Richard Linklater’s influence on independent American cinema is unavoidable at Sundance. His screening of Slacker at the festival in 1991 put him firmly on the map and the films he has brought to the festival since have all gone on to leave an indelible mark on US indie film-makers. With the success of Boyhood, it’s easy to forget that before that marathon 12-year project hit screens at Sundance in 2014, Linklater was out of vogue. Those wilderness years are one of the most fascinating elements of Louis Black and Karen Bernstein’s intimate portrait of the Texas film-maker.  The years which led up to him making Slacker are joyously depicted. In high school, Linklater loved baseball and at one point attempted to write a biography of Dostoyevsky. Then he decided to switch from being an aspiring novelist and playwright to making films. He made his own one-man productions, recording the sound on a Walkman. He moved to Austin and found like-minded friends who started a film club and would eventually become the crew and production unit behind Slacker.  With talking heads including Julie Delpy, Jack Black and Ethan Hawke, the film presents Linklater as a talented risk-taker who is above all hard-working, and who can turn films which are apparently about nothing much at all into international hits. After the success of Slacker, Linklater made Dazed and Confused, a studio film that would become a cult classic. Although now it seems like a staple of 90s cinema, Linklater recalls the trouble he had with the studio which didn’t push it as hard as he would have liked, an experience that left him feeling burned.  Black and Bernstein detail how he went on to make the Before trilogy and the fact that, unlike many directors, he actively seeks actors who want to collaborate on scripts and dialogue in order to reach something purer and more authentic. But that approach is what sees him clash with the industry. Delpy’s agent quit when she signed on for Before Sunrise because he thought she should have auditioned for Rush Hour 3. Linklater’s brushes with big-time studios, resulting in films such as The Newton Boys, saw him critically panned and sent the moneymen running a mile.  Yet Black and Bernstein argue that Linklater’s outsider status has made him the artist he is. It’s also what led him to conceive of and create Boyhood, a film that the documentary holds up as his crowning glory, a vindication of the indie approach. But it asks for a reappraisal of his earlier work: A Scanner Darkly, Bernie and Me and Orson Welles are all held up as better than they’re given credit for. What Dream is Destiny makes clear is that commercial success really isn’t everything, and that being a director who isn’t bothered by it can lead to a singular if perhaps undervalued career.
Documentary about the film-maker details highs and lows, from being toast of the indie scene to studio-assisted missteps, before his Oscar-winning renaissance