Richard Linklater – Dream is Destiny (Sundance Review)
On the heels of Richard Linklater’s highly acclaimed Boyhood, director Louis Black (co-founder of SXSW and the Austin Chronicle) captures his filmography and the struggles he’s endured with the film industry. It’s a little odd, though, that the documentary was made now considering Linklater’s career is still very active, but fans of Linklater or his films will likely enjoy this tribute. It’s clearly made with great admiration and respect for the filmmaker, but it doesn’t bring a wealth of new information to the table. Because most of Richard Linklater – Dream is Destiny consists of interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, the documentary seems most practical as a DVD extra feature (we’re looking at you Criterion).
Growing up, Linklater wanted to be either a novelist or a professional baseball player. But a semester in college spent watching movies, and apparently drinking a lot of Pepsi, transformed his career path into filmmaking. Black does a good job defining how unprecedented it was for the Austin-based Linklater to make an indie film like Slacker in a city outside of New York and Los Angeles. Though Richard Linklater – Dream is Destiny makes it a point to discuss the film industry as a whole, Linklater seems mostly content with it. It’s clear that he just wants to make films that he’s proud of, whether it’s a $30,000 film (roughly the budget of Slacker) or a $35,000,000 film (School of Rock), even though he confesses that a film like Slacker wouldn’t take off now like it did back in 1991. “It’d be just another indie film. Whoopee,” he admits.