Watch: ‘Boyhood’ Star Patricia Arquette Advocates For A More Fluid Production Process During Academy Conversation
Shipra Harbola Gupta
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Academy Conversation series provides cinephiles and film industry professionals an opportunity to hear directly from the filmmaking talent behind the most prestigious releases of both past and present.
Earlier this month, Indiewire Managing Editor Nigel M. Smith moderated one of these conversations with “Boyhood” director Richard Linklater and stars Ellar Coltrane and Patricia Arquette.
In an excerpt pulled from the talk, which you can watch below, Linklater, Coltrane and Arquette discuss their creative process on the film, both individually and as a team.
Arquette then takes the discussion a step further by stipulating that the rather mechanical quality of the production process that characterizes most filmmaking projects might actually benefit from an approach that resembles the free-form strategy employed by Linklater on “Boyhood.”
“I think a lot of people would be afraid,” she said. “Like ‘What do you mean, you don’t have a script?’ ‘How will I know I like the tone?’ ‘How will I know that I like what my character is saying?’ or ‘I don’t know about this.’ But it always felt right and it really felt beautiful and it felt like maybe the way we ought to work in this business. There was no power struggle or anything other than support, I think, for everybody and from everybody.”
“Boyhood” opened in theaters on July 11.
