In a never-tried-before approach to Hollywood movie-making, “Boyhood” was filmed intermittently by writer/director Richard Linklater over 12 successive years (2002 – 2013) with the same actors.
The film, released in July, is already generating Oscar buzz for best picture and best director. Its stars, Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, who play a divorced couple, were on hand for a private screening held in Malibu last Sunday, along with the actors playing their two children, Ellar Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater.
The fictional coming-of-age story begins with six-year old character Mason and chronicles the events in his life up to the time he graduates from high school, including relationships with his sister, divorced parents, step-parents and friends. The audience can see the boy and his sister growing up as the years pass, and the passing of time is not done with makeup or by using actors of different ages the way it is in most films.
The making of “Boyhood” had a profound effect on the actors involved. Hawke explained that the actors and crew got together to shoot the film once a year for 12 years. They didn’t start off with a finished script. Instead, Linklater would outline the “big, life-changing events” he wanted to dramatize, and then write three or four scenes for that year with input from the cast.
The film was made in Texas, Hawke’s home state.
“It’s my 30th year of acting as a professional. I made this film from age 32 to age 44. As you get older, your reasons for acting change, and it’s not just about the attention,” Hawke said.
The character that Hawke plays is a young, irresponsible father who gradually becomes more mature over the 12 year passage of time.
“As you get older, you learn that happiness and responsibility are intertwined,” he said. “Happiness is not just pursuit of pleasure. As [the character] gets older, he realizes he’ll never be happy without responsibility to the kids.”
Ellar Coltrane, the young actor at the center of “Boyhood,” said that the first time he watched the film in its entirety, and saw himself grow from a six-year old to an 18-year old, “was overwhelming – kind of a catharsis…This is another level above just looking at [photos].”
Coltrane said many of the scenes were loosely based on Linklater’s life growing up.
“Linklater was constantly using and comparing my feelings and experiences growing up to his. His experiences were very different, but his reactions emotionally were almost parallel to mine,” Coltrane said.
Most of the actors likened the annual film shoot to summer camp or a family reunion. In terms of hairstyles, it was a come-as-you-are-party every year. In fact, changing hairstyles and facial hair were one of the ways the audience could tell that time in the movie had passed from one year to the next, along with cues from news events and the latest electronic devices.
Hawke said that for him, “it wasn’t hard finding the character again” each year.
Patricia Arquette, who plays the mother, said the first time she watched it, “To see yourself get that old that quickly is a little shocking, but that’s what was attractive to me about the film… You realize the life cycle of a human is very short.”
Arquette related heavily to the movie.
“My son was 12 years old when we started and now he’s off to college.” She also knows “what it is to be a single parent and having to choose between buying diapers or food.”
Like her character, she’s also been divorced twice, and knows the feeling of “God, I’m failing again!”
The most difficult scene in the movie for her, emotionally, involved a fight with her husband that ended in domestic violence.
Lorelei Linklater, the young actor who plays the sister/daughter in the film is also the daughter of its writer/director.
Now 21 years old, she said that seeing herself in the film for the first time “was really hard…very difficult…I had an emotional reaction.”
All in all, though, “The movie is so simple, people relate to it,” Hawke said.
