n his later years Orson Welles made wine and beer commercials. He acted in The Muppet Movie and Magnum PI and narrated a documentary about Bugs Bunny. Sometimes he gave lectures, too, shambling into the half-empty town-halls of middle America to breathlessly introduce himself as a film director, writer and actor; a magician, designer and painter. Then his eyes would flick across the rows of empty seats. "Isn't it strange," he said, "that there are so many of me and so few of you?"
It was Welles's fate to burn too brightly, too quickly. He was a man who could be everything except a cog in the Hollywood machine; an artist whose precocity would prove his undoing. He was a stage star in his teens and the creator of Citizen Kane at the age of 25. After that, his output became fitful and frustrated and he died leaving a trail of unfinished projects in his wake.
The director Richard Linklater is taking us back to Welles's early years with his latest movie, Me and Orson Welles, which he is here in London to promote. Set in 1937, the film sees Welles about to mount his ground-breaking stage production of Julius Caesar in New York. The "me" in the title refers to a callow teenage actor, played winningly by Zac Efron. Welles, meanwhile, is brought brilliantly to life by newcomer Christian McKay.
It is easy to see why Linklater might be drawn to the subject – as an independent film-maker, he and Welles are kindred spirits. "I think of him as the archetypal independent film-maker in that he basically invented the notion of independent film," Linklater explains. "He was doing in the 40s and 50s what everyone else was doing in the 80s and 90s. But he had that independent spirit, which meant that he was never going to fit in with the system."
Linklater's film gives us Welles in his pomp, enshrining a time when he had the world at his feet and a full house beyond the floodlights. At the same time, it steers clear of whitewash. For all its giddy exuberance, the movie paints a convincing portrait of the artist as spoilt brat. Its hero flatters and cajoles, bullies and deceives. He demands unstinting loyalty and sets out to destroy anyone he suspects of messing with his master-plan.
Linklater, by contrast, strikes me as an altogether more gentle and collegiate soul. I'm expecting him to shake his head at such antics. If anything he seems to applaud them. "Hey, if you want to work on stage or in a film, then that's how it is. There's only one director. Ships have only one captain. If you have a problem with the way he's doing things, I wouldn't suggest challenging him in front of the whole cast and crew. That's a lesson in integrity."
I point out that he's probably biased, what with being a director himself; he chuckles and admits that may be so. "But Welles was a kind of wilful genius and geniuses don't have much room for other people. We've all known individuals like that, where you have to find a place in their world. And I've had that in my own life too. I've had friends who wanted to do what I was doing, and that became difficult. They shouldn't be in a supporting role in my world; they should be starring in their own world." He mulls it over. "But I don't think I'm like Welles. I'm not a showman type; I'm kind of a quiet director."
So far, touch wood, Linklater has avoided the ignominies of Welles's twilight years. He is now 49 years old, and has enjoyed a charmed and prolific career, having managed to score with both high-risk, independent pictures (starting with his first feature Slacker, which he made back in 1990) and street-smart studio ventures (School of Rock, The Bad News Bears). His best films share the same warm, airy, inclusive quality, whether they be running amok with teenagers (Dazed and Confused), maundering through a daydream nation (Waking Life) or trailing a pair of star-crossed lovers through the streets of Europe (the glorious double-bill of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset). These stories give the impression of beautiful ease; as though the characters have just happened to amble out while the cameras were rolling.
Linklater would go along with that. "I caught a groove where the whole process of making movies didn't feel stressful," he says. "I had a good run of eight or 10 films. And then all it took was two films: Fast Food Nation [his fumbled 2005 adaptation of the Eric Schlosser book] and this one, where I thought: 'Wow, this is a really tough business.' This one especially almost pushed the bounds of possibility."
Me and Orson Welles was largely shot in the Isle of Man, way back in the early months of 2008. It was hoped that the movie would find a distributor at that year's Cannes film festival, and then again at the Toronto film festival. But by that point the recession was biting and cash offers proved thin on the ground. Ultimately the film's producers cut a deal in which they effectively released the film themselves, splitting marketing costs with the Vue cinema chain. All of which caught the director by surprise.
"I'd always seen the film industry as a constant," he says. "And then all of a sudden the bottom fell out." He now finds himself in an alien terrain; indie distributors have gone to the wall and the directors have become self-publishers, streaming their films for an online audience. He's not sure he likes it. "I still hold on to the romantic vision of people watching my movie in a cinema," he admits. "I don't want to watch Bright Star on a fucking iPhone."
Where this leaves him is anyone's guess. This summer he was due to shoot a romantic comedy but the studios wouldn't play ball (what he saw as a mainstream outing, they saw as an art movie). He has tentative plans to make a third installment in the Before Sunrise/Sunset series, but he doesn't want to do it just because he can. "There are enough of those movies made as it is: sequels, remakes, franchises. It depresses me. It's the way the industry is going. They figure they can make these huge-ass Harry Potters, Batmans and Transformers, spend $200m on a surefire hit, and who cares about the quality? They've basically stopped making my kind of movies altogether."
Perhaps this is what happens to all independently minded film-makers. They start out ahead of their time and then the time catches up and reels them in. They lose their gloss and their bargaining power. Their luck runs out and they are forced to fight for crumbs and survive as best they can. If it can happen to Welles, it can happen to anyone; and maybe that's not even such a terrible thing. "Genius deserves to be brought back to earth," says Linklater.
I ask if he feels he's had a better career than Welles and he admits that he probably has, in terms of quantity if not quality. He is promiscuous, he explains. He has kept moving, avoided getting bogged down, and made films of different stripes in different genres. "I've managed to get 15 movies made and I feel very lucky about that. It's just that things have a way of pressing in on you." Linklater shakes his head. "One thing's for sure. It doesn't get any easier."
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