RICHARD LINKLATER: DREAM IS DESTINY – First Wave of Sundance Reviews
The documentary RICHARD LINKLATER: DREAM IS DESTINY screened at Sundance yesterday and the first reviews are in. The doc, directed by Louis Black and Karen Bernstein, gives audiences the most complete portrait yet of Richard Linklater, writer, director and, yes, founder and Artistic Director of the Austin Film Society.
John DeFore at The Hollywood Reporter calls the film “One of the most enriching and enjoyable docs about a filmmaker in recent memory,” and gives us the following appetizing teaser:
“The film offers plentiful pre-moviemaking biographical material and spends enjoyable time thumbing through the spiral notebooks where Linklater kept journals full of big ideas. Offering wisdom any wannabe auteur should heed, Linklater describes his approach to the one-man production of his pre-Slacker feature It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (“It’s a long time before your technical skills catch up to your ideas.”) and shows the meticulous, Walden-inspired accounts he kept of how he spent his money and time in those days.”
The Guardian review notes that:
“The years which led up to him making Slacker are joyously depicted. In high school, Linklater loved baseball and at one point attempted to write a biography of Dostoyevsky. Then he decided to switch from being an aspiring novelist and playwright to making films. He made his own one-man productions, recording the sound on a Walkman. He moved to Austin and found like-minded friends who started a film club and would eventually become the crew and production unit behind Slacker.”
And finally, Joe Gross at the Austin American Statesman’s Austin 360 blog share the news that the film will be broadcast as part of PBS’ American Masters series after its theatrical run.
