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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Tape

00:38 / 30.04.02

I caught Rich Linklater's latest (TAPE) on video last night and just had to say : Loved it.

Be warned -- filmed digitally, based on a play (its a talkie), three actors (Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke and some other guy) and a hotel room. If any of that puts you off, you may want to stay away.

For the rest us, what you're going to get is a smart, involving little piece of work that hit me more then I expected it to. (Think amped up Before Sunset without all the different locales... or the romance.) Ethan Hawke steals the show and the writing (ie where it's all going) keeps you on your toes. I secretly didn't expect to like it at all, but ... surprise, it's one of the best things I have seen in the last couple of months.

Sure, wish they would make more movies like this one.

Who knows, if DV is the revolution Linkletter makes it out to be, maybe we will.

All I could think of after the show was :

"Damn, I want a professional digital camera." My social circle is teeming with talent, I could make my own flicks.

And now, a day later, its :

Hhhmmm, I do have that money I was saving to get to europe...

00:41 / 30.04.02

do it, Nightguard, do it!!! even just buy a consumer model, take it to Europe...

01:33 / 30.04.02

(Nightguard breaks from his day dreaming ...)

Huh? What? Oh yeah, that's not a bad idea Utopia, maybe.

(Nightguard's eyes glaze over as he does a little mental accounting. Minutes pass, then ...)

Oh by the way, I just read that Richard Linklater is possibly going to direct PKD's "A Scanner darkly" Anybody care to comment on that?

Murray Hamhandler

02:41 / 30.04.02

Hmmmmmm... It's been a while since I read it, so I could be wrong, but 'Scanner' does seem like it'd be one of those fairly unfilmable novels that people always seem to feel the need to film ('Nekkid Lunch', anyone?). And even if it were filmable, it seems a little un-Linklater-y, yeah? I'd give him the benefit of the doubt, though.

I, too, was quite taken w/'Tape'. I think it's to Linklater's credit that I can think of very few other directors who could successfully stage an entire movie in one room.
Arthur Sudnam, II

02:47 / 30.04.02

Linklater doing PKD? Can't think of anything I'd less like to see. I think Linkmater is the most invented, overrated middle of the road filmmaker of the past decade. The guy's just not very good. Granted, I haven't seen Tape, but after struggling to not cut my own throat during Waking Life, you know, just for something interesting to do while the film finished, I can't imagine sitting through another of his films any time soon.

But, anyway. What has the guy ever done to suggest that he could handle PKD?

18:52 / 30.04.02

I agree with you Videodrome, Linklater is overrated (ala Slackers - alot of hype over nothing)and the rest of his work is hit or miss (usually more miss then hit). I enjoyed Before Sunrise (Sunset???whatever) and didn't mind Waking Life (more for the animation and the influence it will have on future indie features then the intellectual yimmer yammering that went on). Tape is probably his best work to date. I've read your blog (good work by the way) and think you'll probably enjoy this one, whenever you're whiling to give Linklater another chance.

As for Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly", I just can't see it. (The guy who directed "Requim For A Dream" or D. Fincher would have been my choice for that story.) Although, who knows, maybe the man will pull something out of his ass and surprise us. So far, most PKD inspired films have all been big budget show horses that skimp around PKD's bigger ideas instead of diving into the "what if?" meat. Now, Linklater's an idea man, that's what drives his machine, so it is possible that he, if the pic gets a green light, could be the first director (with the guts)to dive head first into the philosophical side of the work and finally give us a "true" PKD movie (because you can sure as hell bet we won't see that with Spielberg's PKD pony coming out soon). Hhhmm, the more I think about it the more the idea warms on me. Linklater's "Scanner" ... a low budget, gritty, maybe even retroscoped, mind fuck involving identity crisis, drugs and intellectual psychobabble -- I don't know, when I first started the post I couldn't see it but now the idea is staring to make sense, maybe he could pull it off ...

The Knowledge

23:39 / 01.05.02

I liked Dazed and Confused. That's the same guy right?

01:07 / 02.05.02

Yup.

08:40 / 02.05.02

Nightguard wrote: Linklater is overrated (ala Slackers - alot of hype over nothing)and the rest of his work is hit or miss (usually more miss then hit).

The odd thing about Slacker (not to be confused with the shit-on-a-stick "Slackers") is that I really, really liked it, even though it wasn't really about anything in particular. Which is EXACTLY the same reason I absolutly loathed "Seinfeld". So insert long threadrot about philosophy, tupperware & class warfare here.

Back on-topic (re: the PKD thing), I think he'd do a good job with it. I think Linklater is only as good as the actors in his films. In other words, I don't think he's learned how to get great performances out of actors. It seems that he's so involved with the pre-production, feel of the film & the sub-text of the script that he doesn't look objectivly at the final result. But I think he excells at understanding the undercurrents that should end up on the screen, but doesn't know how to achieve them. As for who might do a good job with a PKD flick, I think Luc Besson would either do a great job or botch it up so bad it'd be worth rubbernecking the film as it crashes and burns.

Trivia: He plays one of the Men-In-Black-esque spies in "Spy Kids". I also read that he doesn't see a dime from the VHS/DVD profits from any of his films because he waived those royalties in order to get the dough to finish "Slacker".

12:47 / 03.05.02

Richard Linklater wrote and directed Dazed & Confused and is therefore god, even if he makes some rubbish films, and I will duel to the death with anyone who says otherwise.

Darren Aranofsky(?) doing A Scanner Darkly sounds like a dream ticket though .. Linklater's a little too .. nice.

The Natural Way

12:50 / 03.05.02

God, how I love Dazed & Confused. Love, love, love, love.

And Rushmore.

And Election.

When the teen movies get it right they really get it right.........

15:57 / 05.05.02

If Dazed & Confused was a religion I'd be a fanatic. Unless it already is, and I am..