Richard Linklater is the guy behind movies such as Slacker, Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, the updated Bad News Bears, and all those Before Sunrise-type films. Phrased another way, you’ve probably seen his work at some point in time. Minus School of Rock, his movies don’t make a ton of money, but their cultural resonance is pretty deep. I personally consider Dazed and Confused a top-10 ‘coming-of-age’ type movie of all-time; aside from the fact that it’s basically the first place the world saw McConaughey and Affleck, it also has one of the great HS movie speeches ever:
There’s also this all-timer from McConaughey’s character:
Well, now Linklater has a new movie coming to the Sundance Film Festival; it’s called Boyhood and it basically took 12 years for him to make. It stars Ethan Hawke (in a ton of Linklater movies), Patricia Arquette, and Ellar Coltrane. Linklater has been filming Coltrane three days per year from age 7 to age 18, creating a movie that Hawke calls “Tolstoy-esque.” There are going to be preview screenings on 1/19 and 1/20. (The run time is 164 minutes, FYI.)
If you’d like to know more about Linklater’s process for making films and connection to each one, check out this 32-minute interview with The Hollywood Reporter from a ways back:
Back in spring 2012, Slate ranked all of Linklater’s films — and somewhat unsurprisingly, Dazed and Confused was at the top. Slacker, which is the movie that first got Linklater money for other movies (essentially), came in surprisingly high. The best part about that movie, which I believe I saw with my mom (who didn’t understand it in the least), is that you can literally leave the room for 11 minutes, come back, and still understand the basic ideas of what’s happening.
This Boyhood movie has a kind of 7-Up feel to it, so hopefully it ends up being a really cool project.
Oh, and just because:
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