Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater continues to navigate his way through the worlds of independent film and the Hollywood industry. After leaving Sam Houston State University, Linklater worked on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and then moved to Austin where he began making films throughout the late 1980s. His first film to receive a distribution deal was Slacker (1991) about the subculture of Austin youth. This and other Linklater films explore the concept of the idle mind – both the positives and the negatives. In 1993, Linklater worked with Universal Pictures on Dazed and Confused, which earned critical praise, as well as Before Sunrise (1995) and then the follow-up Before Sunset (2004), the latter garnering him an Oscar nomination for screenwriting. Linklater used digital video for the making of Waking Life (2001) which employed “rotoscoping” - a technique that introduces animation to the film's frames after the live-action portion has been shot. This technique was used again in the recent A Scanner Darkly (2006). The Newton Boys (1998) represents a return to major studio filmmaking, along with the much more successful School of Rock (2003). His latest film, Fast Food Nation (2006), is an adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s book about the fast food industry.
