When we asked Nouvelle Vague director Richard Linklater, one of our favorite filmmakers of all, to share what he’s learned about making films, he decided to pitch his advice toward “young, aspiring directors, focusing maybe a little more than usual on the mental side of things than the technical. Observations on things I maybe wasn’t even that consciously aware of at the time, but think might be useful.”
Linklater is at a creative peak, nearly 40 years into a career that started with the feature film Slacker (1990), which helped launch the indie film boom of the ‘90s. He continued with 1993’s Dazed and Confused, a story of mid-’70s Baby Busters driving and partying, populated by some of Gen X’s best actors. His Before trilogy with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke tracked a couple from youth through middle age, and he shot Boyhood, perhaps his masterpiece, over 12 years, earning a Best Picture nomination and a Best Actress Oscar for Patricia Arquette.
All of Linklater’s films are characterized by a lived-in sense of just hanging out that can feel casual in the moment and profound in memory. As relaxing as his films can be to watch, he releases them at a strikingly steady pace, and aims to go all in, every time. Nothing is harder than making things look easy. Perhaps the deceptive simplicity of his films explains the Academy’s baffling failure to give him an Oscar.
He has released four films in the last two years: They include last year’s sexy noir Hit Man, and “Hometown Prison,” a segment of the documentary series God Save Texas, about his home state, where he has lived throughout his career.
This fall he has two films about the creative process: Blue Moon stars Hawke as lyricist Lorenz Hart on the opening night of Oklahoma!, and Nouvelle Vague — out on Netflix today — recreates the making of Breathless.
The 1960 film by one of Linklater’s strongest cinematic influences, Jean-Luc Godard, helped popularize the French New Wave, and taught Linklater and others that films can be deeply personal.
As prolific as he is, Linklater, like Godard in Nouvelle Vague, believes he started late. He went into filmmaking, as one of the founders of the Austin film scene, with a sense that he was making up for lost time.
And though he is looking back, he’s also very much looking ahead: He is shooting one of his current projects, a film adaptation of the 1981 Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical Merrily We Roll Along, over 20 years.—M.M.
Richard Linklater’s 15 Rules of Moviemaking
1. Gotta be all in on cinema. I can’t think of a director of any stature or longevity that wasn’t a true film freak — well, maybe David Lynch. There are jobs in the industry, but writing and directing is beyond that – it’s got to be your whole life. If watching films, writing them, shooting them, editing them, reading about them, isn’t what you’d rather be doing than anything else in the world — if there’s something else you find more fun or rewarding or you’re looking forward to — then go do that, because you don’t have the unconditional love that’ll be required of you to get through all the many levels of challenges.
2. Build a thorough cinematic foundation under yourself. This should just come naturally as an extension of your passion for cinema, but it’s not a mistake to be conscious and intentional in your development. Even if you’ve graduated from film school, you still don’t know much, and lack experience. Get ready to start putting in the years: Set your life up where you can be engaged with cinema for the most amount of your waking hours as possible. Again, if spending your entire life watching movies, writing, shooting, editing, and reading everything relevant to what you love sounds like a limited life, and you need to be doing other things, go do those things. Let’s face it – there’s a high incidence of neurodivergency in the director ranks. If you don’t have that all-encompassing deep-dive obsession, you can probably have a really nice life, and probably make more money, in one of the many other areas of the film world.
3. Gain experience by cleansing your system and discovering your voice. Once I seriously picked up a camera, in those first five years I did lots of shorts, maybe 20, and one featurelength film, mainly as technical exercises, not to express myself that much. I knew my cinematic ideas were so far ahead of my technical abilities. I was just trying to catch up a little and submerge myself in the physical and technical, not the dramatic. I’d do entire films for just one reason, like lighting, or camera movement, or as an editing exercise, trying on different suits, imitating things just to get them out of my system, knowing I’d eventually find what worked for me. It’s of course good to be able to do every element of a film, every technical position, just so you’re aware of the challenges and specific skills required. Down the road, this experience and knowledge will make you a better collaborator with others, and an appreciator of those more gifted than yourself in various capacities.
Richard Linklater on Acting
4. To be a good actor’s director, you should become an actor yourself. I knew I wasn’t a natural performer and had a distinct “behind-the-camera” personality, but I also sensed that what I wanted to do and express would be very performance-based. It scared the hell out of me, but I got into acting classes, which developmentally was probably my biggest leap. So I just incorporated this into my cinematic life. I’d be in evening acting classes, doing scene work with others, getting picked apart and challenged by a wonderful teacher who created a secure place to try things and often fail. I got over a certain shyness and found it a very creative and expressive space – truly fun. I read everything I could get my hands on about acting and started to develop my own ideas about film acting. But acting classes matured me as a person, helped me enormously as a writer, gave me a language to be a better communicator. I even somehow ended up going on a few auditions, which gave me a sensitivity to that process, having seen it from the actor’s perspective. I can draw a direct line from this period in my life to the methods I use in working with actors today.
5. People want direct communication. Before that unnerving experience of having a crew waiting on you, wondering what the hell is going on, I had worked primarily alone on everything I’d done. I had to really learn how to talk with everyone and communicate my ideas. It’s easy to be vague when you’re still in process, but you have to know your film so well and how you’re going to make it so that you can answer as many of those questions as correctly as possible. In Day for Night, Truffaut says, “I answer questions all day long. Sometimes I even know the answer.” Even if you’ve written a very detailed script that describes everything happening in front of the camera clearly, constructing that in the real world will necessitate an enormous amount of questions and choices. You’ll drive everyone crazy and be disliked if you can’t give clear answers to people who are just trying to help you. A day of definitive answers to questions (“What’s in the shot? Where can we park the trucks?”) that’s followed by an occasional changing of your mind is much more respected than nothing but vague and contingent answers. Be a decisive leader.
6. You’ve just got to jump in when you know the time is right. Only you will know when you’re ready to make your first big film. It’s usually much later than you think it should have been. The world hasn’t lined up and rewarded your passion like you thought it would… you’re behind, but hungry. But when the planets finally are lining up, you gotta go – no more consensus-building or asking permission or paying dues. Jump.
7. You’re going to be a different person by the end, and you’ll have learned so much that you didn’t know you didn’t know. Such it is and will always be. The only thing that will carry you through your lack of experience, insecurity, and the day-to-day precariousness of it all is the pure enthusiasm and passion for your film and the joy that comes with creating it.
8. Trust yourself on casting. You’re the storyteller here, you’re going to be the one working with the actors, so it’s up to you to decide if this actor is the embodiment of what you have in mind. Can’t lie to yourself here – it’s got to be a kind of love-at-first-sight situation where something tells you they’re perfect. Everyone will be expressing ideas, suggesting folks, and the casting director’s job is to put people in front of you and be your partner in this. But you have to go with your gut instinct, even if a consensus has formed around someone else.
9. There’s a perfect balance to strive for between the technical and the performance side of filmmaking. I want everyone to feel supported and able to do their best work, but I want the set to be most conducive to the actors, for them not to feel overrun by the technical apparatus, however complicated.
Richard Linklater on Money
10. Don’t think in careerist terms. Take it one film at a time. Like Bergman says, approach every film like it is your last, as if there won’t be another – you have to put it all on the table now. You live and die with your latest film – there’s nothing else. Never make a film because you think it will lead you somewhere else or open up other opportunities – it’ll likely do the opposite. Tarkovsky talks eloquently about how if you ever step off your true path (and only you can know what that is), for even one film, it’ll take you a number of films to find your way back.
11. You can’t prep and rehearse enough. I love the process, how the best film slowly emerges. In my collaborations, I’ve got my ear to the ground, ready for anything that could be an improvement, but the next good idea I’m most searching for, looking forward to, is my own — but you have to put yourself in a position to have it. The more prepared you are, the more relaxed you and your set can be. I think that’s a better environment for people to work in.
12. Be good with money. On one hand money is bullshit, the most alienating thing in the world. It shouldn’t be a motivator or steer your decisions at all. But you have to try to regulate your life so you don’t have to do anything just for money. But there are these things called budgets, and the professional responsibilities that go with them. Work hard and don’t go over budget. Be responsible, frugal, and fair. Looking back, and I don’t remember being conflicted about it at all at the time, but after Dazed, I remember turning down various studio deals that guaranteed me $1 million for the development of a few films that may or may not have ever even gotten made, in favor of one-tenth of that amount but a green light and final cut. That was on Before Sunrise, which was just the film I knew I needed to do next.
13. Stay in shape, physically and mentally. If you’re in it for the long run, you can’t have any bad habits that debilitate or tax your system -— life’s tough enough just naturally. Your own energy and functioning brain are all you have. I try to live like an athlete who’s in the off season — you don’t have to be full-on obsessive about your health, just know you’ll be paying for and having to make up for anything too excessive. And you shouldn’t have much of a social life while in production – when you’re not on set you should be either continually preparing to make the best film possible or getting as much sleep as you possibly can.
14. Don’t make a film where you don’t feel for sure you are the best director for it — maybe the only one who knows how to pull it off.
Arrogant maybe, and technically wrong probably, but it’s a necessary headspace to be working from.
15. Timing is important. You have to be able to sense if it’s the right time to be making a certain film. Sometimes it isn’t… backburner isn’t a death sentence – things come back around. Master the art of the balancing of urgency and patience. There’s a time when the opportunity is there to go forward, and a time when it isn’t — to pull back and wait. You have to have good instincts on this – forcing something into the world at the wrong time can be costly and a waste of time. Listen to what the film gods are telling you.
Nouvelle Vague is now in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
Main image: Richard Linklater, photographed by Huges Lawson-Body for Netflix.