Imagine a round table discussion with the directors of the following films:
School of Rock (a 2003 Jack Black family comedy)
Hit Man (a comedy-drama that Netflix bought last year for $20 million)
The Before trilogy (a trio of art-house romances released at nine-year intervals)
A Scanner Darkly (a rotoscope-animated science fiction film based on a story by Philip K. Dick)
Dazed and Confused (an iconic stoner comedy set in the ‘70s and made in the early ‘90s)
Boyhood (an experimental film shot over the course of 12 years and showing the actors aging on screen), and
Fast Food Nation (a mockumentary about the food industry)
It’s such a random collection of films and genres that it’s hard to imagine what all those directors would even have to say to one another.
Also, it wouldn’t require a very large table.
Because the same person directed all of them.
Be as unpindownable as Richard Linklater.
Most successful filmmakers have a thread running through their work.
It might be a style of dialogue. A way of framing their shots and blocking. A particular type of story they’re exceptionally good at telling.
Richard Linklater, who has directed 31 films in his 30-year career, is much harder to define.
He’s made films in a wide variety of genres. He’s made films in ways that no one has ever thought to make films before (see Boyhood, with its particular time-travelling magic creating a coming-of-age story unlike anything on screens before or since). He’s an acclaimed arthouse auteur, an experimental weirdo, and a popcorn blockbuster director.
And while I love many of his films more than I can express, this post isn’t about making movies. I think he has a lot to teach us non-filmmakers as well.
Here are a few of the life lessons I’ve taken from studying Linklater’s career:
1. Let curiosity fuel you.
Watching Linklater’s first film, Slacker, which he made for a grand total of $23,000, you’d be forgiven for assuming that this was not a director who would ever have a Hollywood hit.
The film features a rotating cast of characters in Austin, Texas, each of whom is only on screen for a few minutes before disappearing for the rest of the film. The camera roams through the city, encountering people and leaving them at random.
It’s… weird. But it’s also, in retrospect, a blueprint for the rest of his career. He lets his imagination and his attention go where it wants to go, and when he finds something interesting, he pursues it and turns it into art.
Some of that art is lifechanging (I’m on record already that the Before trilogy is my favourite film work of all time).
Some of it is extremely fun (I watched Hit Man a couple of days ago and I’m still grinning).
And some of it is just okay (The Newton Boys isn’t bad, but maybe a little inert?).
The point isn’t that every time he makes a film it’s perfect. The point is that his curiosity is so immense and the energy he puts behind it so boundless that his filmography is more alive and varied than any other filmmaker I know.
2. Don’t let your biggest thing define you — you’re much bigger than that.
If he wanted to, Linklater could have made a pretty solid career in the ‘90s pumping out teen comedies after the slow-burn success of Dazed and Confused.
In the 2000s, he could have done the same with family-friendly films in the vein of School of Rock, which was a huge financial and critical success.
In the 2010s, he could have focused on making Oscar-bait, following his wins for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film for Boyhood.
But he didn’t make any of those films — or any of his other films — as a way of getting comfortable or rich, or to keep repeating himself. He made them because he was excited about them and intrigued to see how they might come out. And while the films listed above are totally different from one another, all of them radiate that excitement from the screen.
How many of us live our lives this way?
Remaining open to our interests and our passions?
Discovering new ideas and seeing how far we can take them?
Connecting with new people and forging new relationships as the decades go by?
We can learn a lot from Linklater’s refusal to be defined by any single thing he’s done. No matter whether he succeeds or fails, he remains entirely himself, and that keeps him alive and creative.
3. Live by a single question: “why couldn’t you…?”
I have no idea what Richard Linklater will do next, but I bet it won’t be what I expect.
(In case you’re wondering, IMDb suggest his next three projects are:
Transforming Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) into a Broadway composer turned Hollywood director
Making a movie about the making of an iconic movie — Breathless; and
Crafting a biopic about one half of iconic songwriting duo Rodgers and Hart).
While trying to puzzle out a new way of telling a coming-of-age story, he thought up the idea of shooting scenes over the course of many years, which would eventually become Boyhood:
“I sat down at my computer, and I had a flash of that feeling: why couldn’t you do that?”
That feeling — why couldn’t you? — is the source of much of what makes life worth living.
Why couldn’t you tell that person how you feel?
Why couldn’t you offer more care to those around you?
Why couldn’t you create the thing that only you are capable of creating?
What if you could do anything?
What would you do then?
4. Don’t do it alone.
As well as endless curiosity and energy, Linklater has an extremely collaborative spirit.
He shares writing credits with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke on Before Sunset and Before Midnight, and although they’re not officially credited, the two then-very-young stars reworked a lot of their dialogue and scenes on Before Sunrise as well.
Matthew McConaughey’s iconic line “all right, all right, all right” from Dazed and Confused came about because Linklater asked the actor — in his first-ever on-screen performance — to improvise a scene with half an hour’s warning.
Linklater doesn’t think about how much experience someone has or whether they’re “qualified” to work with him. He treats people with the same curiosity and interest that he treats ideas.
If you want to find the magic and beauty in life — whether you make art or not — other people are where to look.
As I get older, I see more clearly that my only true ambition in life is to connect with other people. The people I love. The people I know. The people I haven’t met yet.
Richard Linklater’s career represents a pretty good blueprint for how to do that well, and how to create a good life in the process.
A life filled with unexpected experiences and profound beauty.
A life where you don’t get less interesting or less alive as you get older.
A life where you just keep adding to your weird, unique body of work and your beautiful, quirky memories while continuing to connect with other people.