People think drama drives story, but I think the comedy is really the heart and soul.
Richard LinklaterTo those humans in whom I have faith; I wish suffering, being forsaken, sickness, maltreatment, humiliation. I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and the misery of the vanquished. I have no pity for them because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or notโthat one endures' . . . Remember, the passion for destruction is also a creative passion.
Richard LinklaterNormally 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 LinklaterMy 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 LinklaterWell, you have to keep your faith in the fact that there are a lot of intelligent people who are actively looking for something interesting, people who have been disappointed so many times.
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