Experimental Wisconsin filmmaker James Benning wandered the cafe of Bradford Film Fest’s National Media Museum, along with Double Play‘s writer/director Gabe Klinger, almost unnoticed, shuffling around in denim jacket under long, greying hair, and giving off an air of undying cool. Double Play‘s other subject, Richard Linklater (or ‘Rick’, as Benning refers to his friend throughout Klinger’s director-on-director doc), is another intrinsically laidback man of movies. Emerging on the independent filmmaking scene out of Austin, Texas back in the early 90s, Linklater early on in his career made a point of meeting Benning out of respect for the man’s work. Now friends of some 20 years, it’s the interplay between two of modern cinema’s most relaxed men that softens any dry notions of a documentary about directors doing some highbrow jawing. They are, in debutante Klinger’s capable hands, what make Double Play so stimulating.
Centering everything around a weekend of conversation between the two directors, Klinger inserts clips from Benning and Linklater’s movies to illustrate points and highlight the surprising individual histories of his subjects (Benning was never really a film fan, while Linklater might have had a very different career in sports had an injury not sent him into the comforting embrace of cinema). There’s always a potential for fascination when the camera is turned on the filmmakers and we’re given a chance to explore the minds that magicked up the movies, and Klinger’s portrait depicts personalities clearly reflected in the work: Benning is serene, patient, intentionally vague, while Linklater is a romanticist and a touch scattershot, his thoughts leading off in several different directions in a search for some higher truth (we see Linklater’s own character paralleled most obviously here in the Before trilogy’s Jesse).
Together, they ruminate on how their individual work deals with time and its relationship with people and place, and Klinger’s own film takes a good look at how Linklater and Benning have changed both physically and professionally over the years. We see two men talk of struggling in life to get to their points of comfort — Benning came from a working class background with no concern for art, while Linklater had no vision of a movie career growing up in 70s Austin — and Klinger’s documentary is the happy conclusion: here, Klinger finds two directors wholly satisfied with their own work, and two cinematic minds excited to discuss the possibilities of film language and the power of cinema. Playing baseball and shooting hoops as they talk over careers of 42 years and a quarter of a century, respectively, the deceptively composed Benning and Linklater together make Double Play one of the more insightful docs about the filmmaking process out there.
Is Double Play for cinephiles only? Most likely — Benning has never been anything other than an independent filmmaker on the fringes of obscurity, and the only reference to Linklater’s more commercial work comes in the form of a clip from Bad News Bears. At just 70 minutes (the film was originally made for French television), you just know Benning and Linklater have more to say — an entire documentary could be dedicated to Linklater’s new film, Boyhood, of which we see tantalizing glimpses here. But Double Play is still a valuable introduction to these two filmmakers’ work for budding film enthusiasts, and the enthusiasm and intelligence of Benning and Linklater, not to mention their casual, jokey rapport, makes it a treat for already firm fans.
