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He pauses, considering, “I think it was Orson Welles who said, ‘I’m the bird.

In a career that now encompasses 22 features, director Richard Linklater has tackled myriad subjects and worlds: high school, Orson Welles, weirdos, lovers, ballplayers, boyhood.

Not unlike Orson Welles, another American filmmaker who experienced unexpectedly enormous success early in his career who turned increasingly experimental as a filmmaker later in life, Coppola became fascinated with new possibilities for movies.

But Welles’ success, according to Kael, meant he also needed to be taken down a peg.

Buster Keaton, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles and Elaine May all spent their later years struggling to mount projects.