Everybody Wants Some!!: Linklater Pays Homage to his College Days

Casual sex. Drinking. Hyper-masculinity. Competition. Baseball. And of course some existential talk, it’s a Linklater film. In Richard Linklater’s newest film, Everybody Wants Some!! (yes, two exclamation points), we are put in a time machine and sent back to the era of mustaches, ass-hugging pants, muscle cars, and tape cassettes.  I’m talking about the 80s, and Linklaters attention to detail is enjoyable as well as immersive for the audience. We follow our protagonist Jake, amongst a large supporting cast, as he arrives for his freshman year of college (somewhere in Texas) upon his recruitment to the baseball team. It seems that Linklater has once again reached into his own memory bank in order to create authentic film, considering he was a baseball player in college, in Texas, in the 80s. And like most of Linklater’s work, the mundane is turned into spectacle.

There is something very compelling and charming about the characters of this film. Although as one character Finn points out that all they talk about is baseball and girls, the conversations are engrossing. This can attest to how well Linklater’s writing and directing complement each other. The mundane story arc that is truly just a flatline, matched with Linklater’s simplistic style of directing is delightful. Linklater’s style allows for the audience to feel immersed into the film, feeling like they are just another one of the guys on the team. So once the films gets to the point where they actually play baseball (a practice not even a game) it’s extremely entertaining. I felt like I could watch them play for hours because of the intimacy I felt towards the players.

It is the same type of intimacy one might feel towards the characters in Linklater’s cult classic Dazed and Confused. When watching that movie you feel as though you are hanging out with characters on screen. But I must be keen to mention that this is not in any way a ‘sequel’ to Linklater’s homage to high school that many are portraying it to be. The film stands alone and going into it thinking that you are about to watch Dazed and Confused 2 might ruin it for you. Although there is a thread that connects the two films and that is Linklater. He is a cultural anthropologist in the way he dissect time periods and institutions but is called a filmmaker because he transfers all of his research onto the big screen. He did in Dazed and Confused and he certainly did it here in Everybody Wants Some!!.

Linklater takes us to most of the frontiers of the 80’s although the film really only follows the baseball team (full of many different characters.) Our protagonist Jake finds himself on the disco dance floor, the straw covered country bar, the concrete punk mosh pit, the decorative artsy theater house, and of course the keg infused jock palace. It’s Linklater’s way of showing audiences that college is the time in your life when all frontiers are available to you, in order to figure out which one fits you best. The film is a joy to watch whether it a nostalgic piece or relevant to you now. It’s a load of fun, If you don't believe me watch this clip of Jake making friends with his new teammates through one of Linklaters favorite modes of expression, music. Enjoy!