INSIDE MOVIES
It was the perfect ending: Boy (Ethan Hawke) meets Girl of His Dreams (Julie Delpy) on his last day in Europe, and they spend the night wandering the city getting to know each other. The next morning, the instant soul mates part ways, agreeing to meet six months later in Paris. Do they ever see one another again? Do they always wonder what might have been? Rarely does a filmmaker have the guts to be so wistfully open-ended, but in 1995's 'Before Sunrise,' Richard Linklater understood that knowing what happened would have spoiled it.

And now, Linklater has gone and done the near impossible: He's created a sequel that not only satisfies our unanswered questions, but actually improves upon the original. 'Before Sunset' reunites Hawke and Delpy in Paris nine years later. In a world of one-liner actioners, Linklater (who also directed 'School of Rock' and 'Dazed and Confused,' among other films) is the rare moviemaker who understands the value of conversation. Here he reveals the movie that gave him permission to let his characters really talk, along with four others that helped shape his approach to filmmaking.
Masculin, Féminin
(1966, dir: Jean-Luc Godard; starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya)
'Masculin, Féminin' is just these people sitting in cafés talking. In the Godard sense, they don't really have pasts or futures. They're really just mouthpieces for the moment. The whole French New Wave wasn't afraid to talk. When people think of 'Breathless,' they remember him shooting a cop and being on the run, but there's this long 10-minute scene in her apartment, where she's sleeping and they're in the bathroom talking. To me, that's the heart and soul of Godard, just two characters talking. I think that's what life is: communicating, talking. Most of us aren't living in action movies or thrillers or any kind of hyperbolic state. It's just you communicating with other people. At any moment, we have the choice to blow it off and not go very deep in our thinking or to be honest and reveal more of ourselves. I admire people who cut through the layers of social niceties and get right to something real. I met Timothy Leary once, and he was the kind of person who would grab you on the shoulder and look you in the eye and ask you something pretty provocative: "What are you reading? Are you married? Are you gay?" That's how he met you. He didn't meet you with your defense mechanisms up. He had limited time, but he wanted to get to know you. I think what's required of us -- Julie, Ethan and I -- is complete honesty and a digging for some kind of truth.
The Band Wagon
(1953, dir: Vincente Minnelli; starring: Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse)
I think it's important to love all cinema, and 'The Band Wagon' is probably my favorite musical. I've always enjoyed all genres and styles of movies, but what I can do is kind of limited. In a parallel universe, I imagine myself like a Hollywood director of the '40s and '50s, like Vincente Minnelli or Howard Hawks or Michael Curtiz or Victor Fleming or any of these guys who could jump from genre to genre, film to film and handle all kinds of material. In a way, that's my model, even though we're living in much more independent freelance times. What Minnelli was able to accomplish at MGM throughout the '40s and '50s and into the '60s was pretty remarkable. He made some really great movies. 'The Band Wagon' is just one of many ('Some Came Running' might be my favorite), but I've been thinking about his musicals lately. It's a beautiful film, but it's kind of sad, too. Fred Astaire plays a has-been entertainer who gets up for one big show and one more love. Minnelli always had a really strong visual design for his films. He was a master of color and the frame, and that's something to strive for.
O Lucky Man!
(1973, dir: Lindsay Anderson; starring: Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren)
'O Lucky Man' probably ties into 'Before Sunset' more specifically because it turned out to be the second in a trilogy with Malcolm McDowell. There were only about four years between 'If....' and 'O Lucky Man,' and then 'Britannia Hospital' followed almost 10 years later. Mick Travis sort of grows up before our eyes, but he's a very different character in all three films. Anderson was a crazy, radical filmmaker who was always challenging convention. In 'O Lucky Man,' he really pushed it to the limit. He follows Mick Travis through all of society. I'd love to do something like that someday. Sequels can really be anything. Primarily, they're rather quick on the heels of the original, giving the audience more of what they thought was big about the first one. 'Before Sunset' was consciously going the other way. The question all those years ago was, "Do they get together or not?" It was never, "Are you going to make a sequel?" I like the idea of revisiting characters, and cinema's very powerful that way. It can explore that dynamic in a very physical way: You see them younger, you see them older. You sense a dialogue between their older and younger selves that's pretty interesting.
2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968; dir: Stanley Kubrick; starring: Kier Dullea, Gary Lockwood)
I think one of the most influential films I ever saw was '2001: A Space Odyssey.' I saw that when I was in first grade. That was during the space age, and they hadn't even put a man on the moon yet, but I was just kind of mystified. It was like this primordial film. It communicated to me on a nonverbal level. The words are almost intentionally banal, but it's a genius stroke that I intuitively understood that movie as an 8-year-old in the same way that I understand it years later. It was set in the near future -- at that point, only 32 years -- but I think that made logical sense from a mid-'60s vantage point. There had been such rapid acceleration of space technology, and that future seemed very likely. But of course things slowed down, and it all seems wildly fanciful now. I like that idea of imaging a future, which I just did for [my next movie] 'A Scanner Darkly.' I took my cues from the real world we're in right now, so elements aren't going to change very much. What Philip K. Dick imagined as the future has come to pass. I've just kind of updated it. Paranoia plus a generation becomes the reality.
Los Olvidados
(1950; dir: Luis Buñuel; starring: Alfonso Mejía, Estela Inda)
I remember seeing 'Over the Edge' brilliantly curated with 'Los Olvidados,' so it was like the two ultimate teenage wasteland films. One's a barrio in Mexico City, and the other is New Grenada, a planned subdivision in Southern California, but they each have equally devastating results in different ways. 'Over the Edge' was a totally underappreciated teen movie. The ultimate teen movies, they went all the way, where they end up fire-bombing the school, and I didn't have that courage in 'Dazed.' I did a slice-of-life story that was more like my real world. 'Over the Edge' has this wonderful build-up where things go wrong. It shows how this suburban world falls apart on these parents and teachers. It's pretty great. 'Los Olvidados' was very realistic, and I've always appreciated that. When you're in the genre, you're often working against it. What's motivating you isn't the great films of the genre, but the sappy bad ones that don't seem real at all. It just makes you say, "I'm going to make something that seems truer to my own life that I can relate to." That's what I've always tried to do with whatever I was doing.