Richard Linklater

You see it in all arts and it's really important.

for renewal, you know, to just be against the status quo of your moment.

So these French critics, you know, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Romare, Chabrol, they all wrote for Caillou du Cinema, the magazine.

So the film kind of centers around Caillou du Cinema and...

These critics transitioning into filmmakers, which is really rare in film history.

But they said they wrote their film criticism and they were really film enthusiasts.

They love movies, but they thought the French commercial cinema of the time was pretty lame.

And they were just kind of declaring their own independence.

And when they started making their own films, you know, they made a different kind of film.

They weren't so genre to me.

you know, not so genre, uh, different kinds of narratives and much more to me, the nouveau vague really means personal filmmaking.

It would be the archetype for the independent film, but, um, you know, freedom, personal expression, uh, just, you could make it in a great way.

I think it lowered the stakes of movies.

It didn't have, the movie didn't have to be about some big, uh,

epic story or some great genre piece.

You could make a film about your own childhood.

You could make a film about a love affair.

You could make a film about a trip you took.

You could, you know, it could be about your own life, kind of like maybe the beat writers.

You can just write a novel about a trip you took across the country.