Richard Linklater in 2009 at the UK premiere of Me & Orson Welles (WENN)
Director Richard Linklater has a new film at Cannes: Nouvelle Vague. It’s about the making of Breathless, the 1960 classic of the French New Wave. (Until just now, I didn’t know that nouvelle vague is the original French for new wave.) Guillaume Marbeck plays director Jean-Luc Godard.
What a career Linklater is having. This is a good time to revisit his 2024 interview with The Guardian, with Linklater musing on his past career and future plans – including a version of the musical Merrily We Roll Along that’s going to take 20 years to make. (He already did a shorter version of this, shooting his 2014 film Boyhood over 12 years with actors Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette.)
Asked about planning 20 years ahead, Linklater – now 64, the same age as Elena Kagan and Fred Flintstone – says:
There’s a certain level of actor, Ben Platt, Paul Mescal, you don’t have to say: ‘Are you going to be acting in 20 years’ time?’ That’s who they are. It goes without saying.
…I have a picture on my wall of John Huston making [the 1987 film] The Dead. He’s sitting in a chair hooked up with an oxygen mask making his last film and I go: ‘That looks pretty good!’ I’m not even a smoker, so maybe I won’t need the oxygen mask.
Nice! Good luck to him. Looking forward to seeing Nouvelle Vague this year, and Merrily We Roll Along in the 2040s.
No trailer for Nouvelle Vague yet, but here’s a modern-day trailer for Breathless, which looks darn good. That soundtrack!