Richard Linklater’s striking Boyhood, which the director filmed intermittently over the course of a dozen years, charts the unfolding adolescence of one boy, Mason (Ellar Coltrane), against the backdrop of various relationships, including with his sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), and divorced parents, Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) and Olivia (Patricia Arquette). Recently, Paste had a chance to chat with Arquette one-on-one about her experiences making the unique film, the excitement of seeing herself age on screen, and the moment that salved her own adolescent restlessness. The conversation is excerpted below:
Paste: Ethan Hawke had a relationship with Richard spanning many films and years, but Boyhood was your first film with him. Did Richard just sidle up to you and slyly ask what you were doing for the next 12 years or so?
Patricia Arquette: We’d met one time very briefly, at the Chateau Marmont at a party. It was very fleeting. I said I was a big fan of his, and he said he loved True Romance. We talked a little bit about life, and he knew that I was a young mom. I was a mom when I was 20, so already basically when my career started—my son was in True Romance at the end, actually—he plays my son in the movie. It was weird at that time. There weren’t a lot of other young mother actresses. I guess that was in Rick’s mind, and he just called me and said he had this idea for a movie over 12 years about this family. And my heart got so excited, so I said, “Are you thinking about me for it?” And he was like, “Yeah, I was wondering if you’d be interested in doing it.” And I said, “Oh, I’m in.” And then later I thought, “Oh, maybe I should’ve asked what my part was.” But I was doing it no matter what.
Paste: This is a film without a conventional script—it incorporates real-life events in rolling fashion into its backdrop. How many conversations with Rick about what was going on in your own life shaped your understanding of who Olivia was?
Arquette: Well, on so many levels this movie was different. The first conversation I had with Rick, he told me the main, big, pivotal changes for my character, so that stuff was already locked in. He told me they’re divorced, Mason Sr. went off and was more of a free spirit, and that it starts when the son starts first grade and ends in high school. He told me about the marriages and divorces, and why some of them happened. And through the course of making this movie, of course a lot of people would say there should be more dramatic moments—like, in Film School 101, under Formula 5-CO3, the character is supposed to do this and the arch-nemesis does this and then the protagonist does that. But Rick was always very clear that life could hold itself, that life was enough—that it’s not about the first time you have sex or about these major moments, that life is in between all of that. That is the fabric of life, and that we lose sight of that in this ever-aggressive culture of accomplishing milestones. …We did talk about other stuff some, pop cultural things that we would remember from throughout each year—like, “Oh, wow, everyone’s on Facebook, and now there’s this new thing, Instagram.” We would talk about those things but throw out about 99 percent of them. This movie would be super-weird if none of those things were involved, but [we tried to work them in] subtly. For example, you get a sense that she got a great deal on this one house because it was in foreclosure, but later of course you’re house-poor and you have pressure because of a high interest rate.
Paste: Rick recommended to Ellar that he watch the film in private first, which makes sense. But how was your first viewing experience, which came at its Sundance premiere, right?
Arquette: Yes, the first time I watched it was with 1,200 people, so I had all those weird feelings in public. Rick had asked if I wanted to see it before. And I [had seen] the first five years cut together and was like, “Wow, this is amazing, but I don’t want to see anymore until it’s all done.” I think there’s something great about this age, in that you get braver and more okay about mistakes and flaws—you just get more okay about being vulnerable and raw. One of the things that was really strange and incredible about finally seeing the movie was that I was excited to see myself age and change. Me and Ethan were young actors once, and maybe people saw me for the first time in True Romance, and Ethan was young when he came into people’s consciousnesses. In a weird way, people freeze you a lot at that age they first see you, and even though at that age I wanted to get rid of being an ingénue as quick as I could, I really with this movie knew that I would be able to explode it into 100 million pieces and be completely done with that forever. There’s a responsibility and a burden carrying that dumb thing, and I wanted to be brave enough to see that end. And certainly there was another level of just watching the movie and remembering [things about] our own lives: “Oh, that’s the year Ethan got divorced, and oh right, Rick had his twins that year, and oh, my daughter was born, oh, I got a divorce, oh, my son went off to college.” It was remembering all of these things from real life. But back to what you said earlier, about not having a full script—I also wasn’t exposed to what all the other characters were doing, so then the third layer was experiencing all of these scenes that I wasn’t in, that I never read in a script. Olivia has this real resentment with Mason Sr., and he has some for her, too. But in seeing the movie, there were moments [where it was almost like] my character is also watching him have private moments with his kids for the first time—seeing what he says to them, seeing them go camping. And when you look at the big picture, I think she would let a lot of resentment go by seeing the beautiful contribution he’s also making to their lives. And I think he would with her, too.