Blog

“Before Sunrise” (1995), “Before Sunset” (2004), and “Before Midnight” (2013)

Salon.com has a heartfelt story of Richard Linklater’s actual life before the 1995 film production of “Before Sunrise,” which now has a third film, “Before Midnight,” currently in theaters.

Even in the midst of that romantic night, the filmmaker in Linklater couldn’t help but consider its cinematic possibilities. In a 2004 interview with the New York Times, he remembered “walking around [thinking], ‘If I could just capture this feeling I’m having right now,’ instead of actually having that feeling.” On a recent episode of the podcast The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith, he recalled mentioning the movie idea to Lehrhaupt that night:

Even as that experience was going on … I was like, “I’m gonna make a film about this.” And she was like, “What ‘this’? What’re you talking about?” And I was like, “Just this. This feeling. This thing that’s going on between us.”

Linklater, famous for avant-garde and realistic films that are often set within a single day, was lucky enough to capture that feeling and making a trilogy from a single night’s adventure.