- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided by: Panonica Foundation, Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Ascension Seton, BP America, Laura and John Beckworth, St.

David's HealthCare, and by... And also by... A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

- You know, it's like our country.

We're striving to be more perfect, and we're trying to represent and give voices to everyone.

And so that's the best part of our industry.

So I'm saying, I guess I see our industry really intertwined with the American spirit.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music) - Welcome to the LBJ Presidential Library.

I'm Mark Updegrove.

Since the library was dedicated over a half a century ago by our 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, it has hosted some of the biggest names and best minds of our day to discuss our nation's rich history and the issues of our times.

Now, we bring those conversations straight to you.

Richard Linklater is one of America's premier filmmakers.

Throughout a career that has spanned over four decades, he has made acclaimed and iconic movies, including "Dazed and Confused," "School of Rock," and "Boyhood," as well as last year's "Nouvelle Vague" and "Blue Moon."

Tonight we talk about his methodical approach to filmmaking, how he chooses the eclectic projects he takes on, and his thoughts on how the American experience is reflected in the American film industry.

Rick Linklater, welcome.

- Oh, great being here.

Thanks for having me.

- You have recently said that life makes sense backward.

- I don't think I originated that.

- But you invoked it.

(Richard laughs) - We feel it.

- Right.

You've also said you don't believe in fate; except if you look at your life and you rewind, you were almost fated to be a filmmaker.

So how did that happen?

- Well, I had to discover that.

I think, nowadays, filmmakers know it.

By the time they're eight or 12 years old, they're like, "Oh, yeah, it's a thing."

But when I grew up, that wasn't an option, you know, making a film.

They were just, you know.

In my little town, a new film would open every week in our little theater, and that was it, you know.

I was a aspiring a writer probably from fifth grade through early college.

I thought I was gonna be a novelist and a playwright.

But then once I started watching movies, I realized, "Oh, I got a visual thing."

You know, I could see the movies in my head.

I just had to do it.

I look back kind of fondly on those years.

It was like, you know, the artist in search of their exact medium.

You know, you don't really know.

I must have had something I wanted to say, stories or characters, but it was kind of discovering film was so exciting to me.

It was like, "Oh wow, yeah," just getting my hands on the equipment and editing.

And I loved the visceralness of it, and I loved the story.

It was every art form I had ever experienced, writing.

It was like visual art, literature, theatrical.

And it's famously an art form that combines all the art forms.

- Everything comes together.

- Yeah.

And I was like, "Oh, that's me.

That's where I wanna live."

And I just love movies too.

- But you studied a lot of them.

So you drop out of school, you move back to Houston, where you're from, and you start watching movies, as many as 600 a year.

- Yeah, I wrote down every movie I saw in those peak years.

Yeah, about 630, 650.

I'd average about two a day.

- That's stunning.

- Sometimes it'd be four a day, and then it would be, you know, one or zero.

- But this is also at a time where you can't get it on Netflix or HBO, right?

You had to go out and seek these films- - These were all in theaters.

But it was a glorious time.

This is the early '80s.

I'm actually an offshore oil worker at this time, saving up my money for a couple of years.

And then when I'm not doing that, I just found myself in the movie theaters.

But they had these repertory theaters, like the River Oaks in Houston.

They were showing two classic films every night, films from all over the world.

There was, you know, university programs, museums.

If you started looking around, you could do it.

And then I moved to Austin where they had a vibrant film program on campus.

And then they had a lot of other theaters.

So I was always just positioning myself where, you know, where the movies were, where I could watch a lot of movies.

- What did you take from taking in all those films?

What did you get from that?

- Oh, if it's what you love, it's kind of asking a musician: "What do you get from going to live shows?"

Or seeing Willie Nelson or something.

It's like that's just what I live.

That's the air I'm breathing, the life I'm living, the blood that's circulating through me.

But it was a nice flow.

I'd go to movies.

And I had saved up my money, and I wasn't working and I wasn't in school, for the first time in my life.

So all the time was mine.

And I was, you know, in my early 20s.

So I kind of had my focus.

You know, I've made a lot of movies about lost youth who don't really have it.

But I was lucky; at age 20, I kind of locked in.

And so I could spend all my time, I could spend 17, 18 hours a day.

I could watch three movies, spend three hours editing.

I could write, I could go shoot something, you know?

So it was just the film life.

And I started a film society in '85 too.

So I was booking films, showing films.

So it was wonderful.

Most of my 20s was just this fun film world that I was, you know, this little film bubble I had created.

And we started, you know, got a community together, you know?

That film study is now like one of the largest film organizations in the country.

Very proud of it.

- When did you know you had broken through as a filmmaker?

- Well, there's all these levels.

I remember, I had to prove it to myself first.

I mean, I knew I loved films and I was pursuing this.

I was taking acting classes.

You know, everything was working toward that.

But I made a couple of films before I felt like, okay, I'm not lying to myself.

You know, we can delude ourselves in this world.

I was like, "Okay, no.

I think I'm meant to do this.

- You did a whole lot of shorts to prove it to yourself- - I probably 20 shorts and a Super 8 feature too.

And I'm working completely alone at this point.

You know, made a feature film.

And it wasn't like what do other people think so much, as like did I achieve what I wanted out of it?

Did I, you know.

And if I did, then I was like, "Okay, I'm moving on to the next thing."

And I was completing things too.

I wanted to finish and move on.

'Cause I was being patient with myself, as far as the big picture, but I was also kind of in a hurry.

You have to balance those things.

And I was like, "No, I have scripts I wanna do."

So I was moving forward in my own laid-back way, I guess.

But yeah, each step was a new challenge.

So in short order, in about a three-year period, I had two evolutionary leaps.

My first film anyone saw, "Slacker," was just, you know, it's a no-budget indie film, but I was working with people, you know, seven, eight.

I have a crew, I had of cast, I had, you know, all those responsibilities and pressures and all that.

So that was a big test, just personally.

And just see if you like it, you know?

Is it fun?

A lot of people wanna make films, but they don't like it.

See, I loved it.

Even the problem solving, you know, the little engineer brain you have to have to make it work is like, yeah, you have to like that.

You have to like every element.

And I said, "Well, I did."

It's anxiety-producing, it's all these things, but I love it.

And then to go from that, and it was successful.

It actually got a distributor.

And that's when you think the planets are kind of lining up for you, that, you know, miraculously this weird film was an indie hit in its own way, and opened up a door that I was able to get my next film made at a studio.

I jumped from working alone, like say in '88, to making a $6 million studio film in about a four-year period over three films.

So that was to see if I could do that, you know?

- So "Slacker" sort of gained this kind of cult following.

- Yeah.

- Right?

And it took a while, right?

- Yeah, well, it was a hit, you know, an indie hit, which back then was, you know, it played for months in the cool towns in the country and, you know, at midnight, and made over a million dollars for a film that cost 23,000.

Yeah, it was seen as a success.

What was termed a success has changed over the years.

But a film could be, an indie film could have a cultural impact, you know?

It would be kind of a thing.

So that was fun to be a part of.

I guess, looking back.

- What makes you good at this?

You talked about the responsibilities and how they suit you and how you like embarking on a project for the problem solving, those kinds of things.

But why are you suited to it?

Why are you good at this?

- Wow.

That's a question no one really ever asks themselves.

I think if you asked a professional athlete why they're good at something, they'll just probably say they work really hard.

'Cause they do.

But they usually don't attribute it to their inherent abilities.

It's pretty demonstrable in sports, when someone's really fast, big, obviously gifted.

But in the arts it's a little different.

You know, like, what's going on in your head?

What makes you able to do this?

You know, I was an average student.

Like, why are these people who are quote-unquote so much smarter than you unable to do what you do?

And I'm like, "I don't know."

But looking back, I think I had this visual thing when I told you I discovered films.

It's just how my brain worked.

I have a visual memory.

So I could edit in my head, you know, whatever that thing is.

You know, I could recall a lot.

I can store a lot of visual information in my head.

So I know every shot in the movie, and I can edit in my head.

Oh, well, I can see it.

You know, I'm a visualizer.

So I can see, I freak people out with my memory sometimes.

I won't have seen someone in 20 years, and I'll recall the entire conversation we had and where we were and, you know, things like that.

So that doesn't get you good grades necessarily in school.

But I had that.

- But I would submit that one of the things that makes you a really good and interesting filmmaker is what seems to be insatiable intellectual curiosity.

And if you look at the breadth of your work, its sheer eclecticism, it's remarkable.

You know, you go from "Dazed and Confused" and "School of Rock" to "Nouvelle Vague" and "Boyhood."

I mean, it's a vast array of stunningly different work.

How do you choose what you wanna focus on?

How do you embark on a project?

- Again, you know, it's not so much a conscious effort.

It's like, "Why is this story in my head?

Why is this one not going away?

Oh, I must have something to express about that."

Yeah, I love the evolution of movies.

I could tell you a little story about every movie I've done and how it came to be.

And they're all different.

But one commonality most of them have is it just starts as a weird idea or just a feeling, maybe characters, and just thinking there's something there.

There's a story there.

There's a movie there.

And just spending years thinking about it and finding the form of it.

It starts with an image or maybe just a vibe.

I like this.

You know, you mentioned "Dazed and Confused."

It was just like, I was, you know, 10 years out of being a teenager, in my later 20s, And I was like, "What was that?"

That was kind of crazy, that little town, those initiation rituals.

I think you gotta look back at everything and think that meant something.

You know, like, you see life kind of metaphorically.

Like, that wasn't just what it was, it meant something more, you know?

And so I just started digging around there.

It's like, "Yeah."

And then maybe I'm dissatisfied with the genre in films.

Like, "Oh, they're always so dramatic."

My teenage years, we were just driving around trying to be cool, looking for the party.

I'm gonna make a movie just about that.

It's usually I'm taking something that's in whatever genre I'm in, like, even romance, say the "Before Trilogy," it's kind of like, "Oh, we know romantic comedies.

You kiss and you run off and then there's conflict."

And I'm like, "No, what if you made it all about just a feeling between two people?"

What if you made it all about, you know, and you spend 40 minutes before they even kiss.

You know, what if you just try to be in those moments?

And I was, in "Dazed," let's just capture what it felt like to be in that car riding around, or just hanging out in that environment, the shifting groups of people.

You know, so I don't know.

I just kind of felt my way through it.

But how do you ride it and make it compelling enough that a studio gives you $6 million?

That's the trick in the film industry.

You have to get buy-in from people.

They have to think you're making an entertaining film.

And hopefully you are.

I am.

I don't wanna bore anybody.

I wanna make something compelling that's funny and telling, all those things.

But, I mean, subject matter, it just comes from everywhere.

You know, something you read.

Something, you know, the times I've come aboard, like, I'll read an early draft of a script by a friend of mine or something and go, "Yeah, I could see..." I get on board things- - One of the things that seems to mark you as a filmmaker is your patience.

"Boyhood" took 12 years, and you would come together as a group for two or three consecutive weeks, do it, wrap it, and then come back the next year.

And so many of your other projects too.

Where does that patience come from?

- Yeah, I tell people who are aspiring to be filmmakers, I say, "Well, it's the patient medium.

If you need to express yourself and be done with it, like, go be a performance artist, be an actor."

There's more immediate, be a musician, be a performer.

'Cause film is, wow, is patience required, you know?

Even the quickest-moving film is still a year or two.

You know, like the whole process.

I realized that when I was a little kid.

I got that lesson early.

When I was in fifth grade, Sam Peckinpah came to my town, Huntsville, and shot; Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen were in town staying at the Holiday Inn.

You know, the prison is there.

So it's a prison movie.

And called "The Getaway."

I'm in fifth grade.

Okay, so they leave town.

I didn't realize then, they were really there for like a couple of weeks.

And then they shot most of the movie in other parts.

So I waited.

What happened to that film?

Sixth grade comes around and goes, and that film came out when I was in seventh grade.

So I'm like, "Oh, it takes a while."

(laughs) Like, that was a long time ago when you're that age.

I was like, "It takes a long time to do a movie."

And so I always had that in my mind.

Funny.

But yeah, I like it.

I like it.

You gotta love the process.

And I don't, like people, I guess, boy, it's obvious, like, "Wow, it took 12 years to do the movie."

But it was just storytelling.

It was like that was the only way to do that movie.

I was solving a narrative problem.

I had to represent these people at different ages, and, you know, hair and makeup.

You know, you can't really ask an 8-year-old to, oh, now you're 13.

It limits storytelling.

I felt the limitation of film depiction of kids.

Usually the stories are brief for that reason.

And a lot of years have to go by before you cast someone, a different actor.

So I was like, this was just a problem I had almost given up on.

In fact, I was sitting down to do my teenage ambition of a novel.

I was actually gonna write some kind of experimental novel about growing up and all these ideas I had about it.

And as my fingers were hitting the keyboard, this idea hit.

I could see a movie that, well, what if you just, yeah, what if everybody just got older?

Yeah, it's just a slow-moving dissolve.

It'll take, you know, 'cause I had the first through 12th grade of the public education, you know, this grid we're all kind of put on, first through 12th grade.

And I said, "Well, what if..." Yeah, I could just see 'em all aging, but I knew what it would require.

But it was like, "Oh, problem solved.

That's how I'll do it."

And then it was just getting everyone to, it was fun to see, when I'm talking to Ethan Hawke: "Hey, what if..." And they'd look at me like.

(Mark laughs) Like, "What are you doing in 12 years?

Are you gonna be..." And they're like, "Cool."

But both the adult actors, really, Patricia and Ethan signed on in the first conversation I had with them.

They were like, "That's crazy, but cool.

Yeah, let's do that."

- Last year you had a phenomenal year with two great films about two different artists, one in the beginning of his career, Jean-Luc Godard, as he's doing his first feature film, "Breathless," and Larry Hart, songwriting partner, and at the end of his life.

But I wanna talk about "Nouvelle Vague."

- Yeah.

- So this is about Jean-Luc Godard.

He's doing "Breathless."

He's a very different filmmaker from you, completely different.

- Oh, 180 degrees.

Yeah.

- Helps to usher in French New Wave cinema.

Why him, 'cause he seems so different from you as a filmmaker.

So how'd you do that film?

Why?

- I do love his films, probably not as much as I love a few of the other, you know, as far as... You know, he's so cerebral and he's just so different.

I just thought he's a funny character 'cause he's just so different.

If you did a Francois Truffaut doing "The 400 Blows" or something, it would be kind of normal.

You know, he's like a normal, decent person.

You know, good artists are so different.

I think whatever his neurodivergency is.

And I'm attuned to that as a filmmaker.

it's like, "Oh, he's a bit of a freak."

But I love the way his brain works.

You know, his films are really essays.

They're not traditional drama.

You know, his characters don't have past or futures.

They don't have like real-world commitments.

You know, he's not interested in human psychology, necessarily.

And he had made 60 years of all these hundreds of movies.

But it's just the way his unique brain worked.

And he was an amalgam of everything.

He took in the world like a sponge and kind of kicked it back out.

So I like that part of him.

So he quotes, and, you know, he was a great quoter.

So he was just a funny character with ultimately his own cinematic language.

So you're witnessing the birth of something new, a new cinematic language, a completely unique artist.

What does that feel like in person?

It feels strange.

You know, it's so different.

So you see his relation with the crew and the producers and the actors.

You're not doing it the way we do it.

And he, I think, just naturally has an instinct, that if I'm gonna do something different, I'm gonna do it differently.

You know, if you get into the same cookie cutter, you probably have a good chance of kicking out the same product.

- [Mark] Right.

- I'm doing this in a whole new way.

So you see his methods, like, didn't have a script, not telling the actors much, feeding them lines, kind of, you know, simultaneously to filming, taking days off, you know, shooting a few hours.

And I'm out of ideas, send everybody home.

It's so unusual.

Films are very pragmatic businesses: time, money, production.

They're very efficient, let's say, or trying to be.

And to throw all that out of the window, and then triumph.

You know, I think the audience kind of knows they're witnessing something, but it's fun to see the contemporary world kind of at odds with it, or going with it, but not sure, you know?

So that was fun.

And to get inside another movie historically like that was really thrilling.

You know, a film I respected a lot, but even more so now that I know so much about it.

And to recreate that time and place was magical.

- Almost shot by shot.

It's remarkable what you accomplished.

- The big idea there was like, "Oh, I'm gonna make a French, it's gonna be black and white.

It's gonna look like those films, subtitles."

You know, I just made a French film.

It was such a weird... I told the people, like, "This film was made in 1959."

We found it in an archive somewhere or in someone's attic.

We're making a film from that moment.

- I mentioned "Blue Moon" about Larry Hart.

I didn't mention your 2007 film, "Me and Orson Welles," about, of course, Orson Welles in the beginning of his career, just as Jean-Luc Godard was in the beginning of his.

So three films about artists.

- Yeah.

- Is there an artist from whom you have drawn particular inspiration?

- Yeah, those films are kind of a trilogy.

I mean, there's two in one year and one a number of years ago.

But yeah, I see 'em in the same: two beginnings of careers, one end.

There's more artists I would love to cover.

There's something interesting about that.

But, you know, artists, I think my whole life has been inspired by artists.

And it's people you've never met, and maybe weren't even alive at the same time.

But what they leave behind, what you know of them and all that, yeah.

Yeah, it's funny.

There's a line in the movie: "Yeah, that's okay.

Art waits for you."

And I felt that; I'm grateful for that, all these people who created art in centuries past that are still speaking to us.

That's so important in this world.

And it's powerful.

And yeah, I love to honor that, you know?

People ask me, 'cause these films came out kind of around the same time, and a question I got was: "Well, what would Godard say about your movie?"

'Cause he only passed away a couple of years ago.

- Yeah.

Larry Hart passed away in '43, not that old.

But what would they think?

And I was like, "Well, Larry Hart would be thrilled," even though it's depicting maybe the worst night of his life.

- Right, right, right.

- He would have a huge smile on his face, and he would just be thrilled that he's remembered and that people are still talking about him and his music.

He'd be so tickled.

- He was only about 47 when he died, right?

- Yeah, 48.

47 when the thing, and 48 when he dies.

But yeah, he'd be thrilled.

And I say Godard wouldn't care at all.

He wouldn't even watch it.

He wouldn't care.

- We're celebrating the country's 250th birthday this year.

As you look at filmography, are there films that you think best represent the American experience, best depict sort of what America is.

- Wow.

Yeah, it's funny to think, film is now half as old as our country.

We're in our, you know- - A hundred-plus years.

- Yeah.

We're about 130 years old.

We're about half as old, where there was a time we were the new medium in the country.

Well, film, it was funny being in France for so much of the last year.

You know, they kind of invented cinema.

You know, the Lumière brothers, they first showed movies.

They had a lot of firsts.

America had their own first, Edison.

But it was more like some of the technology, they were the first to kind of take it into theaters.

But both countries have this parallel origin stories that are simultaneous, basically.

It's pretty fascinating, the history.

But quickly, it's funny, it's really our industry in the way that we became the world's entertainer.

There's something about the American kind of robust spirit, our entrepreneurial zest, our openness, our inclusiveness.

We took talent from all over the world.

You know, filmmakers came from all over the world, talent.

So it's a real melting-pot industry.

A lot of people had opportunities in our industry that had no opportunities in other industries, the people who created our industries, so many of the talent that came in.

So it's kind of a wonderful... I love the film industry for that.

It was open.

There's something pure about it.

It's like the immigrant experience.

If you have, what do you... You know, you come to America, you work hard, and you're one of us.

And that's how Hollywood was.

Like, "Oh, you have talent?

You're a good actor, you're a good director, you're a good writer, you're a good cameraman?

We got a place for you."

It was just very merit-based and beautiful that way.

So, yeah, I mean, look at myself, a kid from East Texas.

I didn't know anybody, have any connections.

Like, "Oh, we like your script.

We like your film."

You know, it's like, I wasn't excluded, you know?

And, you know, I have certain advantages, just inherently.

But I saw an industry that really wanted to hear the voices, especially by the time I came along, of everybody, and trying.

You know, it's like our country; we're striving to be more perfect.

And we're trying to represent and give voices to everyone.

And so that's the best part of our industry.

So I'm saying, I guess, I see our industry really intertwined with the American spirit.

- Hmm.

- You know.

And as we're challenged kind of on a national stage, I don't see that letting up.

So I think the entertainment industry has a role to play in the current world, climate, to not give up those kind of ideals, you know?

- Rick Linklater, thanks so much for being with us.

- It's always great talking with you.

(cinematic music) (cinematic music continues) (cinematic music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided by: Panonica Foundation, Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Ascension Seton, BP America, Laura and John Beckworth, St.

David's HealthCare, and buy... And also by... A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

(bright music) (dramatic music)