Richard Linklater: “Sex and violence is what cinema is great at”
Director Richard Linklater has spoken on the modern state of cinema and its treatment of sex and violence. In recent times, movies like Challengers, Anyone But You and Linklater’s Hit Man have all been doused in an undoubted air of sexuality.
However, according to Linklater such movies represent a straying away from the kinds of films that studios are agreeing to make. The Boyhood and Dazed and Confused filmmaker is arguing that there is a lack of confidence in Hollywood that “adult-audience” films can be successful on a wider scale.
In a new interview with The Independent, Linklater spoke of the modern treatment of adult themes in movies like sex and violence and suggested that the film industry is moving towards a state of fear whereby studios are willing to take risks.
“This is scary to them,” the director explained. “You’re less likely to lose your job as an executive greenlighting the fourth sequel to something than by taking a risk on something you think audiences might like.”
Linklater went on to suggest that cinema has been turned into an “infantilisation culture” where studios are writing and greenlighting films that appeal to a broad audience but with a “12-year-old’s mentality”.
When Linklater was young, he admitted that the “adult world would look a little scary” but that it always looked appealing through the medium of cinema, particularly when it came to on-screen depictions of sex.
In fact, Linklater said that “sex and violence is what cinema is great at” and that sex has always helped movies to sell. It’s been generally accepted that the new generation of younger cinemagoers wants less sex on screen, but Linklater puts this down to the kind of depictions they have become used to seeing.
“Maybe they saw a lot of bad sex,” he said. “Stupid, gratuitous sex. Maybe they just don’t trust it any more, especially if it looks nothing like their own life or something that looks enticing.” At the core of his beliefs, Linklater simply doesn’t think that human beings would not be at least remotely interested in sex, nor seeing it in the movies.
Linklater’s new film Hit Man has been noted for his highly sexualised nature, which particularly arrives because of the on-screen chemistry between Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. In response to the lack of sexuality in studio movies these days, Linklater set about redefining the allure of sexuality on the big screen.
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