Richard Linklater: Grilled

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A maverick of American cinema, Richard Linklater has been making movies for 25 years. Not bad for a guy who introduced the word “slacker” into the English language. Linklater, whose films include “Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused,” “School of Rock” and the remake of “The Bad News Bears,” has worked on studio and independent movies, documentaries and animated features without ever compromising his personal vision. His latest, “Me and Orson Welles,” is about a young actor (played by Zac Efron) who talks his way into a role in the Mercury Theater’s 1937 production of “Caesar.” As opening night draws near, he finds himself a romantic rival of the legendary Welles (newcomer Christian McKay).

Richard Linklater talks to TheWrap about why it took two years to find a distributor for the movie, the sinking fortunes of independent film, the studios’ declining interest in Oscars and lobbying for arts funding in public schools.

I know Christian McKay was doing a one-man show on Welles Off Broadway. That must have been an easy casting?
We did like an old-fashioned screen test. I just wanted to work with him for a weekend, talk to him, because I knew this would be such a marriage. I didn’t have financing for the film or anything at that point -- I just had the book. So I felt really lucky it all came together with him in the lead.

There were some producers involved early who didn’t want him because no one knew who he was: “Oh, we need a bigger name.” I’m like, "No, no, you don’t get it. The point is we found Welles."

And he had to play Orson as he’s becoming Orson.
Yeah, it was a little bit going backward in time. Christian had to lose a little bit of weight. But Welles was never young. In the next May of ’38 -- six, seven months after this -- he was on the cover of Time magazine, he looked 70 years old. He was in “Heartbreak House” and he looks like this old, weathered guy, the character he’s playing. 

He liked to portray himself as older, smoke a pipe, facial hair, whatever he could do to seem older. Christian looked about like he looked in that period, so it worked out.

With Zac Efron in the cast and Claire Danes, I’m shocked it took you two years to find a distributor.
The facts are we could’ve signed with any number of distributors -- it’s just the deals were not appealing to my European producers. We’re living in an era now where people are paying $20,000 for million-dollar films. We’re a market that is subject to fluctuations, like we’re commodities or pork bellies or something.

But I’m lucky. I got these really gutsy U.K. producers who really believe in this movie, and they didn’t want to just hand it off to someone who had no true commitment to it.

So we ended up with sort of a hybrid.

 

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