There’s been a lot of Richard Linklater news of late. Not all of it positive, but some still hopeful.
His romantic road-trip comedy, “Liars (A-E),” was deep-sixed by Miramax which is has been downsized and struggling to stay afloat and that was a bit of a shame cause it would have been a great buddy vehicle for two unlikely leads Rebecca Hall and Kat Dennings (we just finished reading it, it was surprisingly fresh and sharp).
However, the director is still intermittently shooting his “Untitled 13 Year Project” (or “Growing Up” which is the working title) about a family that eventually breaks into divorce with Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette — he also just told Movieline it will be “two and a half hours long, minimum,” still has five more years to go and IFC helps pitch in money every year. And he still hopes to one day shoot his “spiritual sequel” to his high school ’70s classic, “Dazed & Confused.”
After all this news came out, much of it, thanks to Collider, we wondered, ok, what about the next installment in the “Before Sunrise”/”Before Sunset” series, after all the sequel, again starring the leads Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy? It did end on a teasing cliffhanger.
Collider, who had a long interview with Linklater on several subjects obviously has the answer again. Since it did end ambiguously (Hawke not taking his flight home and instead choosing to stay with Delpy, but for how long?), but so perfectly (after all, you’re dying to know what comes next), we assumed the trio had mapped out what would happen in the next film. But Linklater says that not is he unsure that they will make the film, but no great concept or narrative has emerged yet.
“I just saw July [Delpy] the other night. We do talk about [the idea of a third film]…. You never know. We were very afraid to do the second one, that was a huge leap of faith. We were nervous and we trended into those waters, very cautiously. We wouldn’t have done [“Before Sunset”] just to do it. We all love each other and love working together, but that’s no reason to make a movie.* You have to have a core idea that compels and challenges you. So when that emerges in our future we might do it again, but there’s no [guarantee].”
“It sort of begs for it though doesn’t it?,” Linklater said about a third film. “We’ve thrown around ideas in a jokey way, but it’s been five years…” he said not dismissing the idea, but not sounding entirely convinced that it’s around the corner either.
Sequels are iffy propositions, especially for films you don’t want to spoil with an unnecessary superfluous addition, but we’ll say it: we must see where this nets out one day. We must. ‘Sunset’ is fantastic and probably Linklater’s most fully-realized, non-narrative film. Not all of his talky pictures are completely successful, but that one’s probably the finest example of what he does best: capture the organic, deeply intimate and magnetic connections between people.
*editors note: this is why we love him.