How come?
I dunno. I dunno. Micro, macro, it doesn’t really fit into my thinking. I mean I appreciate, I like it, but, I have an active camera.
You’ve got the guy in the film shouting about the corporate state and there’s no one really listening.
(Laughs) Yeah, but you gotta like his energy, though. You gotta like his intent. I can appreciate it.
So how did that scene come about, for example?
Well, that guy came out and auditioned, he actually runs a, he has an access show and a radio show. I would describe his politics as, well, libertarian. I like him, or I like him in the part. I mean, I talked about his piece and I like the idea of, the kind of, I mean, it’s old school, you know? Kind of analogue, you know, preach it from the bullhorn kind of thing. In the age of the digital revolution and the internet kind of thing, it’s kind of funny. Like you picked up on it, there’s no one on the street.
I guess the line between libertarian and anarchist is sort of, seems like right where we’re at right now. Any thoughts about that, about where that line is, cause you kind of touch on both.
I can state probably, talking about the US, we’ve got a christian theocracy, how close is that to libertarian anarchism?
I mean the freedom to hold guns versus the anarcho-socialist thing which is almost the opposite…
Could you be a – I think you could be a libertarian socialist.
Funny, cause the whole thing with Guy Debord for me, people pick up on the anti-corporate stuff but forget that he goes on about bureaucracy.
Yeah I know, like let’s form a bureaucracy to get rid of the corporate… It all comes back, it always comes down to structural. For some reason people, like, love their bureaucracy. Human efficiency model, things always fall into that.
Yeah, that’s like Canadian filmmaking – it’s more of a bureaucratic process rather than a corporate process.
Yeah, but, nonetheless, equally frustrating. Perhaps more frustrating. At least there’s something predictable about the corporate freemarket kind of thing. I dealt with Hollywood where it’s tried and true. I can predict it. I know how to find myself within that bureaucracy. Now a more subjective governmental bureaucracy, that’s not subject to free market conditions … you gotta know which way the wind’s blowing. You gotta have some way to get free of it. Pure money, you know, capitalism, you at least know the ground rules are kind of firm, however oppressive. You know what you’re getting.
I actually read your journal about making “Dazed and Confused.”
Oh that thing I about, god, a long time ago. Yeah that was a, some people say, oh, they f****d you over on that movie. I go, no they didn’t, that’s the whole point, I thought I was triumphant at the end to get my movie made within that horrible system. People took it like, because I had a rough time, I must have felt like, oh, I compromised the movie, but it’s not that at all.
It seems there’s been a scale upwards in terms of budgets.
Since when?
All the way through your films.
Really?
Kinda feels like it.
So you’re saying these last two films are more?
This last one feels like it’s more intensely produced.
(Laughs)
I haven’t seen Tape, so I know that one’s totally low-budget.
Actually, if you were gonna put a chart, it would look like a row of sharp teeth or a mountain range. But I know, once again, people wanna feel that there’s some progression. Actually “Dazed” was my second-highest budget ever. I could run through it for ya… funny how people project that onto it. They see the whole world as getting bigger and better and more expensive, whatever, but “Before Sunrise” cost less than half what Dazed and Confused cost. And that was my big Hollywood sellout film because it had Ethan, you know, Europe, cost 2.7 million. “Dazed” is my big studio film pinnacle. “Suburbia cost” about 1.2 million, “Newton Boys” was my biggest budget ever. Waking Life is less than “Before Sunrise” and then Tape is like a hundred grand. So I guess I couldn’t agree with you on the ever-ascending budget scale.
I guess it’s obviously a leap from uh, from “Newton Boys” to Waking Life and Tape to sort of do your own thing again…
I’ve always done my own thing. I wrote it, I wasn’t like a hired…
Get the rest of the interview in part four of LINKLATER ON LIVING THE “WAKING LIFE”>>>
