Richard Linklater: Don’t Play It Safe
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
The Hitman rocks, Netflix complaints, Pharrell's toys, Wes Anderson's scheme, Sundance's Summers, and interdimensional animals.
Let’s go!
The defining element of director Richard Linklater’s career is exploding the boundaries of narrative storytelling.
This weekend, Linklater gives a screenwriting workshop for Screencraft, where he shares his philosophy and insight into creating great films.
Among my favorites of his work:
Waking Life (2001)
A stream-of-consciousness animated film with dozens of disparate animation styles
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
A dystopian film that descends into Keanu Reeves’ bisected brain by way of rotoscoping
Boyhood (2014)
Filmed in segments over a decade
Linklater's oeuvre is populated with perpetual slackers living on society’s fringes (don’t forget he directed School of Rock). And in these plots he finds a chorus of souls waiting to have their dormant hearts set on fire.
So it’s no surprise that his latest film, Hitman, premiering today on Netflix, which collides film noir and comedy, was no easy sell.
Linklater explained:
“You don’t get fired for doing a sequel or an origin story, something that already exists… You don’t get in trouble for what’s obvious and commercial. What changed is that films got greenlit by the marketing department and then it’s become really safe choices.”
Here’s the official synopsis for his anti-establishment film Hitman:
A professor (Glenn Powell) moonlighting as a hit man of sorts for his city police department, descends into dangerous, dubious territory when he finds himself attracted to a woman who enlists his services.
Hitman premiered at the Venice Film Festival to rave reviews, solidifying Linklater’s narrative risk-taking as a model for success.
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