Richard Linklater on the Status of His Paul Mescal Film, Working With Ethan Hawke and “Crap Distribution” for Indie Films

Richard Linklater on the Status of His Paul Mescal Film, Working With Ethan Hawke and “Crap Distribution” for Indie Films

Richard Linklater took the stage at the 69th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) on Friday to discuss his festival titles Nouvelle Vague, about how auteur Jean-Luc Godard directed his New Wave classic Breathless and starring Zoey Deutch; and Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke and Margaret Qualley; as well as his career.

Among broader industry trends, Linklater mentioned how it is “harder to get your film seen” these days due to the changing economics of distribution.

After a clip from School of Rock, he lauded Jack Black for being one of the few people who could pull off the scene of a musician pretending to be a teacher and explaining to pupils how he imagines his stage show. But he lamented that his very different Black film collaboration, Bernie, about a small-town mortician, wasn’t widely seen. “That one got really crap distribution everywhere,” Linklater said. “That’s the one thing about the indie world. By no fault of the film or your own, just the economics of the world can change. The film world can be very volatile.”

Linklater was asked about where production stands on his 20-year film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, starring Paul Mescal, Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein. “It’s nine sections over 20 years, and we’ve filmed three of them,” he said. “So we’re a third of the way through.”

Linklater also shared some personal worries from when he finished one of his well-known movies. “I was afraid for my mom to watch Boyhood,” he said of the film starring Patricia Arquette, because he worried about how she would respond when seeing parts inspired by his real life, such as the alcoholic stepfather. But “she didn’t seem to see it,” the director said. “My sister said: ‘Yeah, we went to therapy. You made a movie.’”

Of course, Linklater was also queried about his long-running creative partnership with Ethan Hawke, with whom he has made nine movies. Discussing Blue Moon, in which the star plays Lorenz Hart, the balding and diminutive lyricist of such hits as “Blue Moon” and “My Funny Valentine,” Linklater quipped: “I was a really nagging director. I mean, if he didn’t know me so well and know I was there for him, he would have punched me.”

After all, Blue Moon was about taking the actor’s natural appeal from him. “We were kind of dismantling Ethan Hawke,” Linklater recently told THR about the film and the role of Hart. “He’s really just a brain, a wit, a mouth, but in body form, that’s not his thing,” he explained.