For Richard Linklater, talking about awards and accolades is a lose-lose situation. The filmmaker, who has five Oscar nominations and is about to receive the Lifetime Achievement in Screenwriting Award at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, likens the process to entering a horse race you didn’t ask to be in (a former competitive athlete, he loves a sports metaphor). “If you say that awards and accolades mean everything to you, it’s like, ‘Were you not loved by your parents?’ And if you say they mean nothing, you seem arrogant and privileged,” he says. “So I take the long view: When you do something long enough, they start giving you awards.”
Whose opinion of your work means the most to you?
There’s no one person. Ethan Hawke said recently, “If there’s one thing I’ve never heard out of Rick’s mouth it’s, ‘Hey, what did you think of my film?’ ” It’s probably some neurodivergent quality I have, but to me the game is with yourself and how you feel about your own stuff.
You previously spoke to THR about all the legacy studios passing on Hit Man. When you reflect on its release, how do you feel about it?
I made my peace with that when it was happening. It’s like any relationship — if the studios don’t think it can do well enough theatrically to warrant their interest, and Netflix is the most passionate about it, who are you going to go with? I haven’t questioned it since. We wish we were living in some pure film world where everything you liked warranted a full theatrical release and then did great at the box office, but that’s a fantasy.
Does the control you get while making an indie film still outweigh the control you have to release after you’ve made it and are waiting for a buyer?
It’s not so simple. The times I have made full-blown studio films, I haven’t had control problems. There’s not a film out there that I go, “Oh, that wasn’t my cut.” My thing was that I always just work really hard and I can stay ahead of any trouble. When I made School of Rock with Scott Rudin, I knew going in I’d better work hard or this could get away from me. If you outwork everybody and make a good film, you won’t have problems.
Are you still in the midst of the 20-year-long development of Merrily We Roll Along?
We shoot in a couple of months, but I’m in early prep on that.
The Broadway show had a huge year, which wasn’t necessarily part of the show’s legacy when you signed on. Has that changed the way you’re approaching the project?
I saw that show before it went to Broadway, too. I’ve been watching every version of Merrily. I started in the ’80s. I really know the play and its various incarnations. When we started the movie, it was the play that doesn’t quite work. But now there’s a version of it that everyone says is a masterpiece. And I agree. So between us starting our project and now, they’ve cracked it. It’s finally achieved top-Sondheim status after being mid- to lower- for the longest time. I’m always thinking about what will work for us. It’s an interpretive adaptation, that’s for sure.
You work with a lot of repeat collaborators. Do you ever write roles for specific people?
Hit Man is a good example, with the part of Jasper, the bad guy. Somewhere in the writing process I thought, “What about Austin Amelio?” — a guy [co-writer and star] Glen Powell and I had both worked with on Everybody Wants Some. He’s about the right age and he would be perfect. So once that happened, we wrote it with him in mind. But you can’t always count on the person being available. Or wanting to do it, especially if you’re low budget.
What is giving you optimism about the future of Hollywood?
I’m optimistic by rote. It’s how I try to go through the world. I’m a little more Kamala Harris than Donald Trump, you know? I think we can all do great things together. Of course there are things looming that you have to keep an eye out for — it’s kind of fun to be pessimistic with AI and the way tech has affected every industry, ours especially. There’s an upside, maybe, but you just roll with it. And our industry is optimistic by definition. There’s nothing more optimistic than an entire film crew — people who believe in getting a story told. Then, later, when the head of marketing comes in and they’ve just tested your movie — that’s the pessimist.
This story appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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