Richard Linklater

But we live in a pretty heightist culture.

I was working with Ethan Hawke in this part, who's right about six feet tall.

For him to lose a foot of height and look up at the world, I could just see him transform as a character.

It's like, oh my God, it's a different world looking up at everybody.

So that was very important for us to get him at that level.

But...

Like everybody back then, if you were gay, it was an underground kind of world.

Your sexuality was against the law.

You could be arrested the way it was treated.

No one was really out.

But interestingly, in the art, everything was kind of coded.

So those lyrics are there to be kind of enjoyed when you know that code.

So he was definitely like everyone of that era.

It was a bad time to be born.

But for his gift in this world of lyrics and to write so many songs, he was at the right time when they were doing so many shows.

He and Rogers wrote 1,000 songs.

Could you imagine?

He got paid to write 1,000 songs for theater and film too.

So it was an incredible time to practice his art.

That was the good news for Larry.