Richard Linklater's filmmaking choices seem to defy basic patterns of
authorship. From his debut with the inventive independent narrative
Slacker, the Austin-based director's divergent films have included the
sci-fi noir A Scanner Darkly, the socially conscious Fast Food
Nation, the kid-friendly The School of Rock, the teen ensemble Dazed
and Confused, and the twin romances Before Sunrise and Before
Sunset. Yet throughout his varied career spanning two decades,
Linklater has maintained a sense of integrity while working within a
broad range of budgets, genres, and subject matters. Identifying a
critical commonality among so much variation, David T. Johnson analyzes
Linklater's preoccupation with the concept of time in many of his films,
focusing on its many forms and aspects: the subjective experience of
time and the often explicit, self-aware ways that characters discuss
that experience; time and memory, and the ways that characters negotiate
memory in the present; the moments of adolescence and early adulthood as
crucial moments in time; the relationship between time and narrative in
film; and how cinema, itself, may be becoming antiquated. While
Linklater's focus on temporality often involves a celebration of the
present that is not divorced from the past and future, Johnson argues
that this attendance to the present also includes an ongoing critique of
modern American culture. Crucially filling a gap in critical studies of
this American director, the volume concludes with an interview with
Linklater discussing his career.
