The film that changed my life: Richard Linklater

I was 23 and I was really starting to dig into film's history. I'd just moved to Austin, Texas, and I was voracious - I was watching maybe 600 films a year. And then I came across a campus screening of Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running . I didn't take it on as a "Oh here's a great film you have to see" - it's just something I wandered into. It really resonated with me. It's about the prodigal son come back to his home town and it's about art and sex and who you want to be – all those important things. It's a Sinatra vehicle but I love it because it's about an artist who's flopped, and that's hard to depict. There's the person Sinatra's character, Dave Hirsh, kind of aspires to be – he had the chance to be the very greatest, but then he's this boozing, gambler guy too, and Dean Martin, playing Bama Dillert, represents that world. I have different feelings about those guys every time I watch it. It's like Citizen Kane – every time you see it it's a different movie. Sinatra always made it all about him, and this is maybe his best-ever performance. But the fun guy, as he was in real life, is Dean Martin's character – he wears a cowboy hat and, like Dean, doesn't give a shit about anything. It reflects how those guys really were – Sinatra: conflicted, easily wounded, striving. Dean Martin: not caring so much, just a cool guy. Sometimes I think I'd rather be Bama Dillert than Dave Hirsh, but it's fun to side with each of them. It's based on a novel by James Jones, who wrote From Here to Eternity ; Some Came Running was his follow-up novel and even though it didn't do as well, they managed to get a really wonderful screenplay out of it. Have I taken things from it for my films? I wish! They don't make 'em like that any more. I would love to, but I don't think people would buy that kind of 50s melodrama. There are sequences that are intimate, one-room scenes, but then there are beautiful crescendos, like the one at the end – he can deliver that too. Minnelli's sensibilities were perfect for it – the sensitivity and the bravado. It hits all the notes. That said, it opens with Sinatra travelling on a bus and someone pointed out to me that I have numerous movies which begin with a character travelling. I wasn't even that conscious of it but I think it's a good device. Richard Linklater is the director of Slacker, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and A Scanner Darkly. His latest film, Me and Orson Welles, is out now on DVD