Linklater's conspiracy

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Richard Linklater is quick to distance himself, philosophically, from his friend Alex Jones.

Mr. Jones' controversial documentaries argue the U.S. government had "premeditated involvement in 9/11."

"I don't think our government is that competent," jokes Mr. Linklater, whose "Fast Food Nation" opened Friday.

But soon after the interview, this reporter received two of Mr. Jones' documentaries in the mail. "Alex puts some compelling cases together," Mr. Linklater says. "I've always been interested in the conspiracist. Not that I think it's true. But it says a lot about a culture. When you hide things, what pops out?"

The director is best known for character pieces like 1991's "Slacker" and 1995's "Before Sunrise." This year, he's released two films with political overtones: "A Scanner Darkly" imagines a future police state, while "Fast Food Nation" is a fictionalized take on Eric Schlosser's expose of the meat industry.

Though very different, both films deal with today's political climate. "The perpetual war against terrorism can be used against anything," the director says. "With Homeland Security dollars, investigators are infiltrating vegan societies. It feels a bit like Nixonian-era COINTELPRO.

Don't write off Mr. Linklater as a typical liberal, though. "I'm one of those people who's skeptical of the party line from anybody -- the corporation, the Hollywood studio, or the government," he declares.

Take his current film. "The adult libertarian in me wants to say 'Choice. Freedom,' " he says. "I live by that. I think we should be able to do whatever we want. Where it gets tricky [in the case of the fast-food industry], what opened my eyes, was when I found out how much they market to children."

It was Mr. Schlosser's idea to make a fictionalized film. "It would have been pretty cavalier for me to say, 'I want to take your thoroughly researched piece of nonfiction journalism and toss it,' " Mr. Linklater says.

This former offshore oil rig worker says, "Though I probably have the best job in the world now, I still see the world through bad service-sector jobs." He made a pilot for HBO called "$5.15" about minimum wage workers but the network declined to pick it up. "They thought it was too depressing," he recalls. "I thought it was funny."