Time is an obsession of Richard Linklater’s. His movies, from “Slacker” to the “Earlier than” trilogy to “Boyhood,” have been thorough examinations of its passage on scales giant and small, however his newest ongoing challenge, an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s under-appreciated musical gem “Merrily We Roll Alongside,” goals to be Linklater’s largest canvas but. The musical tracks the deterioration of a 20-year friendship between three creatives with one particular function: the whole story is instructed in reverse, starting with the tip and slipping again into the previous to indicate how issues go so unhealthy and finally why they had been so good collectively.
“It’s the sort of factor I’ve thought so much about my total life: What might remodel me?” Linklater stated in a current interview with The New York Occasions Journal. “I used to be in all probability extra within the camp of we’re mounted, give or take no matter little share across the edges. So I used to be on this notion currently that, oh, you can change, the character isn’t mounted.”
Because of this, making an attempt to think about if he’ll be capable of keep his colleges to see manufacturing on “Merrily” via — he can be 80 by the point he completed — isn’t a part of his thought course of.
“I see myself making a movie after I’m like 94,” Linklater stated. “I actually do. I’ll go alongside, attempt to keep in form, attempt to be wholesome, hope to get fortunate. However we’re telling a narrative that takes place over 20 years, and it’s actually vital, for this story to work, that you simply really feel these years go by. That was ‘Boyhood.’ You needed to really feel life going by. And this film is about long-term friendship and the way in which life treats folks and the way that shifts round over 20 years. Everyone concerned is clearly doing it as a result of they care, so we simply should assume they’ll preserve caring and so they’ll care 10 years, 15, 16, 17 extra years. You decide folks on that.”And if one thing does occur that stops Linklater from fulfilling his directorial duties, he stated, “I might adapt by some means. Or simply flip the entire thing over to another person. I’ll cope with that when it occurs. I imply, what’s the choice? I consider loss of life frequently. However then I’ve this different facet that simply expects to play it out, I suppose.”