Depending on your own personal opinion on last night’s Oscars; either Alejandro González Iñárritu deservedly won both gongs for Best Director and Picture or Richard Linklater was criminally robbed for Boyhood. Thankfully, in spite of only bagging one Oscar all night, Boyhood is still a crucial part of the cinematic canon and its lack of Academy acknowledgement doesn’t automatically zap it out of existence. In fact, the year-long awards trail Linklater has trekked might have even caused the director to contemplate another look at boy-turned-man, Mason.
When the Dazed & Confused helmer turned up for an interview on Jeff Goldsmith’s Q&A Podcast (via The Playlist), he discussed the possibility of another go-around:
“To be honest… this film first met its audience exactly a year ago and for the first six months of the year, my answer to that was absolutely not. This was twelve years, it was first grade through 12th grade; it was about getting out of high school. I had no idea about another story, there’s nothing to say. It hadn’t crossed my mind. But I don’t know if it’s been a combination of finally feeling that this is over or being asked a similar question a bunch over the last year, that I thought, well, I wake up in the morning thinking, ‘the 20s are pretty formative, you know?’ That’s where you really become who you’re going to be. It’s one thing to grow up and go to college, but it’s another thing to… So, I will admit my mind has drifted towards [this sequel idea].”
Along with his Before trilogy starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as two star-crossed lovers, Linklater’s approach to “The Sequel” can’t be appreciated the same way that regular sequels are. His status as a bona-fide auteur isn’t even questioned, if you examine the passion and enthusiasm he has for adopting a unique style for his subjects.
“The twelve years [structure] came out of [school structure]. It wouldn’t have to be twelve years. It wouldn’t have to be… I mean, who knows. I mean, if I learned anything on the Before trilogy it took five years to realize that Jesse and Celine were still alive and had anything to say. This one would probably be more accelerated, but who knows.”
Finally, moving onto the actual likelihood of re-enlisting his cast for the sequel, it looks like it’s all going to boil down to having a story to tell:
“I can tell it’s happening [in the same way] because I start coming up with ideas about [that time period]. The same way I thought about ‘Boyhood’: just these random little memories about being in my twenties that might seem insignificant on paper, but telling and important. And developmentally, like, ‘oh, that was kind of a moment’; a lot of moments from the fraught 20s….
…I dunno, It’s impossible to say what may or may not come of it… I would love to keep working with this cast and I think we all would. But that can’t be the primary reason to do it. You always need something to say. You can’t do it just cause you want to work with your friends, you gotta have something really inside you you’re trying to communicate about those years. I might happen, but I dunno, it’s in the ether in the moment.”
Tell us, would you like to see Richard Linklater direct Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke for another glimpse into Mason’s life in the Boyhood sequel? Sound off below!