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Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater Books

Film director

Before Midnight

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“A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he has to have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder - all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things and paints them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world - no! Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers, and they haven't given us any other options outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. "You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?" I feel that the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes, let my own lack of a voice be heard.”

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“Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.”

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“You make a film and you can't really pick the way it's put to the public. You control the content, but the way it's marketed, or the poster, or what they're telling the public about the film, it's beyond you. Some people don't even see them, because they think they already know it. That can be frustrating, when something you've done is marketed in a way you think is antithetical to what it is.”

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“I have a lot of women friends - I feel like I finally matured a little. But initially I was attracted to some of them. I liked everything they were about. I think men are just taught: "Okay, well then, I should try to have sex with them." I'm just lucky that it went in the friendship direction, and it became a much stronger bond that's lasted a long time. You wonder how many potentially great friends you lose along the way because you become lovers and it is so painful when it's over and you can't turn it into a positive friendship.”

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“It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism. And there's so many expectations involved, too. You're going in to see the latest Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick film, you really have high hopes, and you can't help but find that it's not exactly what you had in your head going in. Until you can watch it again, you can't accept the work for what it intends to be. It takes at least a second viewing.”

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“Everything that you could think about in life, or experience, or be interested in, theoretically should be expressed or dealt with in cinema. But the way typical narratives are set up, there's no room for philosophy, because it's just digressive material. It's not advancing the plot, so there's no place for it. It's the kind of stuff you would cut out, and that you shouldn't have put in there to begin with.”

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“If the animators could hide something so secretly that I could watch it numerous times, both on the computer and on the screen, and not pick up on it, then it deserves to be in the movie. But if they had more overt things, I'd often tell them to cut it out. In general, as long as they captured the spirit of the character, then they're fine. But sometimes it took a while, and we had to replace a lot of animators.”

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“I don't think all films should necessarily look like they do on digital video. I think it cheats the audience, at some point. If you try to make an epic and you shoot it digitally, that doesn't make much sense. I think there's a certain kind of film that could be a "digital film." But it shouldn't be interchangeable with other films. It should be something more than just a capture medium. It should be a different form altogether, something new.”

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“All I've learned is that you need the studio system sometimes, if your budget is a certain size, and other films you can do independently. When I think of a studio, I generally think of distribution. Since I'm a director, I have a similar creative experience on every film I do, because I can control that. But then it's a different film, I think, as it reaches the public, depending on the way it's marketed. I don't know. I haven't learned much of anything. Sometimes you need them, sometimes you don't. Sometimes they want you, most of the time they don't.”

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“I have a lot of films that I haven't gotten made, and that continues to trouble me. But someday, some way or another, I think I will. It's all about timing. There's a moment when you're hot and studios will make your next film, and then there's a moment when you're really cold, and they couldn't care less what you want to do next. That's when you have to recede and make lower-budgeted films.”

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“I think casting is really important. Finding the right sensibility for the right part is an art in itself. If you're off there, you make it harder on yourself as a director. And it's fun to work that out with the actors. I don't think there's any magic to directing actors. It's very instinctual. Working with actors is really one of my favorite creative moments of the whole process, and the most fun, because it's collaborative. I spend a lot of time rehearsing. I'm very rehearsal-oriented, probably because I have some background in theater. I like knowing what will work beforehand.”

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“I'm so happy and relieved for the indie spirited film world because ... I don't even know if it's indie, it's just alternative cinema that's just different than what the studios are doing and it's a big variety in that category. Everyone always is complaining about the film industry but I think it's important to acknowledge when it's actually a pretty good time when that comes back around. I'd be remiss not to say, "Hey, it's a pretty good era right now for these reasons," and maybe that doesn't last or maybe it does, but I will acknowledge it.”

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“Normally my process is to sit in a room and read a script and talk about it and ask questions and just create a dialogue. That goes all the way through shooting. All kinds of thoughts and ideas can find their way in there. As long as you're all on - We're just all trying to tell the story so my job as a director is just to find out what this film wants to be based on, it's just words on a page at some point but then it just needs to go to some level of believable storytelling. I'm discovering the film as I make it, to some degree.”

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“Editing rooms are kind of, by definition, a bubble of you and the editor and what you're thinking. It's a truth-telling thing to watch it through someone else's eyes, is to get another level of real with your material. Like, "Maybe that's not that funny. Maybe that's not as interesting. Maybe that's redundant to something else. Maybe we can cut down." I don't know. It's a brutal, honest process. You've got to be pretty - You can't be sentimental. You have to be. It's a cold process. You can't be nostalgic. You have to make those tough decisions.”

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“Definitely my generation and beyond grew up in theaters and when you make a film you think of the theatrical experience. You think of that big screen in the darkened theater with a lot of people, so that's always the thought behind it. If that's the case, it's nice if that's available. That's great, but I don't really mind if they're watching films on a plane. I don't mind. Anybody who just wants to watch a movie, I can't complain. If that's the way they're going to watch them, that's the way they watch them. Who am I to judge?”

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