Richard Linklater's 12 year epic

By Matt Holmes /

I'm a big fan of Richard Linklater's movies. Each and every new film he releases is innovative in it's own way (maybe apart from School of Rock) and I don't think there is another writer out there that has an ear for deep philiopsophical dialogue that he has. His innovative use of animation in A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life or the inspired way he shot Before Sunset though is nothing compared to his "epic" film. Apparentaly Linklater has been working on a movie that will take him 12 years to film, as he purposefully shoots just a little bit of footage each year with his cast to give a realistic documentary feel to his fictional tale about two divorced parents trying to bring up their kid. He has secretly being working on this thing for five years, conducting annual film sessions with his crew that includes his regular star Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette who herself recently appeared in Linklater's Fast Food Nation. Strange time to let out the cat out of the bag then, as we still have 7 years of filming to go but this is what he told MTV, "Every year, I get together with the actors and we film a little bit€ It's about a kid growing up €” that's the gist of it". Can't help but admire the ambition of a project like this as so many things have the potential to go wrong. I can't imagine how difficult it must be for the cast to get into the head of the character they are portraying year after year, with such a big time gap between each reel of footage shot. If anyone can pull off this kind of project though, it's gotta be Richard Linklater. As Cinema Blend have stated, it will be a real shame if this movie turns out like crap after so much time and effort has been put into it. Guess, we won't find out for at least another 7 or 8 years though. source - mtv, cinema blend