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The Real Couple Behind Before Sunrise
By Forrest
Wickman
Posted
Thursday, May 30, 2013, at 9:02 AM
If you stick around through
the closing credits of Before Midnight, the latest
film in the trilogy that also includes
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset,
you
’
ll see
that
the movie is dedicated to someone whose name even
the most die-hard fans
have never heard
before: Amy Lehrhaupt. Almost 25 years ago,
Lehrhaupt met a
young man named Richard
Linklater and spent a night with him that he never
forgot. Their encounter inspired
Linklater to conceive and direct Before Sunrise,
the
first film in the series. She never
saw it, though; unbeknownst to Linklater, by the
time that movie came out, Lehrhaupt was
dead.
Linklater never mentioned Lehrhaupt by
name in the press before promoting
Before
Midnight
—
Ethan Hawke has
said that the director was uncomfortable
mentioning her until
“
extremely
recently
”
—
but he
has long made brief references
to their
encounter. From a number of interviews
he
’
s done over the years, we
can
now piece together the complete
story of how Lehrhaupt helped inspire the series.
Linklater met
Lehrhaupt in fall 1989, when he was visiting his
sister in
Philadelphia. He was 29 and
had just finished shooting Slacker, and was
staying
there for one night while
passing through on the way home from New York.
Lehrhaupt was several years younger,
about 20. They met in a toy shop, and ended
up spending the whole night together,
“
from midnight until six in
the morning,
”
“
walking around, flirting,
doing things you would never do
now.
”
As in
Before
Sunrise, most of what they did
was talk,
“
about art,
science, film, the gamut.
”
Did
they kiss? Yes. Did they
have sex? The Times went so far as to ask
Linklater in a
recent interview, but he
said he wants to
“
leave a
little mystery.
”
Even in the
midst of that romantic night, the filmmaker in
Linklater couldn
’
t
help but consider its cinematic
possibilities. In a 2004 interview with the New
York
Times, he remembered
“
walking around [thinking],
‘
If I could just capture
this
feeling I
’
m
having right now,
’
instead of actually having that
feeling.
”
On a
recent
episode of the podcast The Q&A
with Jeff Goldsmith, he recalled mentioning the
movie idea to Lehrhaupt that night:
|||Even as that experience was going on
…
I was like,
“
I
’
m
gonna make a film
about
this.
”
And she
was like,
“
What
‘
this
’
?
What
’
re you talking
about?
”
And
I was like,
“
Just
this. This feeling. This thing
that
’
s going on between
us.
”
|||
But as the night came to an
end, the paths of Linklater and Lehrhaupt began to
diverge from the fictional storyline of
Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and
C
é
line (Julie Delpy).
In fact, on The Q&A, Linklater revealed
that the ending of Before Sunrise was in part
a response to what happened with him
and Lehrhaupt. Unlike Jesse and
C
é
line,
who agree
to reconvene in six months, the real-life young
lovers exchanged
numbers and tried to
keep in touch while they were away. They called
each other a
few times, but it was
“
that long distance
thing
”
that did
them in.
“
It sort of did
the fizzle,
”
he says,
“
So in
the first movie that was a thing, the idea that
they would
intellectually kind of get
beyond that and say
‘
Well,
we
’
re on different
continents.
What are the odds that
it
’
s gonna work.
Let
’
s just commit to this
night.
’
”
Linklater soon became involved with
another woman, who
“
swept
into [his]
life ... and took over for
about a year or so,
”
and he and Lehrhaupt never talked
again. He did think that maybe
“
she would show up at a
Before Sunrise screening
or
something.
”
In
Before Sunset, C
é
line shows
up at a reading of Jesse
’
s
book This
Time, which is based on their
night together.
“
It would be
so weird,
”
he
said, in
2004. But she never did.
Linklater
didn
’
t know then that
Lehrhaupt had died in a motorcycle accident
on May 9, 1994, before she reached her
25th birthday. Before Sunrise started
filming a few weeks later. Linklater
only learned of her death three years ago, when
a friend of
Lehrhaupt
’
s, who knew about
the encounter, put it together and sent
him a letter.
“
It
was very sad,
”
Linklater told the Times. Ethan Hawke
was similarly
devastated when he heard
it, though he reminded Linklater that if he
hadn
’
t met
her,
then he never would have made these movies or met
some of the people who
worked on them
with him.
“
Who knows how we
reverberate through each
other
’
s
lives,
”
Linklater
reflected in another interview,
“
But
she
’
s an inspiration on
this.
”
In this way, Linklater did
find another way to make that feeling, that
“
thing in
the
air
”
they once
had between them, last: He turned it into cinema.
《爱在日出之前》背后真正的情侣
福雷斯特·威克曼
发表于
2
013
年
5
月
30
日，星期四，
9:02AM
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