An interview with film director Richard Linklater by Nell Alk. Photos via Millenium Entertainment, Guest of a Guest, and I4U.
Monday evening marked the red carpet special screening of Bernie, a dark comedy written/directed by Richard Linklater and starring Jack Black, Shirley Maclaine, and Matthew McConaughey. Based on true events, the film, which hits theaters tomorrow, delivers an intimate reenactment of a series of unsettling (if also entertaining) events that transpired in mid-1990s small-town Texas. (Coincidentally, Bernie’s central plot feature is the macabre charade of having to make a dead person appear alive to the prying outside world, carrying forward the tradition of similarly named cult comedy Weekend at Bernie’s).
Working the step-and-repeat that night was of course the core cast, as well as additional notables like Ethan Hawke, Jonathan Ames, and Coco Rocha. But we lasered in on writer/director Richard Linklater, helmer of a dizzying array of divergent genre touchstones including Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, School of Rock, Fast Food Nation, and A Scanner Darkly. Still, his most impressive achievement, at least to us, is that he’s a committed vegetarian (“a PETA guy,” even). The self-taught director was generous enough to give us his insights about the industries of film (bravo!) and food (boo). Read More…
