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Nov 11 - Nov 18, 2001 |
Floating through un-reality
Filmmaker Richard Linklater defies convention with latest film Waking Life
By Angela Baldassarre
Originally Published: 2001-10-21
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Richard Linklater who makes an appearance
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When Richard Linklater named his production company Detour, he couldn't have come up with a more fitting moniker. As one of America's most original and bravest filmmakers, he's always chosen the road that's right for him, even though it wasn't necessarily the easiest route to take. His first major film, Slacker (1989), was a classic of experimental narrative which featured over 100 characters; and his 1993 Dazed and Confused was a successful ensemble piece that portrayed the lives of American teenagers in the '70s. While Before Sunrise (1995) and The Newton Boys (1998) had little success critically, his 1997 SubUrbia, about young, disenfranchised Americans at a crossroads in their lives, was a hit.
Linklater is back with an extraordinary pic, Waking Life, the voyage of a young man looking for answers in his life. But this is no ordinary movie; here Linklater first shot in live-action and then animated it all.
Tandem talked to Richard Linklater, 39, at the Toronto International Film Festival.
You filmed Waking Life and Tape, a three-hander starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard, all at once?
"We shot Waking Life before Tape. I shot, edited, locked picture with Waking Life, and then we were in the animation process. That took an entire year. So while we were doing that, I was working less and less on the animated side. Y'know, the animators were doing about 15 seconds a week each so I was looking over their shoulders, sign off on a character, have a few general meetings, but I was still involved in other major aspects of it that I really couldn't do a big film. So Tape was the perfect film I could squeeze into that schedule. We rehearsed it in two weeks and shot it in one week, and then I was back in my office editing while I was still doing Waking Life. So it's interesting the way they both came to the finish line at the same time. I think I would've been very frustrated if I had not done Tape in the interim. It would've seemed that Waking Life took forever. It dragged a lot out of me, took up too much time."
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