Visiting subUrbia

Director Richard Linklater is haunted by soul-killing architecture. "Ever since doing this movie it's been kind of creepy. I thought I could exorcise it from my system, but I feel like I can't get it out. I'm just driving and I notice the strip malls and the houses, and I think, `Aargh! I'm living the opening credit sequence of subUrbia!' "

Indeed, the director had no idea he'd get trapped in a Twilight Zone of concrete and chain link when he caught Eric Bogosian's play in 1994. He did, however, recognize the sellout show's big-screen potential. But it was not until a year later that Linklater met the curly-haired provocateur and pitched a collaboration. The result is the first film Linklater has not written himself.

"It was a progression for me personally to go to work on something that didn't originate with me. In the play Suburbia, I kind of knew those characters or had been them and knew that world. But for me cinematically it was a real challenge to try to adapt that into a film. It's so dramatic; it works so well on the stage. But I just began putting the play through my own system as a filmmaker, through my own methods of how to make a film. I thought it naturally lent itself to a movie."

Notwithstanding idealist antihero Jeff's vow to "Fuck fear!", Linklater does not ascribe to fearless filmmaking. "I was kind of afraid of it [subUrbia]. It's easy when it's all over to sit back and act like you're really calm about it. It was a big challenge. But I think it's good to enter into a film being sort of afraid. I do that with every film."

The 35-year-old Linklater swears subUrbia is the last chapter in his "hanging out" oeuvre, which covers the talky sleepers Slacker (1991), Dazed and Confused (1993), and Before Sunrise (1995). "My films have actually been getting shorter," he insists. "Slacker was a full 24 hours. They've been getting shorter by a few hours each time. It's just a different kind of storytelling I've been leading up to. subUrbia has been a good bridge, because it's much more dramatic and structured."

What was it like working with the notoriously intense Bogosian? "He's very collaborative. He's got this fierce intelligence. I felt incredibly responsible to Eric. I don't care if everybody else hates the film; if Eric likes it, I've done something. That means everything to me." In fact, the brooding adaptation received a thumbs up from the playwright/comedian.

Both director and writer survived suburban childhoods, Linklater in East Texas, Bogosian in Woburn. Says Linklater, "The suburbs are more a state of mind. It's not just geography. I don't know how much of an impact location really has. I don't think in subUrbia I'm critical of the location in that it equals these characters' problems: who they are, how they're dealing with their lives at that point. It's more about life at 20 than about living in the suburbs."

He singles out Jeff as the character with whom he most closely identifies. But now that he's a big-time director, didn't Pony's rock-star homecoming strike a familiar chord? "First of all, I never left where I live in Austin. I was always there. And it's not the same in film. It might be for an actor, but it's not for a director."

What about the black stretch limo parked in front of the Four Seasons, the site of the director's Boston stay and, coincidentally, the same posh digs where Pony enjoys "a bed and hot water" in the film?

"I think I came in a town car today," Linklater laughs. "Limos are embarrassing."

-- AP