Fun Fridays – Director’s Favourite Films – Richard Linklater

Hello Film Doctor friends

How was your week?

This week’s Fun Friday comes with the release of “Boyhood” – a 12-years-in-the-making tale of growing up, Richard Linklater‘s latest project.

So we turn to Mr. Linklater (“Before Sunrise”, “Before Sunset”, “Before Midnight“, “Dazed and Confused”, “Bernie”) for a list of cinema favourites (as previously selected for Time Out: Director’s Choice, Sight & Sound and Criterion)

“Some Came Running” (dir. Vincente Minnelli) – Apparently, quoted in an interview with Hermione Hoby as the film that changed his life: “I was 23 and I was really starting to dig into film’s history. I’d just moved to Austin, Texas, and I was voracious – I was watching maybe 600 films a year. And then I came across a campus screening of Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running. I didn’t take it on as a “Oh here’s a great film you have to see” – it’s just something I wandered into. It really resonated with me. It’s about the prodigal son come back to his home town and it’s about art and sex and who you want to be – all those important things. It’s a Sinatra vehicle but I love it because it’s about an artist who’s flopped, and that’s hard to depict. There’s the person Sinatra’s character, Dave Hirsh, kind of aspires to be – he had the chance to be the very greatest, but then he’s this boozing, gambler guy too, and Dean Martin, playing Bama Dillert, represents that world. I have different feelings about those guys every time I watch it. It’s like Citizen Kane – every time you see it it’s a different movie.” (R. Linklater for The Guardian, 11 April 2010)