Francois Truffaut kept checking in with Antoine Doinel, Spike Lee caught up with Mookie again…there comes a point in a director’s career where they can’t help but look back and try to work in the same space they worked in during their youth. Sometimes it’s an attempt to recapture old glory, other times it’s because there’s a genuine interest in tackling old subject matter with more experience, maturity and wisdom. And now, two more directors have decided to go headlong into past.
First up, during a Reddit AMA (via Movies) — oh, the times we live in — Richard Linklater dropped the surprising news that he’s finally going tackle his long-discussed “Dazed and Confused” spiritual sequel/successor “That’s What I’m Talking About.” In 2010, he told us that the college-set period film was “just sitting there. I even have it financed, I just have to get a distributor that would do it or would give me enough to make it.” Yesterday, Linklater told a redditor that he’s “hoping to make it this fall, actually” and described it as “a college comedy.” It sounds like the film is appealing to Linklater now especially since it would be following the two-hander “Before Midnight.” “I feel like mixing it up with a big ensemble,” he added.
Details on the cast or even what the story will be aren’t quite known, but in 2012 both Linklater and Matthew McConaughey (aka Wooderson) spoke loosely about the plot. “Wooderson’s hanging out in LA clubs with a couple of chicks – he’s still dialed right in,” the actor said. The director added: “It’s not really a sequel; that’s a word that just kind of comes out. They’re not the same characters.” Intriguing stuff, and we hope this really and truly is coalescing.
Linklater isn’t the only filmmaker returning to a period he’s famous for, THR is reporting that Francis Ford Coppola — of the famed Francis Ford Coppola Winery, of course — will once again document the struggles of an Italian American family from the 1930s through the 1960s. The currently untitled film will focus “on a boy and girl in their late teens” and is described as “a coming-of-age story.” A swath of this time period was mined to great effect in the first “The Godfather” films, but unlike the Corleone family, it seems that the family at the heart of this film will indeed be legitimate. Coppola is apparently holed up on the Paramount lot writing the screenplay, but there’s no confirmation on to what extent — if any — the studio will be on board. Things seem to be moving along speedily though as the “Apocalypse Now” director has already enlisted the talents of the same casting director behind his daughter Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring.”
