The Unorthodox Director
Houston-born filmmaker honored as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People
To be named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People is no small honor. The list encompasses leaders and innovators from all over the globe, including the likes of Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey.
Now a Houston-born filmmaker is joining the esteemed group. The magazine has unveiled the 2015 list, which includes Boyhood director Richard Linklater.
Billed as "The Unorthodox Director" in the Artists category, Linklater joins 2015 honorees John Oliver, Christopher Nolan and Julianne Moore (just to name a few). Linklater made waves this year with Boyhood, the 12-year epic that was partially filmed in Houston. It garnered multiple Academy Award nominations and won one Oscar.
Even before then, Linklater, who graduated from Bellaire High School and went on to direct such movies as Dazed and Confused, Bernie, School of Rock and the Sunset trilogy, was honored for his accomplishments at the 2013 Houston Cinema Arts Festival, where he received the Levantine Cinema Arts Award.
The blurbs for each member of are written by esteemed peers. Ethan Hawke does the honor for the influential filmmaker, director and screenwriter. Says the actor of his full-time friend, sometimes director:
We may never understand Rick's unorthodox path and how it led to movies like School of Rock, Before Sunrise and Boyhood: the vegetarian baseball star from Huntsville, Texas; the years of hard labor on offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico; teaching himself the history of film through the ingenuity of starting the Austin Film Society (with the help of a local Kinko's and a 16-mm projector). But the consistent thread in Rick's career has been a passion for cinema that cannot be defeated or undermined in any way.
Others honored on the 2015 list range from Kanye West to Kim Jong Un and Jeb Bush.
Los Tios is now serving Tex-Mex in Fredericksburg.
Photo courtesy of Adair Concepts