Interview [Written]: Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”)

An interview on RogerEbert.com with Richard Linklater, writer-director of the magnificent movie Boyhood.

If most directors looked back at 12 years of their filmmaking, they could see changes in their approach to form and their art. When you watch “Boyhood,” do you see anything like that in your own work?

The funny answer is “no.” I haven’t developed at all. I haven’t gotten any better. But that was by design. You’d have to look at the other films I’ve made during this stretch of time. With this, I just had a tone and a style and a look that was going to be the whole movie no matter what. I was really trying to match. When the idea came to me, I wanted it to feel like it was one movie. The only thing you would notice is everyone slowly got older and aged and grew up. There was going to be nothing in the film itself. If the style had changed, it would have been jarring. It would have punctured the reality I was trying to create for the viewer, which is you’re just in these people’s world. There can be no intermediary between.

How far in advance did you know how that world would develop? Did you know, for example, that Mason would become a photographer when he was younger or that his mom would re-marry twice? Or WHEN did you know those plot developments?

All the marriages, divorces, moves, big stuff — I knew he’d go to college and I knew the last shot of the movie from the beginning. The photographer thing? I knew by high school he’d be expressing himself. I thought he’d be a writer. Knowing Ellar [Coltrane] himself at that point — he’s living in a music town, his dad is a musician, I thought he might be in a band. I thought I’d be filming band practice. The film would go where he wanted to some degree. That’s not what happened. He ended up with an interest in photography. I thought, “Great.” I like that more. That’s closer to who I was [at that age]. I was taking pictures. I was observational. It was more fitting. That’s a good example of us going in his direction.

The first thing people talk about in relation to Boyhood is how Linklater shot it over a period of 12 years which is, indeed, remarkable. But what amazed me most about the movie is how Linklater chose a series of moments within each year and somehow managed to stitch them together into a seamless narrative that feels organic. Even more astonishing is the choice of moments. None of them is particularly big. In fact, most of them are pretty mundane, at least on the surface. A meal. An argument. A camp-out. Doing chores. And yet, they are all, individually and collectively, compelling and evocative, as Linkater says about Boyhood later in the interview, “It’s the accumulation of little things.”

It reminds me of that quote from author Anne Beattie: “People forget years and remember moments.”

I will certainly remember many moments in Boyhood for the rest of my life.

Here is an interview with Linklater:

Here is the international trailer for Boyhood:

For the rest of the interview, go here.

By indie film standards, the movie is a hit generating $29M worldwide so far.

I cannot recommend this movie enough. Do yourself a big favor and go see Boyhood. 

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