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Director Richard Linklater has been on the independent movie track for over twenty years now, and he’s built an oeuvre that’s as interesting as it is eclectic. He recently abandoned the romantic comedies and plotless, stream-of-consciousness work he’s been known for, turning out instead a pair of cynical flicks—A Scanner Darkly and now Fast Food Nation—that would’ve fit right in during the 1970s. A self-taught filmmaker who, in a former life, worked on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, Linklater has a special feeling for people who labor on the lower rungs—something that’s especially evident in his latest movie.

What attracted you to adapt Fast Food Nation, a nonfiction book, as a fictional film?

I had a real desire to do a piece about industrial workers—auto assembly and the like. I know what it’s like to work at the absolute bottom, and I wanted to make a film from that viewpoint. It was Eric [Schlosser]’s [the author of both the book and the screenplay] idea to base the film around these fictional characters … When I heard that idea, I got on board immediately. Documentary’s not my thing, and, besides, you’ve got the documentary in the book itself. It would be redundant.

No one seems able to really change the system in Fast Food Nation.
It’s cynical in a way that’s almost hopeless.

Eric and I tried to be honest. Take Greg Kinnear’s character—he’s not a hero or a bad guy. One of the messages in the film is that none of us are heroes or villains, we’re just people trying to do our best, and we can make choices. But if you try to sum everything up too simply in a film like this one, you end up weakening the message. If I made someone embody everything that’s wrong with the story, I’m giving that one guy a lot of power he doesn’t really have.

The gore involved in meat production is pretty diminished in this film. Did you want to avoid desensitizing your audience?

Oh, yes—that stuff is pretty powerful. But I felt that if I stuck my camera in the blood and guts, it would be exploitative. I wanted to be somewhat abstract but still get to the reality of the situation. Billions are spent to get you to ignore the reality of your food. You look at fast food … it’s John Wayne and Montgomery Clift on a cattle drive, bringing you the beef. But it’s never fifty thousand cattle crammed into a small space, gorging on hormones and standing in their own feces.

Which processing plants were crazy enough to let you in?

We had to go to Mexico. Amazingly, those facilities are cleaner and safer than those in the United States, and they treat their employees better. The economics are much different, of course: They handle forty to fifty head of cattle in an hour, while in the U.S., they’re doing ten times that. The people who owned that slaughterhouse liked the fact that we focused on the migration north. That’s a very mythical story to them, leaving Mexico to find better work in the United States. Granted, we didn’t tell them everything we were doing, but we didn’t lie, either. It was the same with the fast-food joint—“Mickey’s” is a real place, this little chain from Texas. I’d shot film there before, and the owner allowed me to shoot Fast Food Nation there as well.

And Bruce Willis? I heard that you and he were of similar minds when it comes to things like September 11th conspiracies.

Well, I don’t know about that. He’s a freethinking, wild guy—analytical. He’s crucial in the movie, playing a guy who’s on the inside and doesn’t really care about what’s going on. Working with Kris Kristofferson, too, was an experience. I’ve been a huge fan of his from way back. This was just another small part for him, of course, but when I came away from meeting him, he exceeded my wildest impressions. How often can you say that about meeting one of your heroes?

Caleb McEwen is fast on his feet, but we suspect the artistic director of the Brave New Workshop has been running himself ragged as of late. Not only has he been directing plenty of comedy revues, but he and his wife Katy (the workshop’s assistant artistic director) welcomed a bundle of joy into the world last August. Nevertheless, McEwen remains as quick-witted as ever—so much so that we grew nostalgic for his legendarily funny improv performances. (When, oh, when will he appear onstage again?) In fact, McEwen was unfazed when asked to compose a list of necessities for a hypothetical sojourn on a desert isle. “Strangely, I may be one of the few people you’ll ever meet who has actually been stranded on a desert island,” he said. Was this just another of his improvisations? It’s hard to say, although McEwen did note that his experience made our little game, for him, “less hypothetical and more practical.” Here are the no-nonsense items he’d take along:

1) Von Neumann’s theoretical “Universal Constructor.” This machine is capable of powering and replicating itself, given the proper raw materials. Mine would be made out of the theoretical stuff from other people’s theoretical duffel bags, as these things would be littering the theoretical island—things like Joni Mitchell albums, Sopranos DVDs, and supermodel Gisele Bündchen. I would simply initiate Task No. 1: Start Universal Constructor Sequence. Then I’d relax as my machine begat one duplicate, then four, and so on until they formed a bridge to the mainland. I would then immediately initiate Task No. 2: Stop Exponentially Increasing Universal Constructor Horde from Devouring Earth.

2) Flava Flav. If derivative fiction has taught me one thing, it’s that uninhabited islands are rarely uninhabited. Eventually, someone is going to show up. When they do, I want to make the proper impression. Thus, I would bring along the greatest hype man of all time to properly introduce me. Flava Flav’s energetic and skillful announcement of my presence would prevent an unwelcome bum rush. Also, Flav is one of the few people who could properly appreciate my Universal Constructor.

3) Weapons-grade plutonium. When you’re in possession of some plutonium-239, someone will find you. To alert the world to my ownership, I would post a bulletin on MySpace.

4) A panda. They have to be endangered for a reason. I’m betting it’s because they’re delicious.

5) A recording of that sound Aquaman uses to control fish on Super Friends. I believe this is self-explanatory. How is Carnival Cruise Lines going to react when Flava Flav, an irradiated panda, and I roll up—Ben Hur-style—atop a flotilla of angry tuna?

Caleb McEwen directs Christmas: The Other White Holiday, which runs through January 27 at the Brave New Workshop Comedy Theatre, 2605 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-332-6620; www.bravenewworkshop.org

Seemingly timed for the darkest month of the year, this is a dystopic vision of a world in which the women suddenly become infertile, forcing society to examine—in short order—just what it means to be alive. The youngest human on earth, all of eighteen, is killed, and society’s falling apart at the seams. But when a woman is discovered to be great with child, the forces of good and evil work to deliver or destroy her baby … and hope for mankind. Children of Men is a celebration of gray and brown tones, exploring terrorism and environmental destruction and featuring Clive Owen doing his downbeat existentialist shtick. Along for the ride are Julianne Moore and a long-haired Michael Caine to add some heart to an otherwise morose story. With Children, the newly released Fountain, and the forthcoming Pan’s Labyrinth, this is looking to be one of Hollywood’s most ambitious sci-fi seasons ever.

Could this be a subtle homage to wartime classics (read: Casablanca and The Third Man) that manages to stand on its own? Or is it a tired, nostalgic retread, the last refuge of an artistically fatigued director? Although it’s been six years since Soderbergh enjoyed a critical hit, word on the street is that he’s back in form with this one, a much-anticipated adaptation of Joseph Kanon’s acclaimed novel. When a magazine writer returns to Berlin to cover the Potsdam Conference—you know, that event that allowed the superpowers to carve up Germany like a Christmas turkey—he also stumbles on old loves and new murders. Along with moody, black-and-white cinematography and high-wattage stars (George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire), The Good German offers the possibility of some well-scripted, thoughtful holiday entertainment—the kind of movie the studios pumped out by the dozens in the golden age.

Almodóvar’s latest film is another feast of color and homage (this time to Frank Capra and Mildred Pierce) and also his first set in the backwater province of La Mancha, where the filmmaker grew up. Penélope Cruz stars as a woman who is—guess what?—pushed to the edge of insanity by her husband’s murder. Turns out the old bastard was trying to rape their daughter, who killed him in self-defense. Naturally, Cruz decides to bury the guy in a freezer and take the blame herself. Add to these female troubles the return of Cruz’s long-dead mother, a ghost who seeks forgiveness from her daughters. Oddly, critics here and in Britain have lashed out at this film (along with the recent Viva Pedro! retrospective), wondering why Pedro’s films are essentially manless, and, in the words of one detractor, do little more than rehash old themes and “flatter a [woman’s] self-esteem.” Like the best auteurs, Almodóvar will take his knocks … and keep on creating exactly what he wants.

In 1976, the Maysles brothers followed Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie around their dilapidated mansion, listening to these cousins of Jackie Kennedy Onassis ramble on about everything from fashion to philosophy to the vermin infesting their home. The resulting footage became Grey Gardens, a film whose status has ballooned from peripheral culthood into a Broadway musical and, soon, a major motion picture starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. The Beales of Grey Gardens is a sequel of sorts, cobbling together some of the footage edited out of the original—further odd and often funny gems of wisdom from the two sages.

Touchstone execs are hoping you’ll ignore Mel Gibson’s recent spate of troubles and concentrate instead on his newest fusion of religion and bloodletting. A heartwarming adventure timed to a holiday release, it’s the tale of a young warrior’s quest to save his family … all the while being tortured and mutilated (kind of like Christ). The Aussie madman’s on record as suggesting that his film is a parable about the decline of major civilizations, like one that “send[s] guys off to Iraq for no reason.” Of course, it’s now public knowledge that the people whom a drunken Gibson blames for said decline are not the gentiles in the White House.

Another holiday story comes loping in on its donkey—this one obviously hoping to reap a box-office triumph similar to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ but without that movie’s politics or gore (or big-name director). Shooting in many of the same locales as Passion, The Nativity Story seeks to tell the simple tale of Mary and Joseph come to Nazareth to deliver the baby Jesus—and show the world that you can praise the Lord without whips and nails. Director Catherine Hardwicke’s previous work has been limited to well-regarded explorations of the world of troubled teens (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown), a résumé that could make her the ideal choice for this story about a young woman impregnated (and no doubt tormented) by God.

Here’s one of those big, fat books that seem designed to either shame you or make you feel daunted, if not entirely stupid. The title is a scold, really, masquerading as a title—is that “Must” truly necessary? And an idiot can do the math: Are you realistically going to find the time to read 1,001 books before you die, let alone these 1,001 books? But book geeks are, of course, entirely helpless to resist such challenges—particularly when the list includes some doorstops (The Man Without Qualities), some dogs (American Psycho), and some books no sane person should have even heard of (The Albigenses). Still, that’s all part of the fun, and at the very least, the entries for each selection provide intellectual fake-book fodder for cocktail-party boors and dilettantes of every stripe.

It’s been a banner year for what highbrows call sequential art, what with a new volume of the splendid and absolutely sui generis Kramer’s Ergot and Ivan Brunetti’s An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. The biggest revelation of all, though, might be Dan Nadel’s Art Out of Time, a beautifully designed collection of mind-blowing work by assorted whackos and obscurities. Most of the strips and panels Nadel has assembled have never been reprinted before, and some date from the earliest days of the twentieth century; in a few cases, he got his hands on the only surviving copies. While the majority of the artists in Art Out of Time will be unknown to casual and even hardcore fans, there’s a consistently freewheeling aesthetic at work here, and a formal daring that’s light-years ahead of its time.