Richard Linklater’s decades-long career is as ambitious and varied as it is thoughtful and methodical. He handily solidified himself as part of an emergent new guard of independent filmmakers during the 1991 Sundance Film Festival. His second feature film Slacker, which he showed at the fest, earned a Grand Jury Prize Nomination. From the “nothing-yet-everything happens,” day in the life approach of that film, to subsequent works like the cult-classic Dazed and Confused and his revered Before trilogy… on through later endeavors like the smash-hit School of Rock and 2024’s twisty crime-caper Hit Man — Linklater has established himself as one of our greatest living observers of human existence in all its varied forms.
For his Treat, Linklater extolls the virtues of a classic work of American literature, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Linklater recalls first reading Thoreau’s 1854 memoir as part of a school assignment during his junior year of high school, but the themes of anti-industrialization, minimalism, and staying true to one’s self resonated fiercely with the burgeoning artist. He refers to the book as a “how-to” guide, and describes how he’s been able to apply its lessons to his own life and career.
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This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
As a teenager I read Henry David Thoreau's Walden. It was an assignment, junior year in high school. But that book really changed my life. Thoreau, in his famous Harvard graduation, as part of his graduation ceremony told his classmates that The Bible got it backwards. We were supposed to work one day a week and have six days off. And what he meant by that is you should spend your time in nature — thinking, reading, [and doing] what you're really passionate about. Work as minimally as possible.
He saw the encroaching industrial age that was going to overtake and swamp our nation. He saw it early on, as did all the transcendentalists, and they were really worried about our souls. So he very methodically set out to prove… It's a how-to book, Walden. [It’s] one of the greatest American novels, but it's really a how-to book — how to be yourself, how to just live your life, and how cheap[ly] you can live if you will make the sacrifices necessary. He could plant a bean field and he could sell [them for x amount] and he could live on this. He lived humbly, obviously, in his little cabin he built. It was an experiment. It was kind of a performance art project, but it was a literary exercise. He was very funny, he was satirical, but he really did care about our souls.
I appreciate his effort, because it really did shape a lot of my life. I made those sacrifices, lived very cheaply, and just wanted to do what I wanted to do. I'm now a guy in my 60s. I look back at my entire adult life, and I’ve kind of done exactly what I wanted to do. I never compromised. I didn't do anything for money. I’ve been lucky, but I've been persistent. And I was methodical about it, the way he is methodical about how he's gonna somehow work in this world that wants to screw you over, make you less, and steal your time and your life's force. It's a paranoid book, in a good way, about how the world is coming for you and how to hold it off and be yourself. Yeah… beautiful, beautiful work.