Anyone who walked into The Centre Pompidou in Paris last November was greeted by a soaring two-story moon tower reaching toward the ceiling. Less imposing than the 17 historic monoliths that still exist in Austin today (the real ones are 165 feet tall), it nonetheless made an impression inside the steel-and-glass confines of a contemporary art museum. But that nod to Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused was just one striking aspect of a six-week exhibition and retrospective on the local writer-director.

Turn right into a room entitled “Spirit of a Time/Its Nightmares,” and you could explore rotoscoped photograms from A Scanner Darkly and preparatory documents—including a statement of unpaid bills—from Slacker. Or head into the “Growing Up/Ageing” wing to experience the passage of time through video excerpts taken from Boyhood’s unprecedented 12-year shoot. Sequestered on the other side of the mock moon tower was a different type of tribute, but one that Linklater says he’s equally (if not more) proud of: a detailed look at the Austin Film Society’s 35-year existence.

Long-time collaborator Ethan Hawke attended the retrospective debut and lingered in front of the “Countdown” mural—a collage of 16mm stills that played during the film society’s early days—as well as a wall of flyers that Linklater would paste around The Drag to entice cinephiles into screenings of Barbara Hammer and Kenneth Anger films.

Those two sides of the director’s career, the passionate curator and the vanguard of Texas independent film, might seem like disparate parts of a complex personality. But, in truth, they’re symbiotic tracks that, over time, have benefited one another.

Prior to making Slacker in 1989, the Houston native was a self-professed “film freak” who’d moved to Austin, in part, to take advantage of the movie-mad culture that had made CinemaTexas a success. UT’s on-campus film initiative was screening a double-bill of movies four times a week, supplementing the countless other screenings available at the Varsity, the Texas, and the Dobie Theater. But Linklater was on a VHS and Super 8 diet that exceeded 600 titles a year. Not satiated by the programming available around town, and thwarted by the limitations of the home video market, he launched a film society in 1985 as a means of both promoting and subsidizing his own movie obsession.

“I remember talking to the people who worked in those UT programs, and they told me I could just rent films from the distributors for $100 to $150,” he recounts. “I did the quick math and thought: If I could just sucker 50-75 people into giving us two bucks each, hell, we could show anything.”

After putting together an experimental film series with his roommate, Lee Daniel, (who would go on to become his cinematographer on Dazed and Confused, the Before trilogy, and many others) that they dubbed “Sexuality and Blasphemy in the Avant-Garde,” he was able to secure a screening space inside the Dobie Theater. The venue’s only stipulation was that they provide a large enough audience to justify concession sales—no small task when top billing went to Luis Buñuel and Salvadore Dalí’s silent surrealist short, Un Chien Andalou.

“This template of making flyers and convincing the public to come see a movie, applying for nonprofit status and being an unpaid full-time administrator—I really learned how to produce a movie by doing all that,” Linklater says. “What we started at the Film Society, I mimicked for my own films. When I showed Slacker at the Dobie in 1990, I sold out the first 25 shows. There were lines around the block. But that’s because I’d learned how to hustle.”

For the first five years of its existence, Linklater performed most of the heavy lifting at the collective they’d christened the Austin Film Society—a name they determined was more inviting to funding agencies. Along the way, he maxed out credit cards and depleted what little money he’d saved from his time as an offshore oil worker in the Gulf of Mexico to support programming like a 10-part Fassbinder series at Laguna Gloria. He began working night shifts as a hotel valet and bellhop to assist with rent on a space above the old Captain Quackenbush’s Intergalactic Dessert Company and Espresso Bar on The Drag, which he converted into an office/theater. In his off hours, he could be found ripping out carpet, sanding floors, and building a projection booth, all with the aim of exposing more cinema enthusiasts to the works of Jon Jost and Jean-Luc Godard. Most importantly, his sweat equity helped build a community of “oddballs and film freaks” who volunteered their time at every director’s Q&A and found footage festival—selfless enthusiasts like D. Montgomery who would do anything to further an organization that was helping to shape Austin’s bohemian underpinnings.

That dedication and altruism proved timely as the success of Slacker was pulling Linklater further away to focus on his own filmmaking. Admittedly “frayed,” and with Austin becoming more expensive, the AFS was being put in a precarious position, both financially and leadership-wise. Fortunately, a solution would present itself in Linklater’s rising star and the network of influential friends that had sprung from it. Namely, his connection with Quentin Tarantino and one auspicious decision to premiere Pulp Fiction in Austin.

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At some point, you either have to go big and official, or just go away,” Linklater says in his languid Texas drawl, something that comes across as both self-effacing and introspective in its stoner-by-way-of-the-Gulf cadence. Sitting in the offices of his production company, Detour Filmproduction, located on the Mueller-adjacent Austin Studios lot, Linklater basks in the brief interlude from the chaos that surrounds him. It’s early December, and the director, having just returned from Paris and the Pompidou’s commendations, is at the behest of employees from AFS and Detour. There are budget meetings and planning meetings and correspondences to acknowledge, but Linklater is unperturbed—an aftereffect from the type of adaptability necessary for a career in independent film.

Kicked back in a pair of New Balance sneakers, his permanently disheveled hair sticking up in wispy stalks, he reminisces about the week he grappled with charging patrons $10 (as opposed to the usual $2) for the Texas premiere of Pulp Fiction. Friends from their time on the film festival circuit, and mere months after his Palme d’Or win at Cannes, Tarantino had graciously agreed to screen the movie at UT’s Hogg Auditorium in order to raise money for AFS.

“Yeah, I agonized over whether or not we could charge $10 a ticket,” Linklater says, punctuating each reflection with a nasally “Yeaaaahhh,” very much like the exaggerated “Woooww” Owen Wilson has become famous for. “Of course, it sold out immediately and I kicked myself for not charging double. It was just a big change, because for the longest time, everyone I knew in Austin had no money. That’s what we all had in common.”

Tarantino’s screening not only proved Hollywood’s biggest directors were finally taking notice of Austin’s burgeoning film scene: it also helped secure the seed money for Linklater’s ultimate goal. According to John Pierson, UT film professor and author of Spike, Mike, Slackers, & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema, that ambition included funding an extensive grant program for developing and lending artistic legitimacy to homegrown talent.

To start, Linklater hired his first AFS employees, Jerry Johnson and Elizabeth Peters, two UT grad students whom he paid $100 a month to shoulder much of the programming and managerial burden. Next, he launched the Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund, which was modeled after the type of charitable program administered by the National Endowment for the Arts.

As little as 15 years ago, Texas’ statewide funding for the arts hovered near the bottom of the country, even trailing the U.S. territory of Guam (it’s projected to rank 34th out of 50 states in 2020). But Linklater wanted to change all that by taking government grant money, philanthropist dollars—which still makes up a third of all money AFS takes in—and any profits yielded from movie screenings (like the Pulp Fiction windfall), and pour it back into the local filmmaking community. “Although the Film Society has grown exponentially over the last 35 years, its goal has remained the same: spreading film culture to audiences and helping emerging filmmakers realize their vision,” says AFS CEO, Rebecca Campbell. “Rick [Linklater] has always had that as his motivation, and that’s served as our north star.”

When it was rolled out in 1996, the Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund (re-named the AFS Grant in 2013) awarded $30,000 in cash grants to up-and-coming filmmakers. The following year, they upped that number to $50,000, which was dispersed among 20-plus projects. Nowadays, that annual amount tops the six-figure mark, with the latest round of grants helping the organization surpass the $2 million milestone in its 24 years of endowment.

Past recipients have now included the likes of Kat Candler (Queen Sugar on the O Network), Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas (Skip Day), and David Lowery (A Ghost Story), all of whom received support for their early short works—something that proved a springboard to their eventual breakout feature film success. Annie Silverstein is another filmmaker who says she’s been “nurtured” by AFS from the very beginning of her career. For her first film, a documentary called March Point, she received a travel grant that allowed her to attend the prestigious Silverdocs film festival (now called the AFI Docs) in Silver Springs, Maryland. Six years later, the Film Society not only gave Silverstein grant money, but invaluable personal support, as Campbell joined her in Cannes to celebrate the director’s Cinéfondation jury prize win for her 2014 narrative short, Skunk.

“I was editing that film until three days before the competition,” Silverstein says. “I didn’t have time to go shopping, and I didn’t really have a lot of money, so [AFS board president] Jane Schweppe loaned me a dress and shoes to wear on the red carpet. I’ve had people at AFS play nanny to my 2-year-old daughter, making it possible for me to direct. On every level, AFS has taken care of me.”

Besides money, patronage, and the occasional outfit, AFS also started a multi-day retreat called the Artist Intensive in 2013, which provides filmmakers vital feedback and resources prior to production. Held at a discreet location in Bastrop, filmmakers are paired with a mentor and afforded actors to workshop scenes. By reading the filmmakers’ scripts aloud, and giving constructive criticism, experts like Linklater and Azazel Jacobs (Terri)—Silverstein’s mentor when she attended in 2015 for her latest film, Bull—can help them fine-tune scripts and avoid costly errors that might otherwise sabotage an independent film. “The Artist Intensive is a wonderful gift,” Silverstein says. “It’s this beautiful ranch where you can be in nature, to focus on your story away from your everyday problems, like paying bills. But really, it’s just one more way AFS has supported artists like myself. I go to them for everything, even when it’s something as simple as a question on how to put together a gathering or get more exposure for a film. It’s been this ongoing relationship that’s been there from the start.”

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Rebecca Campbell remembers driving up to the gates of Austin Studios throughout the summer of 2005, pausing in anticipation, elated to see what else Mike Judge and his team had created on 20 acres of tarmac. Walking around the property, she would revel in Idiocracy’s Costco of the future, and immerse herself in its debased version of the White House, adorned as it was with Brawndo advertisements, a tire swing, and an above-ground pool. With five hangars’ worth of studio space, two production office buildings, and two T-hangars repurposed into areas for set dressings and props, there was finally a centralized location, outfitted with the necessary accommodations and real estate, to entice every type of film production. Now, marquee filmmakers like Judge, the Coen brothers, and Spike Lee were taking advantage of everything Austin had to offer.

Based on the grounds of the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, Austin Studios has proven one of AFS’ most significant achievements. Officially opened in November 2000, it has drawn more than 625 productions to the region, generating more than 8,000 jobs and $2.1 billion in economic impact. Beyond the financial ramifications for the city, though, the 51st Street studios have spurred progress within the local industry and generated a logistical hub for a film scene historically dispersed across a vast geographical area. In the years since, two other large studios (New Republic Studios and ATX Studios) have opened in the wake of Austin Studios’ groundbreaking accomplishments.

Yet none of this would have happened without Linklater’s foresight and a city council that was willing to gamble on the arts. In particular, then-mayor, Kirk Watson, opted to sacrifice lucrative commercial property and entrust a small nonprofit to become a beacon for Central Texas filmmaking. “People ask me all the time: ‘I live in so-and-so city and I want to build a film culture. How do I do it?’” Linklater says. “Well, good luck, because you have to live in a town like Austin where you can actually go talk to the mayor.”

In return for a nominal leasing fee, AFS has overseen a concept that should have cost them millions. Like all of its endeavors, though, it’s given back far more in return. What function as soundstages and editing bays during the day, are often used for screenings, fundraisers, and other events benefiting the community at night. This includes Austin Studios acting as the home base for The Texas Film Hall of Fame, which celebrates the state’s greatest films and filmmakers. Founded in 2001 by Evan Smith (co-founder of The Texas Tribune) and Louis Black (co-founder of The Austin Chronicle), its annual spring awards gala often brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of which goes toward the AFS Grant.

The other major cog driving the expanding AFS empire, and its overarching mission of spreading the gospel of film culture, is the AFS Cinema. Opened in 2017 in the former Marchesa in Lincoln Village, the two-screen arthouse cinema has ended the foundation’s itinerant existence (it had a long-time partnership with Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, the Paramount Theatre, and others), and allowed AFS to show first-run films that might not otherwise get released in Austin. Played in conjunction with the thematic film series it’s built its reputation on, the theater regularly exposes filmgoers to under-the-radar treasures like 63 Up, the latest installment in Michael Apted’s award-winning documentary series.

Watching AFS’ annual Children of Abraham/Ibrahim series (an itinerary of films from the Middle East) in a palatial 256-seat-theater, it’s difficult to correlate the experience to its grassroots beginnings: Linklater and Lee Daniel plastering light poles on The Drag, “like a punk band with flyers,” urging students and other self-professed oddballs to attend a midnight billing of experimental films from Bruce Baillie. It was a movement rooted in conviction, blind faith, and inimitable passion—one that initiated a spark. In his trademark way of humbly deflecting praise, Linklater credits the city for fanning that glowing spark into a wildfire of support (“You put something out there publicly in a cool town like Austin, and it’s bound to take off”), but that fervor and progress doesn’t happen without some instigating force.

Louis Black served on the AFS’ first board of directors—a “board” in the loosest sense of the term—a necessity when Linklater began applying for grants to help with film rental costs. They became fast friends and frequent collaborators, with Black making a cameo in Slacker, a film he candidly says he “didn’t think would be any kind of serious movie.” Then he saw the final cut and realized his buddy Rick was a true auteur. It was the type of talent that refused to be bottled up in a quirky college town in Texas. But like so much of his career, Linklater never succumbed to the usual Hollywood blueprint.

“Rick not taking off after Slacker can’t be underestimated,” Black says. “He re-

ally dug in his heels and dedicated himself to the community. He encouraged so many towns with AFS and nurtured a whole new generation of filmmakers. That one decision; it changed Austin forever.”