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 LinklaterAll 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 LinklaterI 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 LinklaterEditing 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 LinklaterYour 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 LinklaterEverything 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