Who is the most representative Sundance
alumnus, Richard Linklater or Kevin Smith? Both have brought many projects to
the festival and are represented again this year in some form. It is a close
call, but the Oscar love shown for Boyhood
(which had a special sneaky screening last year) tips the scale to
Linklater. Austin’s favorite filmmaker is affectionately profiled in SXSW
senior director Louis Black’s Richard
Linklater—Dream is Destiny, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Linklater came along with Slacker at precisely the right time. It
was practically a work of outsider cinema, but it had enough polish to catch
the rising indie wave. He thought he was going studio with Dazed and Confused, but the studio changed its mind. Nevertheless, audiences
gravitated to his retro-Texan answer to American
Graffiti over time. He also started working with a cat named McConaughey.
Soon thereafter, he began another fruitful
long-term association with Ethan Hawke on the first of what he would jokingly
refer to as the lowest grossing trilogy of all time. However, audiences caught
up with the “Before” films into time to make Before Midnight a pretty impressive performer at the specialty box
office. And then there was Boyhood.
Frankly, even IFC’s Jonathan Sehring sounds
a little surprised his twelve year investment paid off. In some ways, his
interview segments constitute another victory lap, but he is entitled,
considering all the heat he took from the company’s finance people. There is
indeed a good deal of Boyhood in Destiny, but it was twelve years of his
life.
Generally, Black reasonably weights
Linklater’s filmography, but the continued short shrift given to Me and Orson Welles feels unfair (one
critic describes it as “the one that got away”). On the other hand, it is hard
to blame him for sweeping Fast Food
Nation under the rug (but honestly, his Bad
News Bears remake wasn’t that bad. Really, it wasn’t).
Filmmaker profiles like Destiny or Tessa Louise-Salomé’s Mr. X: a Vision of Leos Carax are sort
of tricky to review. For those of us covering festivals, they are nice palate
cleansers. We can revisit some films we enjoyed, file away some insights for
the next time we review their work, and then move on to another screening.
However, we probably would not be so satisfied with the experience if we had
paid the full ticket price.
