Dialogues and Dreamscapes:
An Interview with Richard Linklater
In this new century of overproduced and overmarketed Movie Products, the only esthetic respite has been from the indie world with films like GHOST WORLD, MEMENTO, SEXY BEAST, MADE, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, THE DEEP END, and worthy others. Continuing that trend are WAKING LIFE and TAPE, two new films from the Austin-based Richard Linklater, whose lo-fi debut SLACKER (1991) helped chart a defining course for independent film in the 90's. His work is heavily philosophical, reflecting a kind of positive existentialism. His scripts often use improvisation as in SLACKER, and BEFORE SUNRISE (1995), while SUBURBIA (1996) is based on a play by Eric Bognasian. DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993), his most accessible screenplay, doesn't kow-tow to teen-movie conventions with its unsentimental portrait of high school. Linklater's work has an objective point of view: his films do not moralize, they extemporize.
TAPE, based on a taut play by Stephen Belber was shot one set with two DV cameras, and features three characters whose past lives collide in a night of emotional valleys. Although the one-room setting could become monotonous, Linklater uses the camera more visually than ever before, while Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman give excellent performances. Although TAPE is small in scope, cast in the Dogme mold, it's nice to see a film devoted to an intense discussion of ethics and responsibility.
On the other spectrum, WAKING LIFE might be the most fascinating and groundbreaking American film of the year. Shot on DV and rotoscoped using a computer animation program developed by Bob Sabiston, 30 artists added their visual imprint to Linklater's loose script and cinematography in a stunning experiment. The plot is simple: a youth enters a strange, unending dream state, encountering a cast of odd characters who share their ideas on the tenuous connection between dreams and reality. In the end, the difference may not matter, only those actions taken. A psychedelic companion to SLACKER, the myriad monologues are a verbal soundtrack to the liquid images. The result is a mesmerizing, often beautiful, meditation on life in the metaphysical fast lane.
2001 has shown the great divide between film art and commerce. Independent filmmakers are doing fascinating work with little money and big ingenuity. WAKING LIFE and TAPE reveals that Richard Linklater is unafraid to use the medium for personal expression, eschewing the corporate approach that has turned Hollywood into a marketing factory for disposable products. One of the subtle themes of his work is that individuals can manifest destiny if they wake up to the power in their hands. It's not a bad lesson for screenwriters.
CD: I saw WAKING LIFE and MULHOLLAND DRIVE in the same week, so I still feel like I'm in a dream state.
RL: It's so weird those films are coming out anywhere near each other, because I was thinking there wouldn't be anything out like WAKING LIFE (laughs). I'm a huge David Lynch fan. I came out of LOST HIGHWAY wondering, "Am I the only one who understands these alternate universes?" Cinema has sort of painted itself into a corner as far as narrative. Like everything has to have a pat, easily-decipherable structure. What the fuck? It's a real straight-jacket. Cinema of all things, which is fundamentally an endless possibility medium if there ever was one.
CD: Not based on a lot this year's American films.
RL: Yeah, narrative has become kind of an oppressive force. There's a globaliztion of American ideas of storytelling that's taken over the world. You see the effect on European cinema. They're not turning out this cool Antonioni, Raul Ruiz stuff. You can't get a lot of that anymore. It sort of makes people less adventurous. 20 years ago, LOST HIGHWAY would have been like, "Wow. Cool! There's something going on there I don't totally get, I can't wait to see it again." Now it's, "That film wasn't totally comprehensible to me on my first viewing, so it's a piece of shit." People want a passive, spoon-fed process.
CD: It's like A.I., which some people hate, but I found amazing because Spielberg doesn't hand you everything on a silver screen. I could hear the audience frustrated because they didn't get easy answers. If 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY came out today, people would be just as frustrated.
RL: Like the fault is not with them, it's with the product. Those same people who resent those movies, saying everything is so pat, what they really want is the old formula with new twists. Easy to understand, but different. Same bottle, new wine.
CD: WAKING LIFE is like a loose sequel to SLACKER, but more optimistic.
RL: It's like a ten-year cycle back to something, but it's different because there's more narrative, where SLACKER has none. I would clearly define WAKING LIFE as a narrative, not a typical one, but there's a story that merges from it. I agree with you on the themes, SLACKER had a certain disconnect and this is all about a certain psychic connect.
CD: SLACKER was part of the whole Generation X madness --
RL: We just had a ten-year SLACKER reunion. It was so cool to watch the movie completely divorced from its cultural moment, which was a blessing, and see it for what it was, without the generational couch potato stuff, which it wasn't about. I have to say it really holds up. I felt so good about it. I love SLACKER for its spirit and non-narrative.
CD: Were you writing before SLACKER?
RL: Yeah, my whole life, growing up in Texas in the 60's and 70's, my only outlet was "I want to be a writer." You couldn't grow up to be a filmmaker at the time. The idea that people made movies was so distant from my mind.
CD: What did you write?
RL: As a kid and teenager, they were all these science fiction kind-of slanted things. I just assumed I would grow up and be a writer. College was the key moment I started thinking different about fiction. Maybe it was the Beat influence, that you could make stories about your own life. I started writing personal stuff, so when I first approached film, I had that idea all along.
CD: Were you a film buff?
RL: Not until college. I was an off-shore oil worker, and spent every waking second on land in a movie theater, or reading about cinema. I dove in full time, watched 600 films a year, writing, doing short films, my own film school.
CD: What's your writing process?
RL: I spent years writing in notebooks, like I'll have a subject with ten or so things I'm thinking about as future films. It builds over the years. It's frustrating because I have a backlog of like 8 or 10 projects I want to do, 5 or 6 scripts. I think about 'em for a long time.
CD: Like DAZED AND CONFUSED?
RL: I thought about it for 5 or 6 years, then it jumped into the production slot in my head: "This is film you've gotta do next." BEFORE SUNRISE felt like the next film. Once I sat down to write DAZED AND CONFUSED...I started with the music, I collected it because believe me I had put that period out of my mind. I compiled all these ideas, I outline things very thoroughly, so by the time I'm writing the script, I know all the characters, what happens in every scene, the beginning, middle and end. I've got it all. It takes the pressure off me as a writer. I would describe it as "laps." I remember when I was younger all that pressure in my head, not being able to start, going down the wrong track. Now it's such a process that I can come back to it. Sit down very systematic for however many hours. Generally, I write very fast.
CD: Do you show your drafts to people?
RL: I do a couple drafts myself, then maybe hand it out, but I don't like passing scripts around. I usually know what their strengths and weaknesses are. Fundamentally, as a director, I know I'm going to keep working on it all the way down the line, through rehearsal, shooting. I consider almost my dialogue, no matter how good or bad, sample dialogue. I don't think I'd be a good spec writer because I'm such a process guy. I think rarely I've written a script that people would be bidding on.
CD: Your films have an improvisatory air.
RL: It's the process of working that material through the actors. It's important for them to feel like they are that character and contribute to that. My goal is to create a reality through those people. I don't take myself that seriously as a writer; the director in me fires the writer pretty quickly.
CD: What was the script like for WAKING LIFE?
RL: That was wild because I guess I get more confident with every movie. DAZED was very scripted, and I get less and less each time. I look forward to the spontaneous moment of creation that can be production. So for WAKING LIFE I had 50 pages of notes, scenes, thoughts. It's a movie about ideas, so I had pages of ideas. More than any movie I've ever done, I was looking for interesting people and I rewrote what the actors wrote, or the actors did, or we worked together creating scenes around them. I would have two pages, give it to the actor and we'd talk about it. It was very inspirational because it wasn't like how to get from plot point A to B. My problem as a director was to make those ideas work on their own and fit them in the movie. On one level, none of WAKING LIFE should be in a movie, you know? It has nothing to do with storytelling. I found a narrative hook for a lot of ideas. To me it's hyper-cinematic, trying to define itself as a new kind of film. It doesn't quite hit its mark, it's almost self-aware of its ambitions and maybe coming short of them. But ambitious nonetheless (laughs).
CD: Ambitious is a good thing these days.
RL: It's weird to talk about WAKING LIFE in any traditional sense. It didn't even feel like I was making a movie. I felt like I was in a post-graduate study, meeting with professors, working with non-actors. It's their ideas, their passion, their knowledge and with me writing through them. I'm sort of editing and encouraging. When you're insecure or inexperience as a filmmaker, you're afraid of things getting away from you. I'm very open to everything, so that I grasp the control I do have in the process. You can be a great collaborator and still bend everything to your will at the end of the day.
CD: Would you go over it and then write it out for shooting?
RL: Yeah, by the time we shot it was scripted with a couple exceptions.
CD: Was Ralph Bakshi (FRITZ THE CAT; HEAVY TRAFFIC; WIZARDS) or any other animator an influence?
RL: No, it was always conceived around Bob Sabiston's software, this computer variant of rotoscoping. I'm not really a big animation guy. I thought about WAKING LIFE for years, but it wasn't until I saw Bob's software that I thought that the film would work. The subject matter predates my interest in films even. It's based on a personal experience. This is weird to talk about...I was 18, floating around, seemingly trapped in a dream for weeks that I couldn't get out of. It got kind of creepy. Everything that happened to the lead character happened to me.
CD: Do you have lucid dreams?
RL: My entire life. In fact, one of my earliest dreams is like in the film when the boy is hanging onto the car handle being pulled up. I was three or four and it was so vivid, so real, the way your brain works, the way you replay memory that blends into dreams. I took it as a real thing. I think I have a temporal lobe instability. That sounds heavy, but it's no big deal. David Lynch probably has it in another way. You're prone to hallucinations or out of body experiences. The great thing is that I did academic research for the movie. I'm a natural skeptic, so I fall more on the science side. WAKING LIFE is a personal exploration. Even my character in the movie acknowledges when somebody tells you what happened in a dream, that can be boring. I never talk about the movie in terms of dreams because I think people don't want to see a movie about dreams, but the experience. If you can question these things in your waking hours, it makes life very vivid. My two worlds were very much one and the same in the several month period and it was magical.
CD: I hate to say it, but WAKING LIFE is probably the best stoner cartoon since HEAVY METAL (1981).
RL: (laughs) Yeah, with no drug reference, mention, or connotation. That would have been redundant. I'm so not a drug person that surprises me, because I have a naturally psychedelic view of everything. I've done limited experimenting and got so much out of it that the few times I went there I didn't need to go back.
CD: How do you gauge an audience response to the movie?
RL: It's so reflexive of whoever sees it. I was surprised how much people engaged with it because it was so personal, the first time we showed it I felt this could really not work at all. I was relieved and amazed that it could connect to people. If you play your hunches and are honest, you hope there is a direct link to an audience. That's my own little rule. We all share experiences. I had people come up to me with tears in their eyes.
CD: I was very moved by the film, like when a character talks about what a great time this is to be alive.
RL: WAKING LIFE is sort of capturing the technological moment. It skirts around everything, positive, negative, spiritual, political. The way your mind wanders through a day, you might have poetic moments, hellish moments, trapped moments, free moments. It sounds pretentious, but I was trying to approximate the way your mind unfolds. To me, that's narrative.
CD: As far as TAPE goes --
RL: The other side of the cinematic brain.
CD: It seems like your most kinetic film because in a one-room setting you have to move the camera.
RL: First off, to some people, that doesn't equal cinema, but to me, three people in a room sounds pretty cinematic. The DV prosumer cameras I used on WAKING LIFE came in handy because I'll use the same cameras in a different way. I shot it like a collage. There would be no confusion about where you are, so I could violate every camera, continuity and editing law. Like a cubist, Hockney collage where you see the same image from different perspectives, piled on one another. That's the perfect analogy to the event ten years prior. It loosened me up. I operated a camera and my other DP, --- operated the other. We built the room.
CD: Did you work with Stephen Belber to make it cinematic?
RL: I had never seen TAPE performed, I just read it, and there was a question in our minds if it would be feature length, since it was a one-act. We had a supportive environment to make it in because it was part of a series of low-budget DV features. They gave us free reign. Before I even met Stephen we were far into rehearsals, and I thought it was there. It certainly didn't need cutting. It was so well-written, so concise that we really didn't change that much. We added some stuff, threw in lines. For the most part, it's the play.
CD: Did Stephen come on the set?
RL: He was doing a play at the time, THE LARAMIE PROJECT, so he was kinda busy. But he came by for rehearsals, which was a gift. It was wonderful. When people talk about screenwriters getting shit on, I don't think Stephen would claim that experience. I had a list of questions for him, like what did he mean by that line? And he would throw out what he was thinking, and it would take us all to a new level. It was nothing but helpful.
CD: How long did it take to shoot TAPE?
RL: Six days. Steven seemed to like what he was seeing. I felt like I was in New York doing "theater." I would say, "Oh Steven, would you mind if we changed this to that?" He was like, "No, no, go ahead." I always loved theater. I think those characters in that situation is an ingenuous set-up. TAPE is such an actor piece that the DV apparatus folds itself around the actors and the performances. But shooting the film is the easy part. Post-production takes time. It's like building a house, you still have to put in plumbing, lights, etc. It was the hardest film to edit because I'd move the camera after every line.
CD: Do you think DV is a revolutionary medium for filmmakers?
RL: It's evolving, it's an interesting technology, but I'm not making any absolutes because I have movies in mind that I'd rather shoot on film. I like the idea that there's a DV film that can't also be a film-film. TAPE is that way. I wouldn't make it as a "film." It was such as an experiment.
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