Richard Linklater’s spiritual sequel to “Dazed & Confused,” a college film set in the ’80s called, “That’s What I’m Talking About” was going to be his next project earlier this year, but the Austin-based filmmaker soon realized the inhospitable film climate was not going to green light the project and the picture was shelved in the summer.
Collider got a chance to sit down with Linklater promoting his latest film, “Me & Orson Welles,” and the director said that he still hopes to get the film off the ground, but as previously noted, said it’s not a proper sequel and features all new characters (even though Matthew McConaughey was hoping to find a part in it; we’d sort of die for him to reprise his ‘Dazed’ role).
“I carefully called it a ‘spiritual sequel’ to Dazed cause it’s not the same characters,” Linklater said describing the idea. “If Dazed was my high school, this is my college. It’s about a weekend in college in that time period. It’s funny…I think it’s the funniest thing I ever wrote.”
The director says he’ll try and attempt to put on the film again in a few years, perhaps when the film economy becomes less timid and less about franchise. “It’s a bad time for the industry, right now. I think I will get it made in the next couple years, something will come together… It’s just a weird time.”
Linklater says he had financing in place for a $14 million dollar film, but says he couldn’t find distributors, naming several of the indie mini-majors, Fox Searchlight, Focus Features, suggesting they were too timid to take the risk. “People are looking for excuses to say no,” he said. “We’re in a ‘no’ culture right now in the film industry. We’re not really in a yes [culture].”
He also says that next time he tries to take a run at “That’s What I’m Talking About,” he’ll try and get casting in place rather than trying to sell it as a conceptual project on his own. The director describes its comedy somewhat akin to the humor in, “The Hangover,” meaning it’s “real male behavior, young men behaving really poorly.”
He also notes that he has a true crime, black comedy set in East Texas in the works and says “School Of Rock 2” is an idea, but one that was trumpeted up too much by the trades at the time. It is tough out there, especially for the smaller films Linklater does and he hasn’t had a hit in a while. ‘Orson Welles’ is all, but being dumped into a micro-release (sadly, it’s not very good) and his “Liars (A-E)” rom-com was announced earlier this year with Kat Dennings and Rebecca Hall as the leads and the powerful Scott Rudin as the producer, but it appears that picture is still in development. Good luck to him either way. He definitely works outside the system and then uses it to his advantage and on his terms when he wants to.