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Waking Life

Theatrical release poster
Directed byRichard Linklater
Produced byTommy Pallotta
Jonah Smith
Anne Walker-McBay
Palmer West
Written byRichard Linklater
StarringTrevor Jack Brooks (voice)
Lorelei Linklater (voice)
Wiley Wiggins (voice)
Timothy "Speed" Levitch (voice)
Alex Jones (voice)
Music byGlover Gill
CinematographyRichard Linklater
Tommy Pallotta
Editing bySandra Adair
Distributed byFox Searchlight Pictures
Release date(s)January 23, 2001
Running time99 min.
LanguageEnglish
All Movie Guide profile
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Waking Life is a digitally rotoscoped and animated film, directed by Richard Linklater and made in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame. This technique is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of 1970s filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, which was invented in the 1920s.

The title is a reference to George Santayana's maxim that "[s]anity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled." [1]

Synopsis

In a broad scope, Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like appearance and reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life. Along the way the film touches on other topics including existentialism, situationist politics, posthumanity, and the film theory of André Bazin. The young man eventually comes to the realization that he is dreaming and that he is unable to wake up. By the end of the film, he fears that he might be dead.

Unsurprisingly, given the above themes and content, Waking Life is much more focused on dialogue (often even monologue) than on plot action. In this emphasis, it echoes the 1981 film My Dinner with Andre and the 1990 film Mindwalk. Long scenes in Waking Life consist of nothing but head shots of characters while they run through explanations for philosophical questions. The characters and their speech are very reminiscent of Linklater's earlier cult classic, Slacker. (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy even appear as their characters from Linklater's Before Sunrise)

Technique

Adding to the dream-like effect, the film used an innovative animation technique based on rotoscoping. Animators overlaid live action footage (shot by Linklater) with animation that roughly approximates the images actually filmed. A variety of artists were employed, so the feel of the movie continually changes. The result is a surreal, shifting dreamscape.

The animators used inexpensive "off-the-shelf" Apple Macintosh computers (as opposed to the expensive supercomputers and computer clusters used by Pixar and DreamWorks). The film was mostly produced using Rotoshop, a custom-made rotoscoping program that creates blends between keyframe vector shapes, and created specifically for the production by Bob Sabiston (the name is a play on the popular bitmap graphics editing software called Photoshop, which makes use of virtual "layers" inspired in part by the work of Sabiston).

Awards

Nominated for numerous awards, mainly for its technical achievements, Waking Life won the National Society of Film Critics award for "Best Experimental Film," the New York Film Critics Circle award for "Best Animated Film," and the "CinemAvvenire" award at the Venice Film Festival for "Best Film." It was also nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's main award.

Soundtrack

Enlarge picture
DVD cover for the film
The soundtrack was performed and written by Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra, except for one piece written by Frédéric Chopin, and was relatively successful. Featuring the nuevo tango style, it bills itself "the 21st Century Tango." Influence for the compositions stem from the Argentinian "father of new tango" Ástor Piazzolla. The actual tango scores are revised renditions of Ástor Piazzolla's works.

Trivia

  • There is a Sealab 2021 episode titled "Waking Quinn," a reference to Waking Life.
  • The Philip K. Dick essay being discussed is How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later,http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm the introduction to his short story collection I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon.
  • The final song in the theatrical trailer is "The Passenger" performed by Iggy Pop.
  • The entire film was shot with a MiniDV camera.
  • The film's opening and lucid dreaming conversations are used in the song "Botanical Dimensions" by Shpongle. The lucid dreaming conversations are also used in the song "Acid For Nothing" by 1200 Micrograms.
  • In the scene with the chimpanzee giving the lecture, scenes from The Last House on the Left, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams and live performances of Nirvana and Dead Kennedys are playing on the projector.
  • The scene with the man in prison ranting about torture is taken almost directly from Hubert Selby Jr's 1971 novel The Room
  • Samples from this movie are used in (həd) p.e.'s song "Walk On By".
  • The 1970s Bally pinball machine "Fireball" appears in the film.
  • Since none of the characters are mentioned in the film by name, the closing credits show a clip from the film with the character's face on screen, with the actor's name beside it.
  • The man simultaneously driving and shouting into the megaphone is Alex Jones, known for expressing even more controversial and conspiratorial viewpoints on his syndicated radio show.

References

1. ^ Santayana, George (1989). Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press), 156.

See also

External links

 •  • [ e]
Films directed by Richard Linklater
It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1989) • Slacker (1991) • Dazed and Confused (1993) • Before Sunrise (1995) • subUrbia (1996) • The Newton Boys (1998) • Waking Life (2001) • Tape (2001) • School of Rock (2003) • Before Sunset (2004) • Bad News Bears (2005) • A Scanner Darkly (2006) • Fast Food Nation (2006)
Richard Linklater

Linklater at the Austin premiere of Fast Food Nation
Birth name Richard Stuart Linklater
Born July 30 1960 (1960--) (age 47)
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Tommy Pallotta (born May 25, 1968, in Houston, Texas) is an American film director and producer.

Biography

Pallotta received a degree in Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Richard Linklater

Linklater at the Austin premiere of Fast Food Nation
Birth name Richard Stuart Linklater
Born July 30 1960 (1960--) (age 47)
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Wiley Ramsey Wiggins (November 6, 1976 in Austin, Texas) is an American film actor and blogger. He is the nephew of Lanny Wiggins, who was a member of Janis Joplin's early band, The Waller Creek Boys.
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Tim "Speed" Levitch (born 1970) is an American actor, tour guide, speaker, author and voice actor. His nickname is derived from his trademark fast talking style. Levitch has appeared in multiple films and has had his poetic and philosophical works published in books and periodicals.
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For other persons of the same name, see Alex Jones.


Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11 1974) is an American radio host and filmmaker who is best known for his work in promotion of conspiracy theories.
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Richard Linklater

Linklater at the Austin premiere of Fast Food Nation
Birth name Richard Stuart Linklater
Born July 30 1960 (1960--) (age 47)
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Tommy Pallotta (born May 25, 1968, in Houston, Texas) is an American film director and producer.

Biography

Pallotta received a degree in Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Fox Searchlight Pictures is the specialty film division of 20th Century Fox, established in 1994. It has a more indie slant than its parent company, and has produced and/or distributed films.
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January 23 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

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Official language of: 53 countries
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Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator.
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Richard Linklater

Linklater at the Austin premiere of Fast Food Nation
Birth name Richard Stuart Linklater
Born July 30 1960 (1960--) (age 47)
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-2001- 2002 2003 2004  2005 .  2006 .  2007 .  2008  . 2009  . 2010  . 2011 
In home video: 1998 1999 2000 -2001- 2002 2003 2004     
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Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator.
..... Click the link for more information.
Ralph Bakshi (born October 29, 1938, in Haifa, Palestine [now Israel]) is an American director of animated and occasionally live-action films. As the American animation industry fell into decline during the 1960s and 1970s, Bakshi tried to bring change to the industry and pioneered
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George Santayana (December 16, 1863, Madrid – September 26, 1952, Rome), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist.

A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States, invariably wrote in English, and is considered an
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lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. During lucid dreams, it is often possible to exert conscious control over the dream characters and environment, as well as to perform otherwise physically impossible feats.
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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).
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359, 1805–1809.
  • Hofstadter, Douglas. (2007) I Am A Strange Loop. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465030781
  • Kane, Robert (1998). The Significance of Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-512656-4
  • Lawhead, William F. (2005).
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    • meaning of life?" is asked, one of a variety of questions may be implied, such as: "Why are we here?" (or, "What is the origin of life?"[1]), "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?",[1][3]
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    It is a reaction against more traditional philosophies, such as rationalism and empiricism, which sought to discover an ultimate order in
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    Posthuman Future, an illustration by Michael Gibbs for The Chronicle of Higher Education's look at how biotechnology will change the human experience, has become one of the secular icons representing a posthuman.
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    Andr̩ Bazin (April 18, 1918 РNovember 11, 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.

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