“I guess when you’re young, you just believe there’ll be many people with whom you’ll connect with. Later in life, you realise it only happens a few times.”
- Before Sunset (2004)
“She kind of echoes through the films. I always felt I would see her, like she would show up at a screening. When you make a film, you’re in public quite a bit. You do screenings, festivals. I run into a lot of old friends, and I figured, just in my mind, ‘I have a screening in Philadelphia; maybe she’ll be in New York…’ And she never showed up. Even in the second film, I think that, in a way, works into the idea of the novel and it’s sent out as a beacon, you know, in some way, what Jesse admits to, that was swirling around. And I don’t want to exaggerate: it wasn’t as intense of a relationship, obviously, as Celine and Jesse have; it was just something swirling around in my mind.”
- Richard Linklater, discussing the woman who inspired the story of his Before trilogy. He met her in Philadelphia while travelling, and as he was only there for one night they walked around the city together until morning. He told her that he thought he could make a movie out of their encounter. Unlike in the movie, they exchanged phone numbers, but eventually lost touch. Many years later he discovered that she had died in a motorcycle accident shortly before he began shooting Before Sunrise, the film that she had directly inspired. Before Midnight, the final film in the trilogy, is dedicated to her memory.
