Richard Linkletter & Me
PBS American Masters: Richard Linklater
There were a lot of things I didn’t know and hadn’t thought to think about before I watched American Masters’ profile of Richard Linklater. Having lived most of the past four decades in New York City, I’ve thought lately that — if you live long enough — everything comes back around. So many connections I’d made when I was very young and fresh to NYC from my troubled past in Texas are coming back to me. Names and people I had nothing more than a strong sense of destiny about years ago who’ve gone on to do some pretty spectacular things are coming back into my sphere. NYC and the “business,” are just amazingly small worlds.
What I hadn’t realized because I’d never looked was that Richard Linklater and I were born within weeks of one another in Texas and by the time we were both teenagers we were both roaming the landscape in and around Huntsville, Texas looking for direction. A place to go and something to do.
Huntsville is a strangely remarkable unremarkable little place. Sam Houston State University and its quirky pseudo-liberal student body live there. All the while the old-fashioned town square and the curious characters populating the place belie the immense gravitational pull toward the town’s dark side: the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas proudly and unrepentantly kills four times as many people as…
