Richard Linklater has been a powerful force in American independent cinema from his low budget Austin comedy, Slacker to his elegant, Oscar-nominated Blue Moon (2025). He merits study as a filmmaker in that he is at once comparable to an Hollywood studio director like Howard Hawks (the range of genres, the cohort of steady collaborators, the emphasis on the interplay among actors), and to a tradition of recent, more contemplative and phenomenologically-concerned American filmmakers, including Terence Malick and Chloe Zhao, who are explicitly attuned to spatiotemporal experience and the wonders of the everyday world. His filmography encompasses drama, comedy, non-fiction, science fiction, animation, and a musical (in progress). Films include the "Before" trilogy in collaboration with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, such commercial hits as School of Rock and Hit Man, animated films including a philosophical exploration "The Waking Life" and A Scanner Darkly, the best adaptation of Philip K. Dick; and movies about movies, such as Me and Orson Welles and the recent Nouvelle Vague. Linklater's engagingly narrative films, humanist and empathetic, are equally interesting as investigations of the lived experience of real locations and passing time. Before Sunrise takes place in real time, while Boyhood, a coming-of-age movie, was made across twelve summers, with the cast aging visibly as the story unfolds.
5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP)
Richard Linklater has been a powerful force in American independent cinema from his low budget Austin comedy, Slacker to his elegant, Oscar-nominated Blue Moon (2025). He merits study as a filmmaker in that he is at once comparable to an Hollywood studio director like Howard Hawks (the range of genres, the cohort of steady collaborators, the emphasis on the interplay among actors), and to a tradition of recent, more contemplative and phenomenologically-concerned American filmmakers, including Terence Malick and Chloe Zhao, who are explicitly attuned to spatiotemporal experience and the wonders of the everyday world. His filmography encompasses drama, comedy, non-fiction, science fiction, animation, and a musical (in progress). Films include the "Before" trilogy in collaboration with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, such commercial hits as School of Rock and Hit Man, animated films including a philosophical exploration "The Waking Life" and A Scanner Darkly, the best adaptation of Philip K. Dick; and movies about movies, such as Me and Orson Welles and the recent Nouvelle Vague. Linklater's engagingly narrative films, humanist and empathetic, are equally interesting as investigations of the lived experience of real locations and passing time. Before Sunrise takes place in real time, while Boyhood, a coming-of-age movie, was made across twelve summers, with the cast aging visibly as the story unfolds.
Offered in Autumn 2026 at Stanford University.