Latest Richard Linklater Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Editing rooms are kind of, by definition, a bubble of you and the editor and what you're thinking. It's a truth-telling thing to watch it through someone else's eyes, is to get another level of real with your material. Like, "Maybe that's not that funny. Maybe that's not as interesting. Maybe that's redundant to something else. Maybe we can cut down." I don't know. It's a brutal, honest process. You've got to be pretty - You can't be sentimental. You have to be. It's a cold process. You can't be nostalgic. You have to make those tough decisions.

  Richard Linklater

  Real, Eye, Cutting

  Source: collider.com

• Definitely my generation and beyond grew up in theaters and when you make a film you think of the theatrical experience. You think of that big screen in the darkened theater with a lot of people, so that's always the thought behind it. If that's the case, it's nice if that's available. That's great, but I don't really mind if they're watching films on a plane. I don't mind. Anybody who just wants to watch a movie, I can't complain. If that's the way they're going to watch them, that's the way they watch them. Who am I to judge?

  Richard Linklater

  Nice, Thinking, People

• I'm so happy and relieved for the indie spirited film world because ... I don't even know if it's indie, it's just alternative cinema that's just different than what the studios are doing and it's a big variety in that category. Everyone always is complaining about the film industry but I think it's important to acknowledge when it's actually a pretty good time when that comes back around. I'd be remiss not to say, "Hey, it's a pretty good era right now for these reasons," and maybe that doesn't last or maybe it does, but I will acknowledge it.

  Richard Linklater

  Thinking, Important, Different

  Source: collider.com

• Normally my process is to sit in a room and read a script and talk about it and ask questions and just create a dialogue. That goes all the way through shooting. All kinds of thoughts and ideas can find their way in there. As long as you're all on - We're just all trying to tell the story so my job as a director is just to find out what this film wants to be based on, it's just words on a page at some point but then it just needs to go to some level of believable storytelling. I'm discovering the film as I make it, to some degree.

  Richard Linklater

  Long, Trying, Kind

  Source: collider.com

• My sisters would swear that I was the spoiled kid who got everything he wanted, and I would go "No way! I worked my ass off and you guys got everything." We're all kind of in our own narratives.

  Richard Linklater

  Kids, Guy, Kind

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I think casting is really important. Finding the right sensibility for the right part is an art in itself. If you're off there, you make it harder on yourself as a director. And it's fun to work that out with the actors. I don't think there's any magic to directing actors. It's very instinctual. Working with actors is really one of my favorite creative moments of the whole process, and the most fun, because it's collaborative. I spend a lot of time rehearsing. I'm very rehearsal-oriented, probably because I have some background in theater. I like knowing what will work beforehand.

  Richard Linklater

  Art, Fun, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• All I've learned is that you need the studio system sometimes, if your budget is a certain size, and other films you can do independently. When I think of a studio, I generally think of distribution. Since I'm a director, I have a similar creative experience on every film I do, because I can control that. But then it's a different film, I think, as it reaches the public, depending on the way it's marketed. I don't know. I haven't learned much of anything. Sometimes you need them, sometimes you don't. Sometimes they want you, most of the time they don't.

  Richard Linklater

  Thinking, Creative, Different

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I have a lot of films that I haven't gotten made, and that continues to trouble me. But someday, some way or another, I think I will. It's all about timing. There's a moment when you're hot and studios will make your next film, and then there's a moment when you're really cold, and they couldn't care less what you want to do next. That's when you have to recede and make lower-budgeted films.

  Richard Linklater

  Thinking, Hot, Care

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If the animators could hide something so secretly that I could watch it numerous times, both on the computer and on the screen, and not pick up on it, then it deserves to be in the movie. But if they had more overt things, I'd often tell them to cut it out. In general, as long as they captured the spirit of the character, then they're fine. But sometimes it took a while, and we had to replace a lot of animators.

  Richard Linklater

  Character, Cutting, Long

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I don't think all films should necessarily look like they do on digital video. I think it cheats the audience, at some point. If you try to make an epic and you shoot it digitally, that doesn't make much sense. I think there's a certain kind of film that could be a "digital film." But it shouldn't be interchangeable with other films. It should be something more than just a capture medium. It should be a different form altogether, something new.

  Richard Linklater

  Thinking, Epic, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Everything that you could think about in life, or experience, or be interested in, theoretically should be expressed or dealt with in cinema. But the way typical narratives are set up, there's no room for philosophy, because it's just digressive material. It's not advancing the plot, so there's no place for it. It's the kind of stuff you would cut out, and that you shouldn't have put in there to begin with.

  Richard Linklater

  Philosophy, Cutting, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism. And there's so many expectations involved, too. You're going in to see the latest Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick film, you really have high hopes, and you can't help but find that it's not exactly what you had in your head going in. Until you can watch it again, you can't accept the work for what it intends to be. It takes at least a second viewing.

  Richard Linklater

  Writing, Expectations, Criticism

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'd be fine if there weren't film festivals, and you just made your films and didn't have to do anything from that point on. That would be really great, wouldn't it? I don't know. I'm in kind of an aloof time, where I'm not taking anything too seriously.

  Richard Linklater

  Kind, Film, Really Great

  Source: www.avclub.com

• When you're in love, you're asking someone else to fulfill all your unfulfilled needs, to make you whole, and to make you feel good about everything, and no one can do that.

  Richard Linklater

  Love You, Feel Good

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I have a lot of women friends - I feel like I finally matured a little. But initially I was attracted to some of them. I liked everything they were about. I think men are just taught: "Okay, well then, I should try to have sex with them." I'm just lucky that it went in the friendship direction, and it became a much stronger bond that's lasted a long time. You wonder how many potentially great friends you lose along the way because you become lovers and it is so painful when it's over and you can't turn it into a positive friendship.

  Richard Linklater

  Men, Thinking, Long

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• All the women are going around saying, "Oh, we're just friends, we're just friends," but the guy's going, "Yeah, we're friends, but as soon as she breaks up with her boyfriend, I'm hoping to move in."

  Richard Linklater

  Moving, Just Friends, Break

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Your friends are really an extension of your vision of the world. It's kind of a physical manifestation of how you feel. Like your soul.

  Richard Linklater

  Soul, Vision, World

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The rules of parenting have changed. By the modern definition, we were a generation of neglected children.

  Richard Linklater

  Children, Generations, Definitions

  "How Richard Linklater Turned a 'Crazy, Wildly Impractical Idea' Into an Oscar Front-Runner". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. June 27, 2014.

• I'm lucky that I get to jump around, do a big-budget comedy and then a smaller film. I don't even make a big distinction between them. No one believes this, but it's the same. I'm the same person, trying to make it work. I just love being on a movie set. I like making movies.

  Richard Linklater

  Believe, Love Is, Trying

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 14, 2006.

• I didn't have any set idea of what kind of filmmaker I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to tell stories that meant something to me, but I never said I was going to be the weird, avant-garde guy.

  Richard Linklater

  Ideas, Guy, Avant Garde

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 14, 2006.

• I'd be fine to make movies and have them never come out. But you have to deal with the business side. You can't get too emotionally invested, because again, you've got no control. There's going to be some huge film out that everyone goes to, and it probably won't be mine.

  Richard Linklater

  Sides, Film, Fine

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 14, 2006.

• There are so many great artists, I think, who kind of suffer from being icons, legends, acknowledged masters.

  Richard Linklater

  Artist, Thinking, Icons

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 14, 2006.

• You make a film and you can't really pick the way it's put to the public. You control the content, but the way it's marketed, or the poster, or what they're telling the public about the film, it's beyond you. Some people don't even see them, because they think they already know it. That can be frustrating, when something you've done is marketed in a way you think is antithetical to what it is.

  Richard Linklater

  Thinking, People, Done

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 14, 2006.

• It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism.

  Richard Linklater

  Writing, Criticism, Film

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 14, 2006.

• As we know from our government, the more power you have, the more of a bureaucrat you are, and the more ego you have invested in being right, the greater the odds are that you will never change your opinion.

  Richard Linklater

  Odds, Government, Ego

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 14, 2006.