Richard Linklater
by James Crotty
April 1, 1999
DAZED, CONFUSED, OR JUST
HARD TO PIN DOWN?
Austin, TX
hen the Monks
think of Austin film, we
invariably think of Richard Linklater, the
quirky, low-key director, with the moppish hairdo,
stoner's giggle, and Malick-like
aversion to press, who made a name casting
himself and assorted friends in the offbeat
indie favorite, Slacker.
A refreshingly anarchic look at a specific
subgroup of "ultimate losers" on the
west
side of the UT campus, Slacker remains
Linklater's finest film. Ala Seinfeld, it's
a flick not really about anything, capturing in
broad arch caricature the aimless,
rootless zeitgeist of a strata of over-intellectual,
perennially broke late 80's Austinites,
who speak in monologues AT each other, not to
or with each other. Even with the gentrification
of Austin and the increasing number of
"Dellionaires," a few of the inarticulate
white twentysomething Texan males so
prevalent in the film are actually still
found around town, as are a few of the film's
older conspiracy freaks and lunatics.
In Slacker, Linklater gets at these highly cerebral
souls with humor, and even a
bit of insight. Whether stuck in expressionless
silence, incessant chatter, or simple idleness,
all characters in the film seem to be dancing
around emptiness, either waiting for
or pushing for some kind of resolution. Linklater
does not provide a remedy, only
a relentless Becket-like statement of the disease.
While Richard went on to make the
varyingly successful Dazed and Confused,
Before Sunrise, SubUrbia and the Newton
Boys, for our money, Slacker remains his
magnum dope-us, and the signature Austin
film.
After several unreturned faxes, phone calls and
out and out PLEAS, and just before
some hazing from the Austin Film Council
co-chair, who didn't believe we wrote for
Playboy, and who didn't have a clue about Monk,
we finally caught up with Richard
Linklater at QTIII, the third annual festival
showcasing some of Quentin Tarantino's favorite
overlooked films, held at the Alamo Drafthouse
Cinema in downtown Austin. Linklater,
like many Austinites, seemed to have bought into
his pal Tarantino's righteous hype
about these movies, which in many cases were
deservedly overlooked, though one must
applaud Tarantino's intentions. We wouldn't
necessarily have picked 7 Blows of the
Dragon or the Four Musketeers, but that such a
festival exists at all is a tribute
to what might be Richard Linklater's greatest
contribution to local cinema, the Austin Film
Center.
In an era when the number of revival theaters
has shrunk considerably, the Linklater-founded
Film Center soldiers on with an ambitious
program of year round free movies, grants
to emerging directors, regular retrospectives,
plus assorted film premiers (Tarantino's Pulp
Fiction debuted here, as did Ellen Spiro's Roam
Sweet Home). In fact,
Film Center member and influential Austin
booster, Harry Knowles, chided Ron Howard
into moving the premier of EDtv from a less
beloved Austin multiplex to the far more
historic Paramount, where the Film Center
regularly hosts events (to read the "Head
Geek's"
"Open Letter to Ron Howard" go to
http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=3
046).
We talked with a distracted, somewhat
hospitable, Richard Linklater at intermission
of The Three Musketeers, the lead-off film of
the Austin Film Center's nine day Tarantino
love-in. The director said he was very busy,
working on two projects, preparing for South by
Southwest, not to mention QTIII, but graciously
took the time to set us
straight about the character of his home town.
Monk: What is the spirit of Austin?
Richard Linklater: Oh God.
M: You have to think about these
questions.
RL: I don't know if I'm in the mood.
M: O.K. Make it easy on yourself. Why is this
event emblematic?
RL: Wait. This isn't our row is it? I think we're up
one more. Quentin's there. So,
the spirit of Austin. I don't know the spirit of
Austin. Well, it was always the
one place in the South you could gravitate to.
Not the only place. But certainly
from my perspective. Growing up in an east
Texas town, Austin was the place you could
escape
to and, you know, it was definitely the most
tolerant community. I would say if you
have to live in Texas, Austin is the only place
(laughs).
M: Why are you laughing?
RL: Well, you know. A lot of people look down
on Texas. But Austin is kind of an
oasis and it couldn't be more different. Texas is
really five different states. Very
different mentalities, and it's so large. But if you
were at all different, it's
a very tolerant place. If you were a musician, if
you were gay, if anything, you used to
escape from your little burg and come to Austin
where everything's cool. People leave
you alone. If you want to start a cult, you would
come to Austin (chuckles). If
you want to start a religion, you'd come to
Austin. You know, anything. It's kind of wide
open territory. People say it changes. They've
been saying that forever. It's grown
a lot in the last eight years, but I think the spirit
really stays the same. I think
the key point in Austin history, just from what I
know, I didn't live here until 1984,
it seemed to be in the mid 70s when Willie
Nelson [came to town]. All roads when
you talk about Austin actually lead back to Willie
Nelson in the last twenty five
years. (laughs) When he moved here in the mid
70s--Austin always had a long history of rock
and roll and psychedelic type music, and country,
of course--when he moved here and
started smoking pot, country and rock sort of
met. The hippies and the cowboys started
turning on. So it kind of evolved into the birth of
the cosmic cowboy. It was like
hippies and country folk sat down together,
watched music and they both influenced
each other musically, and they got stoned
together. Really. It's a pivotal moment
I think.
M: But the slacker thing. Was that ever
true?
RL: It's a west campus movie, but it was sort of
taking place in the middle of fraternity
and sorority row. I mean that's where that all
takes place. It was always a little
micro society within a bigger society. Just
because that's all the movie shows, people took
that to be Austin. But it was always a minority.
A strong minority. And
it captured a certain atmosphere but it wasn't
indicative of the whole city by any
means. The spirit's still here, but the rent has
certainly gone up. You can't live
that cheaply. You have to work more. My first
three or four years here I didn't have to work
at all. It was great. I had $150 month rent. All bills
paid. You could really do
it cheap. It's just gotten harder. The booming
economy of the 90s hasn't helped.
In the 80s there was a real Texas depression
going on and that was the good time. And all
your friends weren't real estate agents.
Everybody was just doing their own thing.
And the culture of money took back over, which
we're in now. It's kind of sad. All
of your friends got their real estate licenses. Lot
of ambition, lot of money. You can't just
skim the surface and find it [the spirit]. It's like
anywhere.
M: But it's a place that people like Quentin and
others like to come because it's
a break from...
RL: Yeah. I think it's a good balance. Like it's just
big enough to not be some little
back water burg and then it's just small enough
that you feel like it's a place to
get away to.
M: You make films here. You use Austin and
you're going to continue to do that?
RL: Certainly. I mean I live here. I'd rather spend
the night at home when you're
in production. That's always nice. You know.
Friends, family, cohorts, fellow travelers.
You sort of end up with a filmmaking family
around you. It makes sense to stay.
But then it depends on the movie. I did one
movie, I had to shoot it in Europe. I was
in Vienna just for production. But I did
post-production here. My last film, Newton
Boys, even though the movie itself is kind of a
road movie all over the U.S., up
into Canada, big scenes in Chicago, we filmed it
all within an hour of Austin. You wouldn't
know by looking at the movie, but it looks just
different enough that we could get
all of those different looks.
M: What are the icons of Austin? Give me just
three people you'd consider for the
Mt. Rushmore of Austin.
RL: Oh my god. Well, since this is the state
government so many people have come through,
it's hard to say. But in the whole area, the spirit
hovering over Austin: O'Henry,
LBJ, Willie Nelson. (chuckles) Then there's a
whole other flip side and it would
be like Roky Erickson, Charles Whitman, Gibby
Haynes, Butthole Surfers (laughs really
hard)--and those guys would take that as a
compliment I know. And myself. I'd be
really proud to be up on that mountain.
M: And places though. Places that really speak
to the spirit of Austin. They survived.
They're not gentrified. They're
quintessential.
RL: Places in Austin. I don't know. My old house
that we lived in when we were doing
Slacker. We filmed there. It was kind of an icon.
A lot of bands had lived there.
Janis Joplin had lived there in the 60s.
M: What street was that on?
RL: Right near 24th and Nueces. But I went by it
the other day and it's a Johnny Rockets.
They kept the structure, but they just totally
transformed it. It's really sad. So
whatever. But actually Austin's really more fun
now because there's more things going on. More
movie places. I said that little micro-culture, it's
gotten bigger culturally
speaking. There's just more to do actually.
Which is good and bad.
M: But there's still a sense of community?
RL: I think so. I do. They're blinking lights. You
going to be here after the next
movie? I don't know if this is any good.
M: It's on the fly. I like it like that.
RL: What else are you doing while you're here?
M: We got in touch with probably your biggest
fan from the city, Harry Knowles.
RL: Oh yeah. He's like our cultural impresario
these days. Harry's the man.
