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Me and Orson Wells

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : After a chance encounter, theater-loving teen Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) gets the opportunity of a lifetime when famed director Orson Welles (Christian McKay) gives him a small role in his 1937 production of ``Julius Caesar.'' Unexpectedly thrust into the heady world of the stage, Richard finds himself surrounded by ambition, clashing egos and sheer brilliance.

Opened November 25, 2009

Runtime:1 hr. 54 min

Q&A with Richard Linklater

(Q): He’s just made this wonderful film called Me and Orson Welles, which you’ve seen a piece of. I guess I’ll start with the obvious question, which is what was the material? This was based on a book, so could you talk about that?

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, yeah. Wonderful novel by Robert Kaplow, who teaches English right over here in Summit, New Jersey. It’s a very charming, historical re-creation of this moment. It’s kind of a lesser known moment in Welles’ life. Everybody thinks they know Welles pretty well, but this moment was his theater years. Theater being an ephemeral art. There’s hardly anyone still alive who remembers this production or who saw it, but it really is this watershed in his life.

He’s only 22. He’s called this young Mr. Welles. It’s kind of, we know it’s coming, but this is a lesser examined moment in his life, and we tried to do this very exacting, historical re-creation. This was the first Mercury Theater production, him been with the Federal Theater with John Houseman the last couple of years. Done some very famous stage productions. His “Voodoo Macbeth” up in Harlem with an all-Black cast doing Macbeth, Cradle of Rock, He was starting to do more radio. He was already a big star, but he was still kind of on the rise. So people talk about this movie as a kind of coming of age story.

For Zac’s [Efron] character, he’s this high school who lucks into a small part in the play, so he has this whirlwind week leading up to opening night. It’s kind of his coming of age, but it’s also Welles’ coming of age. He’s only 22. You can see him kind of finding the parameters of his own particular genius and his own personality. He’s kind of pushing the boundaries. The appetites are bigger.
 
(Q): In a way when I was watching it, I was thinking so many of your films are about this period in life where all things are possible and you have to decide what to do. Your either out of school or you haven’t settled in and so you can sort of do anything, and that’s true both of Orson Welles and also of the character that Zac Efron plays.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah. There’s a few scenes in the movie where he’s still in high school. He’s a senior, but he gets this part. He was just a theater geek kind of kid who comes in on weekends on the train and goes to theater, goes to music stores, watches plays. He knows everything of the culture of that moment. So he gets this lucky part, so he’s just kind of open.

There’s this wonderful line in the end where he and Gretta, the character played by Zoe Kazan. They’re just talking about their futures, and he’s like, “Well, yeah. It’s all ahead of us.” It’s kind of like that moment in your life where you’re sort of open. You don’t know specifically what you’re going to do, but you know where your passions are taking you. In this case, it’s the arts. She’s an aspiring writer, he’s an aspiring ater on 49th Street. A 50-street theater, the smallest theater in this theater complex.” Right here in New York, there was a show called Rosebud, the lives of Orson Welles, and there was this actor who kind of had a resemblance to him.

And I said, “Oh my god. I have to check this out.” So I flew up from where I lived – in Austin, Texas – and saw the show. I think it was the second to last show, if not the last show. And I said, “Wow. Pretty close.” He had the look, but his show concerned later phases in Welles’ life. It touches on Welles, but mainly he has a fat suit and knows this is Welles, kind of older, looking back at his life But it was a wonderful show, and Christian [McKay] has this big personality, and I thought, “Wow. There is something there.” And got to talking to him after.

He had sort of been tipped off that there was a film in the works, so we got to talking about it. And then I flew him to Austin. We did just an old fashioned screen test. We did three scenes from the movie. I casted a few people, period costumes, I got an old car. There’s a scene in the movie where they’re in an ambulance. Welles famously took an ambulance from theater to radio. He’s so busy in these years, but at least that’s the myth. This is the kind of movie that goes with the myth. But Christian seemed like a great guy. He had never really done a film. He’s a theater actor. He had been in the Royal Shakespeare Company. Lou and I said, “Oh, he’s doing Shakespeare.” And he said, “Yes I was. I was playing a eunuch.” And he tells a really funny story, thinking he’s Richard the III.

But he came later into acting. This is really the key to his performance. In the trailer, you see a glimpse of it. He had this amazing transformation he does. I mean, he’s British, but he’s got the looks and the mannerisms of Welles. But what he really brings to it, which makes it far more than an imitation, is that he himself is this kind of Welles-ian guy. He’s this world class concert pianist who had toured the world playing, who was told at a young age that he was such a genius. Because he is. He’s a musical genius and a big personality. Brilliant guy. So he has this kind of Welles-ian quality.
 
(Q): The funniest thing I read about him was that he was the only person who had to lose weight to play Orson Welles. Was that true?

(Richard Linklater): Yes, it’s true because he’s playing such a young Welles. But it showed his dedication. Because we met in June, I think, and we didn’t starting shooting till January, so we had all that time to start working on this. I’ve never met so much time with an actor on a role. It wasn’t like I was telling him how to play Welles. It’s just he’s so smart. He had so many questions This was his first real movie. so we just had this long dialogue forever about Welles and about the movies and he had so many questions.

(Q): Well, let’s see. We have a clip with him in it. This is a movie that will really bring him to the attention of American audiences. Do you want to say anything to set up the scene?

(Richard Linklater): Yeah. We’ll show the one from the, this is like two nights before opening night, and he’s being challenged on his credits by Sam Leve, who’s the set designer, and he doesn’t like his credit. You know, Welles always had these little credit issues throughout this whole career. And so he’s being challenged in front of the whole cast and crew in front of a crew member. He sort of loses it. All the pressure’s on him. They’ve done a matinee that’s gone terribly, and opening night’s like the next night. And he’s kind of like at the end of his rope, so he kind of loses it. But you see both the devil and the charm.
 
(Q): Great.

(Richard Linklater): Every now and then, I explain that, and people say, “Oh, he’s kind of scary. He’s a bit of a monster, and I say, “Well, sometimes you have to do that.”

(Q): But it feels like, you sort of get a sense in the film that he knows what he’s doing to motivate people, to do incredible work.

(Richard Linklater): I think that’s what a director does. You have to pull it out of some people sometimes or show how much you care that you’re willing to fight for this production every now and then when things get tense. That’s what attracted me so much to this story was that it was a depiction of creating art the way that theater and film demands. You create art communally and it’s the same hierarchy, the same egos, the same different points-of-view that you would get in any business or any undertaking. It’s just more jarring when it’s the arts. People think you’re crazy, but it’s like, “No. This is how it works.”

You have to balance these ideas to get anywhere in the collaborative process. It’s a battle of wills sometimes and forcing ideas and letting the best ones win and personalities. In that scene, we see Welles as a really strong, that’s pretty egomaniacal to say, “You’re all adjuncts of my vision.” But in the end, he’s charming them. “You are one of the best theaters in the country, in the world.” And it’s true, still, to this day, 72 years later, they still speak of this as one of the most influential, maybe perhaps the greatest Shakespeare production in North American history.
 
(Q): And you actually re-create some of that production. We do get a sense in your film of what that production was like with the kind of stark staging.

(Richard Linklater): This is kind of like why Welles is kind of the patron saint of indie filmmakers because it was starting here. He had no budget. He was funding this production largely through his money he was making in radio, which is what he would do his whole film career with the exception of maybe three movies. He had a bare stage, and they painted the brick wall red. That was really it. They had no money. Modern dress, it was set in 1937 so they’re dressed kind of like gangsters.

It’s a modern dress. He wanted the lighting and everything to look like a Nuremberg rally, Caesar as dictator, so the modern reverberations of that time were significant. It really sent a chill through people to see Caesar, who looked a lot like Mussolini, we read these reviews, and everyone commented that Joe Holland, who played Caesar in the production, they said, “Oh, he had this resemblance to Mussolini.” So Simon Nehan, the actor who played him, he even shaved his head to look like Mussolini who’d kind of stand there.

We had fun with that. But Welles was trying to make it look like trying to put the will, something that’s the Nuremberg Rally, the lighting. And we had these photos to reference. There was a point during the famous assassination, well, how do you kill of Caesar? You know it’s coming. Caesar started from this side of stage and kind of went down these steps and then Brudus gives him the final cut down there.

But he got these floodlights and flooded the audience with light. They’re cinematic. They’re seeing a silhouette almost. It was fun to re-create all of that. That kind of dramatic lighting you’d never do in a film. It would be a little over-the-top. But to re-create a stage production, it was great fun, and our wonderful director of photography, Dick Pope, this wonderful British DP, we had a lot of fun re-creating that.
 
(Q): You always had a great knack for casting. Dazed and Confused, you discovered Matthew McConaughey and Parker Posey. This film has very interesting casting because you have this discovery of Christian McKay but then you have Zac Efron, who’s certainly well known, but this is a different role for him, and he’s really wonderful in this part. Can you talk about the casting?

(Q): Yeah. It’s a weird combination. It’s a lot of British actors. That was Eddie Marsan playing John Houseman. So we shot this in London, so I had so many great British actors from the stage and screen. They came in for the movie But then the key part besides Orson Welles, once I found Christian, the hard part, the next one was who plays the teenager. You see this story kind of through his point-of-view. but it’s a very demanding part. He kind of ends up falling in love with Claire Danes, this older woman who works at the theater. She’s not an actress in it, but I needed someone to kind of be a leading man who go toe-to-toe with Welles, sort of beats him at his own game for a little while. Welles kind of underestimates the kid, and he realizes, “Oh.” Behind his back, he’s got Sonja and all this stuff going on and then it’s kind of like game on in Welles’ mind.

But you needed someone with that charisma and that leading man quality, and Zac has that. People might be surprised. I’ve heard people go, “Oh. That seems like such an odd choice.” But I defy someone to find another actor of his generation who has both the song, he’s kind of a song and dance man. He’s a throwback himself. But a real leading man quality, a lot of charisma, the camera loves him, and he’s really smart. He’s a really good actor.
 
(Q): So we actually have a clip I think with him and Claire Danes, so do you want to set it up?

(Richard Linklater): Oh yeah. This is, they’re in a projection booth in the Mercury Theater. They’re all waiting on Orson, who has run off with some woman for just a short amount of time from the radio station. This is Zac sort of making his move on Claire and everything.
 
(Q): And there are some interesting twists. I don’t want to give away any of the plot. Sort of what happens with Claire Danes’ character. She’s sort of not what you would expect.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah. She kind of plays Orson’s girl Friday, and she is kind of a throwback. Kind of a screwball. Claire, one of her favorite actresses is Barbara Stanwick. We talked about that. I was like, “Perfect.” Confident, smart. Claire is kind of a modern embodiment of that. She’s a wonderful actress. So lucky that she’s in the movie.
 
(Q): One thing I want to ask you, and then we’ll open it up for questions in the audience. But you talk about throwback. The world in the film is such a great atmosphere of this sort of theater world in New York City in the 1930s. But you couldn’t go film in the streets of New York. So can you tell us how you made this physical reproduction?

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, I mean, re-creating ‘30s New York, obviously that’s so long gone. If you were to walk on West 41st Street, where the Mercury Theater, you would never know there’s no theaters on that street. It’s kind of just a big office building now. The world of that time is so long gone that we had to re-create it somewhere. We ended up shooting, we re-created West 41st Street on the backlot of Pinewood Studios. We shot all the theater interiors in this wonderful theater in the Isle of Man, the Gaetie [?] Theater, which was built right around the same time in the 19th century, about the same time as the Mercury Theater.

So the architecture, everything about it, was to scale. They had that wonderful understage area. Welles famously had these trapped doors where actors emerged out of onto the stage in darkness and came out of trapped doors. And we were able to use this understage area, so it just helped in the re-creation. So, we got lucky with our locations. I mean, it was a tough film to make. We didn’t have much of a schedule or budget. All these things kind of helped. We did a lot of CGI too. Skylines. It’s amazing what you can do now with green screens.
 
Q: I just had two questions. What was your process in the editing room? How much did you have your say in the final cut? And also, I’m assuming there wasn’t a whole lot of room for improv, but were there any moments that you let the actors kind of surprise you or did you get anything that you didn’t intentionally seek out?

(Richard Linklater): Yeah. I mean, actors, they rehearse a lot. This is about theater, so yeah. Actors, we came up with a lot. Every movie I’ve ever done, there’s a ton to rehearse. I’m always looking to take it to some new level. I think any good director would be. You know you want to get the most out of your actors. And so many, everyone involved, that was the charm of this, we all loved the backstage story here. Every film and theater actor, we’ve all had this experience so they brought a lot to it, little mannerisms, little lines here and there, there’s so much. Christian was so well versed, and Welles he had a lot of ideas, Zach threw in a bunch.

So yeah, but it’s usually not when the cameras are rolling. I do all that in rehearsal and on the day maybe a few things, but not, it’s pretty much determined through a lengthy rehearsal process. And as you were asking about editing, this was a lengthy film to edit. There was, I shot a lot more of the play and toward the end you see the production, it wasn’t just like a montage you actually see entire scenes from the play kind of from the audience’s point of view.

The way you would you know, we were trying to wow our film audience of today, the same way Welles did. So all those lighting effects, you get a sense of the play. But we filmed, even when we filmed it, I knew that it would be more than we needed but it was good for the actors to do and kind of good for the production in general. But you know in the editing, it took a lot of passes I think to just widdle away and get the pacings right for the film. But I liked that part, and as far as final cut, I have final cut so I don’t have anyone, I mean I like listening to everybody’s notes. And you have a screening with a small audience or something and you just get a feel for the pacing. But you know this wasn’t a studio film you don’t have —

Q: You don’t just hand it off and then pray,

(Richard Linklater): No, no you kind of live in the editing room. I’ve worked with the same editor; I think this is our 17th  project together or something. We kind of share the same post-production brand at this point, Sandra Adair. So you know, she can just look at the footage and know what I’m going for and then just kind of come in and performances and talk about it. But it’s ultimately about pacing and working that through.
 
Q: I just wanted to say I’m really excited for the movie. I read the book actually a year and a half ago and I fell in love with it right away. It took me only a few hours to read I didn’t put it down. I’m really excited about it. I did hear from a few reviews of people who have seen the movie already, and I was just wondering what made you decide like certain parts of like to portray from the book and not, because like I know what aspect, I hope it’s OK to bring this up, but like Richard is Jewish and I really like that aspect because they bring up a really few good scenes in the movie but then I heard it wasn’t really mentioned in the movie of his character. I was just curious of your view of that.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, well, Vince and Holly on the adaptation, it’s kind of something, I don’t know. Hasn’t Hollywood been doing that forever? Take a Jew short and make it not. I meant that as a joke. I don’t know. There was one line that disturbed me because Sam Leve, the stage guy who you see that fight with, in the book, there was a line, I never even talked to Robert about this, there was a line, he calls him, “You’re a credit-stealing Jew.” And that just seemed so harsh. Welles, you know, no history of anti-Semitic. I just thought that would be so harsh on film. Maybe in the context of the book, it works as part of that. But I don’t know. It just didn’t.

Q: I was just curious because I remember there was one scene, yeah.

(Richard Linklater): I don’t know. We lost a lot of his home life and a lot of his interaction with his own friends. We realized early on that what’s going to work or come alive is everything that’s going on in the theater, so we only have a few scenes of him at home where in the book, like any adaptation, it’s always an interesting process, you have a hard time getting a movie started. Books always have long intros and sets up everything. Films can kind of jump right in, so we needed to get into the theaters quickly as possible. So a lot of stuff kind of went out of there.
 
Q: Couple of things, Richard. I noticed that you go back and forth between things that are funny and things that aren’t. Like some people, you think of as having a specific direction, you throw us off. There’ll be one movie you’ll think is one way and then you’ll go and do something else. So how do you mix that up? And then are you going to do the Shakespeare? I’m half joking.

(Richard Linklater): I have a question though. What do I do that’s not funny?

Q: Well, I mean you do things.

(Richard Linklater): Even Fast Food Nation, it’s bleak but it’s funny. There’s funny parts.

Q: Well, you have funny. But you don’t think of funny as part of your movie.

(Richard Linklater): No, no. It scared people.

Q: But you have balanced out some films.

(Richard Linklater): Well, some films are more overtly. Like, this wouldn’t be, this is kind of a comedy. Like I said, it had shades of screwball comedy and stuff. Some are more overt comedy, like School of Rock, Bad News Bears. Those are like, I like that was just unabashedly comedy. The other, the dramas I like to think are funny, like find a lot of humor. That comes out of a lot of collaboration, working with cast, having kind of a funny view on things. But this one I think is more of a drama than comedy. Where it’s funny I think is really funny.

Q: But I think you pick things that throw people off that I wouldn’t necessarily think will be your next project.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, well thanks. Over the years, I think you earn that with time. Ten years ago, 11 years ago, people put you in a box. They say, “Oh, this is the kind of film you do.” But I just approach every film like something I’m interested in, whether it’s the history or characters or something about it that’s personal to me, something that I’m writing that’s very autobiographical. So it’s just like, we all give ourselves a lot of latitude for various interests, so it shouldn’t be unusual that someone that’s in any artform that’s trying to do different things.

When some musicians steps out and does music of a different kind, you’ve got to remember that every musician loves music – not just the kind that they themselves can do. But they might push themselves into another genre. So everyone’s just trying to box everyone in. But I’m kind of glad 11, 12 years ago, I didn’t get that. I made a film called The Newton Boys, which to me was as personal and fulfilling as any other film I had done, but the vibe at that time was , “Wait. What are you doing? You can’t make a movie like this.

This isn’t your kind of film.”  It’s like, “Yeah it is. I co-wrote it. I discovered the story just very similarly to this film.” And yeah, at that point, I didn’t really qualify to make that film in people’s minds. But over time now, it’s like, “Oh, you do all kinds of things.” I’m like, thank you. Latitude, everybody wants that.

Q: And the second part of my question was doing theater. Although I jokingly said, “Why don’t you re-stage this?” Do you want to move into that?

(Richard Linklater): That close. I mean here, the whole cast are theater actors. We had the original stage design, we had the score, we had rehearsed it, we had costumes, we had the cast, we had even lighting. We really were that close to. Wouldn’t it be great if this week, that play you could just go see in some theater. A re-creation. Like, no one does that much in theater where you re-create. It’s always re-staging and modernizing and doing new interpretations.

But to do an old time-y theater piece that was radically modern in its time, that would be wonderful. We actually talked about it. It would’ve been a lot of fun. I saw a play a few years ago, Clifford O’Deaf’s play that had been re-staged like that, that awakened scene, I thought that was wonderful because it was like, I’m in the ‘30s watching this play from that point-of-view, and I thought that was great to evoke that exact time, style, everything about it.
 
Q: You had a lot of fun with the music. Speaking of ‘30s, the jazz in this film.

(Richard Linklater): Oh, yeah. Love it. I’m a geek that way. I love the music from this era, and it was just grabbing a lot of music from my own collection mostly and making that work. It was all the original recordings. Like I said, I had done this movie, before that, it was set in 1918, 1922. None of the music from that era, are the masters usable really, it was too scratchy and noisy.

Where this era, ’37 by that point, the studio recordings were pretty good. They hold up, so I only had to re-create partially one song. There’s a scene where Zac sets up these sprinklers and there’s this big disaster that’s going on on stage and Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” is playing and I had to kind of widen that out into the surrounds and get a deeper sound. We re-created that in a recording studio. But the music here is a lot of fun. It’s a big element. At this era, there’s music everywhere. Music stores, everyone played an instrument, music, music, music was everywhere, so I wanted the movie to reflect that.
 
Q: It seems like you have a lot of fun when you’re making these films. But how do you define success in terms of each of these projects? Obviously, you always hear directors leave a little part of themselves with each project. So how do you define success in terms of this project and previous projects?

(Richard Linklater): Well, success, I learned early on, my definition for success in movies was getting to make the movie. Just getting it finished up. That was success. Leaving a part of yourself, I mean, I leave every project. Even my bigger comedies, there’s something really personal. In all of the subjects in the world, why are you doing this? Well, obviously it resonates with you, you found your way into the story, and you personalized it. So yeah, you leave yourself not only in the movie but in all of the characters. Everything you touch, you feel that way about it. So yeah, I learned early on it’s just the process.

That’s all you can control. How films do at the box office, like we had this unfortunate yardstick that’s emerged, even just recently in the last 20 years or so, that the box office is printed on the front of the paper. Oh, No. 1 and all that stuff. It’s kind of a ridiculous notion with art. But everyone’s living in such a material, horse race-y kind of world where that seems to be the yardstick. Everyone’s buzzing about how much money Twilight made over the weekend, frankly. Well great, good for them.

But yeah, I don’t know. It’s like that’s not really the yardstick you can bring into your work because you can’t control that. I’ve done a lot of films that haven’t really been distributed very well. You never know. You just never know. Audiences just don’t want to see a certain movie at a certain time. You just never know. You can’t let that effect. Obviously, you want people to see the movie and enjoy it. But I learned a long time ago from the first film I ever did that I was like, “Well, if you’re lucky, that works out.” But the goal is to really do the best you can. You can’t really control.
 
me, more critical at times, or like well maybe he’s not his own best friend in some of these issues, but now I’m just so accepting of the whole well you know, you accept who he was his personality and you go, oh it couldn’t have been any different. Welles was never meant to fit into any system. He was, we’re lucky just share chutzpah. He got Kane and Ambersons made the way he did, and even though he had trouble with the end of Ambersons, you know, he was never fit into Hollywood. That’s why they resented him so much.

Here was this 23-year-old going out there with the better, with more. He didn’t care about the money. All he cared about was the art, was the control of that, and he had, the idea of final cut was unthinkable then. And he had complete control over Citizen Kane. Studio people would come on to the set, and he would tell them, he would stop working and say, “Hey. Look at my contract. Get out of here.” I don’t know. He didn’t endear himself, I guess. He was a little willful in his maestro super director status.

So I think people, they had their knives out for him. They wanted him to fail, I think, after so much success, so much talent, I think there’s a force in the world that wants to bring you back into Earth a little bit. It’s just natural in the media and in everybody. He was too big of a force for his time, for all time.

(Q): But so many of his films were considered box office failures yet they were masterpieces.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, well he didn’t have one film that I don’t think anyone considered a financial success. Even Kane was kind of thwarted in his day. The Hearst Corporation famously wouldn’t advertise, and he was ready to do a road show with them. Show it in setup theaters, and that would’ve been, bring that showmanship to it, but he didn’t. And it wasn’t seen as a big success. I think maybe his life and career may have been different if he would’ve been able to work maybe longer with John Houseman.

He really needed a guy there helping him in those waters. I think Houseman was dropping out of his life right around the time they were starting Kane. That was sort of the end of their partnership. So he probably needed that. But I don’t know. He just accepted it all. It was interesting being in Europe. He’s really just seen as a master. He was the guy who made masterpieces in three or four decades. He had a long, very active career. He was doi ng radio. He did so much. He toured during magic shows. He really was such a public personality. And I think for young people today, if you’re not at least 35 to 40, you have no memory. And this is striking for guys our age to think about this, but we had memories of Welles growing up. He was this big guy on talk shows with that voice.

(Q): Right. Orson Welles. Wine commercials.

(Richard Linklater): And famously wine commercials, and he was [inaudible]. Whatever. But I didn’t know till I was older why Orson Welles was Orson Welles. He was just always Orson Welles. He was this bigger than life character with the tell me stories. And then you find out who he is, but he was this iconic figure. He died 24 years ago. It was weird. Like, he was talking all the time. So people don’t, if you’re younger, you don’t remember that part of him at all, so it’s like, oh he has the art. Which is kind of great too.

Maybe that’s a purer relation that you can watch the movies and re-listen to some of his radio and all that. But yeah, he was sort of cursed with that long life. But I don’t know. I watched this video of him. It was very touching. But last night, it was live. He died later that night. But he did this very elaborate, amazing card trick on the Murray Griffin Show. He was a guest on the show. A very elaborate card trick, where it was like, “Wow, how did he do that?” Even magicians were like, “I don’t know how he did that.”

He was kind of wowing them until the end. He was put on Earth to wow us. And he did it in every way he could: radio, film, I think in person. He was the greatest dinner companion ever, apparently. He told stories, little magic tricks. He’s the kind of guy who would go to a Hollywood party with a rabbit down his pantleg. So two hours in, he could pull a rabbit out and amaze everybody.

(Q): That comes across in the film. He’s just not going to be boring.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah. No, no. I think, and people say, “Oh he seems like an egomaniac who comes off as a jerk.” And I’m like, “No, no. He must have been really fun to be around.” If you could find yourself a place in his world, clearly he’s the boss. Clearly, he’s the genius in the room. So you look at guys like Joe Cotton who had this long career.

They were friends for life, and Cotton was in a lot of his movies and they remained friends and he found his place in Welles’ universe. So that’s how it is sometimes. I’ve been around people like that, and if you can accept your rather subservient position in their world, I can be fun, but that’s a choice you have to make. Zac Efron’s character in this, he’s 17. He doesn’t quite know that. Even though people warn him not to criticize Welles and he’s the boss, don’t contradict him, he sort of does that out of his own emotional state because he’s in love with Claire’s character. So you see him kind of misstep there fatally, painfully.

(Q): It might have just been Orson Welles’ pajamas at one point.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, yeah. In the book, it starts, “This is the start of the week in my life where I make my Broadway debut, fell in love, fell out of love, and slept in Orson Welles’ pajamas.” We don’t have voiceover in the movie. Just a little in the trailer, but it’s a funny line.
 
Q: You talking about the latitude of your work. But you didn’t mention Waking Life and animation. I was just wondering your background, what did you study early on that you have such wide interests? Because animation doesn’t normally fit in with live action.

(Richard Linklater): Where does animation fit in? Well, I’m not an animator. But those two, it seems appropriate at the Apple Store to talk about Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, we did those all on these home computers. But that was just a storytelling device. Director, your job is to communicate with the audience and make these kind of decisions – how it should look, how it should feel, all these choices.

So I just felt, some friends of mine where developing this software in the earliest stages where it’s drawing over live action footage, kind of like this computer area into [inaudible], and I was like, “Wow.” The live part of it and the artifice part of it, it just, there had been this story that I had been thinking about at that point. Seriously, around 20 years, 18 or 20 years, I had this story in my mind, and it had never worked in film. The live action story in my mind just didn’t work. But once I saw that technique, I said, “Oh. That’s how this should work.”

So it was a great convergence of technology meeting a storytelling desire, and that’s how that marriage happened. And then A Scanner Darkly, I did a few years later, that was just for the same properties I felt that technique worked on the audiences’ perception. I thought that worked for that particular movie where the questions were identity and not his ever-shifting reality, the unreality of it, the questionable reality. Because I think that’s where your brain goes when you’re looking at that technique. Like what’s real. Part of your brain, the rational part’s saying, “This isn’t artifice. This is clearly a construction.” Another part of your brain is accepting it as reality because the gestures and the sound.

I don’t have any stories currently that work with that, but that was perfect with those two movies. But you know. This movie’s in cinemascope and color. You make all these, I call it my palate choices. You set visual rules for what you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to accomplish and you collaborate with everyone and those goals.

Q: You have a background in art?

(Richard Linklater): Not really. I’m not a very good drawer at all. I don’t know.  No, no. I can appreciate. Working with artists like that is like working with composers. Same with music. A lot of interest in it, a big fan. But film is collaborative in that way. You get all these talented people to work with you on things, and you bring everything you have and they bring everything they have. But you asked about range and stuff. I don’t know. Everybody has, think of your life, you have so many interests in so many realms. It’s not uncommon.

So for me, it’s about making a film about something I’m interested in. It can be as minimal as something that happened to me or a historical book. I don’t have a line. Oh, here’s my life and here are the kind of films I do. They’re kind of lured together. Anything that I’m interested in, I’m trying to find a story. Like right now, I have around five to probably 10 ideas or stories that everything can fit into. And some of those can keep going. Usually, years go by, and if that one’s still in your head, then that’s probably worth pursuing.

The ones that scare you a little bit and yet compel you, I think in the arts, that’s a good track to go down. I’ve never made a movie where, “Oh, I know how to do this. This would be easy. Oh, I’ve got this one figured out.” No. That would be the disaster, I’m sure. Every film has to be almost impossible. There’s something about it.

(Q): There’s a sense of wanting to experiment. Like it’s almost like you have to invent a form. Like Slacker, there wasn’t a model for Slacker.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah. When you can’t describe what genre you’re in, you’re usually in a good place.

(Q): And Fast Food Nation, you can take a nonfiction book and say you did it as a real interesting narrative.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, I created a narrative where there really isn’t one. But I’ve always been interested in that. In cinema, like how the audience, we create narrative out of stuff, just pieces. That’s how our lives unfold. We all live and narrate our own life. For better or worse, we’re the lead actor in it. It all kinds of make sense. In a lot of life, it only makes sense in reverse. What got you from here to there, and yet it’s comprehensible.

So I think properties of movies are the same as dreams. You really can’t, with the right amount of information and context, you sort of can’t find a narrative in something that’s hard to explain on paper but on an experience level that can work as the film. That’s a strong property of cinema that’s still out there that people can discover or push. Cinema is somewhat cursed, and here I am making a movie about a stage production, but film is often cited as being cursed with the theater.

This three act structure and the properties of theater in film haven’t always pushed the film medium to where its own potentials. Film’s still pretty young. It’s 115 years old now. When Welles re-invented it with Citizen Kane, it was only 45 years old. It’s amazing to think that an art medium is only 45 years old at the time, right for reinvention. Welles was born definitely at the right time for that.

He could reinvent cinema, radio, theater. He was born at the wrong time to be an indie filmmaker. If he had been born in my generation, this was the hayday of getting films made, world financing, there’s a market, there’s specialty theaters. That was so not existent until more recent. Really, the ‘80s. Cassevet has really struggled with all of that, so those guys definitely would have done better in the modern times. But he wouldn’t be the same Orson Welles.
 
Q: I have a film industry-related question. What are your thoughts on the recent downsizing of Miramax and its implications for any film?

(Richard Linklater): He’s asking about the downsizing of Miramax and the disappearance of so many of those companies. I  mean, I’ve been doing this just long enough. It’s really sad. It was weird to kind of wake up and realize you live in this diluted world that’s just art that you’re trying to create, but it hit us as an industry, even in the distribution and everything of this film, our “industry” is this market that has collapsed.

I didn’t know I was living in a commodity, that this was a thing that could fluctuate like that. But I think there are a lot of factors in that. But I don’t know. There’s always been cycles and stuff. You hope that, clearly things are changing and something’s being reinvented. We don’t know quite what yet, but it’s probably right for that. The exact format, I’ll tell you, I don’t know. The old world that, of what I just said, the hayday of indie, I say it in the past tense now.

It never feels like a hayday when you’re in it, you’re just struggling to make your next thing made. But now looking back at the immediate past, I’m like, “Oh, that was a pretty good run.” I even see films I made in the last, whatever, 18, 19 years, where I go, “Oh, I could have never have gotten that made today.” I heard guys say that a long time ago, and say, “Oh, you sound like an old fart. Hm, things change.”

(Q): What’s an example of a film that would be difficult to be made now?

(Richard Linklater): Well, most of them. But certainly, Dazed and Confused. That was done with Universal. They wouldn’t have done that. I had no stars in that. It was $6 million or so. The equivalent would be $10 or 11 million today, maybe 12. They don’t make that kind of film anymore. They like big comedy sequels, $200 million. The real issue here is Hollywood, while the indie and specialty world is sort of going away, Hollywood’s in their hayday. They’ve really got it down, the marketing of these huge films.

They really know how to do that. They don’t mess. Like 10, 20 years ago, they’d make $100 million film that would make $1 million, it would be a huge bomb. That was more volatile. Now, I think it’s through sheer marketing prowess and spending. Spend $100, $200 making the film, spend $100 distributing it and it just makes sense to stockholders and a business plan. Like, that’s a better bet than a bunch of these, like this is called, this kind of film is called, I love this term in the industry, execution dependo.

That means it actually has to work or be good. And then maybe someone will see it. But it’s true if you have to look at it as marketing. Those big ones, who cares. Does Twilight have to be good? No one’s even talking about it. It’s a phenomenon beyond its own quality. It’s just more of a marketing extravaganza. I mean, it’s a bonus when it’s good. Everybody’s like, “Dark Knight, it’s really good. Did you see it?” I go, “Well, for $180 million, yeah, I hope it should be pretty good.” There’s talented people involved, why are we surprised when it’s good? That should be the bottom line.
 
(Q): I think we have time for one more, so we’ll try to end on something less depressing. But it’s OK, I try to be optimistic and feel positive about everything.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, I’m sorry. Well, when I do, overall, we don’t have to be. But it is weird times we’re living in.

Q: You mentioned you like to rehearse your films. I was just curious with your rehearsal process, if you do a full rehearsal or just kiss scenes, something beyond a table reading. And the second part of my question, what was the process to finding the right Welles, not falling into an imitation?

(Richard Linklater): Well, your rehearsal question, I do a lot of rehearsal. I mean, it starts at a table reading, but you get out of that pretty quickly. Hopefully, over several weeks. And some characters need more than others, and it’s sort of like being the coach of a team. Some people need a lot of rehearsal, some need less, some scenes need a lot of work. As a director, when I’m rehearsing, I’m directing the movie. I’m figuring out how I’m going to shoot it, I’m rewriting it.

Some lines just flat don’t sound right coming out of someone’s mouth so you have to change it. You have to work with the actors, all that. It’s never pre-rendered. You’re never rendering something that’s totally set. That said, so many directors do that. Hitchcock famously, I’ve heard the Coen brothers have everything storyboarded. It can work, but it’s just, you bring your own insecurities, your own maybe limited skill set to what you do and I need all that rehearsal just for me. I’ve worked for actors like, “I don’t want to rehearse.” And I’m like, “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me.” I’m trying to figure out how this film’s going to work.

So I demand a lot rehearsal, and that’s the definition of a collaboration – whether it’s with an actor or a DP or a production designer or anyone, you want to go as a collaborative partner. Between you, you want to take it someplace neither one of you could have gone to alone. So that’s the definition of a successful collaboration. You kind of keep pushing each other. And I would define that as Christian McKay, who plays Welles here.

I mentioned earlier about finding him at that play and everything and I spent a lot of time with him, but it wasn’t, I wasn’t telling him how to do Welles. I was really just making him feel comfortable in that environment, answering his questions. He tells his story like he remembers me going like this a lot. He’s big and theatrical, I was always kind of a little less. And he says, “And the one day, in there, you were kind of like up. So I guess we had dialed in to a Welles, and hopefully that happens the first day of shooting.”

You get it right. You don’t over-rehearse anything. If it’s totally working, obviously that needs less of your attention. It’s the scenes that don’t work and the characters. If you’ve cast well, that’s the cliché, casting is what 80 or 90 percent of directing. And there’s something to that. When you get the right people, you spend a lot more time with someone who’s maybe miscast or not quite, you find yourself working with them a lot more just to kind of get them to fit into the big picture. I mean, it’s very important. I always think performances, they’re the director’s fault.

If you don’t like something, they’ve been miscast or they didn’t create an atmosphere or you didn’t give them enough tools to do their best work, whether it’s script or anything. If it didn’t come off, I think it’s the director’s fault. Yet, when it works, it’s really there. They’re like an athlete, they did the achievement. You can’t claim anything. You can say, “Well, I threw a little water. I helped in the garden, but it’s theirs.”

(Q): Or you can cheat and be like Orson Welles and take all the credit.

(Richard Linklater): I thought Welles was actually really generous, and he has this reputation. But if you look at the credits, the Ambersons and Kane, he’s introducing the Mercury Theater. He lists himself last in the cast. He shares credit with Greg Tolin, the great DP he worked with in Kane.

(Q): That’s true. And he does this thing where he shows the actors in the end to remind you who.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah, yeah. He gives their faces. That hasn’t really been done in cinema much. He shows you their name and face. Puts a face to the real character. I find that really touching and giving of him. So I think that’s who Welles, in his mind, that’s who he was. I think he gets, all that stuff falls on him because he was such a huge personality. We project egomaniacal status on to him. But I don’t know. I think there was a part of him that was that generous. And sharing the card with Tolin, probably a guild that would emerge wouldn’t allow that today.

But Greg Tolin actually came to this theater production of Shakespeare, Caesar, and when he heard Welles was going to Hollywood to make a film, he said, “Hey. I saw your Julius Caesar. I want to work with you. What you were doing with the lighting.” And so, thus was born here was the greatest DP-director collaboration in history.

(Q): Because he was in Hollywood two to three years later doing Citizen Kane.

(Richard Linklater): Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah, you never know what comes out of anything in this world. But an early seed was planted.
 
(Q): I guess we could say that execution was successful with this film or something like that.

(Richard Linklater): Execution dependent. It’s still dependent, definitely.

(Q): But congratulations. It’s got a lot of great acting.

(Richard Linklater): I hope you guys get the chance to see the movie.

END.
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