RICHARD LINKLATER
Name: Richard Stuart Linklater
Born: 30 July 1960 Houston, Texas
Richard "Rick" Linklater (born July 30, 1960, in Houston, Texas) is an
Academy Award-nominated American film director and screenwriter.
Linklater studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his
stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While
working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love
of film through repeated visits to a repertory theater in Houston. It was at
this point that Linklater realized he wanted to be a filmmaker. After his job on
the oil rig, Linklater used the money he had saved to buy a Super-8 camera, a
projector, some editing equipment, and moved to Austin. It was here that the
aspiring cineaste founded the Austin Film Society and grew to appreciate such
stylized auteurs like Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu, Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Nagisa Oshima, and Josef Von Sternberg.
For several years Linklater made many short films that were, more than anything,
exercises and experiments in film techniques. He finally completed his first
feature, the rarely seen It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (which
is now available in the Criterion Collection edition of Slacker), a Super-8
feature that took a year to shoot and another year to edit. The film is
significant in the sense that it establishes most of Linklater's preoccupations.
The film has his trademark style of minimal camera movements and lack of
narrative, while it examines the theme of traveling with no real particular
direction in mind. These idiosyncrasies would be explored in greater detail in
future projects.
To this end Linklater created Detour Filmproduction (an homage to the 1945 low
budget film noir by Edgar G. Ulmer), and subsequently made Slacker for only $23,000.
The film is an aimless day in the life of the city of Austin, Texas showcasing
its more eccentric characters.
While gaining a cult following for his independent films, such as Dazed and
Confused, Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, his mainstream comedies, School of
Rock and the remake of Bad News Bears, have gained him wider recognition.
Name: Richard Stuart Linklater
Born: 30 July 1960 Houston, Texas
Richard "Rick" Linklater (born July 30, 1960, in Houston, Texas) is an
Academy Award-nominated American film director and screenwriter.
Linklater studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his
stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While
working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love
of film through repeated visits to a repertory theater in Houston. It was at
this point that Linklater realized he wanted to be a filmmaker. After his job on
the oil rig, Linklater used the money he had saved to buy a Super-8 camera, a
projector, some editing equipment, and moved to Austin. It was here that the
aspiring cineaste founded the Austin Film Society and grew to appreciate such
stylized auteurs like Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu, Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Nagisa Oshima, and Josef Von Sternberg.
For several years Linklater made many short films that were, more than anything,
exercises and experiments in film techniques. He finally completed his first
feature, the rarely seen It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (which
is now available in the Criterion Collection edition of Slacker), a Super-8
feature that took a year to shoot and another year to edit. The film is
significant in the sense that it establishes most of Linklater's preoccupations.
The film has his trademark style of minimal camera movements and lack of
narrative, while it examines the theme of traveling with no real particular
direction in mind. These idiosyncrasies would be explored in greater detail in
future projects.
To this end Linklater created Detour Filmproduction (an homage to the 1945 low
budget film noir by Edgar G. Ulmer), and subsequently made Slacker for only $23,000.
The film is an aimless day in the life of the city of Austin, Texas showcasing
its more eccentric characters.
While gaining a cult following for his independent films, such as Dazed and
Confused, Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, his mainstream comedies, School of
Rock and the remake of Bad News Bears, have gained him wider recognition.