[Announcer] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith
is provided in part
by Hillco Partners,
A Texas Government
Affairs Consultancy.
And by Claire and Carl Stuart.
- I'm Evan Smith, he's
a critically acclaimed
academy award nominated
director and screenwriter
who's credits include
Boyhood, Dazed and Confused,
Bernie, and Slacker.
His latest film is
Last Flag Flying,
he's Richard Linklater,
this is Overheard.
(soft music)
(audience applause)
Let's be honest, is this
about the ability to learn
or is this about the experience
of not having been
taught properly?
How have you avoided
what has befallen
other nations in Africa--
You could say that
he'd made his own bed,
but you caused him
to sleep in it.
You saw a problem and
over time took it on and--
Let's start with the sizzle
before we get to the steak.
Are you gonna run for president?
I think I just got an
F from you, actually.
This is Overheard.
(audience applause)
Richard Linklater, welcome.
- Thanks for having me.
- Good to see you, welcome
back to another episode
of the Richard Linklater
fanboy half hour.
- Yeah, okay.
(laughing)
- This is a great film.
- Oh thank you.
- Please take this the
way that I intend it,
I keep waiting for
you to shank one.
I keep thinking at some point,
he'll make a movie
that doesn't work.
Do you feel as good, I
mean I loved this movie,
from your perspective do
you think this movie worked
as you wanted it to?
- Yeah.
Yeah absolutely.
- Does it always
turn out that way?
- Kind of.
- Yeah?
(audience laughter)
Okay, good night
everybody, thank you.
(audience laughter)
- You're always dealing
with a lot of things
you can't totally control,
but to my, from my perspective,
if I just, you know,
you do your best you
work really hard,
try to make everything
work and collaborate
and yeah I haven't done
a movie where I like,
there was some fundamental
flaw that to me
made the movie not work.
I mean people have
ones they don't like
or maybe characters
don't speak to them.
- Or like less.
- Or whatever, but
I always feel like--
- Generally, and so this one,
so this is, I have a theory,
we've discussed this before.
That you're always in a
one for me one for them
one for me one for them
mode with your films.
I know you don't
agree with this.
I look at a movie
like this and I think
- At all.
- This is a big
consumer facing film.
You have made big
films and small films,
you've made films
that were more for
a film lover audience and more
for a general consumption.
I looked at this and I thought
this is a general
consumption film.
- I think it could
be, but it has kind of
I don't know, it feels
like just the next film.
It's another film I tried
ten years to get made
and I wrote the
script so long ago.
- That's the story you tried
ten years to make this film?
- Yeah this was, I had
a script in '05, '06,
because it deals
with the Iraq war.
I think the world, my industry
and the world in general
didn't want to see
that subject matter.
Hopefully they're ready to
examine that now a little more.
But yeah it was a long way.
- But in part this
film is based on,
is it not based on the
novel by Darryl Ponsican?
- Yeah, yeah, Darryl Ponicsan.
- Ponicsan, pardon me, Ponicsan.
- Yeah, he wrote a
book in 1970 called
The Last Detail.
- Right, which then became
a Jack Nicholson film.
- Right, and then this
book is many years later
he kind of reactivated
those three characters
and wrote this book.
It was never gonna be a sequel,
you know the movie, because
we couldn't get those guys,
Otis Young had died, you
know things like that.
But together we
adapted it kind of
away from them specifically,
add a Vietnam backstory,
so it's really a--
- It doesn't play as
a sequel to anything
it plays as a movie
that stands on its own.
- Yeah, right, but
that's kind of it's DNA.
I mean, if you know that film,
film people know that film
but I think the general public
not so much.
- So let's do the story,
so the story is three guys
who served together in Vietnam,
the catalyst for
this is Steve Carell
who's character goes
and finds the other two.
- Looks them up literally the
stranger walking into a bar.
- And the bar owner happens
to be one of the two.
- His old buddy, who once
he realizes who he is
is like oh, you know.
- [Evan] He remembers Doc.
- He was Doc, the younger
guy, he was a Navy guy.
They were two Marines and
then they go look up Mueller
the third guy.
- Right, so the bar owner
is played by Bryan Cranston
and then the third guy,
Mueller, who is now a preacher
but he was kind of a
wild guy back in the day
is played by Laurence Fishburne.
- Yeah, could you
get farther apart
than a bar owner and a preacher.
But they were hellraisers
back in the day
and they all went
through something,
obviously, in Vietnam.
- So the Vietnam story
itself turns out to be
a little bit more complicated
than what it at first
appears to be and Steve
Carell has come to see them
because his own child,
Larry Jr. has gone to Iraq,
this is set in 2003.
- Yeah the first
year of the war.
- First year of the war,
and he's killed in the war,
and he's gonna, and
the body of his son
is gonna come back and
Steve Carell wants these two
Vietnam mates of his
to accompany him to
receive the body.
- And he doesn't tell
them that up front,
you know he's there
under mysterious,
it takes him a while
to even admit that.
But he doesn't even
know, probably,
why he's looked these guys up.
- Right, so their story
together turns out to be
a little bit different
than what you see.
And it turns out that
the circumstances,
without going into it, the
circumstances of the son's death
are also not as
they appear to be.
- Yeah, yeah, they've been
told, not the full story
not the full truth.
As war has a way of
doing that, doesn't it?
Not only during,
but before, you know
in the run up to
war, we're not told.
- Think about the Iraq war
as a great example of that,
right, all the reporting
on the Iraq war,
messages from people
in political office
about what we were doing.
- All suspect, yeah, yeah.
And you know,
Vietnam too I guess.
If you, you know,
Gulf of Tonkin,
you know there's a lot of
misinformation out there.
- This subject interested
you specifically why?
- I love these three
characters but I think
I grew up during the
Vietnam era, you know,
every night on TV, you know,
this many soldiers died.
You know it's always just
the backdrop of my whole life
up to the time I was about 14.
Watching the run up to the
Iraq war was really painful,
you know, I mean I remember
reading all the same reporting
and go this doesn't make
any sense logically,
we know even their neighbors
aren't afraid of them.
But if this is true then
maybe there is a problem.
It was just such, and just
to find out it was just
all misinformation and
then you look at the cost.
Look at every time I see a vet
walking on a prosthetic leg
or has their arm,
it just kind of,
I get a little angry, you know?
I just think that was
a very avoidable war.
And I think the culture kind of
came around to that eventually.
But in the leadup, that's
what was so frustrating.
To me personally, it was like,
oh if you're not, the way the
dialogue gets kind of hijacked
by you know,
warmonger mentality.
It's like if you weren't for
the war, you were unpatriotic.
Instead of like, can
we just look at this
and like analyze it, do we
have our best people on this?
Is this war really necessary?
- Well one of the things
about this film honestly,
and the timing of it is
that we're in a national
conversation about
what is and is not
patriotism at the moment, right?
And so the timing of this
film against that backdrop
is kind of uncanny.
- Yeah, we've seen
this, it bubbles up
fairly regularly, you know.
Who owns the flag,
what is patriotism.
You know it's usually
it's a good way
to shut down protests,
is to question their
you know, their patriotism
or just you know.
- But even the flag is a symbol.
I've heard you tell
the story of as a kid
being chosen to be the one
to raise the flag at school.
And having to learn
about all the procedures.
Talk about that.
- Yeah, I was very proud there.
I'd get to get out of
class a little early
and you know, take it down.
I had to get there
early and put it up
and if it started to rain
I could jump out of class
because the flag
couldn't get wet.
And now you're driving
down the highway,
there's these huge
flags just in the rain.
- [Evan] Car dealers,
you're right.
- You know, no one
cares about that.
But way back then, what
days to fly it at half mast,
when J Edgar Hoover died,
you know maybe we should
fly it at half mast.
- Right, but there was
also a period of time
where the flag was treated
as this sacred symbol
and then all of a sudden
it became running shorts.
- Yeah, by the early 70s,
yeah, shoes and you know,
you could kind of wear the
flag that was kind of cool.
But ironic I guess, but.
- We now seem to
be back in a place
where the flag as symbol,
people are actually
objecting to the
more casual use of it
and so we're back to that.
- Yeah we're back to kind
of that blind patriotic--
- To an earlier time.
The other thing about
this film I must say
that I thought sitting
there watching it,
uncanny timing was
this movie is coming
and you couldn't
have known this.
You had the four
service members in Niger
who were killed, and
the conversation around
specifically this brave
young man who was killed,
La David Johnson and his
body or the conversation
I should say about his
death between the president
and his widow, with the
congresswoman in the car
and then subsequently
the chief of staff
talking about, I
mean that is really,
basically, this movie.
- I know, we were making a movie
that we thought was showing you
what they don't want you to see
or really think about,
the behind the scenes.
Well yeah there's
a death over there
there's a body transported,
the family greets it,
there's a burial,
it's all that stuff.
- And there are questions
about what happened.
- Yeah, same thing.
Can you see the
body? No, you can't.
The poor widow's
going, I don't even
know if that's him in there.
- And then it turns out you say,
no in fact, if you
want to see it,
we advise you not to see it,
but you can see it.
And in this movie indeed,
same thing happens.
- Yeah, same
mysterious death under,
you know they're
saying it's one thing
it's something else.
- I mean it was eerie.
- It's PR spin.
- Considering the news.
- Yeah, like I said,
we thought it was
behind the scenes and
here the General Kelly's
kind of walking you through
the Dover Air Force base.
That whole experience, yeah it's
it's creepy.
- How much of what
we saw in the,
so there is a
section of this film
where they go finally
to retrieve the body.
So the portion that we saw,
the official you know,
go see the coffin
and all that sort of stuff.
How much is that literally,
did you research that
so that it's like mirror--
- Yeah, we had military advisors
we had guys who had
been on those kind of
mortuary escort details
and you just try to get
all that right, and you know, me
because I don't have
a military background,
I mean my dad was in
the Navy, Korean war,
but he didn't talk
about it that much.
And I was the era they
had just quit the draft so
guys my age we were like, war
was in the rear view mirror.
And it wasn't really a thing.
We were just kind
of free from that.
- I wondered about that as
I thought about this film.
You said your dad
was in the Navy.
- Everybody's dad had a
hitch in the military.
- Steve Carell's dad
was in World War II
was he not, right?
- Yeah.
- And Laurence Fishburne,
well he made Apocalypse Now.
- Yeah, he's in a lot
of military movies.
- In some ways, it's
the most authentic.
- Laurence even says, I served.
I wasn't in the military
but I kind of was.
- A lot of people today
don't have the experience
of having a connection
to the military.
I come back to John Kelly again
in the briefing room on
that day when he did that
and he said I'm only gonna call
on people who know somebody
or have a connection to
the military and it really,
this generation of people
there are not that many
with a connection.
- Big disconnect, you know,
post doing away with the draft
big disconnect between, yeah.
It's like there's a class, like
a warrior class has emerged.
- I want to talk about
the people in the film.
So you've not worked
with Carell before.
- No, none of these guys.
- Not worked with
Bryan Cranston,
not worked with
Fishburne, although you're
making another film
with Fishburne?
- He's in my latest film,
I shot a film this summer
that he has a part in, yeah.
- That will be out next year.
I think of Carell as a
particular personality
mostly from The Office
but from the persona
that he's developed.
I think of Fishburne
in a certain way,
and I think of Bryan
Cranston in a certain way.
And I felt like each was
playing against type weirdly
in this film.
- Something a little different.
- Like Bryan Cranston is
kind of the coarse wild guy.
- Yeah, he's insane.
(audience laughter)
- Is not Walter White, he's not
the Bryan Cranston we've seen
and I think same
with the other guys.
- He's so funny.
Bryan's really hilarious.
- God, he's rally funny.
- If I were to ask you which
of my cast members did stand up
in the 80s, you would
probably say Carell, right?
He's the funny guy.
Not true, Carell
never did stand up.
- [Evan] It was Cranston?
- Cranston.
When he was just
beginning he had
he did stand up.
- Well he was genuinely
funny in this movie
and I think the three of
them separately and together
worked extremely well.
- Yeah and they really
really respected
and loved one another.
Each one when I was in
the run up to the movie
they were like, they
really were looking forward
to working with the other two.
Lot of respect there.
- [Evan] And the
respect that they shared
was evident I think in this.
- They really bonded, which
was important for the movie.
- The kid who is in the
film who was serving
in the Iraq war with the son.
- Quinton Johnson.
- His name is Quinton Johnson,
who served with the son
of Steve Carell, the
character who was killed.
Wasn't everybody--
- Yeah, I have worked
with him before.
- He was, and boy he
was also just terrific.
- He's a wonderful
actor, you know,
he's starring on Broadway
right now in Hamilton.
- [Evan] I did not know that,
is that right, seriously?
- He's big time.
He was at University of
Texas Theater, you know.
Musical Theater Major.
- UT Austin, kid made good.
- Yeah, he was the
McConaughey out of that one.
- But I thought his,
he was memorable though
in your last film and he's
certainly memorable in this.
The two others I
wanted to just note.
Cicely Tyson is in this movie.
- Yeah, 92 year old Cicely.
- And it's one scene, Ms.
Tyson's in this one scene,
it's a pivotal scene in terms
of the narrative of the film
but I kept sitting
there watching it going,
that's not actually
Cicely Tyson.
So how did that happen?
Did you go looking for her?
- Well ultimately yeah,
I was just kind of,
it's a funny story, how does
someone end up in your movie.
I was just, it wasn't really
written for an African American
woman but I was kind of
day dreaming the movie
I was just kind of, we
were starting to rehearse
that part wasn't for a long time
but it was time to you know,
start thinking about casting
and I was just
imagining the scene
and the door opens
and the door opened
and it was Cicely Tyson's face.
- In your head?
- Yeah, and I said
oh something's
telling me something.
I said oh wow, so I
talked to Laurence
because he had worked
with her a couple times
and he said oh just go,
you know, look her up.
- [Evan] Just ask, right.
- I'm like, really?
You can just, yeah it's like.
You know ninety-whatever year.
They don't get a
lot of offers, but--
(audience laughter)
I thought she might want
to work with the people,
you never know.
So I kind of floated
the script to her
and sure enough, I went
and had breakfast with her.
- And she was good
with it, yeah?
- Yeah, yeah, she's great.
- Had she been
familiar with your,
I bet she's a big
Dazed and Confused fan.
- Yeah, big Dazed
and Confused fan.
(audience laughter)
No she was really really sweet
and really with it.
- You proved the
point though that
you get nothing in this
life without asking.
You know one day, it
pops into your head
I want Cicely Tyson
in the doorway.
- I think earlier I
would have thought
that wasn't an
option but it's like,
well yeah, what is some of the,
everybody actor or artist just
wants to practice their art.
Sure enough, she's
very political
she's got a lot of causes
she's very involved in.
But she wants to work, and in
fact she called me up with,
as a few months ago she had
a project she was getting
off the ground
interested in if I was,
you know she's hustling,
she's out there.
- Like everybody else.
- Just hustling got
that next thing going.
(audience laughter)
- Cicely Tyson
hustling is the thing
I'm gonna take away
from this conversation.
- There's a lesson there.
- The other person is the
one I actually did not know
and I went and
looked up his name
because I thought
he was so good,
his name is Yul Vazquez, right?
And he plays the marine
commander or officer.
- Colonel.
- Colonel.
- Yeah, Colonel Willits.
- Who is at the,
is at Dover, right?
To greet the families
of the fallen.
And I just thought he was
absolutely, he was fantastic.
- Oh yeah, he's intense.
- Where'd you find him?
- He's a Cuban American
actor I knew from
primarily New York
theater circles.
I'd seen him in a
number of plays.
He's in a lot of movies,
he was at a reading
a couple years ago, Ethan
Hawke and I were just doing
a reading of a script we're
working on and he was there
and I got to talking to him.
This guy's intense, you know,
I just really liked him.
He was funny--
- Well he was extremely
intense in this part.
- Very funny,
really great actor,
intense, all these things.
So again, you go to cast,
and like who could play,
I said you know, I'll call
up old Yul see if he wants to
play that part and he
had worked with Cranston
on other things so it was great
because they're kind of,
they've got each
others' number in this.
So that was fun that they
renewed their old, you know.
Rivalry or whatever it was.
- So this interested me,
come back to this question
of the timing of this.
I walked away from this thinking
this was a deeply
political film.
But I don't know you to be a
political filmmaker over time.
I can't think of another
film that you've done
that either,
intentionally or not,
may be perceived as political.
Do you view it that way?
- Yeah, I think we're definitely
in a political landscape.
I mean there's
nothing more political
than taking a country
to war, right?
And that's the world this is in.
So I think it's a
minefield of politics
and these issues of patriotism.
But I think it
acknowledged the political
nature of it but then
as a storyteller here,
I was just thinking I
want to really honor
my characters' points of view.
I want to, you know,
I have my own politics
we all do, but--
- Do you leave those
off the screen?
- You can't
completely, but I like
the subject matter
to me hit the.
The question I was asking,
can you be anti-war
and still love your
country and love your flag
and be patriotic.
And I think the answer's yes.
So to me that movie,
and honor those who
put their lives on the
line for their country.
Just, you know, the
unfortunate fact
that it's often
not reciprocated.
That gift that thing they're
sacrificing for their country
is not reciprocated you know,
from the top of the command
on down when you
hear Donald Rumsfeld
is using a signature
machine to send the letters
to the gold star
families, instead of,
he doesn't have time
himself to sign the letters.
That kind of, you know, that
tells you all you need to know
about how they view--
- Well these characters
though, in the film,
I think very, I think in
a really appropriate way
convey their ambivalence.
The Bryan Cranston character
particularly, you know,
is this rascaly guy.
He says at one point,
you know, we'd go again
if we were asked to go.
If we could go, right?
Men make wars and wars
make men is what he says.
It has this--
- He says that kind of
like in a sad way, you know,
this will never end way.
- But it's true, he
acknowledges what a conflict
you have within yourself about
this experience of serving.
- And I don't think
it's a contradiction,
like those could be the
best years of his life
when he felt the most
alive and you know,
he just felt that brotherhood,
that connection, his
life had a purpose.
And now as a self-medicating
PTSD survivor,
whatever long-term,
you know he runs
a bar and everything,
and he would.
Those were the best
years, but he can also be
extremely critical of
this war and the last one.
He's kind of earned
the right, you know?
I think no one complains
more about the military
than the military themselves.
They're in it, you know?
They're stuck in
this big bureaucracy,
everyone's a little screwed over
but that doesn't alter
their commitment.
- I want to, on this question,
we have a certain
number of minutes left,
I want to pivot a
little bit to a broader
conversation about you.
So you're in your fourth
decade making films.
- I guess so.
80s, 90s.
- For our consumption.
- Yeah.
- On this question
of earning the right,
you've earned the
right at this point,
partly because the amount of
time you've been doing this
and partly because of
the success of your films
to work with the people
you want to work with.
And I'm as interested in
the people we don't see
as the people we do.
You have a crew of
folks, a literal crew,
who you return to
maybe not every film,
but repeatedly from the
editor Sandra Adair--
- Yeah, we're in our 25th year.
- All the way down,
and I just wondered if
you could talk about that.
You know, you get comfortable
with certain people
as you get older, doing the
kind of work that you do.
And it extends into casting
of course you've got people
in the Linklater company
who appear in your films a lot.
- Well, you'd hope so.
That's the, if I had
one regret in this
life in film it's that
there's so many great people
that you don't, like a
cast, someone you work with,
and it's just great and
they don't find their way
back in another movie.
Because they're not right
or they're not the right age
or whatever.
- Can you give me an example
of somebody who would
fit in that category?
Somebody--
- Oh there's so many, a
lot of the Dazed cast.
I wouldn't have thought I
wouldn't have worked with again.
I mean I thought I
would have worked with
and I'm surprised I haven't.
- Right, some you have
and some you haven't.
- Yeah, and it just,
it's kind of like,
and that goes with so many.
But it's wonderful
when it does work out,
when they are you know,
right for something.
And the same with
crew, you kind of
catch a groove, maybe
a little decade plus
with some people
and then you know
some people's lives change,
they move, they have, you know.
Priorities shift and
you know so you're kinda
ships slowly passing.
Some people collaborate well
for long periods of time
sometimes you're one.
It's a pretty
freelancey business
but I do value the long term.
- Well one of the things
that I imagine must be true
is that as a creative person
you've got a lot of
focus you have to devote
to realizing your vision
and how great it is to
have people over here
who you can trust to
do all the other stuff.
And often that only happens if
you work with them over time
right, where you
just know how I work,
I know how you work, we
do this well together
and that's it.
- We were able to,
these, Last Flag Flying,
and the new one Where'd
You Go Bernadette,
the same department heads,
the same people we were
able to just take that into--
- [Evan] Just pick them up.
- Yeah, and I have
incredible trust with them
you know, Bruce Curtis
my production designer,
Shane Kelly my DP,
Sandra the editor,
Kari Perkins costume director,
Ginger Sledge producer.
- How long have you
worked with Ginger Sledge,
I mean that goes back,
that's got to go back--
- Over twenty years now.
Different capacities.
- Is the studio relationship
also at this point
stable from your perspective?
Do you feel like
something has happened
where that has leveled
out a little bit?
- No, the financing
thing's always a bit
catch a sketch kind of.
I'm very lucky right
now to have done
my last few films
with Annapurna.
- [Evan] Annapurna, right.
- And Amazon Studios,
with Last Flag.
And they give you just enough,
it's still we're
kind of low budget
by their standards but
just enough of a budget
and a schedule to
get it done properly
where I had movies in the past,
I would say like Bernie.
We didn't quite have the
budget and the schedule.
I mean we made it work,
but it's the difference
between shooting a film
in 30 days versus 22 days.
I like 30.
- If anybody's listening.
- Yeah, it's a little
nicer, but when you have,
when you're meeting
producers on your set
for the first time
who've invested 50 grand
in the movie and you have
30 whatever producers.
And that was a thrown together,
but you just do what you
have to do to get it made.
- I think all of us
though would sit out here
thinking well Boyhood
was this phenomenon.
And it had all these
academy award nominations
and it had this, you know,
everyone kept talking
about what an
amazing thing it was.
And you'd think, finally,
as a consequence of that
that I'm gonna get the
latitude to do whatever I want
with whatever money I want,
on whatever schedule I want.
And that's the romantic ideal.
- Yeah, but it, it
definitely helps.
You know, definitely I
think you always have a,
there's a temperature to
yourself in the industry
and I was happy to,
you know, after that
I've gotten three additional
movies made that were all
kind of difficult
to make so I'm--
- So maybe it did have
a positive aspect to it.
- Yeah, it definitely
doesn't hurt.
- What can you say
about this new movie?
What are you willing to
say about the new movie?
- Oh that we're editing now?
- Yeah.
- This was kind of
a mid-life movie,
you know with these
guys, middle-aged.
And I've done that
kind of much more
from a female perspective.
It's Cate Blanchett,
Kristen Wiig, and--
- Again, people you've
not worked with before.
- No, no, but I'm
very blessed to.
So yeah, it's a woman's
movie. Mid-life.
- So you're still
enjoying doing this?
- Yeah, are you kidding?
It's fun, yeah, I
can't think of any,
I haven't figured out
anything else to do.
- Well but, you know--
(audience laughter)
But I do think about the
challenges over the years
that you and other
filmmakers go through
and the fact that the
environment has changed,
studios have changed,
distribution has changed,
I mean you mentioned the
Amazon Studios piece,
I did notice that Amazon
was part of this last one
like you said, it's part
of the next one as well.
The introduction of those
players onto the scene,
- It's great.
- It actually creates
this whole other--
- Yeah, no, it's a good
time, I look around,
filmmaker friends
I would run into
maybe seven, eight years ago,
we look at each other we go,
is it, it's like, it's horrible.
You know like no one's funding
the kind of films we make.
And it was tough and now, I
go, can we just acknowledge
this is the good time,
because it's not gonna last.
It didn't seem like
it was the good time.
- It's kind of like a life
in crime or something.
You catch a streak and then
at some point you get busted
and you have to go
away for a while.
And you come back,
get the crew together,
and do some more jobs.
- But that's on the
front end, right?
But I actually, of
course, was thinking
as much about the back end
where all of a sudden now
there are so many more places
for us on demand to see films.
- Well studios are
making, technically,
less films, they're just huge.
But it leaves a lot of room
and there's a lot of people
filling that.
- Is that something you
have any interest in doing
if they came to you and
said we want you to make
a superhero movie,
would you do it?
- No, every now and
then, believe it or not,
something floats my way
but I never, I don't--
- It hasn't even appealed
to you just a little bit?
- No, no, I got too
many things I'm trying.
I'm probably not the right,
I've passed on a lot of movies
that I just, I go I'm
not the right person.
But the things that have
come to me outside myself,
you know I write a lot of
original screenplays and stuff
but the ones that I'm
adapting a book or something,
you know, you want
to feel you're the,
you have a sensibility,
like you're the only one.
Like I can tell this story
in a way no one else can.
You got to feel that way.
- Self-awareness
is a good thing.
- And then if I go, well
I think someone else
can tell this better than I can?
- Pass.
- Yeah, then what're you doing?
And I feel that way about
almost, so many things.
So but, the ones
that get me get me.
Those are the ones
I want to try--
- It's exciting to get to
talk about this stuff with you
whenever we get a chance to.
I appreciate you coming
over and thank you
and congratulations on the film.
- Oh thank you, Evan.
- Alright, Rick Linklater,
good, thanks very much.
(audience applause)
- [Announcer] We'd love to
have you join us in the studio.
Visit our website at
KLRU.org/overheard to find
invitations to
interviews, Q and As
with our audience and guests,
and an archive of past episodes.
- I feel lucky that I haven't
been that restless within it.
But I've always
been really happy,
I was just happy
to move to Austin.
That's all I wanted.
Happy that the
film studies doing,
happy to get to
make my next film,
I just keep it really simple.
- [Evan] Uncomplicated.
- Yeah, yeah, not get overly
ambitious or complicate things.
One film after the other.
- [Announcer] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith
is provided in part
by Hillco Partners,
a Texas government
Affairs Consultancy.
And by Claire and Carl Stuart.