Richard Linklater on Zac Efron, Child Actors, and His Mysterious 12-Year Drama

That's got to have been a primer on how to work with child actors in itself.

It actually always helped me! Like on School of Rock or Bad News Bears, I had been thinking about childhood already. Now I'm into the teen years, so it's going to segue into some weird, perverted version of Dazed and Confused or something. [Laughs] I get a year to think about it, and then we shoot it in two or three days every year. It's very low-budget.

Have you reworked the script as you went along?

No, I pretty much have it mapped out. I know the last shot of the movie and I know where it ends. I know I'm building toward something.

And when does the shoot end?

In about another five years or so. It's such a weird concept! I remember talking about it to Patricia Arquette -- before this, I had only met her once briefly -- and I called her up. I knew she had had a kid pretty early, and I was talking about this single mom and what I had in mind for the mom character. We talked for about three hours and she agreed to do it. We talked about, "Where are we gonna be twelve years from now?" And I said, "I'm probably going to be trying to get a movie made, if we're lucky, and you're going to be looking for a good role." And she said, "Yeah, you're right." And here we are! Every year we talk. Her character has been through a lot. The lead character is really just time.

You were never worried that the plug might somehow be pulled? How is the film financed?

Talk about a shifting industry! IFC gives me a little bit of money every year to shoot it. Back then, they had all these films, and now, I'm their only production. You can buy films for $20,000, so why produce anything? There's niches to be had out there in this crazy world.

I'm definitely curious about it.

It's an intriguing thing. I'm encouraged that I get asked about it. I just hope that people are interested when it's finally done. It's going to be two and a half hours long, minimum. If I can spend thirteen years working on something, you can spend that long watching it.

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