The Big Picture · Interview
November 10, 2017/ 37 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey talks to Richard Linklater about Last Flag Flying, his twentieth film, why the passage of time keeps coming back into his work, and the industry reckoning over sexual harassment.
10 films across 1 segment.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
In conversation
His new film: Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne as three Vietnam-era friends who reunite in 2003 to bring Carell's son's body home from Iraq. Adapted from Daryl Ponicsan's novel, which he first read in 2005.
Named in the intro as one of his talky, single-day movies, set on the last day of school.
The other intro touchstone; he and his co-stars keep circling a fourth Before film roughly every nine years without landing on the idea.
The third intro touchstone, shot over twelve years; comes up again as an idea he sat with for a decade before making it.
His pick for a genuine anti-war movie, credited to Oliver Stone actually having fought in Vietnam.
The film right before this one, a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused. Paramount financed it but barely released it; he says people keep discovering it a year or two late.
Cited alongside Boyhood as proof he's found ways to make ambitious, unconventional films on a modest budget.
Shot in London with an international cast, set backstage at Orson Welles's 1937 Mercury Theatre. Another one he loves that got buried by bad distribution.
His example of the backhanded compliment: a fan mentioning they just caught it on Showtime, years after the fact.
John Huston's final film, which Linklater is showing in his own film society retrospective. Huston made it while on oxygen for emphysema.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Named in passing Star WarsThor
Teased for next week Lady Bird