Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

It’s easy to see Richard Linklater – director of Slackerand School of Rock– as a film-making descendent of Orson Welles, the original indie director. Linklater tells DONALD CLARKEabout Orson’s enduring appeal, why he has just made a film about him, and Zac Efron’s serious side

WHY DO we keep coming back to Orson Welles? Versions of the late polymath have appeared so often in films that he has developed an independent life as a demi-fictional character. Danny Huston played him recently in Fade to Black. Vincent D’Onofrio had a crack at Welles in Ed Wood. Angus Macfadyen did an Orson in The Cradle Will Rock. Now, Richard Linklater, director of Before Sunrise, Slackerand a half-dozen other funky cult hits, offers us Christian McKay as the great man in a smart new film entitled Me and Orson Welles. He just won’t go away.