Before Sunrise - Production

Production

Before Sunrise was inspired by a woman whom writer/director Richard Linklater met in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989. They walked around the city together, conversing deep into the night. Originally, in the screenplay, who the two people were and the city they spend time in was vague. Linklater realized that because the film is so much a dialogue between a man and a woman he knew that it was important to have a strong woman co-writer. He chose Kim Krizan, who had small roles in his two previous films Slacker and Dazed and Confused. According to Linklater, he "loved the way her mind worked – a constant stream of confident and intelligent ideas".

Linklater and Krizan talked about the concept of the film and the characters for a long time. He wanted to explore the "relationship side of life and discover two people who had complete anonymity and try to find out who they really were". He decided to put Jesse and Céline in a foreign country because "when you're traveling, you're much more open to experiences outside your usual realm". He and Krizan worked on an outline. They wrote the actual screenplay in 11 days.

Linklater spent nine months casting the film because he saw so many people but had trouble finding the right actors for the roles of Jesse and Céline. When Linklater first considered casting Ethan Hawke, he thought that the actor was too young for the part. Linklater saw Hawke at a play in New York City and reconsidered after talking to the actor. For Céline, Linklater met Julie Delpy and liked her personality. After they did a final reading, Linklater knew that Delpy and Hawke were right for the roles. Once Delpy and Hawke agreed to do the film, they went to Austin and talked with Linklater and Krizan for a few days. Delpy said in a 2007 interview that she and Hawke also did uncredited work on the script though not without some controversy. In an interview with The Guardian in May 2012 for her film 2 Days in New York, Delpy expressed her anger at Linklater's role in denying the film's two stars their writing credits:

They were denied credit after a vicious battle with the director, Richard Linklater, and the official screenwriter, Kim Krizan. Delpy is still fuming about it. She and Linklater have since made up. But, she says, "Richard was not totally fair on that. And he knows it. Richard says he couldn't do anything, but I think he could've done something." If he had any class, she says, he'd "take the film off the shelf and put our names on it.