Houston: Richard Linklater Wants Your ‘69 Home Movies
Leave it to Richard Linklater to make a movie about the exact same period as new films by Quentin Tarantino and Mary Harron, but to go in a completely different tonal direction.
The beloved indie auteur is setting his next film in the fabled Summer of ‘69, like Tarantino and Harron - but rather than focusing on the Manson murders, he's keeping things bright and chipper by shifting the action to Houston. That year, during which Linklater was in third grade, saw Texas’ largest city play host, remotely, to the moon landings - all amongst a significant period of development. So, it's still a film about cultural upheaval, but in a more positive kind of way.
Linklater's film will be told from a child's point of view, harkening back to Boyhood, The Film That Lost To Birdman. It'll be shot in and around Houston as much as possible, despite the ongoing tax-incentive war currently favouring other states, and will feature “regional hits” from the period on its soundtrack.
Most intriguing of all: Linklater is calling for Houston locals to submit photos and home movie footage from the era. The material would be used for research, but also could be digitised and used in the picture itself:
Director Richard Linklater needs your Houston area photos, videos from the 1960s for a new movie. Have a home movie from Astroworld or the Astrodome, or a recording of your little brother with Kitirik? Did someone you know use a Kinescope to record the moon landing? If so, we want to see it and anything else that documents that era. There is no wrong material, as long as it from Houston in the 1960s we want to see it.
The relevant contact email for that is [email protected]
The as-yet-untitled film will go into production sometime after Linklater's current project Where'd You Go Bernadette? wraps up, and is being aimed for release for July 2019, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.
