From Slacker (1991) to The School of Rock (2003), from Before Sunrise (1995) to Before Sunset (2004), from the walking and talking of his no/low-budget American independent films to conversing with the philosophical traditions of the European art house, Richard Linklater's films are some of the most critical, political, and spiritual achievements of contemporary world cinema. Examinations of Linklater's collaborative working practices and deployment of rotoscoping and innovative distribution strategies all feature in this book, which aspires to walk and talk with the filmmaker and his films. Informed by a series of original interviews with the artist, in both his hometown and frequent film location of Austin, Texas, this study of the director who made Dazed and Confused (1993), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Bernie (2011) explores the theoretical, practical, contextual, and metaphysical elements of these works along with his documentaries and side-projects and finds fanciful lives and lucid dreams have as much to do with his work as generally alternative notions of America, contemporary society, cinema, and time.Â

Rob Stone is professor of film studies at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Spanish Cinema and Flamenco in the Works of Federico García Lorca and Carlos Saura, and Julio Medem, and coeditor of The Unsilvered Screen: Surrealism on Film, Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema, and A Companion to Luis Buñuel.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Walk, Don't Run: The Cinema of Richard Linklater
1. Locating Linklater
2. Crafting Contradictions
3. The Form and Content of Slack
4. American Art House
5. Dreamstate, USA: The Metaphysics of Animation
6. The Spaces In Between
Filmography
Bibliography
Index