Unusual filming strategy in ‘Boyhood’ explained

AUSTIN, Texas

It’s the laugh at the end of “Boyhood” that Richard Linklater loves. Not one in the movie, but one from the folks watching it.

“There’s something in the audience that has been building up for so long,” he says. “There’s such a release when you get to the end.”

Linklater was referring to “Boyhood,” the movie he shot in 39 days over the course of 12 years all over the state of Texas.

Starring longtime Linklater collaborator Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Linklater’s daughter Lorelei and a largely unknown young man named Ellar Coltrane, “Boyhood” is the story of a family, mostly the story of a boy named Mason. We see him from age 6 to about 17 or 18, around the first day of college, from about 2002 to 2013.

Mason doesn’t have a fatal flaw to overcome. He doesn’t go to rehab or shoot his friend or reveal himself to be a genius computer programmer or something. There is no heart-wrenching third act twist. “Boyhood” is just a look at life lived, year over year.

Yet, it’s that “Boyhood” plays out in real time, in a way that no feature film ever has before, that makes it hypnotic and hilarious and touching. We see Mason get older, get terrible haircuts, surf his parents’ divorce, get stoned with friends and just generally ... grow up.

And then you hear a peal of laughter roll through the audience at the final scene in “Boyhood.” Where is that laugh coming from? Admittedly, it ends on a great line and an even more gorgeous shot, but that’s not all of it.

“When you first hear about (the movie), it sounds like a conceptual experiment,” Linklater says.

Indeed. Linklater started planning “Boyhood” around the turn . He struck upon the idea of filming a bit at a time over 12 or so years, with the same cast. He bounced the idea off Hawke in 2001 when the two were in New York. Hawke was in.

Obviously, there were complications with this idea. Actors - indeed, human beings in general - don’t often know what they are going to be doing a month from now, let alone a year, two years, five years, 12 years from today.

It’s like Linklater says he told Arquette: “I said to her, ‘Where are you gonna be 12 years from now? You’ll be looking for a part, I’ll be trying to get a movie made.’ Twelve years in an adult life is very different from 12 years in a kid’s life.”

After looking at dozens of kids, Linklater cast Coltrane, then a largely unknown 6-year-old. Ellar had a tiny bit of acting experience - but nothing that suggested the kid would be correct for a 12-year shoot. This was uncharted cinematic water.

“Ellar had this really special quality,” Linklater says. “This was a long project, and you wanted it to be a good influence in his life and not an awful burden.”

As the years went on, Linklater and Coltrane would talk on the phone every now and then. “It was like being a cousin or uncle,” Linklater says. “I would come to things now and then, and as (Coltrane) got older it was more like, ‘Let’s have lunch and talk about what we’re thinking.’ He became more of an active, collaborative participant.”

“I never wanted to get ahead or too behind Ellar, where he was developmentally,” Linklater says. “I had the whole thing structured and kind of planned out.”