applause Rick Linklater, welcome. Always great to be here. Thank you very much for being here. Congratulations. You know i love this movie. Ive seen it so many times. Im the most prepared ive ever been for an interview. Thats amazing. Its great. But, you know, i think, actually, so generationally, were not the same age, but were close enough. This spoke to me as i suspect it spoke to you, and came from you, because this is the story of our lives at that point. College. You know, i made a High School Movie a long time ago, so the idea of making a College Movie hit me probably in like 2002. It took a while for that desire to kick in, there, but once i started thinking about that, i just started thinking about, okay, what was college like . And what was your freshmen year . You were in college in what . Its very much like this movie. I went off to college actually 79, 80, but im kind of keeping the chronology of dazed. This movie is sort of, i call it the spiritual sequel to dazed, and i always did that just to kind of orient people toward it, because if you think of mitch, Wiley Wiggins character, in dazed, theres a little sequence in there where hes pitching in a pony league game. If you, four years later, hes going into high school. If he had kept playing ball, and was good enough, and went off to college on a scholarship. He becomes blake jenner. Yeah, he becomes blake jenner, jakes character, so to me its a sequel. Wileys like 38 years old now. He couldnt do it, but. chuckling had i done it four years later. He probably would have enjoyed the call to come back and do that. You say spiritual sequel. It is not a literal sequel, in the sense that none of the characters recur, its not the same story line, none of the actors are in it. Yeah, but its like, that was my high school, this is my college, and you could see where it is kind of the same. That was the end of high school. This is the beginning of college. I focused it on that weekend before classes start. Like, you just literally get off the bus with your bag. In this case, hes driving off to college. Its one of those stories. Yeah, his albums. And his stereo. Very important. Period details. Yeah, so its that new life you step into. You know, all the freedom. That was kind of the metaphor i was thinking. What do you do with all that freedom . Youre in college, and, suddenly, you can stay out all night, you can just eat and drink whatever you want. You know, you dont have, theres no authority around you, so it was just all that freedom, and more so than that first weekend. I think we show up on a thursday. Theres registration, or whatever on friday. Then, you have that weekend. Before it all begins. Yeah, and this is pretty autobiographical. I went to sam houston state, on a baseball scholarship. I thought i was going to live in a dorm. The coach says, you know, over crowding in the dorm, the city donated us these two old houses off campus. So, its literally your story . It is. It is. I will admit it. And, just suddenly, i was thrust into these two houses with 18 roommates all of a sudden, and theyre my teammates and my roommates, but i dont know any of them, and so it was kind of like oh, so that was just a really interesting week, get to know you, moment. And for the benefit of people who havent seen the movie, literally that is the case. Kid shows up. Hes been a pitcher in high school. Pretty good. Second team allstate. Which becomes a joke. Which becomes a joke later. He drives in from his hometown, shows up, hes living in one of two houses, occupied by the Baseball Team at the school. Yeah, its all these roommates, and, you know, how to maneuver through that, how to fit in, and, kind of keep. It can be an intimidating situation. All these upper classmen, and they seem like kind of men. You know, youre just out of high school. And theyre a little mean to him, but also, it becomes, really, a story about their friendship as it evolves over that weekend, and their relation. Its about bonding, you know . Especially in a team environment. You know, its like that. They do kind of challenge you. Athletes are like that. Maybe the first thing theyll do is kind of check you. You know, just to see what you. Chin music. Yeah, a little bit. In baseball. Just to like, hey, see what you come back with. Now, youve call this a College Movie without college. Its the best time, yeah. laughing what you dont see is really the College Experience beyond that weekend in the runup. Its also kind of a baseball movie without baseball. laughing its true. Theres one little scene. But really, its about these characters. Now, what i love about. We visited about this on the way over here that these are not known actors. You didnt go out and cast every young, hot hollywood recognizable actor. These are largely unknowns. Not people who havent worked before, right . But largely unknowns. Right. I mean, we would be out together, and youd see a group of girls with their cameras, wanting to get the picture of the guy from teen wolf, or step up, or glee. Yeah, theyre around, quite a few of them. A lot of them, its their first movie, but, for the most part, i dont think theyre, theyre not household names yet, but theyre great. Have you ever made a movie before that was an ensemble, and many of your movies are ensembles. Have you ever made a movie that was an ensemble, where you didnt have at least one or two recognizable, you know, boyhood had ethan hawke and patricia arquette. Oh, certainly. The before movies had ethan. Yeah, well, at the time, dazed and confused, that was the complaint by the studio. No, they were a bunch of unknowns. So, even though it was renee zellweger, parker posey, ben affleck, they were all very early in their career. Yeah, a lot of early films. A lot of them, first film. You know, mcconaughey, and then a lot of them, like ben, had been a couple things, a tv thing, you know. But nothing you would really be able to land. Yeah, nothing that you go, oh, thats that guy from. Now, of course, the interesting thing about this cast, is although they are unknowns, theyre not people without interesting stories. There is a character in here who is the real life son of goldie hawn and curt russell. Wyatt russell is in this movie. Yeah, he just met him on an audition. Hes playing willoughby, whos kind of a different character. Not to spoil it, but in the movie, you find out hes not maybe who he seems to be, and wyatt just had this just comedic ability, and just the coolest guy. And hes a hockey player, but he had played baseball. Yeah, he had been a pro hockey player. All the guys had played sports. I really wanted to get that kind of youthful swagger that athletes have. Our culture sort of elevates athletes to this degree, so you cant really fake that. I got to thinking about it. You could be like a prodigy, you know, violinist, or pianist, or a brilliant physicist, at a, you know, young age, and you can still be kind of bullied, and treated like a nerd. You can still have, but an athlete, youve been that way your whole life, and people kind of dont pick on you in the same way, people dont, you dont go through the same process of. They treat you like youre a big deal. You can have no redeeming qualities, outside of this one thing, and youll have everybodyll be boosting you up, so, that all ends, of course, the second your careers over, when they cant, you know, youre not representing a school, or something, helping people in any way, so that ends, but i told the guys, well, you dont know that yet. Youre still in that beautiful bubble of athletic entitlement. Theres a discussion of what should i study . What should my major be . [rich] and they thought about it. Basically, youre a baseball player. Yeah, youre here to play baseball. And your selfidentity is, youre a baseball player. Yeah, when they ask what you major in, just say youre on the Baseball Team. Dont even. laughing and thats it. Now, so Wyatt Russell has played hockey, but had played baseball. Juston street is another character. In fact, Wyatt Russell and juston street play two transfers, who come to the team. Theyre a little bit older, but they transfer into the school. Juston street is the brother of houston street, who is a professional baseball player, and the son of the late james street, who is a quarterback for the university of texas. These guys all look like theyve played baseball before, and in many cases, they have. Its hard to fake that. You could fake being a pianist. They can cut away from your hands. Or cut to the closeup of the other cut. Right, or somebody elses hands, but in the baseball case, in the sequence that is in fact them on the sunday practice, the sort of voluntary, mandatory practice, you can see these guys have played baseball before. Yeah, im really happy about that in the movie. A lot of people say, well, theyre baseball players. You hear a lot about it. You see how competitive they are, but finally, toward, you know, the last part of the movie, we actually see them on the field, and you see how, kind of dialed in they are, how good they are, that theyre taking it serious. As much as theyre partying, and farting around, its kind of the mentality of a team that wants to win a national championship, too. I wanted to show that, so i could only do that. On certain parts, i was like, okay, this guys has to be a baller. Theres a confrontation in that practice between niles. You know, juston streets character, whos a pitcher, and the hitter, which Tyler Hoechlin played. Mcreynolds, hes the best hitter on the team, so they have this little thing between them, and they both, you know, i needed my best hitter and my best pitcher, and juston, he had played for the longhorns. He had played a little pro ball. Just an athlete, but an actor. He had been acting recently. He played his own dad in that wonderful movie, myall american. He played his own dad. The Freddie Steinmark movie. His dad had just died, right. I know, its a really touching story, but, you know, he had played football at westlake high school, so anyway, just a great, creative guy. What a great group. Its amazing to me, watching this movie, which i enjoyed so much, just as a sort of, you know, diversion from, from the rest of the world, or the rest of your life, its just fun to sit and watch this movie, that it was a movie that was hard to finance, hard to make, especially when you consider, they all are. That your last movie was boyhood. laughing could there have been a more celebrated, i mean, certainly deserving of all the awards it got, and all the attentions, you think, coming off of boyhood, i can do whatever i want, write my ticket next, and you cant even get financing for this movie. Well, no, this, i think this, i did get this movie made, probably because of boyhood. So, as hard as it was, it would have even been harder, had it not been for boyhood. Well, i tried for a number of years. I almost made it in 09. The money fell out. A guy said he was going to finance it, then kind of pulled out. Its just, its a hard movie to get made, because it doesnt have a lot of star parts, these big ensembles. There wasnt, and i called it the spiritual sequel to dazed, and theyre like, well, can mcconaughey play the coach, or something . laughing and its like, theres a little scene. I said, no. Thats not right. Wooderson wouldnt be a College Baseball coach. You know . So i couldnt. They just couldnt wrap their head around it, and it reads kind of funny, too. You know, its the resolution. What happens at the end of the movie . You know, class starts. You know, its not. chuckling my scripts often read like, eh, you know, i dont know what this is, and i go, well, its got to be good, you know . laughing so im always up against that. The view that hollywood has of you, has not markedly changed. Youve been at this for a long time. Youve been making movies for more than 25 years. You are celebrated, correctly, for boyhood. Youve been nominated for a number of academy awards. This would have been the moment where you thought, okay, hollywood finally gets me, and i can now go to hollywood. My relationship with them changes. It sounds like its not much different than it really was. A little bit. I mean, i was lucky to get this film made. Megan ellison liked boyhood a lot. She liked my other films, and she asked me, well, what are you doing . What do you want to do next . And, hollywood sometimes asks you that, but they usually dont. No one cares what you want to do next. They care what they want. Yeah. Yeah. She liked the script. She goes, the scripts hilarious. Why hasnt it been made . I just, what i just told you, like, and she goes, well, i think it would throw it off if you had one star apart. Its such an ensemble. Its such a conceptual piece. Itll be kind of refreshing if, if everyone, if you feel like youre just in that world, and no ones pulling you out of the movie, and i agree. I dont really like those kind of cameos that youre aware youre watching someone. I kind of like to put the viewer in that reality that you just believe it. The fact that they there were people we didnt know made them and their characters more believable. Yeah, it really helps, i think. So, she came aboard, and then she partnered with paramount, who kind of controlled the script. I had written it for them a while back, so, you know, it just came together, but boyhood certainly helped that. Its a film that you recognize as yours, though. The involvement of all these extra people, financiers and studios, the film that we see is the film you wanted to make. Yeah, but it always is. You know, ive always managed to wrangle that, no matter whos financing. Hasnt that been your hallmark has been the control that youve been able to maintain over your films. Yeah. Staying at austin, as opposed to being in los angeles, being the independent film guy, even if youre making a studio picture. What youve got out of that is control. Yeah, i always get the film, you know, i want made somehow. They might not like it, or, you know, who knows what happens with it, but ive always, you know, ive kind of worked my way up to like final cut director, but i havent had bad experiences. I learned early on to kind of not make the film. Once i see the train wreck coming, like, oh, they want the film to be this, and, you know, the wrong cast, and i just dont make the movie. Did you learn it by getting into something and realizing you needed to get out, and getting out in time, or did you make the mistake of doing something, and you thought, ill never do it again . Ive been close to it going off the rails, and i felt i managed to get my movie out of the deal, somehow, but i could see where, and you learn from other peoples mistakes, too. You know other filmmakers. You see how it works, and you just try to avoid. Ive always had a good preservation instinct, i think, for that, but, i dont know. I get offered a lot of things. You know, like after the success of boyhood. I get offered a ton of things. Were you offered big budget stuff. Yeah, of course. I usually, i am kind of all the time. Anything you were attracted to, and maybe thought, i could go that way . Its sort of like the beginning of slacker. A lot of different ways. I could go that way or that way or that way. Every now and then, i come aboard something i think im right for, like, oh i can really. Batman verses superman. Ive got to think im the only guy who can do this. Well, you know, you get, the strangest things float your direction, cause they never know. Like, oh, theyll find out, like, oh, thats been my lifes dream to make that movie. Thats what they want to hear from a director, and if i cant tell them that, im not going to lie, but every now and then, theres a story, go, you know, im the right guy to do this, because of this, that, and the other. Something like school of rock. You know, i was like, yeah, i know how to make that movie. Because that movie, thats an example of a movie that was quite commercial. In fact, it may have been the most successful movie youve done, commercially, of all the films over these years, and it was a movie that if you went in the front door and said this is a movie about a guy whos going to teach a bunch of kids rock and roll, and its jack black, and everything else. You wouldnt have necessarily thought, thats a Rick Linklater movie. [rich] no, definitely not. But look what came from that. The movie, itself, had a lot of integrity. It was a much more interesting movie than if another person had made it, and the relationship with jack black, ultimately, probably made bernie happen the way it happened. Yeah, if i had not worked with him before, he wouldnt have risked what he risked, i think on bernie. He had to trust me, so we had that bond. And, i really know his abilities, too, so im a good director of him. Hes a significantly better, and more interesting actor than he might also appear to be at first glance, right . Oh, well, hes a very. I love jack, because hes got all that, hes like the most brilliant actor of like comedic ability. He has the biggest toolkit imaginable, but hes a trained actor. He wasnt like a standup comedian. You know, hes theater. Hes a trained actor. The people who come to him by way of tenacious d dont appreciate what happened before that, right . Yeah, no, but thats just one more amazing skill. You know, that voice. Hes the total package. So, this film, everybody wants some debuted at south by southwest. Youre in austin. Youre the place where youve lived and worked for many years, and at the same festival, a documentary about your career, also showed. I believe it debuted at sundance, and then it showed at this festival. Its interesting to look at your work laid out end to end, because as much as this film is your story, a number of these films have been your story. Yeah. Youre comfortable telling your story in different ways, going all the way back to slacker, which literally, from the very first scene, is your story. Its you. I think im, i will admit, im one of the few who will admit, like, oh yeah, this was a point in my life, or this was me and my friends, or yeah, i met a girl in philadelphia, and we walked around all night. That becomes three movies. You know, the trilogys kind of based on one night i had, so ill talk about that. I think youre supposed to kind of say, oh no, i just, you know, make these things up, but i kind of like, ill acknowledge it, just kind of like, you know, a lot of novelists kind of will admit, you know, oh, this was this point of my life, or a moment in time, so, i have no problem doing that, and i think it, you know, people youre working with, i think they kind of like that, cause it gives you a certain authority. Its like, no, this is exactly what happened. No, trust me, he said this. laughing when anybody questions you, youre like, no no. Heres what happened. You mentioned the idea of a novelist, as opposed to a filmmaker, in the way that you can see the stories. You mentioned, last time we were together up here, you talked about boyhood, and the fact that boyhood really sprang from what you thought was going to be a novel. You sat down to write this novel, and you thought, no, heres how to tell the story. Heres how itll work as a film. Cinematically. More like a novelist than a filmmaker, you seem comfortable playing with structure. Boyhood is a great example of that. It was a story told in a little bit more than two hours over 12 years, as opposed to this film, which is a little bit under two hours, told over basically 48 hours, right . 72 hours. Threeandahalf days. Whatever. You feel comfortable moving back and forth, and changing the parameters around what we all think of, conventionally, as storytelling on film. Yeah, i think in terms of time structures probably a little more than i do plot, cause those are very real. Our own lives are very much about time. And plot is kind of usually a construct to try to move a story along, but i think if you have, if the time and the character, kind of the actors, through lines, story lines, i guess, to me, are plenty. That feels real. Im trying to carve out a little bit of, you know, reality, in some strange way. Its one of the things that makes your movies more interesting than the average person, i think, and thats a good thing. So, what happens now . Youve made this film, youve always got a couple things working at the same time. What are the next couple things youre doing . Gosh. You know, i have nine scripts that im trying to get made. All yours. Some ive developed with other writers, some ive written, some ive cowritten. You know, all over the map. Some things that are different than the typical things youve done . Yeah, theres a, im just calling it the artist trilogy. Its three scripts ive been, you know, developing for quite a while, about, its kind of like i did a film, me and orson welles, that was sort of a week in the life of a young orson welles. Theyre similar to that. Theyre little moments in time of artists lives. You know, real subjects, real moments in time. A lot of other things. Youre pretty much in the position, at this point, i suspect, whether the financing is easy or not, and working with hollywood is easy or not, that you can, more or less, do what you want to do, and limit yourself to that. I think on a lower budget, i can get a lot of these made, but, you know, for me, i dont know what that is. Five or under, maybe . Ill find out soon, probably, what i can get. I have a couple, a thing im writing right now, about being a kid during the apollo program, like when they first walked on the moon. So yeah, its a bigger film. You grew up in that part of texas, and at that moment. Yeah, yeah, so im trying to kind of, coming up on the 50th anniversary of the, the moon shot. Yeah, that i was like, oh, that was a pretty interesting time, so im trying to maybe recreate that, but thats a bigger, thats probably a 30 million film. Ill see if i can get it made. Think about how much fun it would be to recreate that period. One of the great things about, again, coming back to the current movie, is the perfect recreation of what it was like to be at that time, the clothes, the cars. The music. The music, and, in fact, i mentioned to you, again, before this, we sat down today, that theres a sequence at the beginning of the film, where a bunch of the people in the cast are singing along to rappers delight. chuckling as theyre driving from one of the houses to a party or to a, to a bar. laughing and it was immediately authentic, because i thought to myself, probably at that moment, at that point, in my dodge dart, driving around, i may have very well been, yeah. [rich] been doing the exact same thing. I was in the back seat of that car, while that song was playing, and the guys in the front were, that notion of passing the mic to the next guy, that was new. You know, people like, oh wow, this thing we would come to know as hip hop, like what is this song . It has these kind of beats, the kind of discoey, but then it, it had this, it was just new. And they were discovering it at the time, but it just, again, perfect period. It had been out for a little while, but at that point, the guys in the car know the song pretty well. Yeah, so it had been out for a little while, so everybody knew it, so theyre singing along, and that scene is kind of. It sort of is the movie. Its about, youre in a couple minutes, and youre just in this car, with these young guys driving around, and i remember, i got the note quite a bit. You know, the Movies Running a little long. Its like, well, you can cut that. You can cut that shorter. And i thought, well, just leave a little bit. I was like, no, its so early in the movie, sometimes you just want to set the tone. It establishes the tone of the movie. If you dont like hanging out with these guys while they kind of do their thing, youre not going to like the movie. laughing you know, so, lets just get to it right now. laughing what i loved about it was you had the main character, this freshman, whos just arrived. I mean, hes literally just a couple of hours from showing up on campus, and he is every bit as much a part of that singalong as the older guys, and it shows his confidence, and the way that hes integrated himself immediately into this group. Yeah, and hes doing it correctly. His roommate, who they just ridicule the whole movie. He probably didnt go drinking with the guys, right off the bat. Hes got the girlfriend at home. He didnt go out with them. [evan] spends all his time on the phone. Yeah, he separated himself, and hes paying the price, for not bonding properly. You learn a lot just in that five minutes. You pick up on these things, its like, hmm, i better, yeah okay, i dont want to, but i will go with you, to the, to the thing. [rich] it gets you in trouble. We have a couple minutes left. I want to ask you about bernie. Reallife bernie. Not just the movie, but reallife bernie, with whom you have forged a strong personal relationship since that film. In fact, i believe you all are living in the same. Yeah, he lives, he has a garage apartment, behind your house. Yeah, my part. His trial is coming up. Yeah, april 1st. As we sit here, it may, in fact, people may see this a little bit after, so talk, quickly, about his frame of mind, and his life right now. Hes doing pretty well. Hes had this wonderful two years since he was let out. The da, danny buck davidson, who Matthew Mcconaughey plays in the movie, looking at new evidence. Bernie got a lawyer, after the movie. Jodie cole saw the movie, and got very curious about the case. She thought she smelled some stuff. They were like, wait, somethings not right, here, and she got in, and started doing this incredible research, and found out some very key things. The biggest single thing she discovered that didnt come out in the first trial was his confession. This is where a lot of injustice happens. The coerced confession thats incorrect. When the person writes your confession for you, and forces you to sign it, cause theyre blackmailing you, basically, that he admitted in the confession. It was written as it was a premeditated act, and once you do that, you cant ever really get over that, where it never made sense that it was premeditated, even, you know, i was just amateur, you know, reported there, i was like, well, if it was premeditated, usually you premeditate getting away with it. Usually, you do a lot of things. laughing and, you know, he didnt. But as you filmed it in the movie, it doesnt seem premeditated. And it wasnt. It wasnt, but all they had to go on, was this course confession, and other circumstances in bernies life, and about that relationship. Hes getting an opportunity to have a second. Yeah, so theres a new sentencing. The state agreed to have a new sentencing, so its not a question of guilt or innocence. The guy served almost 17 years, so its not a question of that. Its like, well, what was he guilty of . You dont always bring your work home with you like this . No. laughing i would never have predicted it. You make a movie. You never know what, what you hear back, what happens, and its been a real, i felt so blessed, and kind of happy that my attention to that case, and i just mg a cody. That movie isnt an aist movie. This guys innocent. It wasnt about that, but it did show a really sweet guy, like the nicest person imaginable, who did a horrible thing, that ruined a lot of peoples lives, and at the outer complexity of that, and i think a lot of people dont want to ever deal with the why of things. Rick, its never not interesting to talk about this stuff with you. Congratulations on the movie. Great being here. Good talking to you, always. [evan] thank you, very much. Thanks, guys. applause [voiceover] wed love to have you join us in the studio. Visit our website at klru. Org overheard to find invitations to interviews, q as with our audience of guests, and an archive of past episodes. Its fun to take a subject that maybe you have mixed feelings about, and try to figure out what you, what you really feel, or by experiencing it through the making of a film, you do. Whatever cathartic elements there are to art, ive definitely felt in a lot of different areas in my life. [voiceover] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. Also, by hillco partners, a texas Government Affairs consultancy, and by the Alice Kleberg reynolds foundation