Richard Linklater tempts fate, commits to 20-year film production of Merrily We Roll Along
Aux Features Film
Look, we get it: Boyhood was an amazing achievement in the field of method directing, with Richard Linklater’s decision to film young Ellar Coltrane over the course of more than a decade producing one of the most authentically affecting portraits of growing up ever committed to the screen. But also, Richard, buddy: You know make-up exists, right?
Said piece of practical advice comes courtesy of a piece reported in Collider today, suggesting that Linklater apparently intends to top his own chronologically obsessed self by spending the next 20 years filming an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along. Sorry, no, that was a misprint; we meant to say the next 20 fucking years, with a bunch of exclamation points slapped there on the end.
And look, we love Sondheim as much as the next pop culture website, but we’re pretty sure Grimskull The Thicc, Lord Of The Los Angeles Quakelands, isn’t going to be handing out any Special Achievement In Film Oscars when this thing finally comes out in the distant wreckage of 2039. Linklater, meanwhile, will be pushing 80 when the movie actually arrives, and you just know that the government-mandated lifegem implanted in his palm during the Youth Wars of 2028 will have begun blinking by then. (Dear Sandmen: Please respect your fellow theatergoers by not Carrouseling Richard Linklater during a screening at the Alamo Drafthouse.) And not to be crass or morbid, but that’s to say nothing on banking on stars Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein staying, uh, alive, in all that time, especially if they aren’t able to find a Mariner to show them the proper way to Dryland.
Admittedly, Merrily We Roll Along—first staged as a musical back in 1981—is all about the passage of time, as a rich and successful composer looks back at 20 years of his life. Per the report, Linklater’s film would take that process very literally, filming the flashbacks first with present-day Platt and Feldstein, and then checking in with them (or their brain-uploaded holo avatars, as necessary) as the years progressed. It’s the sort of thing most directors would do with CGI and, again, make-up. But hell, what do we know; maybe Linklater just really knows what Grimskull likes.
Update: Blumhouse, which is reportedly co-producing on the film, has now apparently confirmed not just its existence, but its purported timeline for filming. So there you go, we guess. All hail Grimskull!
Update, 7:15 PM: Oh, wow. So this thing is really happening. Hours after Collider published its initial report, Linklater himself has confirmed to Variety that yes, he is making a 20-year adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along, and yes, he knows it’s a really ambitious project. To quote the five-time Oscar nominee:
I first saw, and fell in love with Merrily in the ‘80s and I can’t think of a better place to spend the next 20 years than in the world of a Sondheim musical. I don’t enter this multi-year experience lightly, but it seems the best, perhaps the only way, to do this story justice on film.
Godspeed, Richard. Hopefully Grimskull gives us all time off from the blood mines to go see it.
81 Comments
If there was only some technology that would allow you to digitally age and de-age actors. I’m sure it will exist in 20 years time.
I don’t give a rat’s ass about Harry Potter, but I hope they reshoot the 13-years-later coda in five years with the 13-years-older cast. Effects can be great, but Time is the greatest effect of all.
I hope not, because the coda is hot garbage.
No argument there, but I think it’d be a nice gift to the fans that do enjoy it.
yep, but the gimick of boyhood wouldn’t have been as good if they just used CGI. Linkletter knows he’s sort of a hack now. Bernie was literally his last good film and even that is carried by the cast and a shitload of Texas accents
This is the most theater kid thing ever
I mean, sure, why not? Yeah, you could film the whole thing in a few weeks using age makeup or CGI or whatever, but tons of movies use makeup to age people.Beanie Feldstein is 26, and when she’s 46 she’s going to be able to give a different (presumably more mature) performance portraying a 40-something woman than she could at the age of 26.
That’s sort of the key. There are plenty of reasons not to do a movie this way, but it’s experimental in the best way. Watching an actor play the same character for many IRL years is something that happens a lot on television, but it’s less common in movies. And TV shows tend to hide the inexorable march of time by recasting roles or just ending.
Yeah. And, like, why would anyone care if Linklater wants to do this? It harms no one.
I imagine an actor being told they have twenty years’ of guaranteed work would experience far too many multiple orgasms to be healthy.
Twenty years’ of work, but split up over a long period, it’s not like it’s handing out continuous paychecks.
It’s still some work, every year, for two decades. It might not pay all your bills but at least it takes away some of the stress of being a working actor and keeps you in the industry, where other people can meet you, for twenty years.
It’s still presumably the amount of pay you’d get from making a movie in a single go, it’s just spread out differently. And “occasionally going back to the same project” is probably not nearly as good for your career as actually having that project come out now.
Is there some fucking reason that fucking A/V club fucking headlines have to fucking have foul fucking language in them, fucking all the time? It fucking makes you and your fucking employer come across as fucking seventh graders that just fucking learned how to fucking say the word “fuck.”. Grow the fuck up and write decent headlines that are fucking safe for fucking work. Fucking thanks you pubescent fucking cretins.
I don’t get this. Even if he doesn’t want to use CG, could he not just cast different actors? What’s the obsession with real time aging? Also isn’t Linklater in his 60s?? He could just straight up die before the movie is finished.
Yeah, it’s not like when you watched this one on stage, you came back every year for one scene
That would be a really interesting theater experience.
“He could just straight up die before the movie is finished.” – So? Directors can be replaced, and I imagine he’ll make contingency plans. Personally, I think this sounds like an awesome idea, even if I have no clue whether I’d enjoy the source material now or in 20 years. What, after all, is the point of any artistic undertaking?
Directors can be replaced, but that is nowhere near the ideal for a movie nor does that always result in a coherent film. Obviously you could argue that every movie is pointless, but this one just seems to be introducing potential issues that aren’t really necessary.
Having one director doesn’t guarantee a coherent film, either. And this movie is based on a long-established musical, and any replacement director would by the very nature of the project have plenty of time to review existing footage and get up to speed… So, you’ll excuse if I find your fretting somewhat bizarre. 😉
Filming a musical over 20 years isn’t something a person just randomly decides to do. Why would you expect a new director to even want to take on someone else’s deeply personal, weird, and time-consuming project? If you were going to do it that way, you’d just embrace the gimmick and have a new director jump in each year until you had a movie musical filmed by 20 people.
“Filming a musical over 20 years isn’t something a person just randomly decides to do.” – I imagine Linklater has put some thought into it. Also, you’ll never become an internationally admired filmmaker with that attitude, friend!“deeply personal, weird” – Perhaps you’ve never heard of Sondheim musicals. They’re rather popular in theatrical circles. “time-consuming project” – It’s filming a few scenes per year at most. Really not seeing what the big hardship would be.
Yeah… Linklater being the one who put thought into it is the entire point. It’s his project that he’s put a lot of thought into. Is this hypothetical new director spending years waiting for him die and thinking about what they’d do with the project once that happened? Or are they just thoughtlessly taking on a decades-long project?“Perhaps you’ve never heard of Sondheim musicals. They’re rather popular in theatrical circles.” I admit that I’m not all that into musicals, but are all Sondheim musicals performed over the course of 20 years? How fascinating! I guess that means there are TONS of people willing to take on this very humdrum and workaday assignment.“It’s filming a few scenes per year at most. Really not seeing what the big hardship would be.”. Yup. That’s all directing a movie involves. “Filming a few scenes.” Doesn’t take thought or preparation or working with others, or managing schedules or worrying about funding or using one’s imagination. Easy peasy.
You seem genuinely upset by this project. What insult is it to you?
I’m mystified where you’d get that idea from, since nothing I said relates to my opinions on the value of the project. Maybe you’re projecting? Are you “genuinely upset” at the thought that a 20-year-long art piece couldn’t just be handed over to any random Sondheim fan for completion?
“Hey, Richard I’d love to be your backup director – no, wait, I just checked the calendar and I have a scheduling conflict in 2032.”
Twenty years is time enough for an entire career in Hollywood to be established. It’s plenty of time to find someone willing enough, suitable enough and willing enough to take over from Linklater in the event of him being unable to complete this project. It’s not like Linklater is going to be lacking time to consider the possibilities.
Maybe. Or he, quite reasonably, figures it’ll either be completed or it won’t. I doubt an artist taking on a 20 year project of this sort would be all that interested in passing it on to someone else. Part of the point of such a project would be having one artist presenting you the work of 20 years.
I mean, I don’t think anyone’s saying he doesn’t intend to complete it. Just that there’s also plenty of time for him to sort out a contingency if necessary. I also doubt it’s entirely up to him, since anyone willing to invest in this project would presumably only do with some kind of reassurance that the people involved will make every effort to ensure it’s completed and won’t just give up should something happen to Linklater. Part of the point is one artist showing the audience the work of twenty years, yes. But if worst comes to worst, I imagine they’ll settle for someone else completing it if possible. ‘They’ being the people stumping up the cash.
Well yeah obviously. But who really cares whether some random zombie version of his opus comes out posthumously because of money? Other than the people with the money? The other possibility would be just to edit what exists and present the unfinished work. That sometimes happens when an artist passes before they can finish something
The people who are kind of curious about finally seeing this twenty-year movie that Richard Linklater devised and directed a significant chunk of even if he didn’t complete it, for one. People who’d like to see this story on-screen for two (it is a Sondheim adaptation). People who are still curious about the gimmick even if it took multiple directors to complete, for three. People who are also interested in our hypothetical other director, for four; you seem to be preemptively jumping to the conclusion that they’ll just drop any old random hack into stitching this project together in a complete hatchet job rather than, say, someone who Richard Linklater himself personally recommends and approves of.In short, while I’m not saying that they’d absolutely definitely go this route, if they did it wouldn’t necessarily going to be the absolute trainwreck with no audience you seem to have decided it will be either.
Also enough time for linklater to get #metoo’d or #canceled or #assassinatethebourgois or something in next twenty years. Hell half the cast could be killed in the Great Melt of 2034 or something
Oh I’m not fretting, if and when the movie actually gets made I’m sure it’ll be fine (at least). I’m just saying what I think could be some problems that COULD arise, not that they’re all going to 100% happen. I’m not about tosend him a letter about it or anything.
Having one director doesn’t guarantee a coherent film, either. And this movie is based on a long-established musical, and any replacement director would by the very nature of the project have plenty of time to review existing footage and get up to speed… So, you’ll excuse if I find your fretting somewhat bizarre. 😉
It’s a beautiful show. Really sad, great music, well drawn characters.
It’s an experiment. It’s supposed to be impractical, and it will be a unique viewing experience when it finally comes out. In addition to the actors actually aging, rather than doing a simulation of aging, the earlier scenes will be dated in a way that it’s hard a for a “period piece” to match. There are subtle differences in fashion and the cars on the road that come across differently when a movie is set-designed to look like the present versus the past.
This is the best take yet on this film and the concept in general. The older scenes will not just look older, they will feel older and that will have a subtle but significant effect on any viewer who opens him/herself up to the experience. More importantly, this is an experiment and thank god for even failed experiments in the age of Disney. I’m not much of a Linklater fan and I skipped “Boyhood” but I’d take a gander at this. On a marginally related note, does anyone else remember David Carradine directing a multi-decade film starring his own daughter? He supposedly started it in the seventies but I never heard another word about it.
“He could just straight up die before the movie is finished.”
That’s okay. No one has ever regretted the things they didn’t do after they died.
Fucking Moonlight had 3 different actors for the main character, and that worked! Hell, it won the Best Picture Oscar! You don’t have to go THAT method!
So… it’s official? We’re all going to start using ‘method’ in this way that doesn’t really jibe with the original concept just because it makes us “sound knowledgable” about film???
To me it just has a certain Rube Goldberg quality. It’ll be an impressive feat of project management if nothing else, and there’s definitely an intriguing aspect to the idea of actors giving performances that evolve over two decades, but ultimately it seems like so much effort to expend over something that gets achieved more simply, and to great effect, all the time. Someone downthread mentions ‘Moonlight’, which features three amazing performances from incredible actors that build upon and entwine with each other beautifully.
It works great in Moonlight, in part, as a way to amplify the dramatic changes in the main characters life.I know nothing about the musical being discussed, but I can think of a ton of stories where this choice would be a really BAD way to tell that particular story. One can’t make or tell every story the exact same way.
“couldn’t he just paint, like, a thing instead of all those spatters” – response to Jackson Pollack
“i don’t understand all the behind the back stuff. what’t the point” -response to Pistol Pete Maravich“what’s with all the whale stuff. he loses the plot” – response to Moby Dick“take five? Nah, I’m cool with 4-4.” – response to Dave BrubeckLOL. Art isn’t (just) about cranking out something in 8 months for some else’s consumption. For some artists the process itself is part of the expression. For some attempting something new is worth the effort in and of itself. And finally, there is much to learn in looking at how we do anything in a dramatically different way, whether the project you learn from is great or not.
Mr. Linklater’s Opus.
I doubt Blumhouse will exist in twenty years.
It’ll probably get bought by Disney and the project will immediately be consigned to the dustbin.
What a fucking gross waste of digital ink. If just reporting the news directly is beyond your capability, could you at least dial back the cynicism at least 30 notches? In the one bit of worthwhile prose, you note that “Merrily” is “all about the passage of time, as a rich and successful composer looks back at 20 years of his life.” It’s a legendary misfire on stage, never quite living up to its possibilities primarily because casting the same actors to play both young and old versions of themselves never quite works. Linklater’s solution sounds brilliant: You still get what Sondheim, writer George Furth and director Hal Prince were going for on stage, but it takes advantage of its medium by being able to show the reality of the stars aging and maturing along with their characters. Perhaps in 20 years you’ll have matured out of this reflexive, nauseating cynicism.
It’s cool how my comment is still pending. Sure does make me think the writer/editors can dish it out without being able to take it.
You
know what? Good. Richard Linklater has made several of my favorite films from
the last three decades. His last few films, however, were pretty disappointing –
it just seems like he doesn’t have the same drive or interest in making
traditional indie prestige stuff anymore. So why not do something weird and ambitious
and probably untenable (but maybe not?) with the industry credit he’s built up? It could be amazing. It could fall apart in a couple years. He might not live to finish it. But fuck it man, at least it’s interesting. I wish more people with his reputation would try things like this.
They could have the actors hang out and party with Lindsay Lohan and then it will only take 5 years to age 20.
She’s the real life equivalent of the hyperbolic time chamber.
Everyone’s guffawing at the ambitious time frame, but they’re burying the real lede here: A FILM ADAPTATION OF SONDHEIM’S MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. I sincerely hope to be alive to see it. Also, it’s funny that Beanie Feldstein is reprising the role that her character played on stage in Lady Bird.
I mean his
I am a Sondheim fanatic. I’ve listened to this soundtrack numerous times. I watched the doc about the production and audio recording of the music. This is a colossally bad decision. The only valuable metric of Boyhood that the viewing public had no idea of the production before it was finished.
I want to see the doc. I saw the Documentary Now spoof and loved that. I need to find the real version.
The Documentary Now spoof was on ‘Original Cast Album: Company,’ about a different Sondheim show. The doc IMHO is referring to is called ‘The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened,’ which just came out a couple years ago.
Just FYI. The Doc Now was a parody of the the Company cast recording. There’s a separate doc about the doomed production and recording of Merrily We Roll Along. Both are good, but the second one has much more drama. I think I saw it on Netflix. OOPS, I can edit this but not delete it. I just noticed the other comment regarding this info.
It was revived on Broadway earlier this year and it’s….not great live. I’m a fellow Sondheim fanatic and I’ve seen the majority of his shows (and been in a few) and it ranks right near the bottom.
You know, I get that it is a gimmick and you could just cast different sets of actors or use CG, but I find this particular combination of gimmick and material kind of interesting. The whole musical is about time passing and disillusionment. There’s also something about a really good actor coming back to a role much later in life that can be quite moving.
If nothing else, the gimmick fits the material.
This is one of my favorite musicals and I never thought I’d see a movie version of it in my lifetime, and it’s possible I still never will!
“Mr President, the ecosystem is teetering on the verge of complete collapse, and the Mars colony, though risky, is our best shot. We have to think about planetwide evacuation now.”“But if we hang on just three more years that Linklater film will be done!”
Oh, they’ll have movie theatres on Mars.
Just as long as this doesn’t interfere with his next entries in the Before series.
So Linklater’s becoming the real life version of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character in ‘Synecdoche, New York’?
This seems like one of those “I’m doing this because I can” things for Linklater. And I fully support it. Some things are worth doing because they take a long time.
On the one hand, I’ve been pretty happy with the wave of filmed musicals in recent years, we can’t all pay $100 for theater tickets. On the other hand, this is just a ridiculous way to make a musical. Is Merrily We Roll Along even considered one of Sondheim’s best? I haven’t seen it, because again, no film, but all I know about it is about the troubled production. It’d be a shame to go through all this effort just to get the equivalent of the A Little Night Music version with Elizabeth Taylor.
Merrily is considered on on Sondheim’s more ambitions flops, though unlike Follies, it never attracted a sort of “King In Yellow” mystique to it. It’s also arguably one of the most openly bitter Sondheim stories: it’s how fame, greed, and lust destroys the friendship of three people in show biz (one is a reporter, one is a morally bankrupt producer who does mainstream friendly tripe, one is a struggling producer who refuses to sell out like his friends and makes “real art” with his musicals) and reflects how jaded and upset Sondheim was at the time relating to how projects like Follies flopped while his more normie friendly fodder was what made money and how Broadway kept pressuring him to be less ambitious and focus on lowest common denominator fodder. That said, the entire gimmick is that like the film “Irreversible”, the entire thing filmed in reverse starting with the first act having the main characters as old folk who have completely destroyed their chances at happiness/redemption and are irrevocably miserable and suffering; the second act details the final break from which the trio made the choices that irrevocably ruined their lives and friendships, and the final third act shows how the three met, their pure innocents and joyous friendship and how full of hope and optimism at how bright their future was and how they would be friends until the end.
Maybe we should stick to having Anne Lockhart and Miguel Ferrer playing the same characters in the WWII flashback scenes as June Lockhart and Jose Ferrer did (respectively) in the present-day scenes of that episode of Magnum, PI.
But… why?
I say the same thing about 95% of movies that get made.At least the point here is to try something new or grand instead of just setting up the next film in an extended universe.
Because somebody’s got to, goddamnit!
Fair enough.
Jesus, I look forward to seeing this when I’m almost 60 fucking years old.
Maybe he should just film a remake of Merrily We Dance:
Would that it’were so simple.
This really isn’t a prank?
Why does this feel like a sophisticated retirement plan scam? I mean how much are they funding him as a Director for each year?
government-mandated lifegem implanted in his palm
I’m always happy to stumble across references that remind me Logan’s Run was a real movie and not just something I hallucinated.
Reshoots after filming wraps are gonna be a bitch.
Hubris, thy name is Linklater