L O S T I N A M E R I C ARICHARD LINKLATER SURVEYS A MEANER, HARDER WORLD IN A SCANNER DARKLY AND EAST EODD NATION

A N E X l K h M E L Y K A ] l i l l " U I . A D A I ' -

tation of Philip K. Dick's 1977novel, right down to the inclusion

oT the author's postscript roll-call oi drug-casualty comrades, A Scanner Darkly findsRichard I.inklater journeying deep into thespooky, lonesome badlands of the psyche. Ifthe similarly animated and interiorized Wak-ing Life (01) was a playful, free-associativeexploration of dream logic and an engag-ingly dialectical survey of the nature of real-ity and existence, /\ Scanner Darkly is a badtrip in which the dissolution of a schizoid,drug-addled mind refracts ii dystopianAmerican Now. By the end of rhis tale ofparanoia and betrayal, set in a spectralworld where there's a surveillance camera onevery street corner, the film's protagomst,Bob, a near-future undercover narc played

by Keanu Reeves, has lose both himself and all but the most tenuous of connec-tions to reality—and whether he'll ever recover remains an t>pen question.

You could say that L.lnkLirer's a long way from home with this fitfully comicbut ultimately bleak and haunting material. But is he? Most of his Hlms are aboveall attuned to the way consciousness wrestles with questions of authenticity andself-definition—they're driven by the intrinsic sense of possibility contained in peo-ple's ruminations and open-hearted yearnings, in the human urge to question andinquire and connect. [Respite its melancholic conclusion. Waking Life positivelyreioices in the endless permutations of the mind's engagement with the world,much as Slacker (91) celebrates the overwhelming diversity of individuality to befound if you spend a day wandering the streets of Austin, Texas, I.inklater's baseof operations. And Before Sunrise (95) and Before Sttiisct (04) are two ditferetittakes on restless spirits trying on possible approaches to the world around tbemand coming to grips with life's Big Questions, hopefully and self-consciously in thefirst film, and with regrets and doubts in its nine-years-on sequel. I.inklater'smovies are grounded in a faith in the freethinking individual's ability to find bis orher own way instead of simply accepting received imperatives. At the same time,as Before Sunset demonstrates, introspcctit)n is no walk in the park; loss and dis-illusionment are never far. A Scantter Darkly, like Linklater's 2001 digital video

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POUCE

experiment T^ipe, plays out these same fundamental questions, but in a fallenworld where life has been hollowed out and the future looks less than bright:"Does a scanner see clearly or darkly? I see only murk," concludes Bob. Entropyand impasse, evidenr from the start in some of Sbcker''s more nihilistic and para-noid monologues, have become this film's domain.

Back in the day, Slacker was described as a film that posited "persona! refusalinstead of politics," Maybe. But as if to refute this, hard on the heels of AScanner Darkly comes Linklater's soon-to-be-released hast Food Nation, withits grim minimum-wage realities and pervasive moral compromises. A fictivetake on Eric Schlosser's nonfiction expose, it presents a holistic view of the innerworkings of a corporation that is McDonald's in all but name. Matter-of-fact andunsensationalized but no less incisive for it, the film delves into the business ofjunk food from top to bottom, dividing its time among three narratives thatdepict working life in the meatpacking plant, in retail outlets, and in the executivesuite. Laying bare a structure that effectively embodies an entire socioeconomicsystem and its values ("the machine that's taken over our country," as one char-acter puts it). Fast Food Nation is Linklater's most ambitious iilm to date in itsreach and scope. Here, for once, questions of identity and the meaning of lifemust take a backseat to putting food on the table and making a living.

Linklater's films have always been, in part, an implicit ongoing reflection onAmerican life and values, from Dazed and Confttsed (93) to School of Rock (03).Taken together, Fast Food Nation and A Scanner Darkly constitute a comprehen-sive political vision of today's gtoves-off, No More Mr. Nice Guy America, wheredissent isn't tolerated and exploitation is the name of the game.

Nightmare nation (clockwise from left): Keanu Reeves (drinking), Robert Downey Jr.

(smoking), Keanu again (glowing), Winona Ryder (driving), and Rory Cochrane (busted)

INTERVIEW BY GAVIN SMITHWhat makes A Scar)r)er Darkly so haunting isthis sense of an identity gradually dissolving.Well, it's always, I think, the most interestingquestion: Who are you? That's the questionwe ask ourselves our whole lives. Obviously,your most enduring relation is who you thinkyou are to who you have been in the past—and then there's always who you really are,which some of us never know. So much ofour identity' is wrapped in an illusion. It's justa construct of who we want to he rather thanwho we are. So Scanner totally stacks thedeck in that direction. At some point in thepast he has taken a job as an undercover nar-cotics officer, so that's kind of interesting, tobe play-acting someone you're not. Andthen, when he's assigned to observe himself,it gets surreal. And when you throw Into thecocktail that his brain is actually splitting intwo due to his own drug addiction from hisjob, it results in bis actually forgetting whohe is altogether. It's a twisted Philip K. Dickworld that was kind of impossible to resist—so rich, so many layers in that area. It's seen

July-August 2006 FILM COMMENT I 27

as a kind of nightmarish scenario, but Iwould ask the question. Is it really so badto forget who you are. I think a big partof the human spirit's struggle is trying totranscend yourself, whether it's throughreligion or some mystical means orthrough drugs, to forget yourself, tobecome egoless, to lose yourself in some-thing bigger than yourself. It's an inter-esting tightrope we all walk, and I've feltit my whole life—forging an identity or astrong sense of yourself. And yet it canbe really unhealthy depending on what'sattached to that.

In your case you found or lost yourselfby joining the cult of cinema.Yeah, the cult of art in general, and cin-ema would be the subculture withinthat. I always felt cinema was a parallellife that I preferred to the real world. Itprobably goes back to something aschildlike as sitting in a movie theaterand forgetting yourself completely asyou watch this dream on the big screen.Obviously, that's why film has alwaysbeen so successful. It's a physical mani-festation of what we all do every night,which is to dream.

And film infiltrates your nervous sys-tem. Watching a movie is an experiencethat lives on within you aftervi/ards.It's still in you in a similar way a per-sonal memory would be. Some of yourmost intense emotions or experiencescome through secondary sources. Eorme, it was intense moments watchingmovies. Not that my life is devoid ofintense moments, I have plenty of them,but some of the most profound, becausethey're so perfectly clean, because you'renot directly involved, are in films. Whenit's your own life, you have so muchbaggage attached. Bur there's somethingclean about a moment in cinema thatyou're purely moved by.In adapting the book, what did youdecide about who the protagonist reallyis or was—is he Bob or Fred?There were many times Keanu and Iwould look at each other and say, "Well,who is this guy at this moment?" Youchart out where he's losing himself andto what degree, what percentage is heFred at this moment, how much is he

They drive by night: Fred/Bob Arctor (Reeves) and Donna (Ryder)

forgetting Bob. Wbat we do so well aspeople is proceed in what, at least to our-selves, is a consensual reality. We mightbe the only person consenting, but wethink this is reality. I've met people whoare pretty far gone with Alzheimer's,who've forgotten so much of their life,and yet they seem pretty content and inthe moment. That's how we had to workKeanu. Scsme impulse is firing when Bobwalks up to his house and he's forgottenthat it's his house—"There's somethinggoing on in this house." Your bodydoesn't care about that. It's functioning.That's our main motivation, just to stayalive, function, and keep going.Did you have a backstory, a sense ofvi/hat Bob was like before? We do get aflashback. If vi e can believe it.Yeah, there's a wife, kids, all that. Wedidn't dwell too much on rhe past, andwe even left it open that maybe that's notreal either.

Bob's old life is one of conformity, andthen something causes him to reject it.Yeah, I found that fascinating. We play itlike, "Yes, he did have a wife and kids,and they did live in that house." But thatwhole sentiment, that you could turnyour back on that life of conformity—inmy twenties I would have thoughtmaybe that was a cool thing or liberat-ing. Now 1 find it just incredibly sad.Having a few kids myself, I think that ifyou couldn't find any joy in that and

wanted to run away . . . I saw it more intragic, sad terms. I'm still very in touchwith myself at a younger age when Imight have said, "Cool, fuck that. I don'tever want to be married in a three-bed-room, two-batbroom house with 2.3children." I totally relate to tbat guy, too,but a guy rejecting his kids is very sad tome at this point in my life.What were you going after in terms oftone?

To me, the narrative challenge was tocapture both the fun, exuberant, andridiculous bilariry of the drug world, andthe tragedy, the paranoia, and the sad-ness tbat comes in the wake of it. There'san up and a down tbat are often veryclose together, not just in the drug world,but in this world in general. The drugworld only accentuates and acceleratesit. The tonal shifts required are reallyamazing. And it's not just comic relief;that's the world they're living in, that'sthe way their brains are working, theway they're synchronized witb eachother on a certain high. And then it slidesinto paranoia, isolation, despair.Why did you return to the rotoscopeanimation used in Waking Life?1 always saw the film that way for thesame reason that I thought it worked inWaking Life: that it challenges the viewerin the area of realism—you have to ques-tion the reality of it. It's obviously ahuman construct, but it seems real, too.

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It puts your brain into an interestingarena. Film puts your brain in that placean^'ay, but I think this particular ani-mation technique, because it does havea reality basis, really tweaks that knobone more notch.

How did the approach to animationshift?Waking Life was all about individualcharacters being drawn different ways,in their own way. And it kind oi pulsed.,a product of drawing 12 frames persecond instead of 24, and then the com-puter interpolating the extra frames, soyou get this kind of doubling. It con-tributed to a slightly floaty', breathingeffect. This time we drew all 24 frames.We were going for a ver>' specific, con-sistent look: the look of this movie ismore like a graphic novel.And the cinematic correlatives are lesssci-fi movies than gritty Seventiesstreet films.

Yeah, that's true. It was fun to be in therealm of science fiction, but myjumping-off point was more Alphavillethan anything else. People always thinkscience fiction is about the future, but Ialways thought, "No, we're going toplay it just like it is right now." Justbecause it's the future doesn't mean theytake all the old cars off the street. Lookat Cuba.

And the animation is now about thenuances and subtleties of the actor'sface.Design and detail, detail, detail. It justabout killed us. It took so much moretime. You want to capture a perfor-mance and do justice to these actors,and you want people to forget they'rewatching an animated film. We onlyhad a few scenes in Waking Life thathad similar detail.

None of your movies buy into the idea ofheroism. But here the ending raises thepossibility of Bob making a difference.I've never wanted to do that before. Itdoesn't seem real to me. Bob's gone, andwe don't know if he's ever coming back.It's as if Nicholson at the end of OnePlew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had beenprogrammed to do something to put thehospital out of business. Bob has been

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programmed to maybe, mayhe dosome good in the war that's going on. Icould live with it in this case because atthe end he's a pawn in someone else'sgame. You can't really look at it andsay that's a traditional hero.The America you're visualizing here and

in Fast Food Nation is a bit more bleak

than the one in The Bad News Bears.

Things have gotten a little darker. Thatfeels real to me now, whereas it didn'tfeel real to me 10 years ago. It's a dif-ferent vibe out there. That's what mademe think Scannefs time had come.So the paranoid gestalt that comes upin parts of Slacker has become a reality?Yeah. So many conspiracy theories arejust your garden-variety paranoia, butconspiracy theory plus a generationquite often equals reality. What peoplethought was crackpot thinking in someof Dick's books wasn't that far off:unwinnable wars on drugs and terror-ism, the idea of a surveillance state—those are all ver\' real things. We treatedNew Path as if it were Halliburton. Thegovernment has outsourced the drugwar to this company, and they're notgoing to unemploy themselves; they'vegot stockholders to answer to. Thereare no human bad guys. The bad guy isthis quasi-governmental corporationthat's there to help. Downey says it allin the first scene in the cafe.Given that the book Fast Food Nation is

nonfiction, what was your initial model?

Eric and I just decided we had tothrow out the book altogether—butkeep the name and the atmosphere,and the focus on one town in Col-orado. Traffic would be a precedent inthat it's a good example of that narra-tive device where you take a subjectand you attack it from various angles.We don't have as many angles. Wereally only have three. By the end ofthe movie we only have two. Our orig-inal jumping-off point was SherwoodAnderson's Wineshurg, Ohio—to dothe story of a place and see it from alot of different people's points of view.Eric suggested that, and that's when itclicked for me. That's what I do, andthat would he my point of entry—I

Servitude with a smile: Fast Food Nation

don't want to make a piece of propa-ganda, but I am interested in workers.I am interested in all these issues.Why the structural device of droppingthe Greg Kinnear character's narrativethread halfway through?Boy, that met with a lot of opposition.It was like, "Unless you're Hitchcockdoing Psycho, you're not supposed tostart the film with somebody and thenhave them leave the movie halfwaythrough." But that's our metaphor.We've seen Nnrma Rae and Silk-wood, we recognize we're in that kindof genre—but it's not going to be oneperson coming in and changing it, it'sso much bigger than that. In Shanethe hero comes in and takes out atown and that's the story. So it's like,"Not this time. That's not going towork here." So it was fun to havehim just drift away, and you don'tmiss him, because his effectivenesshas run its course.

Did you consider a more satiric. Dr.Strangelove tone?Wow—you know, it started going therea lot, and at times I felt like maybe thatwas the best way to go. Didn't Kuhrickstart making Strangelove prettystraight, and the jokes kept comingand they realized they were in themiddle of a big satire? I looked forthat a few times, hut then that didn't

feel natural to me.Was there a point where getting themovie made became compelting?1 actually felt for the first time that Iwas doing something that's just biggerthan me. I've always felt 1 was doingsomething that was immediate andmade sense to me, but with this one, Iwas kind of aware that the subjectmatter was taking me to a muchbigger place. But I didn't want to getprecious about it. I almost had to fightthat feeling, because that's where youend up being really full of shit.How did you shoot the kill-floor sceneat the end?

Many times we couldn't light or hadvery limited time. They might let usin for an hour or two. We just had toshoot around reality, and many timeswhat you see in the plant, it's peopleactually working. We just insinuatedfictional people into real situations.But I was equipped for it. iMany atime the crew would say, "There'sjust no way we can do that in threehours. That's a day and a half, twodays' work." And my AD VincePalmo and myself, we'd say, "Hey,anybody could film in a day and ahalf, artyhody. We are the only peo-ple who can get it and get out in twohours. That's why we're doing this."This was definitely my most difficultshoot since Dazed and Confused, inthe similar way that the scope andthe ambition of the film so far out-distanced our budget and schedule.But I was up for that challenge.How many days was it?

Oh gosh, we had like thirtyish days.Hell, Dazed and Confused, I needed42 days, and I got 36. I could haveused an extra week or two here. I hadeverything I could probably ever get—but it was just the limitations of theenvironmerrts we were shooting in. Nomatter what budget or schedule, westill would have had only two hours toshoot. But, hey, I'm not really com-plaining. It adds its own feel. IZI

The interview continues online atwww.fiimlinc.com.

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