Richard Linklater was completing up production on his newest project, the animated Apollo 1012, on a soundstage at Austin’s Troublemaker Studios when he learned that the 2020 SXSW film festival would be cancelled due to the COVID-19 epidemic. That’s when he understood the gravity of the situation. “I was thinking, ‘Holy sh*t, this is genuine,'” the filmmaker explains.
He finished the 20-day shoot for Apollo, travelled home just outside of town, and settled in for lockdown and a lengthy postproduction animation process.
Linklater’s filmography is a patient study. After all, this is the man who directed a trilogy that spanned almost two decades (the Before films, which began in 1995 with Before Sunrise) and filmed one feature picture over a period of 12 years (Boyhood, released in 2014). Rather of bemoaning the COVID-induced sluggishness, Linklater embraced it. “It was a perfect moment to have a long-term project,” he explains.
Apollo10½ is a mash-up of numerous threads from Linklater’s canon, following a little kid on an imagined voyage to space alongside the Apollo 11 mission. After addressing the 1970s with 1993’s Dazed and Confused, the 1980s with 2016’s Everybody Wants Some!!, and the 1990s with his Gen X classic Slacker, Linklater is now tackling the 1960s with Apollo 10½.
The Linklaters resided near NASA’s Mission Control in Houston for a brief but pivotal period while the country prepared for the 1969 moon landing. “Most movies make it about the item rather than the audience,” he explains. “However, there were three individuals on the mission and 600 million people watching it,” I reasoned.
And Linklater is staying in Houston for his next film, a contemporary depiction of the city. He characterizes the idea as “a very modern work with a real crime bent,” with filming set to begin in the spring. But first, Apollo 1012 will premiere at SXSW two years after the festival’s last-minute cancellation, and then on Netflix on April 1. “Because they wanted to do it,” Linklater, artistic director of Austin Film Society, which runs local indie-focused cinema AFS Cinema, chuckles when asked why the streamer was the ideal distributor. That’s always the appropriate person to be with.”
