Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos.

There's this idea, maybe a trope, that the best film directors are constantly remaking their own movies,

trying to get this one thing out of themselves, or more perfectly articulate some vision.

At first glance, this may not feel like it applies to the director, Richard Linklater.

His long list of films include fun commercial hits like School of Rock and Thinky Indy

classics like Slacker and Waking Life. He also has got a category almost exclusively to himself,

project shot over many years piece by piece with the same actors,

like the Before trilogy and boyhood.

But these films do have a lot in common.

There are a lot of men figuring out what it means to be men.

There's a lot of philosophizing with characters talking through ideas.

There are a lot of people who change.

His most recent film Hitman stars Glenn Powell as a philosophy professor named Gary, who moonlights as a police informant that's pretending to be a hitman. Gary's a pretty

boring guy, but as an undercover hitman, he springs to life. It explores philosophy and masculinity,

and whether people change, and it's also just a very fun watch. I'm thrilled to have Richard Linklater with me today to talk about the film. Richard, hi. Welcome to the show. Hi, how are you doing? Good. How are you? Good. It's just men trying to figure out what about Julie's character? What about Patricia Arquette and Boyhood? I thought, you know, I'm going to anyway. That was the first question I was going to ask you

is just like, I have this grand theory for you and feel free to disagree with it. Well, that was it.

I'm wondering if, like, do you think you're someone who's continuously trying to get the same thing

or a few things out in your films or no?

You know, I don't consciously think about it filmed to film.

I mean, in my own life, I'm always interested in exploring or, you know,

see where your interests and instincts take you.

I've been lucky every film.

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