>> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization, board certified attorneys in your community, experienced, respected and tested. also by hilco partners, texas government affairs consultancy and its global health care consulting business unit, hilco health. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation, and viewers like you. thank you. >> i'm evan smith, he's a iconic independent filmmakers and two time academy award nominee, just released boyhood garnering the best reviews of his career. he's richard linklater, this is overheard. >> there are two sides to

each every. >> i guess we can't fire him now. >> i guess we can't fire him now. [laughter]. >> the night that i win the emmy. >> being on the supreme court was an improbable dream. it's hard work and it's controversial. >> without information there is no freedom and it's journalists who provide that information. >> window rolls down and this guy says, hey, goes to 11th. [laughter]. >> rick, good to see you. >> thanks for having me. >> congratulations. seems like an jud understatement here at this point. the reviews are the best. no film you've made has gotten anything like this. >> the last two, bernie and before midnight i thought each one -- i thought it doesn't get any better than this. we're way up there. >> but this is really even -- >> even those we never got any bad reviews, but it's like some kind of, hmmm, this one is all in kind of -- this has an extra thing to it. >> well, that's the thing. i wonder if in some ways it's bad, because you kind

of go, well, it can't be as good as they're saying, actually, can it? [laughter]. i would be self-conscious. >> i'd go through the culture, if anything -- i'm starting to see the other direction. >> got to be bad. >> with the understanding they're not going to cancel the oscars and give them all to you. it does seem like it may be a good first next part of the year for you and let's hope that happens. >> if enough people see it. that's a weird world with its own rules. >> and politics. >> yeah, money, mainly. >> the genesis of this -- let's leave that hanging out there. [laughter]. >> yeah. >> the genesis of this film has sort of famously been written. it goes back 12 years, 13, 14, 15 years. >> yeah, probably. >> the story in miniature is what? >> probably personally like 14 or 15 years. , you know, i had been a parent for a while and i was just thinking about growing up, you know, like having a kid you have to kind of relive that -- you're so much in the mentality of your kid. as lorelei developed, she

was 5, 6, i said, you know, there's a movie here. i kind of want to make a movie about being that ainge age or what that's like, and why and -- -- i didn't have that moment where your iew stuck with the actor. you think of kids' movies a on a moment in their life because you can't just ask a 7-year-old to play a 10-year-old or a -- >> you're limited. >> with adults you have some leeway with makeup and whatever. kids, you're extremely limited, and i didn't have my moment. you know, all my ideas about that were -- they were just burst over all the years. i thought about it for years and i thought it would be a portrait of growing up but also parenting and all this, and i didn't really have that -- i call it my 400 blows moment where it's a film about one moment in time. i had already given up and i was about to -- i think i was going to return to my much earlier ambition to

like write a novel. i had some kind of experimental strange novel to write about growing up, and i serious -- seriously, i sat down to the keyboards having thrown away the film idea, returning to my 17-year-old self who wanted to be a novelist. my hands hit the keyboard, and boom, this idea came to me, proving i'm not a novelist, i'm a filmmaker. [laughter]. >> right. >> wait, that film, i could make it -- what if you filmed a little bit every year? what if you just filmed and waited and -- yeah, i could cover the whole thing. you know, i could -- it would just hit me in the tone of the movie. it was one of those flash moments. but looking back i have to go, after two years of thinking about it very specifically, i had solved my problem. >> right. >> you know, it's kind of like -- it sounds pretentious, but like a scientist, you think you're trying to solve something and maybe it comes to you in a dream, the sphor formula, but

you've been thinking about it and you're trained to do that. it's a very simple idea. why hasn't anyone done it -- >> the novelty, among the things that have been celebrated about this are the originality of the concept. no one attempted to do this. >> i have to say i've spent my whole adult thinking about cinema storytelling, particularly to do with structure and time and on the margins of it, and it hits me the same way i did for slacker, it's that same thing, why couldn't you tell a story that went interconnected between -- would that work? i haven't see seen so. so it was in the same territory. but the commitment to this would be much longer. the fun part is the idea and it seemed like such a broad cinematic canvas to try to express all my feelings about parenting and growing up, and i thought in one sitting you could have that experience. it would be -- i was seeing it from the viewer's mind. like one tone, nothing demarcating all the years passing, just your observations of everyone --

>> you know time is passing because the characters look a little different, seem older. >> notice a haircut and you say -- the way life flows, i think i'm trying to capture the way we process the world, you know, as we grow up, and it's very different from a kid -- for a kid than an adult. kids jump up. every year we shot -- in the early years lorelei was growing up year and he wasn't so much and she slowed down and he -- >> he caught up. >> every year one of them is growing. >> well, the other thing, the inverse of this is that life is not necessarily about these extraordinary moments that just go, blink. it's really more just a serious of things that are connected and amount to, in some, you know, your life. and this movie is really series of not extraordinary things, but reasonably ordinary things. >> yeah, it's really -- i would have called it like ordinary people, but -- >> that has been taken. [laughter]. >> yeah, it's really just -- you know, these little -- it's like -- but i really believed in the accumulation that would happen, this powerful effect

as the years went by, you would be that much more as a viewer kind of invested in this -- >> attached. >> -- this family and this boy in particular. >> right. >> and you'd kind of care. so the little moments would work. those little moments don't work in most scenarios because they're set up along different lines. they're trying to tell another story and these are just the little parts, you need a little bit of that but the real story is here. well, what if the story is all here? i i thought it would work on the viewer that way -- >> but it had to happen in such a way -- this is the part i found myself as i watched the film, part of me was focusing on the film and part of me was thinking the risk involved in taking this approach. you start this project back in '02, 2012, 12 years ago as we sit here. you don't know what's going to happen in the intervening years. you have casting decisions, story decisions, that are all dependent upon looking outbound. everybody is still

continuing to participate. everything effectively being the same, no major changes in people's lives or careers, derailing the whole project. ellar coltrane decides five years into this i'm done. what do you do? >> you try to create a work environment that he wants to return to every year. [laughter]. >> right, but as you know, the great artist can only control so much. >> he can only control so much. >> there are forces from the outside. >> there sure are. there sure are. that's for sure. >> at any point did this thing almost get derailed? >> no, we were never -- >> how is that possible? [laughter]. >> we were never existentially challenged in that way. we never had a big crisis. and it's so incremental. each year, if you jump ahead it seems enormous but it was like okay, we shot this year, what's a good time to shoot next -- it was just incremental collaboration, but it's designed to be collaborating with this unknown, random future, like that's part of what the movie is about. >> the inknown -- >> yeah, the un -- unknown, the uncontrollable. that's why no one does this because filmmakers are all

enormous control freaks. >> and studios, right? studios. >> yeah, everybody is. you have to control it, you have to manage it, and this was unmanageable. it was predictable, and yet unmanageable. >> unmanageable -- >> i thought, well, the kid is going to grow up. i don't know what he's going to be. time will pass, but it was putting a lot of faith and admitting your collaborator was this unknown. but looking at that as positive. looking at that to say i can't wait to see what kind of young man he grows into. who knows what the culture will give to us? that has to be the fun part, not the threatening part. you had to kind of look at it. that's a good way to look at life. don't be -- don't take crazy risks or anything but just look at it as an opportunity. you know, and i was so grateful to get a chance to make this movie, and that i just thought, well -- we were blessed. you know, it all kind of worked. we never had the huge crisis. it didn't happen. >> but you say life is

initially about taking risks. the reality is most worlds we all live if or work are or averse risks. >> for good reason. >> but the fact you were able to take this risk and i think the people you collaborated with were able to take it -- >> but in art it doesn't feel like a risk. it feels more like a compulsion. which is a good thing. if you're obsessed with something and you're kind of moved t to go in this direction you probably should, not necessarily in life, but in art, i think it's a good way to break new ground and, you know, articulate yourself. >> one of the things i loved about the story behind this movie that i've read so far has been the willingness of both patricia arquette and nathaethanhawke to be open to cs over the years. he's someone you've worked with a lot before. you're almost halves of a whole, it would seem, and, in fact, some of your big successes previously have been in collaboration with him. >> certainly. >> i'm not aware of you

working with her before. >> no. >> this is the first time? >> yeah. >> so why her and -- tell us about that. >> i had met her once briefly six years before we started working on this, just had an after -- at an after party to a premier in l.a., going out with a friend of mine. i talked to her for a while. i knew she had a king kind of young, when she was 20 -- she was kind of young, she was 20 when she became a mom. i always liked her as an as trees, she had this real quality. i called her up, i had a hunch. i talked to ethan, i said, what do you think about patricia arquette for the wife? he said, oh, yeah, she's so good. she's real. i called her out of the blue and we talked for two hours, started talking about her mom. she was in. she was like, artists, you know, they get it. wow, what an interesting way to tell a story. she just got into it on a theoretical basis. >> but in essence what you're saying is what are you doing for the next 12 years? >> yes, absolutely, yeah. [laughter]. >> sounds like a pickup line.

[laughter]. >> yes, pointed out the 12. yeah, it was also like, well, we're adults, think about it. you know, 12 years, it seems incomprehensible to a little kid but i was saying, i'm probably going to be trying to make my next movie, if we're here, you're going to be trying to look for a party and we'll have done this. and 12 years later we're saying, here we are. 12 years later, what are you doing next? what am i doing next? we could see it that way. >> how did the numbers -- i want to come back to her in a second but how did the number 12 end up being the number? did you know it would be 12 when you started -- >> part of the flash was also 12. it was the structural 12 of first the 12th grade, our public education school system, i felt that -- that's that 12-year grid you feel like you're placed on, or i felt that way as a kid. >> so that was deliberate. >> it was a sense i was given as a young child. [laughter]. like, oh, that's a long way. i'm going to live here around you guys and do all

that. >> 12 years. >> wow, and have to put up with -- oh, man, a lone time. [laughter]. >> so i imagine before you came out here as much as i was taken to ellar coltrane, we'll come to, theoretically will be a star because of this movie, as much as it's centered around him and the film is called "boyhood," it's as much patricia arquette's character story, it could be mom hood as much as boyhood. was that deliberate on your part or did that evolve organically. >> it was always going to be a portrait of a very complex strong single mom, i felt, and patricia got that and she jumped in. and so yeah, it could be called mother and son, it could be called motherhood. "boyhood" wasn't always our title. we were always calling it the 12-year film or growing up. titles came of came towards the very end. >> i don't want to give anything away but the last line of the film, the last

words spoken themselves could have been the title of the movie. >> yeah, it was actually for a little while. >> we don't want to tell people what that is, right? >> oh, it's -- we're sort of a spoiler-free movie. no one thing happens big enough that -- >> so always right now. >> yeah, somewhere close -- >> always right now. >> the notion that it's always now. >> i walked away from that thinking, that may be in a movie that's pull of poetry the most poetic thing in the whole movie and it might have been a great way to cast what the movie -- so ellar coltrane, you're looking for somebody to play this part. again, assuming that the 12 years will be the length of time and you're going to need the commitment of somebody. you could have gone and gotten the equivalent of dakota fanning, some professional child actor who would have been -- but you went and found somebody who had really not been -- >> ellar actually -- he was like a texas version of a child actor. he's not l.a., you know, in that way, but he had a head

shot and an agent and a resumé. he had been in a few -- he had been in one indy film that a couple colleagues of mine had worked on and they said, this kid is pretty interesting. we all liked him, he was good to work with. >> but not a big star. >> no, absolutely not. he wasn't a cute kid from a tv show or anything. he was just a local -- local kid, and it was such a huge decision. >> well, the whole movie, come back to the fact it could be motherhood or whatever else, at the end of the day it is boyhood and at thened oatthe end of the day the is about him and it's on his shoulders. >> it's a lot to put on a 7-year-old. [laughter]. >> yes, it is. >> you don't really talk of it in those terms. >> but that's true. >> but everyone who came in for casting, my casting director, beth sepco, we had a ton of kids, actors, met a lot of them, 6 or 7-year-olds in the state at that time, and he was the one -- liked the way he thought. he was the least -- a lot of kid actors can be kind of

cute, you know, they've been rewarded for like pleasing parents and being kind of cute kids. he wasn't really like that. he didn't care what you thought -- >> but not necessarily obnoxious to a fault. he was very even. >> yeah. >> very even keel. >> yeah, just his vibe. it's funny to make that leap with someone, but i just kind of liked his vibe. i could relate to him in some way. he just liked to talk about, you know, music and movies and, you know, what was important to him, and he was kind of searching and -- >> your kind of guy. >> yeah, kind of my guy. he grew up to be like he would have fit any of my other movies. >> i watched the back half and as he grew into his body and his looks is you couldn't have known it when you set it but he looks like ethan hawke's son. >> and he has that rock star quality. >> this is a perfect -- you could see the dna, right? >> we were lucky, because you never know, people go, what if he would have grown up to be this hideous guy?

[laughter]. you never know. you in ever know. >> isn't that life, you know? >> we got lucky. >> isn't that life? >> yeah. >> i wonder if you'll permit me to move away from "boyhood" and do a couple other things. as we sit here in the summer of 2014, if i'm doing my math properly we are exactly 25 years from when you were shooting slacker. >> yeah, summer of '89. >> there are -- we had a conversation about this, there are aspects of "boyhood" that feel like scenes from "slacker." they're not -- >> they're definitely related. >> so all this time had passed and you've been in the film business in one fashion or another -- okay, so what's the same and what's different? go back then and come forward to now. how -- >> in my thinking about film or my life or -- >> yeah, start there, that's good. your thinking about film, working within the business. you're celebrated for remaining yourself over all these years, unlike a lot of other people. >> well, i don't know, i think i'm -- i acknowledge

that we're probably ourselves whether we like it or not. we're sort of stuck with ourselves. >> some people are less happy than about that than others. >> i made peace with my limitations a long time ago and try to work within those. this film is related to "slacker" and it came in a similar aha moment. similar. i see them as bookends, and if you think at childhood, where he leaves the movie, slacker fills the gap between parenting and this and in my own little cinema universe they're in there together. these kind of time structure projects. >> one thing that strikes me similar then and now is you're continuing to do the films that you want. in some ways, despite the great reviews, you're not making the movies for the reviewers. >> no. >> you're not really making the movies for the studios. you're making them for us and you're making them for you. >> you're making a movie you want to see and in your best-case scenario others

want to see it or get to see it. so that's always great. >> a lot of directors have a lot of artistic integrity and great ideas, nonetheless have to live within the boundaries. they have to color within the lines. >> yeah, and i've been in that position too over the years. when you're working with a studio you sort of accept the rules, and that can come from anywhere. just whatever story you're trying to tell. you have to think of the most effective way to tell it. and i've never been in the position where i was having to compromise what i felt, told the story the best -- to meet some other, you know, strange demand. i mean, it's probably the subject matter itself. you know, when i'm making school of rock, i'm thinking, oh, this is a commercial film. if we do it right it's a commercial film. but i think that way about every film i do. even the most odd film i say, if we realize the potential of this i think it will be -- >> it will get hot -- >> yeah, i love the optimism that courses through the whole, you know, film industry because everyone thinks that and you have to

be -- >> this is the one. >> you have to be just delusional enough to motivate yourself and you get to the end and go, yeah, i love it but no one wants to see it. [laughter]. i found myself this time going, i love it and i think people want to see it. >> so far. >> yeah. >> this is where viewers matter because as much as they want to listen to you saying this is a good movie, if every single reviewer says you have to see this movie they're more likely to go. >> yeah, and there's a tone that starts -- there was a tone before we finished. we tried to work in private, as much as possible, but it got announced -- nothing is private. yeah, it's not. it's not, and it became that way more. even in '02 there was a little bitty trade article about the movie, someone agent blabbed. i really wanted to keep it quiet. so over the years when i've had other movies come out people have asked about it and as we got closer to the end, i think ethan last fall, he had just finished, and he was doing press for a movie and i don't think he wanted to -- he'd rather talk about what he just came off of. and so he started talking about this.

he said, i just finished, it's going to be this -- and so the word was kind of out. >> nothing you can do about it. >> okay, then, well, i guess we're soon to be public anyway. so good. so we showed it at sundance, but there was sort of an anticipation for those who knew about it, like what the hell is this going to be? you know, this rumored long-term project. >> the great thing about it is it has a narrative through line that's different from most movies and if you have to differentiate yourself from everything else, not bad to do it this way, something on the -- >> and i wouldn't have predicted -- i've been sort of kind of grooming ellar for the response, but i was trying to lower his expectations because he's putting his whole life into this, and at one time i said, ellar, describe this movie to me. what's it about? and, you know, about two paragraphs in i said, okay, stop there. that's why no one is ever going to see this movie, because you can't -- if you can't describe it really briefly -- and i completely was discounting the idea for the -- i was like the content, whoa, a kid wrote -- but it's like a

movie shot over 12 years. i never thought the structure of the movie -- >> would be the pitch. >> would be the story. >> would be i've never seen this. so we find ourselves in a very simple way with a pitch tto a thing that sounds compelling because you've never seen it of about. so i wasn't really thinking about that. >> so the mechanics of this -- we have a couple minutes left, to the uninitiatinitiated. this film is now out. >> yes. >> are there people now kicking themselves who had an opportunity to be involved with it on the studio end or the financing end or whatever else who are now saying, god, i wish i had actually -- can anything happen now to blow this up to be a much wider release or can -- will you have the last laugh with people who may have doubted the wisdom of this decision? >> i didn't really take -- it's not the kind of thing you shot around, it's such a weird ask. i went to the company -- at that point i had made my last two films that they had helped finance, "waking life" and tape. i see it as part of a big

media company and they think long-term, most producers have to think short-term -- >> make a buck -- >> long haul, relationships meant something and they had had two good experiences with me. so when we started they weren't a distributor. they were just a production company. >> long ago. >> and then they evolved into a distributor. i thought we would be looking for a distributor but they ended up the distributor because they had put in the 12 years also. so it made sense. so they're kind of a smaller distributor. it's not one of the big ones, but they're doing a good job. i think they're running with it. we're right now -- we just had opening weekend, and just in new york and l.a., but i think they're planning -- they're planning the long haul. they have a plan -- >> the first screen take, which is one of those variety magazine concepts is off the charts great. >> i know. >> that bodes well for what happens. >> i'm not an expert on that stuff. i don't spend my time analyzing that, but when bernie opened two years ago, we were about 39,000 screen and they said that's the

biggest indy opening of the year. this is double that. it's 77, i think, or something. >> so in the last minute -- >> people want to see it. >> mr. innovative, what are you going to do to top this? [laughter]. do you have something else you've been doing you want to tell us about? >> wow. wow. i like your secret project. >> have you got another secret project? >> you got anything? make something secret? >> what are you going to do. the college movie you've been talking about for some time, is that still hanging out there. >> yeah, i think i actually get to do that, perhaps. seems to be coming together. i want to shoot it this fall, hopefully in austin, and it's strangely both -- it's a sequel to two movies. sequel. >> spiritual sequel. >> [inaudible] is not in it, unfortunately. and it's also a continuation of "boyhood." like the first weekend of college -- >> it's right there, in some ways. >> ellar -- this is the beginning of the movie i'm trying to make when he goes off to college. this is where this movie

starts in another universe that i'm trying to get this -- >> so that may happen next? >> may happen next and i have some other things i've been working on for over ten years, writing and -- >> the rick thing. >> for a long time. sometimes it gets made, sometimes it doesn't. so who knows. >> well, it's -- yea for yo you. >> thank you very much. >> congratulations. >> good talking to you. >> and you too. i hope it's as much success ag it appears to be. >> you just roll with it. i can't do much about it. [laughter]. >> well, we can. [applause]. [music]. >> we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our web site at klru.org/overheard, to find invitations to interviews, q&as with our audience and guests and an archive of past episodes. >> it was when i realized, like, okay, i love film, okay, well, what kind of films do i want to make? and, you know, you have these great ideas, all the great films you've seen and you're thinking big, it's when i started thinking in

front of me, my own perceptions of the world and my own life and what was around me was my subject matter. you know, like that was worthy of being a film. i guess that's the key. [music]. >> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization, board certified attorneys in your community, experienced, respected and tested. also by hilco partners, texas government affairs consultancy, and its global health care consulting business unit, hilco health. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. and viewers like you. reynolds foundation. and viewers like you. thank you. garrison keillor: a native of michigan,

bob hicok worked with cars and computers before becoming a teacher. he's the author of five books of poems, one of which, animal soul, was a finalist for the national book critics circle award. he says, "i can't separate what's serious "from what's funny. "i'd like the mix in my poems to reflect a range of emotions and ideas." this poem is called "calling him back from layoff." i called a man today. after he said hello and i said hello came a pause during which it would have been confusing to say hello again so i said how are you doing and guess what, he said fine and wondered aloud how i was and it turns out i'm ok. he was on the couch watching cars painted with ads for budweiser follow cars painted with ads for tide around an oval that's a metaphor for life

because most of us run out of gas and settle for getting drunk in the stands and shouting at someone in a t-shirt we want kraut on our dog. i said he could have his job back and during the pause that followed his whiskers scrubbed the mouthpiece clean and his breath passed in and out in the tidal fashion popular with mammals until he broke through with the words how soon thank you ohmygod which crossed his lips and drove through the wires on the backs of ions as one long word, as one hard prayer of relief meant to be heard by the sky. when he began to cry i tried with the shape of my silence to say i understood but each confession of fear and poverty was more awkward than what you learn in the shower. after he hung up i went outside and sat with one hand in the bower of the other

and thought if i turn my head to the left it changes the song of the oriole, and if i give a job to one stomach other forks are naked, and if tonight a steak sizzles in his kitchen do the seven other people staring at their phones hear? (applause)