The Before Trilogy

“Literally The Before Trilogy, Richard Linklater. They're just great but I sat down with my partner and watched all three movies with her years ago and we finished them while on vacation in Central America and had like a life-changing discussion about our relationship after watching Before Midnight and just kind of like renegotiating our relationship because like seeing this Mirror in front of us of just like where we were headed and like what it's like to domesticate someone you love.”

“Not the whole Before Trilogy, but the final one. Sharon Horgan and I were writing the first season of the show Catastrophe, and my wife said, 'Let’s watch Before Midnight.' And so she puts it on and watching I’m like, 'Oh my God.' As soon as it was over, I called Sharon, I was like, 'Put down your quill. We have to retool everything because the ultimate work of art about a marriage has just been made, and if we think that we’re gonna play in that arena, then we got to study this playbook.'”

“This is going to be a box-set kind of day for me. I have to do this. This is probably going to be a little obvious for you who have seen a lot of my small, intimate films, but this is The Before Trilogy by Richard Linklater. Why this is so special for me in particular is, when I was 18 years old, I had seen Slacker, I had been to all the Midnight screenings of Dazed and Confused, and this movie came out. I’ve been obsessed with these movies ever since.”

“And I’ve also got this down because, when we were doing White Lotus, a lot of us rewatched these. So, I always related to the first one the most. And then it was quite a big moment when I realized I now relate to the second one more and I’ve grown up, and there’ll be a day that the third one will resonate with me more, and it just feels like it’s a trilogy that you grow with. So I’ll take The Before Trilogy with me home.”

“I kind of want a bunch of movies that I just haven't seen which are not interesting to talk about like The Before Trilogy. I've never actually seen. That's where they walk and they talk and they like each other a lot, right?”

“The Before Trilogy. You know sometimes when a film is a poisonous Mirror and you look at it and you’re like, “No!” It is a bisexual text. I don’t feel like I need to elaborate on that. That should be… The reasons why that’s true, I think, are evident if you’ve seen this stuff.”

“The Before Trilogy. Before Sunrise, of course, is my favorite. And what Richard Linklater captured in Before Sunrise is so hard to do. You’re just watching two people walk and talk for an entire film, and you’re not bored, you’re so in it, because everyone knows what it feels like to have that feeling of falling in love in real time and sharing intimate moments with a complete stranger. This movie is just so, so beautiful and captures the nuance of falling in love perfectly.”