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Director Richard Linklater takes journalistic approach to 'Bernie'
May 16, 2012|By Christopher Borrelli, Tribune Newspapers
Richard Linklater at 51 looks almost exactly like the Richard Linklater we met at 30, the young Austin filmmaker who, with his 1991 breakthrough, "Slacker," defined a sensibility (indie, navel-gazing, interlocking narratives) and a lifestyle.
Indeed, at first glance he appears to have never shaken that lifestyle: In Chicago the other day to shoot an episode of an upcoming travel series for Hulu, Linklater looked every inch the aging slacker. His hair hung in style-free curtains. A slight gut pushed at buttons of his untucked work shirt. His still-boyish face held a bemused expression more familiar on surf bums than acclaimed directors.
Add the Texas twang and he seemed like, well, all right all right all right, Matthew McConaughey's brother from another mother. Which isn't some random association: His follow-up to "Slacker" became McConaughey's laid-back 1993 breakthrough, "Dazed and Confused." They were simpatico. But then, the undercooked "Newton Boys" (1998) aside, the pair didn't shoot a film together for 14 years.
McConaughey went A-list. And Linklater went all over the place, making masterpieces ("Before Sunrise," "Before Sunset"), blockbusters ("School of Rock"), experiments ("Waking Life"), bombs ("The Bad News Bears" remake), investigative docudramas ("Fast Food Nation"). They didn't shoot another film together until just recently.
"Bernie," which opens today, is your typical Linklater film — meaning, it's unlike any other Linklater film. It's an adaptation of a 1998 Texas Monthly article by writer Skip Hollandsworth about a beloved, gentle East Texas mortician (played by Jack Black) who befriends a rich, mean antiquarian (Shirley MacLaine).
It would be unfair to reveal much more than this:"Bernie"becomes a crime story, Linklater ingeniously weaves together a Greek chorus of actual East Texas locals, and McConaughey — in a small role — plays a zealous prosecutor.
Q: Did you want to be a journalist? You have very journalistic streak as a filmmaker.
A: I suppose I do go through my life somewhere between journalist and documentary filmmaker. Like a lot of those people, I have endless files on all kinds of subjects I'm interested in.
It's all over the place, subjectwise. I'm always looking. I read a lot of nonfiction. I like investigative journalism.
I was on my high school newspaper staff, and I always wanted to be writer and thought the only way I could make any money at being a writer was by being a journalist. But remember, this was in the 1970s. I was trying to be practical.
Q: You definitely seem to have a general-assignment reporter's sense of curiosity.
A: That everything is a potential story? That's so true. My threshold for what is interesting is so low (laughs).
Three times a day I think to myself, "That could be a movie." I keep actual file cabinets in my office organized by subjects. At any time I'm probably reading research materials related to 10 potential films.
Q: So why not make "Bernie" as a documentary?
A: Nah. Because it's not the way my brain works, ultimately. But I approach things the way a journalist might. Though there is a journalistic quality in the interviews in the film, those are scripted, rehearsed.
I hate the word "mockumentary." The closest thing is maybe the way Warren Beatty used interviews in "Reds."
Q: Your dialogue is journalistic too. Rescripted quotes from your actors, right?
A: Yeah, I've been doing that for 20 years. I think I'm most creative when I let people write their own lines, when I have to think about the script as they see it. Ethan (Hawke) and Julie (Delpy), in "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset," sat in a room for three weeks and rewrote their entire scripts. I want to hear actual voices.
Q: How much of "Bernie" is your reporting?
A: The trial at the end, certainly. I attended it. I wanted to know exactly what was said, the feel for the courthouse. They didn't have enough food in the small town where the trial was set, so people sold food out on the street. I bought a pimento cheese sandwich.
You want to gather details. But so much more of it came straight from Skip's reporting, his interviews and the way he was able to piece his own work on it together.
Q: You still live and work out of Austin. Has that decision affected your career?
A: Sure. It's made it harder. But it was never a big decision. It was life unfolding. You get attached to a place, and now I am an "industry outsider."
If I lived in Los Angeles and could play golf with people, it would help. But I never wanted to be the guy who people came to because I was the last director they met. The thing is, even when a film, like "School of Rock," comes my way, I work fine within Hollywood. I make exactly what I want to make.
They don't want to take your film away from you, which means more work.
Q: Why has it taken you so long to work with Matthew McConaughey again? You seem so perfect for each other. He actually seems like you in a way. Or maybe you seem like him in a way.
A: I know. it's really true. We met 20 years ago this summer. We have done three films together. Our dads played on the same college football team at University of Houston in the early '50s.There is a link there, but, you know, you don't want to abuse a friendship just for a movie, and Matthew doesn't owe me a damn thing. For a while we talked about a (presidential brother) Billy Carter film. But it's not the kind of film that Hollywood likes to make now. Q: Actually, 20 years ago, this movie, "Bernie," would have been a wide release.
A: Oh, 12 years ago! Ten years ago! Around the time we first had a script, years ago, I thought it would be like a small studio film.
"Dazed and Confused," I made for a studio for only $6 million. "Bernie," I thought, might be like $12 or $15 million. But in the early 2000s, studios quit making films like this, so by the time I got around time to actually shooting, I had 22 days to do it and absolutely no interest from the industry.
Q: Does that disappoint you? You grew up in the 1970s when filmmaking for adults was the standard. Then, by the time you came into your own, smart movies for grown-ups kind of fell off.
A: I see it the other way, that I got a good run, that I was born at the right time. This is my 16th film. I caught the wave in the early '90s. And I heard the death rattle (laughs).
I am still making movies, but I guess we're just redefining what it means to make, and to watch, movies for adults these days. I remember around the time when I was making "A Scanner Darkly," a reality set in — "People will mostly see this at home."
Q: I still picture people reading this story in a newspaper.
A: Which is a healthy delusion. Creative people need to be unrealistic. By nature, they have to be.
