Why did Richard Linklater cast Alex Jones in ‘Waking Life’?
The films of Richard Linklater are widespread in tone and genre. The director has taken on the romantic drama with the Before trilogy, the coming-of-age stoner comedy with Dazed and Confused, and science fiction with A Scanner Darkly, but one of the most interesting of the Texan filmmaker’s efforts is 2001’s Waking Life.
The animated project is a meditation on the nature of dreams and features several barely linked scenes in which an unnamed protagonist has a series of conversations ranging from social philosophy, lucid dreams, the meaning of life, free will, existentialism and everything in between, all delivered in a beautiful rotoscoped visual style.
Yet of all the moments in Waking Life, perhaps the strangest sees the conspiracy theorist, radio host, and Info Wars founder embark on one of his infamous rants. In fact, Jones gets so into his speech, as he often does in real life, that his face turns pink, then blue, then red.
However, Linklater would later reveal that at the time he cast Jones as himself in Waking Life, Jones was not the dangerous far-right, alt-right conspiracy theorist as we know him today. Rather, he was something of a lowly Austin, Texas, public access TV host.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Linklater said of Jones: “He was this hyper guy that we’d all kind of make fun of. But he wasn’t so virulent; he just had all that energy. I just thought he was kind of funny.” Those words would turn out to be far, far away from the truth, but admittedly Linklater wasn’t to know.
Jones came to wider recognition during the Donald Trump presidency, and even now, Linklater is surprised by his fame. He finds it strange that Jones is “taken seriously on a national level. I would have never thought I’d see the day when the president of the United States knew who he was, much less going on his show. It’s crazy, it’s insane, but it fits our times.”
At the time of the interview, Linklater admitted that he “hadn’t talked to Jones in years”.
He said: “I talked to him a bit during the Bush-Cheney years. He always positioned himself as anti. So when you’re anti, he’s your bedfellow.” Certainly, Linklater would not have cast Jones in his film would have known what he would become. It’s likely that he just thought he was amusing and would fit the role rather than sharing any of his beliefs.
Check out the Alex Jones Waking Life scene below.
