Richard Linklater recently reflected on his career and spoke about his upcoming projects in an interview at the 69th BFI London Film Festival, according to The Hollywood Reporter. A part of its Screen Talks series, the director discussed his two new films, Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon, which screened at the festival simultaneously. Nouvelle Vague follows filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard during the making of his feature debut, Breathless, a seminal film in the French New Wave of the 1950s and 60s.
Blue Moon follows lyricist Lorenz Hart as he deals with the end of his partnership with Richard Rodgers on opening night of the composer’s next play, Oklahoma!, with new collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein II.
With the former, Linklater hinted at his interest in the project, saying,
“…it’s about a community. That’s what I think is so important for cinema. Films don’t just spring out of nowhere. Every filmmaker, even if it’s you and your handful of friends making the film, that’s a community…I wanted to show how it comes out of cinephiles [coming] together and [getting] excited.”
The filmmaker, in another interview, compared the directors of the French New Wave to the ones Linklater began his career with in 90s Austin:
“In a way, Nouvelle Vague is so personal. It’s about someone making their first film, drawing on the resources of community. When I was doing Slacker back in ’89, it was an outgrowth of the Austin Film Society…They were writers, but they were also future filmmakers. That’s how they saw themselves.”
With Blue Moon, life seemed to imitate art again for Linklater as he discussed reuniting with frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke, and how this time, things were different:
“It was such a challenge. It was like, Ethan had to transform…just everything about him had to change. I called it like, a kind of erasure of Ethan…he said if he didn’t know me so well and know I was there for him, he would have punched me… This was taking away everything and believing in this open wound of a guy.”
Linklater also talked about his long-gestating adaptation of the musical Merrily We Roll Along, about the rise and fall of a Broadway songwriter told in reverse order: It’s nine sections over 20 years, and we’ve filmed three of them…”
Blue Moon opens in theaters on October 24th, Nouvelle Vague on Netflix on November 14th, and Merrily We Roll Along sometime around 2040.
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