Before the ‘Before’ trilogy

The Internet was abuzz last week about a filmmaker’s “search for a happy ending.”

Turns out, director Richard Linklater’s romantic trilogy—“Before Sunrise” (1995), “Before Sunset” (2004) and “Before Midnight” (2013)—is not entirely fictional or based on “organic” improvisational exercises with lead actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

Last week, as the latest installment opened in local cinemas, the story made the social media rounds: Linklater was inspired by a brief fling from his own past.

“Before Sunrise” is about two kindred spirits who seem unlikely to cross paths again—a sensitive American writer and a smart French feminist. They meet on a train and run off to Vienna for a night of wistful conversations, insightful debates and playful flirting.

Linklater’s rendezvous happened in a Philadelphia toy store in 1989. The girl, Amy Lehrhaupt, also an American, finally got full credit after almost 25 years: “Midnight” was dedicated to her.

Through the years, Linklater would mention her in interviews, without going into details. At least two websites (Slate and PopWatch) pieced together bits and pieces of those past interviews, finally lifting the shroud of mystery. They uncovered a story more dramatic than any of the “Before” movies.

Unlike Hawke and Delpy in “Sunrise,” Linklater and Lehrhaupt briefly kept in touch after, but the distance between them eventually pulled them apart. Unlike Hawke and Delpy in “Sunset,” Linklater and Lehrhaupt never reconnected.

This is the part where the tissue box would get passed around: Three years ago, Linklater learned from a friend of Lehrhaupt’s that she had died in a motorcycle mishap at age 24, only weeks before he started filming “Sunrise” in Europe.

It was “sad,” Linklater said in a UK Times interview. Hawke was just as “devastated,” according to Slate.

If this story had turned out to be an urban legend or a marketing gimmick, would it diminish the impact of the trilogy on a generation of love-struck kids who grew up in the 1990s? Another site raised the question: When would too much information about movies we love be just too much?

Would it, ever? Meanwhile, and thankfully, romantic movies remain what they are—poignant, fleeting moments, much like a chance encounter in a toy store or on a train bound for Vienna.