"For anyone who doesn't know, this is a Texas-set drama about growing up and growing pains shot over 12 years with the same actors, some of whom start very young and who age on screen before our eyes. It's as much about the heartbreak of being a parent as that of growing up – and that without the moments of real connection between parents and children, siblings and friends, a lot of us would be lost. We don't know when or where these moments are going to come from and we make wrong turns and choices all along the way. Patricia Arquette as the mom who tries hard but keeps picking the wrong man is really good in this. It's ultimately uplifting but doesn't let on that it's necessarily an easy ride and all the more interesting for that. It's always been fascinating seeing kids grow up in dramas (eg AJ and Meadow in The Sopranos or Arya and Sansa in Game of Thrones) but I've never seen so many years condensed into such a short time-space while still feeling there's lots of breathing space in the film. The fact that it's made by Richard Linklater who's so good with actors, picture and soundtrack of course adds loads."

"I grew up in a rural area and with four channels on a black and white TV. Birdman of Alcatraz would come on TV, anything with Don Knotts, like The Incredible Mr. Limpet, but Wizard of Oz was a big deal. That movie came on a couple times a year and as a little kid, as all kids are, I was pretty skeeved out by the flying monkeys. But I got past that and just really, really loved the film. I think that I related to the fantastical story as a whole, and also to the idea of being in a rural area and wondering what else is out there — what’s on the other side of the rainbow, so to speak. It was formative. When I was 19, I moved to Austin, Texas, and I went to the Varsity theater — rest in peace, Varsity theater — and saw the movie as an adult. When they’re in Oz and it’s suddenly color, I gasped, because I only had a black and white TV, and in the back of my head I knew the movie turned to color, but I had forgotten. That was a really wonderful surprise. Also, seeing it on a big screen made the movie that much more of a great gift."

"I’ve been directing television for almost twenty-five years. In that time, one thing that I have learned for sure is that Douglas Sirk is the godfather of all dramatic television. It all comes from him. The best of television is redolent with his sense of ironic and knowing melodrama. He piles on the conflict in each and every scene. Bad things and disappointment stalk his characters, but always with style. The first ten minutes of Written on the Wind are literally drunk with this style. Robert Stack drinking from the bottle in an intensely yellow sports car, hundreds of leaves that blow through a Texas mansion, pages of a calendar that flip through time, and, above all else, Dorothy Malone. Nobody mambos like Malone: the sequence where she drunkenly mambos in her room while her father dies of a heart attack is choreographed for the camera like a Minnelli musical. Sirk blocks a scene with such dynamism and artfulness you can turn off the sound and know exactly what’s going on. All That Heaven Allows got me into Sirk, but Written on the Wind is the poster on my office wall—it’s a touchstone, a timeless piece of popular art."