“Making your own life fodder for your own art… there’s something very fundamental about that. You have to make that leap mentally and think, I’m going to go down this path and not worry about how it affects everyone. I care about what I’m expressing here. It’s not with bitterness. Not every film I do comes from the absolute truth, but you personalize that. A good story can come from everywhere.”
-Richard Linklater, episode 373 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Director Richard Linklater has made a career out of telling personal stories with universal appeal. Dazed and Confused, Waking Life, the Before trilogy, Boyhood. No matter the genre or form, Linklater’s human touch remains.
To mark the arrival of his latest films, Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague, we return to our talk last summer with Linklater. We begin with Hit Man (6:36), his action-packed neo-noir (8:15) that also explores the malleability of identity (11:00). Then, Linklater reflects on his athletic career in college (17:20), the health scare that ushered in a period of creative exploration (18:48), and the renegade spirit that drove his first two feature films, It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books and Slacker (28:12).
On the back-half, Linklater describes a formative Sundance memory with director Robert Altman (34:00), his first experience at the helm of a major motion picture (37:48), and the lived serendipity that inspired his Before films (52:22). To close: a Hollywood state of the union (1:00:54), why Richard continues to create art from the fabric of his life (1:08:00), and whether Sam should return to directing himself (1:17:36).
Original air date: June 9, 2024.
Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at talkeasypod@gmail.com.
Watch this conversation on YouTube:
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Show-notes:
- See Richard Linklater’s latest films, Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague.
- Watch Hit Man, Boyhood, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, Dazed and Confused, Slacker, It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books, The Newton Boys, Bernie, Everybody Wants Some!!, and Another Day at the Office.
- Learn more about Richard Linklater’s work at Detour Filmproduction.
- Read Nathan Heller’s profile of Linklater in The New Yorker.
- Follow along with “To The Reader” from Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel.
- For more talks, hear our conversations with Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Steven Soderbergh, and Matthew McConaughey.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
Illustrations by Krishna Shenoi.
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