The Kennedy Center Honors is an annual award given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture. They are the highest honor an artist can be bestowed in the US, and only four of 198 honorees gained their fame primarily as filmmakers.  

Think about that! This is the country that made The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Jaws, Back to the Future, and Titanic. There are, of course, literally thousands of equally excellent examples. Truly, film has been America’s most significant export.

In 1969, Easy Rider swept the nation and much of the world, and the American independent film movement began. Or maybe it began with Little Fugitive in 1953. Whenever it started, the body of work that has come since reveals the American experience with a breadth and a depth that matches any other art form.

The independent spirit gives us Ed Wood or John Waters’ camp, Cassavetes’ intensity, and Spike Lee’s indignation. It is both a launching pad for breakout talents like Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, and Darren Aronovsky, and a place where underground visionaries like Charles Burnett, Barbara Loden, and Julie Dash create masterpieces that are fully appreciated only decades later.

Perhaps no filmmaker encapsulates the range of American independent film better than Richard Linklater. His 1991 breakthrough Slacker, with its $23,000 budget, is one of the seminal “indies,” and it inspired a generation of filmmakers. Dazed and Confused and School of Rock are true comedy classics. Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly are trippy midnight movies for the ages. And, of course, we haven’t even gotten to his most popular films, the Before series, and his most highly regarded, Boyhood, both of which emphatically disgarded standard conventions of plot and filmmaking.  

Through 21 narrative feature films and a gumbo of shorts, documentaries, videos, and TV episodes, Richard Linklater has embodied the endless spirit of discovery essential to all art. A proud Texan, he is definitively an American artist—Fast Food Nation, Apollo 11 ½, three movies about baseball, Dazed and Confused…no other country has these stories.

The cinema is America’s greatest art form; our independent film heritage is profound; Richard Linklater is a national treasure.  

Please sign and share this petition, which I will forward to the Kennedy Center. Thank you!