'I love living inside a project for a long time,' says Richard Linklater

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Richard Linklater has made several films that have left a lasting mark on pop culture - "Slacker," "Dazed And Confused," "School Of Rock," the "Before Sunrise" trilogy. His movie "Boyhood" was groundbreaking. Linklater shot the film over the course of 12 years, so we literally see all the actors - and, therefore, the characters - get older. He's doing the same thing now with his film adaptation of the Sondheim musical "Merrily We Roll Along," which takes place over 20 years. So that is a very long ambitious project that I am very excited about.

Now Linklater has two new films, both about brilliant but difficult artists. "Blue Moon" is about the great lyricist Lorenz Hart. The other new film is "Nouvelle Vague," and that's French for new wave. It applies to the new wave of French filmmakers in the late '50s and early '60s who were experimenting with new ways of telling stories on film. Linklater's "Nouvelle Vague" is about the making of the landmark new wave film "Breathless," directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

Let's start with "Blue Moon." Lyricist Larry Hart and composer Richard Rodgers wrote some of the best-known songs in the American songbook, like "Blue Moon," "Manhattan," "My Funny Valentine," "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" and "Where Or When." But Hart had become an unreliable songwriting partner. He drank too much. He didn't show up on time and missed deadlines. No longer able to count on Hart, Rodgers teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. Together they wrote "Carousel," "South Pacific," "The Sound Of Music" and more.

"Blue Moon" is an imagined version of what happened on the opening night of Rodgers' and Hammerstein's first show together, "Oklahoma!" when after the show, everyone heads to Sardi's. Hart is feeling rejected and deeply wounded because Rodgers is no longer working with him. He's bitter but sarcastic and funny. He thinks "Oklahoma!" is corny and sentimental. In this scene, he's talking to Rodgers about doing a new musical together about Marco Polo that would be a send-up of musicals with a hard-earned joy. They disagree about what makes a show too sentimental. Ethan Hawke plays Hart. Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLUE MOON")

ETHAN HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) I mean, Marco Polo is going to be a show about joy. But a hard-earned joy, an unsentimental joy.

ANDREW SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Something wrong with sentimental?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Well, it's too easy.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) "Oklahoma!" is too easy? The guy actually getting the girl in the end is too easy? You've just eliminated every successful musical comedy ever written, Larry.

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) It's too easy for me.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Did you hear the audience tonight?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Yes.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Sixteen hundred people didn't think it was too easy. You telling me 1,600 people were wrong?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) I'm just saying you and I can do something so much more emotionally complicated. We don't have to pander to what...

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) So Oscar and I are pandering?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) No, I didn't say that.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Irving Berlin is pandering?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) I love Berlin.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) "White Christmas" is pandering?

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Well, I don't believe "White Christmas."

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) OK.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) Well, maybe audiences have changed.

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) Well, they still love to laugh.

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) They want to laugh but not in that way.

HAWKE: (As Lorenz Hart) In what way?

SCOTT: (As Richard Rodgers) In your way. They want to laugh but they also want to cry a little. They want to feel.

GROSS: Richard Linklater, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Congratulations on your new films.

RICHARD LINKLATER: Oh, thank you, Terry. Great to be with you.

GROSS: Two of them (laughter).

LINKLATER: It wasn't planned that way. It's just they sort of, you know, it just happened.

GROSS: So "Blue Moon" reads like a play. It's set in one room, in the bar at Sardi's. And all the action is in the dialogue and the expression on people's faces and their body language. How did you make it into something that actually feels like a movie?

LINKLATER: You know, you think, oh, it's a one-room, it's largely a one-room film. But that room isn't just any room. It's Sardi's. And there's a coat check room, there's a bathroom, there's a bar. There's all these areas we explore and we kind of drift around. And we're getting 90 minutes in Sardi's. It just happens to be a historic night in, you know, musical theater history, the opening of "Oklahoma!" But you're seeing it through Lorenz Hart's eyes.

GROSS: It makes me sad that Hart, who was so brilliant, lived at a time when if you were gay, as everybody thinks he was, you had to hide that from the newspapers, from the gossip columns. You had to hide it from the public. And on top of that, he was very short. He was like 5 feet or under.

LINKLATER: Yeah, he was just, you know, diminutive, tad under 5 feet tall, like a lot of people. But we live in a pretty heightist culture. I was working with Ethan Hawke on this part, who's right about 6 feet tall. For him to lose a foot of height and look up at the world, I could just see him transform as a character. It was like, oh, my God, it's a different world looking up at everybody. So that was very important for us, to get him at that level. But like everybody back then, if you were gay, it was an underground kind of world. Your sexuality was against the law. You could be arrested. The way it was treated, no one was really out. But interestingly, in the art, everything was kind of coded. So those lyrics are there to be kind of enjoyed when you know that code.

So he was definitely, like everyone of that era, it was a bad time to be born. But for his gift in this world of lyrics and to write so many songs, he was at the right time, when they were doing so many shows. He and Rodgers wrote 1,000 songs. Could you imagine? He got paid to write 1,000 songs for theater and film, too. So it was an incredible time to practice his art. That was the good news for Larry. The bad news was on his personal front. Yeah, he really struggled and probably never had, you know, as he says in "Blue Moon," a love of his own. So that's the sad part. But that's where those heartbreaking lyrics come from. Yeah.

GROSS: So at least the way the story is told in the movie, Hart thinks "Oklahoma!" is corny and sentimental and that the lyrics aren't very good. The opening scene, the first words we hear out of his mouth are really funny. We're in the theater on opening night of "Oklahoma!" The cast is singing the song "Oklahoma." And as they sing we know we belong to the land, Hart says, here comes grand. And of course, the next line is...

LINKLATER: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...And the land we belong to is grand. So it's a great opening for his character.

LINKLATER: Yeah.

GROSS: The way the character is portrayed in the movie. So there's this ongoing argument between Rodgers and Hart in the movie about what's sentimental and what's real and authentic in terms of what humans really are like. What's pandering and what's earned? Are these questions you've had to ask yourself in the making of your movies?

LINKLATER: Yeah, I think it's hard to define taste. Like, I love Rodgers and Hammerstein, don't get me wrong. Like I said, I grew up with it. But I remember discovering Rodgers and Hart - this is in my 20s - via Ella Fitzgerald's songbook album. And I was like, God, these are great. I just started to really appreciate the songwriting. And I didn't even know Rodgers was the same Rodgers that I had kind of grown up with in the Hammerstein era - that these songs were just so different, the lyrics were so witty, dark. And they were edgy and funny and biting and beautifully romantic and all that.

They weren't, you know, the soaring, kind of aspirational lyrics, maybe, of Oscar, who I do love. I love Oscar Hammerstein. But if you ask anyone, OK, Richard Rodgers, Hart or Hammerstein? Almost everyone says Hart. You know, they just appreciate those songs more. But, I mean, like, you can't even say your favorite Rodgers and Hart songs. Few people can say what show those originated from, you know?

GROSS: That's because of the period. I mean, outside of "Show Boat"...

LINKLATER: Exactly.

GROSS: ...So many of those shows were basically girl meets boy with some funny songs.

LINKLATER: Yeah.

GROSS: Some novelty songs and some ballads.

LINKLATER: Right.

GROSS: And the songs were often great, but the stories weren't necessarily memorable.

LINKLATER: Yeah, they're not memorable. And those shows aren't really put up anymore. There's - you know, no one's putting up those Rodgers and Hart plays anymore. Whereas someone's going to do "South Pacific" again. Someone's - "Oklahoma!" is playing always, you know, "Sound Of Music." You know, these last forever just because of that combination, that the stories are intertwined in the music. And it's just a new kind of musical. And, you know, Larry - poor Larry, he realizes the times are leaving him behind. Rodgers is right. People do want to cry a little bit. They want to feel that. They want to - you know, a war is going on. This takes place in '43. That's kind of the backdrop to everything. And Larry, on this night, sadly, is being left behind not only by his partner, but by the times that are changing. You know, artists are vulnerable to tastes changing, and, you know, your thing is no longer what's in vogue, and you're out of a job, you know. So it's kind of sad. You know, no artist proceeds through life thinking they have an expiration date.

GROSS: So Ethan Hawke is a lot taller than Larry Hart was. What tricks did you use to get him to look like he's not quite 5 feet?

LINKLATER: It wasn't just the height, which is a big part of it, but it's also his hair. You know, Hart was bald with kind of a comb-over, which wasn't totally uncommon at that time. So he's a funny-looking guy - you know, eyes a different color. So Ethan had to go through a complete transformation. And that - we've worked together a lot, but we've never had that particular challenge. But just to get the character right, that was staring us in the face. All these years, we've been developing this - over 10 years. So we're like, God, how are we going to do that? So as we got closer to game time, it was fun to solve those problems.

But it was old-school stagecraft - no prosthetics, no visual effects, nothing, just old tricks. You know, he shaved his head. He left it long on one side. We did that - you know, contact lenses. For the height, we probably threw probably, like, five or six different methods to get him lower. It was really - basically, it was lowering him and keeping everyone else at the same height. So - and then various ways of him to walk and to maintain the lower height. The costume department has to be in on that. You have to build the wardrobe that he's shorter to give the - it's, like, a visual trick, but I don't know, it was kind of fun, old-school.

GROSS: You could have cast somebody else who was shorter. Why was it so important...

LINKLATER: I know.

GROSS: ...To cast Ethan Hawke?

LINKLATER: Ethan had the kind of neural capacity, the quick-firing verbal ability. You know, you're portraying a genius, you know, one of the great wits, one of the great lyricists who ever lived. And Ethan had that ability. We just had to get the body right, which was - it was fun. It was fun to see him transform. It was fun to see Ethan work so hard, to see my friend push to his absolute limit, you know, and on every single level you could as a performer. He was like, I think I'm at the edge of my talent. I go, yeah, me too. You know, this is tough. But we did something that was really, really challenging for us. So that was fun.

GROSS: I know you didn't write the screenplay, but did you do a lot of research to find - like, try to figure out what Hart was really thinking on the opening night of "Oklahoma!" and if he talked as much and was so - as self-pitying as he is on the film.

LINKLATER: (Laughter) Well, Robert Kaplow, the writer, he - this is kind of an imagined evening, but it's all based on fact. Hart was there. He did go with his mom. He did - you know, it's all kind of imagined, the people he encounters and that. And Hart, there's - you know, there's some biographies, you know, a pretty good one fairly recently called "The Ship Without A Sail" (ph). So you dig into everything you can get your hands on, but it's pretty much an imaginative exercise.

GROSS: "A Ship Without A Sail," I'll recite a part of the lyric, and I might be conflating lines from several stanzas. But here's the approximate. All alone and all at sea, still, nobody cares for me. When there's no hand to hold your hand, life is an endless tale like a ship without a sail.

LINKLATER: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Or something like that.

LINKLATER: Yeah, yeah. That's Larry Hart, right there.

GROSS: Yeah.

LINKLATER: He was the ship without the sail. But...

GROSS: And lonely.

LINKLATER: Yeah.

GROSS: Apparently.

LINKLATER: Yeah, lonely but not really alone, you know? He's living in New York. He lives with his mom. He's out at shows. He's everybody's buddy, you know? He's - everybody kind of loved Larry. You know, people who are around him talk about how energetic and fun he was to be around. I wanted the movie to feel like something you would say the rest of your life, 30 years later, you know, I once met Larry Hart in a bar, and he just talked. And I'll never forget it. What a great character. You know, I don't know if I'd want to be around him more than one night.

GROSS: Exactly. That's what I was going to say. It's like, time for me to get - to go to the bar. Time for me to get some food.

LINKLATER: Yeah. You know, when we encounter these people, it's like, oh, my God, they do take up the room. They don't shut up. And there's a narcissism and a neediness to them that you have to deal with. But in his case, for this one night, at least he's fascinating, you know? He's so smart, so funny. There's really no one like him. So I thought, technically, he's probably annoying. But for one night, you know, you'll be glad you were near him. So that was sort of the conceit.

GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Richard Linklater. He has two new films, "Blue Moon" and "Nouvelle Vague." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with filmmaker Richard Linklater. He's directed two new movies. "Blue Moon" is about lyricist Lorenz Hart, and "Nouvelle Vague" is about the French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard and the making of his first film, "Breathless."

So since we're talking about Broadway, let's talk about your production of "Merrily We Roll Along, " a Stephen Sondheim musical. It covers a 20-year period, and you are shooting it over the course of 20 years. The central relationships in the movie - or in the show, I should say - are about a songwriter and a lyricist who split apart, and they both have their resentments involved with that. And one of them is more commercial and famous but unhappy, and the other one is doing more independent, noncommercial work in theater but is so heartbroken that he's not working as a lyricist with his former songwriting partner. And then there's a woman who's the same age, and she is a writer and initially writes the stories for their lyrics. And it's told in reverse chronological order. So you're shooting it in chronological order, and your actors are going to age 20 years over the course of the making of this movie 'cause you're going to shoot it like you did "Boyhood, " over the same period of time that the movie covers. Can I say, congratulations. You're crazy.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: I can't wait to see it.

LINKLATER: Indeed.

GROSS: I should live so long.

LINKLATER: Yeah.

GROSS: But, like, what kind of commitment is that? How old are you going to be when it's over?

LINKLATER: Yeah. I'll be pushing 80, apparently. So, you know, tempting fate, hoping to get lucky. But, you know, you got to proceed through this life like things are going to work out and you're going to be doing what you're doing. And God, it's so funny, hearing you describe what "Merrily" is about.

GROSS: It's the same thing.

LINKLATER: It's so "Blue Moon."

GROSS: I know.

LINKLATER: And funny, I was developing "Blue Moon" before we jumped forward with "Merrily." But at some point, it did cross my mind, oh, this is similar territory with the composer-lyricist relationship. And, you know, Sondheim is in both. You know, he makes a little...

GROSS: I...

LINKLATER: He's a 12-year-old. Little Stevie shows up...

GROSS: Do you want to describe that scene? It's hilarious.

LINKLATER: ...In Blue Moon. Well, he was - Oscar Hammerstein was practically his father. You know, they lived in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and Sondheim loved Oscar so much. He said, if he was a plumber, I would have been a plumber, when they talk about it. I learned everything, you know, from him, which is, you know, I think, an exaggeration, of course, but there it is.

And I got to know Sondheim, of course. He was very generous in letting me adapt that musical to film, and he had great ideas, and he was just a wonderful person to get to know. And I'm so lucky. And I was looking forward to the day I could tell him, oh, hey, Steve, you know, I'm making this movie, and just so you know, your little 12-year-old self is - you have - you're in one scene. Is that OK? I just wanted to see his face. I know he would have kind of smiled and went, what the hell? You know, so I didn't get that, unfortunately. I missed it by a couple years. I'm sad about that.

GROSS: But the young Sondheim, as portrayed in your film, is such a kind of nerdy kid.

LINKLATER: (Laughter).

GROSS: And so Hart says, what do you think of my lyrics? And he says, they're clever, but - you want to say what he says?

LINKLATER: He goes, I like them, you know, funny but a little sloppy, you know. And that's something Sondheim said later as an adult. But it's funny that they're - those are two of the greatest lyricists ever. It's just funny that - the thought that they would meet.

GROSS: When I heard that you were making another, like, long-term project like "Boyhood" with "Merrily We Roll Along," to be shot over 20 years, I asked myself, what kind of contract do the actors sign with you to commit for 20 years? I know "Boyhood" was more of a handshake deal. Are you still doing that?

LINKLATER: Yeah. You know, everything's a leap of faith and belief. You know, you can't really contract anyone to do anything over seven years. So we all just look at each other. And, you know, you cast lifers - you know, Ben Platt, Beanie Feldstein, Paul Mescal. You look at people and go, you're doing this for the rest of your life. You know, you're not going to suddenly quit acting and quit being a performer. I look up and say, well, I want to be making a film when I'm that age. And I think once you're inside it, it doesn't seem so far-fetched. You know, it's just a fun thing we're involved in. And we've shot, like, three of the nine episodes. So it's just a fun thing we come together and do. It's weird, but it's really pretty exhilating.

So if I had to analyze it, I think I love living inside a project for a long time. I must, you know. But it's really just storytelling. It's how to tell that story effectively where I think it will work as a film. You know, so much in filmmaking is problem solving. You know, that play notoriously didn't work for about 40 years. And more recently, there's been some excellent productions. This London-based one that came to Broadway was a big hit. And they've cracked it to a large degree. But I still think it would benefit from kind of the reality that a film would give. And Sondheim agreed. You know, he was a real film guy. And he always kind of - even said, you know, maybe this was a film, anyway, you know, so...

GROSS: Yeah. Well, we have to take another break. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Richard Linklater. He has two new films, "Blue Moon," about lyricist Larry Hart, and "Nouvelle Vague," about the making of the 1960 film "Breathless," the first film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Richard Linklater. He directed two new films. "Blue Moon" is about lyricist Larry Hart, who had a long and very productive partnership with composer Richard Rodgers until Hart was drinking too much, not showing up on time and missing deadlines. The film is set on opening night of "Oklahoma!" the first of several classic musicals Rodger did with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. It left Hart feeling wounded and irrelevant.

Linklater's other new film, "Nouvelle Vague," which is French for new wave, is about the new wave of French filmmakers in the late '50s and early '60s, focusing on Jean-Luc Godard and the making of his 1960 groundbreaking radical film "Breathless," in which he intentionally broke many film conventions. Linklater's other films include "Slacker," "Dazed And Confused," "School Of Rock," the "Before Sunrise" trilogy and "Boyhood."

So let me segue from musicals to "Nouvelle Vague," your other new movie. Both of these films are about obsessed artists. This is about Godard at the beginning of his career. And "Blue Moon" is about Hart at the end of his career and the end of his life, or close to the end of his life. They were both obsessed with their work and both very self-absorbed. So I'm going to ask you to describe what defined the French new wave.

LINKLATER: Yeah, well, new waves in music or anything, it's just, you know, new generations come along and you're not happy with the status quo as much as you love your art form. You know, things are tired. You're sick of what you've been watching your whole life. You want to do something different. You see it in all arts. And it's really important for renewal, you know, to just be against the status quo of your moment. So these French critics - you know, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Chabrol - they all wrote for Cahiers du Cinema, the magazine. So the film kind of centers around Cahiers du Cinema and these critics transitioning into filmmakers, which is really rare in film history.

But they wrote their film criticism. And they were really film enthusiasts. They loved movies. But they thought the French commercial cinema at the time was pretty lame. And they were just kind of declaring their own independence. And when they started making their own films, you know, they made a different kind of film. They weren't so genre, you know, not so genre, different kind of narratives and much more.

To me, the nouvelle vague really means personal filmmaking. It would be the archetype for the independent film. But, you know, freedom, personal expression. In a great way, I think it lowered the stakes of movies. A movie didn't have to be about some big epic story or some great genre piece. You could make a film about your own childhood, you could make a film about a love affair, you could make a film about a trip you took. You know, it could be about your own life. Kind of like maybe the Beat writers. You can just write a novel about a trip you took across the country. You know, you could make it about - really it's just carving out the life right in front of you, that that is worthy of your artistic attention.

Stories can be from your own life. And, you know, I always took it as a call to arms for personal expression. And, you know, there's a technological element to it. You know, cameras had gotten lighter. You know, it wasn't such a cumbersome thing to make a movie the way studios did it. You know, it was lighter, handheld. You could get in the streets and, you know, just make a film in your own neighborhood kind of vibe. So it was a freedom, it was a freedom. Film was maturing and technology was helping.

GROSS: I don't know whether Godard actually says this, but he says it in the film. Because as you pointed out, he was a film critic for Cahiers du Cinema, which translates to notebook of cinema. And so Godard says in the movie, the best way to critique a film is to make one.

LINKLATER: (Laughter) Well, Jean-Luc Godard is one of the great quoters of all time. He was either quoting others or himself pouring out quotable lines. He kind of inverted everything. Just what an incredible mind, you know? What we're watching in the film is this kind of revolutionary moment. But I think only one guy knows it, him. You know, the crew, he's kind of flummoxing everybody around him of what he's doing because he believes if you're going to do something different, you have to do it differently, you know?

So adhering to the schedule, and if you're just manufacturing a product and doing it the same way everybody else, it's like, what's the result? You know, you got to challenge that a little bit. Like, hey, let's - you know, I think what he was really going for was a spontaneity, which, you know, that's a lot of confidence in your own abilities to pull something together that's worthy, you know, of that. But he certainly did, you know? He conjured up something miraculous. And, you know, a lot of that, you give credit to Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, his main actors. But, you know, he created this unique environment where that could happen.

GROSS: Well, he broke a lot of conventions. He didn't want to use a script. You know, the actress would show up and say, we don't have our lines. And he'd go, I don't want a script. It's too mechanical.

LINKLATER: (Laughter).

GROSS: If you've memorized your lines in advance, it's going to be too mechanical. You are clearly the opposite. You do a lot of takes. You shoot over years.

LINKLATER: (Laughter).

GROSS: So what did you make of that?

LINKLATER: I'm different, me and everybody, 99.9% of them.

(LAUGHTER)

LINKLATER: You know, it's like, that's why it was fun to make a film. If I was going to make a film about making a film, I didn't do it the way I would. I think it would be kind of maybe a little boring, you know? I'm kind of a worker, grinder, you know, a lot of rehearsal. But it's still fun. I'm still looking for the new idea and all that. Just I don't have the confidence, and most people shouldn't, that you can just turn on a camera and something miraculous happens. Godard was probably going back to the silent days. They didn't have scripts in the early, you know, first 20-something years of cinema. You know, a director would just be shouting out ideas and directions, and the actors would do it. And a lot of comedy was based on things they worked up.

It was pretty spontaneous, a lot of that. And then it became a little more literary. And certainly, in the sound era, it jumped to theater, practically, you know, much more of a writerly medium. So I don't mind anyone shaking that up and really challenging that. Godard did it by frustrating Seberg. Belmondo was along for the ride. And, you know, they put in a lot of that later. They didn't even have a sound department. So there's talking, but they really did a lot in post, too. So it was forever being created, you know, all the way down the line. It was a film coming into being. It wasn't pre-planned and rendered by any means.

GROSS: The plot of the movie is very basic, very genre. You know, a guy and a girl. He's very attracted to her. He says he loves her. It might just be a sexual attraction, hard to say. And she's not sure if she loves him. She doesn't know he's a small-time thief who's owed money that he can't get his hands on. At least that's what he says. He's lied to her about who he is. And when he's identified as a cop killer and the police are on his trail, she tries to help him get away.

How many times have you seen "Breathless"? And how many times did you rewatch it before making the movie? Because you also perfectly reproduce scenes. It looks - the actors look so much like the actors in "Breathless." And shot for shot, your reproduction of scenes from "Breathless" seem, like, perfect. So what was it like...

LINKLATER: Oh, well, thank you.

GROSS: Like, did you watch "Breathless" over and over and over again? And what did you get out of doing that?

LINKLATER: You know, I know the movie really well. Over the last 40-something years, I've probably seen it 20, somewhere 20, 25 times just naturally. But even as we started to make this movie, I didn't really watch it again, I don't think, even. I started watching the scenes that we were replicating, and that was just a technical - I mean, it was fascinating to be under the hood of another movie to this degree, but we're reproducing these moments usually from the other angle.

We're not reproducing imagery from that movie, but you're seeing it kind of more fascinatingly, like when she's selling New York Herald Tribunes, walking down the street, you know, famous scene. But, you know, the camera's really in a mail cart. They're pushing it, but no one knows they're making a movie. So we're seeing it - we're in front of them, not behind them, and we're seeing the apparatus. But the actors, we have to replicate the exact steps, the turn, the gestures. So we, in rehearsals, could really obsess on that and try to get that 100% accurate. Our goal was you could put up the film and our film, and they would be totally in sync, just from a different angle. So that was the obsessive goal.

You know, I mean, we couldn't have made this film more different than the way they did it. We were replicating something, and we were - you know, they could just show up on a Paris street and shoot. We had to build it. We had to create it. And, you know, it's 64 years later. It looks different, but we were back at a lot of the locations. But it was really thrilling just to be making a film in 1959. That's what we wanted this film to feel like. You know, it's using the language of that time, the look, the feel. Everything about it, we were trying to replicate.

GROSS: Well, we have to take another short break here, so I'm going to reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Richard Linklater. He has two new films, "Blue Moon" and "Nouvelle Vague." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "TOOT TOOT TOOTSIE GOODBYE")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with filmmaker Richard Linklater. He has two new movies. "Blue Moon" is about lyricist Larry Hart, and "Nouvelle Vague" is about the French new wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard and the making of his first film, "Breathless."

You've made a movie in French, which you do not speak. So how did that work out?

LINKLATER: I know that sounds insane. There's, like, four things about this movie that sound kind of insane. But that was really the least of my worries. When I first thought of this, it was going to be a black and white French new wave movie with English subtitles. That's what the Nouvelle Vague looked like to the world. You know, it was - the French language is, to me, that's how the movies sound, but it's the subtitle. So I was making a subtitle movie, and I didn't really - I cared deeply about the French version. I wanted that to work in France. I wanted them to like it, and I went out of my way to do that. But me not having the language was - it wasn't even in my top 10 concerns about if I could pull off the movie. It really wasn't. I don't know where I got that kind of confidence, but I was just kind of like, no, here's how we'll do it. I had a methodology.

And everyone I work with, you know, English is everyone's second language now. So my crew, everybody, you know, understanding 80 plus percent of what I'm saying. And, you know, we'd rehearse in English, and it was a pretty fun process. It was kind of amazing. It really emphasized the visual, what this is.

But the final little - maybe I did my own little control group study about performance on this in that my goal with actors is to make them comfortable. We rehearse a lot. We answer questions. I just want to build a arena where they can do their best work and feel comfortable and contribute. And do all that. It's never about parsing the words exactly, you know? It's like, oh, put that in your own language. Even as a writer, I'm not like, oh, let's throw out the script and - let's not throw it out, but let's - oh, that's funny or, you know, put it in your own words. It can always be improved, you know? So I did that here. It's just that French language improvement I would have to get translated. My producer was kind of translating, and we would - I was kind of dependent on that. But I could tell when they kind of didn't do their best take.

GROSS: Can you speak more French now?

LINKLATER: No, I have a mental - (laughter) I don't know. I fell on my head a lot as a kid. I don't know.

GROSS: (Laughter).

LINKLATER: I do not have a facility with languages. You know, everybody's wired different, you know? The older I get, I'm like, why is something that's so easy to me seem kind of crazy to other people? And why are things that other people come naturally don't come to me, you know? So I just do not have a facility for languages.

GROSS: You were...

LINKLATER: I wish I did. I wish I did, you know?

GROSS: You were an athlete in your earlier years. Did you literally fall on your head, you know, get hurt on your head during that period?

LINKLATER: Well, yeah. I mean, I played high school football in Texas, which, yeah, you know, I was - I got some concussions, so, you know, there's that. But no, I don't blame that on my...

GROSS: OK.

LINKLATER: ...My lack of facility with languages. But yeah, everybody's mind is wired just a little differently.

GROSS: Something you really have in common with Godard and the other French new wave filmmakers is you are obsessed with film. I mean, you make movies. You've seen a zillion movies. So do you have a point in your life where you realized you love movies and you needed to keep seeing more and more, as many as you could?

LINKLATER: Yeah. God, I was so blessed, you know? I mean, I've had such sympathy for people in their 20s, trying to figure out what they're going to do in life, and I've made movies about that and people trying to fit in. I never had that. At age 20, I was working in Houston. I'd kind of dropped out of college, and I wanted to be a novelist, then a playwright. I was writing plays in my last semester of college. And then this one summer, I started going to movies. I really discovered movies. I was like, oh, that's my art form. Oh, that's in my brain. So I was 20, about to turn 21, and my whole life since then has - I've known what I wanted to do. I've been very lucky to - just the whole world kind of filters through cinema. I think cinema is a great place for people who want to kind of escape the real world and into another world. 'Cause it's so vast. You know, you can spend your whole life kind of there. And so it attracts a certain personality.

So yeah, between the film society I started 40 years ago, we show a ton of movies, help filmmakers. So there's a whole film life of the cinephile that I've been able to experience. And, you know, I did want to write and direct movies, but even if I hadn't been able to do that, I still would have dedicated my life to it. I'd be doing something, you know? - showing movies, distributing, you know. So I admire the lifers, the people who have jumped in and dedicated their life to it.

And that's what "Nouvelle Vague" is really about, these adults who are playing - you know, dedicated their life to it. And there's writers and critics and filmmakers, and it's just the people who have bought into that life and want to be there. So to me, those are my people. You know, that's very special crowd. And it's all over the world. Every culture has that. And, you know, yeah, so it's kind of given me a channel, and I've been very lucky. I wake up every morning excited about what I'm working on. So just a lot of things I've never doubted, and that's it. It's almost like joining the priesthood or something, but fortunately, it's not that.

GROSS: (Laughter) I can't tell you how much pleasure "Nouvelle Vague" gave me.

LINKLATER: Oh, thank you.

GROSS: And it's (inaudible) so much...

LINKLATER: Yeah, it's funny. You're supposed to chuckle at him, and, you know, it's kind of a comedy, isn't it? There's something funny about making a movie. It's just a weird undertaking...

GROSS: Yeah.

LINKLATER: ...In the world. Yeah, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

GROSS: Before we say goodbye, I just want to say to our listeners, "Nouvelle Vague" is so much fun, and it's so revealing about how "Breathless" was made and the influence that it's had. But I would recommend, if you're interested in seeing the movie, watch "Breathless" first. It's streaming. You can rent it pretty cheaply. And you'll enjoy the movie so much more if you've seen "Breathless." Even if you've seen it before, like, watch it again before seeing the movie if you can because there's so much insight and joy to be had if you do that.

LINKLATER: True, indeed.

GROSS: Well, it's been a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you so much.

LINKLATER: Oh yeah. So great, Terry. Really nice talking with you.

GROSS: Richard Linklater's two new films are "Nouvelle Vague" and "Blue Moon."

After we take a short break, Maureen Corrigan will review the new novel by Lily King that's a prequel and a sequel to her novel "Writers & Lovers," which was on Maureen's 2020 Best Of list. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF RAY CHARLES' "JOY RIDE")

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The title of Lily King's latest novel, "Heart The Lover," comes from a card game that the three main characters play starting when they meet in college. It becomes a symbol for their shifting romantic attachments. When our book critic Maureen Corrigan started reading the novel, she kept picking it up and putting it down. Here's why.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: I love King's writing, but the opening section was hard for me to take; not in a grisly Cormac McCarthy or scary Stephen King kind of way, but in a, ugh, I remember being that girl, that age kind of way. "Heart The Lover" opens in a college class of the 1980s. The professor, a man, is teaching 17th century British literature, and he selected a student's essay, a creative piece, to read aloud. But first, he holds up the essay to remark on its vulgar packaging, the fact that it's typed on neon orange paper. The embarrassed student author is a young woman nicknamed Jordan. She tells us that Halloween construction paper was all she had available when she was typing the essay on deadline. Here's how Jordan, decades later, will remember what follows.

(Reading) There are two smart guys in the class. They sit up front together. The professor runs things by them so often, I assume they're his grad school TAs. When my essay gets passed back to me, they both turn to watch where it goes. After that day, the copper haired one, Sam, begins migrating back. Three classes later, he takes a seat beside me. Soon, he is walking me across campus. We talk exclusively about the class. He's not focusing enough on Cromwell, Sam says. I agree. What else can I do? I am a mere student, and he is a scholar. That much is clear right away. And Sam isn't even a grad student. He's a senior like me. Later, I go to the library and read about who Cromwell was.

Ugh. Now, young Jordan is no pushover. She's ambitious, putting herself through college on loans and waitressing jobs, and she harbors a barely formed desire to be a writer. But her path will take longer to carve out. The well-read bright boys, meanwhile, house sit and are invited to dinners by their male professors. They're the heirs apparent to the kingdom of books and ideas. Jordan's gifts are wrapped in the wrong packaging, just like her orange construction paper essay. King's writing is so vivid, so immediate that her opening sparked flashbacks of my own time in such classrooms. But sexism is just the way things are, not the subject of this intensely moving novel.

"Heart The Lover" is both a prequel and a sequel to King's novel "Writers & Lovers," which made my Best of the Year list in 2020. Jordan is the nickname that those two clever college boys give Casey Peabody, who some of us readers have met already in "Writers & Lovers." In that earlier novel, Casey is older, a 31-year-old who's been waitressing and writing her first novel for over six years. "Heart The Lover" suggests a big reason why Casey would have been stuck in her 20s.

But the structure of "Heart The Lover" is so ingenious, it's emotional charge so compelling. You don't have to have read the earlier novel to be drawn into what's essentially a great triangular love story. The young Casey, again, here nicknamed Jordan, is pursued by Sam and then by his best friend, the other star student in that classroom, a boy named Yash. The first love erotic energy between Jordan and Yash is off the charts, and the two envision an artsy adult life together in New York. Yash however, feels conflicted by his loyalty to Sam and by his need to safeguard his autonomy. Guess which way the seesaw tips and who gets crushed beneath.

I'll stop the plot summary there because readers deserve to experience for themselves the devastation of the final section of "Heart The Lover," which takes place at a reunion of the now middle aged trio in a dying man's hospital room. If you've ever lived through such a moment, you'll appreciate how King renders the all of it, the banality of visitors' small talk, the unreal sense of melodrama, the sporadic awareness that a deadline for final conversations is approaching. "Heart The Lover" is about screwing up, wising up, finding yourself and realizing what you may have lost in the process. To quote Elena Ferrante, another great chronicler of women's lives, "Heart The Lover" is also about the velocity with which life is consumed.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed "Heart The Lover" by Lily King.

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, why the U.S. Justice Department's cases against Donald Trump for alleged interference in the 2020 election and his retention of government documents never made it before a jury. Investigative reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis, authors of the new book, "Injustice," will give us an inside look at the department's investigations. I hope you'll join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.