"You hear all these horrible stories about Hollywood, but I
don’t yet qualify to do Hollywood bashing because I’ve had pretty
good experiences as far as getting my films made," says
Linklater.
His latest film is an extended dialogue between two strangers
(Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train, spend the day in
Vienna together, and fall in love. Sort of a My Dinner with Andre
on the Danube, Before Sunrise is a departure from his previous
work, which focused on youth culture in America.
"I liked the idea of setting in in Europe because this kind of
film is divorced from American pop culture," he says. "I didn’t
want to make a movie where they’re walking around talking about
‘Brady Bunch’ reruns. It had to be something deeper than that."
But there are stylistic similarities to his other films as well.
"I made a movie before with a hundred people talking nonstop, this
is two people," he says, comparing Slacker to Before Sunrise .
One thing you won’t see in the dialogue-driven Before Sunrise is
a sex scene.
"The movie just wasn’t about sex. (Love scenes) kind of bore
me," he says. But he doesn’t shirk from the subject entirely. "The
day I do make a movie about sex it will be all about that."
Instead, Before Sunrise "about two people who say yes to an
opportunity. Society tells you be paranoid and suspicious and say
no, but I wanted to depict two people who took this leap of faith
with each other and grew as a result."
The idea came to him five years ago after he had a comparable
experience.
"I was having a night kind of similar to this. It was in
Philadelphia not in Europe, and I thought, this could be a movie,
the way two people meet and they have a lot of extra energy," he
recalls. "She wasn’t as good looking as Julie though. But it’s the
movies."
"I think this has happened to a lot of people in various ways,"
he adds. "We all meet people that we have some kind of connection
with, and it’s just a matter of how far you take that."
The idea to shoot in Vienna in the fall of 1993 came to
Linklater when he was at a festival promoting Dazed and
Confused.
"It seemed like a discovery for me. It wasn’t the typical
European Paris, Venice, Rome and yet I really liked the city. It
had that kind of classical kind of backdrop which I thought would
work for the movie." he says
Fortunately, Castle Rock, which financed the film, was
supportive from the start.
"It was really wonderful that they weren’t obsessed with what
the movie wasn’t. I think a lot of studios would say, ‘We need to
add things. This isn’t enough, just two people talking.’"
Working with "the two people talking" (Delpy and Hawke) was a
real collaboration, Linklater recalls.
"We all worked really closely together, we rehearsed for over
three weeks, and Julie and Ethan contributed enormously to the
script. We were really tough on each other as far as what was
honest, what wasn’t, what worked, what didn’t. It was very much a
process."
That process may have been enhanced because Linklater took the
unusual step of shooting in chronological order.
"The first thing you see is the first thing we shot, the last
thing you see is the last thing we shot, and every night we’d keep
working on it, keep talking about it."
As a result, Delpy recalls that "working with Rick was one of
the best experiences of my life." That is a considerable compliment
coming from an actress who has worked with Europe’s finest
directors, including Krysztof Kieslowski, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnieska
Holland, and Volker Schlondorff.
Part of what makes Linklater’s film unique is that it feels like
a compilation of scenes that are cut out of other movies.
"I think that’s a tendency in the more modern cinema," he says.
"I think Pulp Fiction does that in a way, it’s like all the
details, all the little bullshit you never see in movies, like the
practical reality of disposing of bodies and cleaning cars. It’s
new fertile ground that hasn’t been used in cinema, all that stuff
they’ve been cutting out or skipping over for 50 years."
Linklater is busy promoting the film, having just returned from
the Sundance Film Festival. He hasn’t yet started on his next
project, but when he does it will be a very different feature,
based on a true story about a Texas bank robbery in the 1920s. It
is something he has been planning for a while.
"I don’t start writing until I’ve had at least a five-year
gestation period to think about the project. If I’m still
fascinated by it, if I’m still in love with the characters, the
subject, that tells me something," he says. "Maybe I’m naive, but I
think if it means something to me it will mean something to other
people."