The 2014 filmBoyhoodtook us through a young man’s life from the tender age of six to his first day at college.
Now that the 12-year project has concluded, writer/director Richard Linklater is telling the story of the next phase in life.
Adulthood? Not exactly. Everybody Wants Some!! (named after a song by Van Halen) follows Jake – a cipher for Linklater – as he enters the hugely competitive world of college sports and the hedonism of frat house life. But here’s the kicker: they may be full of bluster, but these aren’t the jerky jocks you’re used to as a cinemagoer.
“I know!” says Linklater with delight. “I’ve broken new ground in cinema history – to show athletes not as fully thugged, rapists, horrible, stupid. Although, you know, there’s a range of stupidity on display, just ’cause it’s all men, but there’s also a lot of humour and bonding.
“They’re not bad guys! I figured that out ’cause I’m an ex-athlete myself, showing something that I remember affectionately, whereas most movies are made by geeks who didn’t like athletes, so their depictions can be very prejudiced.”
Sure, he’s arguing that straight white males are being discriminated against, but it’s hard to meet the endearing cast of Everybody Wants Some!! and not think that when it comes to cinema, Linklater might just have a point.
“That’s just kinda how this society is geared, even though strangely we worship athletes to a psychopathic [degree],” he says. “They have this unwarranted elevated status; they’re also as a group put down and not taken very seriously as people.
“Talk about objectification – people say they objectify women, but the culture objectifies athletes. People don’t care about their souls, they don’t care about them [as people] – they’re just there to entertain them with their athletic prowess.”
Taking place as a ‘spiritual successor’ to his snapshot of the ’70s, Dazed And Confused, the new film is loosely based on Linklater’s experiences as a college baseball player before he made the dramatic and total shift to filmmaking at age 20. He sees it as a critique of young male behaviour, but one without the malevolence of modern initiation rituals.
“If you’re good enough to get a college scholarship and play at that level – a) you have to be good; and b) you have to be really competitive,” he says. “You gotta be a little obsessed, you gotta be kinda what you see in the movies. People think, ‘OK, those guys are competitive assholes,’ and it’s like, ‘Yeah, they all are. You have to be or you don’t belong there.’ But what do you do with all that once you’re not playing ball anymore?”
For Linklater, the answer came easily enough – he got stuck into playwrighting before producing his second feature, Slacker, which saw his career leave home plate. But Everybody Wants Some!! has been a grand opportunity to look back on his former ideology.
“It’s funny how something can mean so much to you – like for me, ages 12 through 20, baseball was such a focus in my life – and then can end and mean so little,” he laughs. “Like, absolutely nothing! It’s just gone. I’m the kind of guy who, the second I wasn’t playing anymore, I didn’t care about it … I was just on a huge non-physical-fitness binge. I just shifted, the arts took over my life.”
Now after almost 30 years in the film industry, Linklater’s competitive streak – appearing in the film as endless battles over ping-pong, women, drink and just about anything else – has been steadily replaced by a devotion to cinema. “For me it’s self-exploration, it’s storytelling. It’s not a zero-sum game. Everybody’s victories are kinda everybody’s victories in the arts. That’s how I see it. If some film does poorly, that doesn’t help me, you know?”
Thankfully, Linklater’s post-baseball change in career path never meant having to leave his teammates behind. “It’s kinda like going through the war with someone,” he laughs. “You’re kind of a platoon mate forever.” During the filming of Everybody Wants Some!!, the director brought his old “platoon mates” on set to relive their glory days, and to ensure that his evocation of the past had the same vibrancy and life to it as the reality.
“There really was a disco we went to called The Sound Machine, there really was a club called The Jolly Fox. They would come [on set] and the guys were just freaking out,” he laughs. “It was so real for them! There’s really 30 guys on the planet who really, really get this movie. The ones who lived there over a three-year period.”
Niche as that may sound, the movie is surprisingly inclusive, as Jake throws himself headlong into every subculture of college life without question or judgement. It’s so all-encompassing that The Guardian’s Noah Gittell referred to the film as a “potent, anti-partisan political statement”.
“To me, the movie’s very much a depiction of the end of an era,” says Linklater. “It’s like setting a movie on September 10, 2001 in New York, y’know? Things are gonna change. We know what’s comin’: fuckin’ Reagan/Bush years, anti-drugs, upping drinking ages, AIDS… the culture’s going to shift and go backwards really quick, so to me it’s like the last look at a certain era that’s pretty long gone.”
It may also be the best college film of the decade. But hey, it’s not a competition.
Everybody Wants Some!! (dir. Richard Linklater) shows, as part of Sydney Film Festival 2016, at State Theatre onSunday June 12 andEvent Cinemas George Streeton Saturday June 18; then the film is in cinemas nationally from Thursday June 23.
