I haven’t been writing a film column all that long, so I’m unsure if it’s proper to start one with shameless praise. But I’ll do it anyway: Richard Linklater is a genius.
Over his four-decade career, the writer-director-producer who was born in Houston and attended high school and college in Huntsville has redefined what it means to be a writer-director-producer. Self-taught and Hollywood averse, Linklater is to independent filmmaking what Willie is to outlaw country. Both found their creative home in Austin—and both changed the city’s culture forever.
You could make a legitimate argument for any number of Linklater’s films to be the subject of this column (Slacker blazed the trail for a new generation of filmmakers; Boyhood is an emotional triumph of epic creative ambition), but it’s hard to dispute that Dazed and Confused has emerged as the most “famous” Texas movie ever made. What’s more impressive is that it did all that while making the difficult leap from cult classic to canon…