Inside Richard Linklater’s Nostalgic Childhood and the Animated Houston of ‘Apollo 10½’
Wilson Chapman editorThe Houston of “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” premiering April 1 on Netflix, is both a loving depiction of the city as it once was and a vision of a place that never quite existed. Translating live-action elements into its animated scenes, the film, written and directed by Richard Linklater, explores the 1969 moon landing from the perspective of an ordinary kid, Stanley, played by Milo Coy, racing through vignette after vignette of life in the city with painstaking specificity. But the overall look is one of palpable nostalgia — that the viewer is watching Linklater’s wistful recollections of his own childhood.“Memories can be deceiving,” says animation production designer Vincent Bisschop.