Expecting the Unexpected

Since bursting into the film scene in the 1990s, Richard Linklater has become one of America’s most singular directors.

The 37-year-old Texas native received acclaim for his experimental low-budget 1991 feature “Slacker,” which followed the lives of 100 characters over a 24-hour period. Though each of his subsequent films has been character-driven, each one has been radically different in tone and genre: 1993’s cult ‘70s teen comedy “Dazed and Confused,” the 1995 romantic drama “Before Sunrise” and 1997’s “SubUrbia,” a disturbing look at contemporary youth.

Linklater’s latest, “The Newton Boys,” which opens Friday, continues this unpredictable tradition.

Matthew McConaughey, Skeet Ulrich, Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onforio star in this lighthearted western-gangster film chronicling the adventures of Willis, Joe, Jess and Dock Newton, four brothers who, from 1919 to 1924, robbed more than 80 banks from Texas to Canada and capped their career with America’s largest train robbery, a $3-million mail train heist outside Chicago.

Unlike many bandits, the Newtons never killed anyone during their holdups and lived the remainder of their lives in relative obscurity.

Besides directing “The Newton Boys,” which also stars Julianna Margulies and Dwight Yoakum, Linklater wrote the screenplay with Claude Stanush and Clark Lee Walker. It is based on the book “The Newton Boys: Portrait of an Outlaw Gang” by Willis and Joe Newton, as told to Stanush and David Middleton.

On a recent visit to Los Angeles, Linklater, who lives in Austin, chatted about “The Newton Boys,” his love for movies and why he’s never gone Hollywood.

Question: You could never be accused of doing the same film twice. How do you choose your film projects?

Answer: Every film is a subject that you are attracted to. It’s like what you need personally out of a film. I was ready to do a true story. I was ready to work with that bigger canvas. I haven’t typically done a lot of action sequences. This is still a character piece. The action is such a part of the characters.

I really enjoyed planning out all of the shots. For me as a filmmaker, that’s the fun stuff. But I just couldn’t do a whole action movie. When I imagine a movie, I imagine characters. I don’t imagine all of these action sequences and hanging a narrative within that.

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Q: The “Newton Boys” harks back to the westerns and gangster films of the 1930s, especially the title sequence, which emulates the old Warner Bros. gangster flicks. You must be a fan of both genres.

A: I love movies. Definitely, I see “Newton Boys” as a homage to those genres. It starts off as kind of a silent film western. The montage in the midsection of the movie is like a Warner Bros. [gangster film] montage. It’s a tip of the hat to the history of cinema: to silent films, to westerns, to gangster films.

I wanted to make it in a really traditional way. You can see by the way it’s shot. The western parts, you don’t move the camera a lot. You just kind of leave it--a John Ford kind of thing. The gangster film part moves a little quicker, the lighting is different. It’s more of a film noir with close-ups. “Newton Boys” kind of bridges those two genres cinematically, historically. I saw it as the missing link.

Period pieces tend to be kind of stuffy or self-important. I want it to be really like fun and spirited. I remember showing the director of photography, Peter James, Francois Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim,” which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this movie, but it has a cinematic, inventive fun and lightheartedness.

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Q: Being a Texas native, did you know a lot about the Newton brothers before you began the film?

A: No, not until I read Claude’s article four years ago [in Smithsonian magazine]. I called Matthew up and he had never heard of them and he grew up in the same town of Ulvade. Then he asked around. He had an uncle who had bought a horse from Joe.

But pretty much they are obscure characters, and that’s what I loved about them. They are not famous. They are not notorious. They didn’t kill anybody. You only get notorious when you kill people. They were not psychopaths. I like their professionalism. To truly be successful in their line of work is to be unknown.

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Q: Do you think contemporary audiences will be able to identify with the Newtons?

A: I think it’s pretty contemporary in a lot of ways. If you look at our society right now, there is this kind of unregulated growth, this booming marketplace and robber barons. Back then it was more crazy, more unregulated and more gonzo.

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Q: “Newton Boys” is your most ambitious film. Were you nervous about directing your first “big” Hollywood movie?

A: No. I was in pre-production on “Newton Boys” when I was doing “SubUrbia.” “Newton Boys” got pushed back roughly a year. The cast really wasn’t coming together. It’s the best thing that happened because I had one more year to work on the script. One more year to think about it.

A movie like this can really go wrong if you don’t do all the pre-production. I came in under budget on this. It could have been a $50-million film easily and I did it for $27 million. Generally, they can’t do a contemporary romantic comedy for $40 million. I think I delivered the goods. It’s all up there on the screen.

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Q: “Newton Boys” marks the second time you’ve worked with Matthew McConaughey, whom you discovered for “Dazed and Confused,” and Ethan Hawke, who was in “Before Sunrise.” How do you work with actors?

A: I like actors. I think a lot of directors don’t like actors. To me an ideal day would be spent working on a script, rehearsing. We had three weeks of rehearsal, which is pretty unprecedented [on “Newton Boys”]. I get that every movie. Even on “SubUrbia,” a 22-day shoot, we had a three-week rehearsal.

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Q: Tell me about the Austin Film Society.

A: I started it in 1985. We show movies and we give out grants to filmmakers. We have only done [grants] two years, but we’ve given out $80,000 in grants to 31 Texas filmmakers. It’s pretty cool. We do these premieres and we raise money. We sponsor projects and we show about 136 [free] films this year. I just introduced “The Asphalt Jungle” the night before last. I got up and talked about John Huston. I bring in a lot of filmmakers. So our little film culture is sort of booming.

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Q: So you’re glad you’ve stayed in Texas?

A: Yeah. It’s home, and that is my whole film culture. I’m such a part of it. Here [in Los Angeles] the film culture is a business culture; that’s a cliche, but it’s true. That all depresses me, as necessary as it is. I never want to think in careerist terms. I have a good time when I’m here, and I like everyone I’m involved with. I don’t want to be part of it. It’s a great deal. I stay there. I make the movies there and get financed and distributed out of here.