The filmmaker describes his new movie as a “spiritual sequel” to “Dazed and Confused," this time with college baseball players sewing their wild oats.
'Everybody Wants Some!!': Richard Linklater's failed baseball career led him to filmmaking
The new film “Everybody Wants Some!!” has been dubbed a spiritual sequel to Richard Linklater’s classic 1993 film, “Dazed and Confuzed.” In Linklater’s new film, he returns to Texas — this time in 1980 — to follow a group of college baseball players living together during those reckless days of sex and drugs before the onset of AIDS and the Reagan era.
The film is a somewhat uncensored view of college life — lots of drugs, sex and uninhibited fun. Linklater wrote much of this screenplay during the filming of his 12-year project, “Boyhood.” Before shooting the film, the cast spent three weeks living together on “The Ranch” — Linklater’s property outside of Austin — so they could form the bond that’s apparent in the film.
The Frame's John Horn spoke with director Richard Linklater about how working on the film during "Boyhood" affected the way this movie turned out, and how he might have become a professional baseball player instead of a filmmaker.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
In a very early incarnation of this movie, I had a long first draft that covered the whole freshman year from Jake's perspective, the lead character. So it went all the way to the end of the [baseball] season. But it was about 180 pages. Then I was able to distill it and say everything I wanted to say in that first weekend ... That was the breakthrough, when I conceived of it being this one long party before classes start.
It's easy to feel that this movie is related to "Dazed and Confused," but I want to talk about its relationship to "Boyhood." Did the making of "Boyhood" influence this film?
Yeah, those are both equally valid. To me, this is clearly the spiritual sequel to "Dazed and Confused." Four years later, if you think of the young guy, Mitch, going off to college — this is his world. But to me, it's almost more interesting as a continuation to "Boyhood." And its relationship to "Boyhood" is kind of complex. I conceived of both films around the same time, and even though I made "Boyhood" every year throughout the way, this was being kind of conceived and written. Both of them influence each other. I always figured "Boyhood" would end with [the main character] going off to college. And this movie picks up right where it leaves off.
In a way, "Everybody Wants Some!!" is a continuation of "Boyhood." Very different character, for sure, but it is related.
So if a filmmaker makes a movie about, say, Navy SEALs, they may send their actors to bootcamp. When you're making a movie about college in the 1980s and you're working with contemporary actors, how do you put them in the mindset of what it was like to be in school in that era?
Well, you do your own kind of bootcamp. It's probably more fun than Navy SEAL training. But you are dialing on the period details to the most accurate degree possible. The movie's so much about bonding and camaraderie among the teammates. So [the cast] all lived together. I [had] this bunkhouse for them. Because the film is asking you to believe that some of these guys really know each other well. I don't know how you could fake that. And that's when I discovered what the movie wanted to be based on the people who were in it. I'm most interested in where that movie could go based on the personalities involved.
You played baseball in college. Had you been a slightly better baseball player, and maybe not found playwriting or theater, would you have become a filmmaker?
I don't think so. Had I been signed out of high school like a few of my friends, I might have had a chance to play minor league ball. But I think ultimately it would have slowed me down. I was 20 when I really got into film and started watching movies. Say I was 25 — I don't know if at that age you can totally start again with the same youthful openness and lack of connection with the world.
So yeah, to answer your question, I don't think I would have. I don't think I would have gotten to put in those years watching movies, reading, writing, studying — just obsessed with my own art form. You know, the Malcolm Gladwell thing — put in your 10,000 hours. That was a good time for me to put in those years and years of film freakdom ... anything other than that would have really gotten in the way and probably prevented it.
I had a high school teammate who was in the NFL. We talk, and he did it backwards. He accomplished so much so early in his life — earned so much money and had a professional career. Then that's over in your 30s. Around the age that I was really just getting going in the arts. We had a flip-flop. Like, I had nothing to show for myself my entire 20s. But I built a foundation under me that, to this day, I draw upon.
It's funny. It can be a kind of curse to be good at something [when you're] young. Because everyone around you thinks that's what you should do. And sometimes that's not what the person's really meant to do. It's interesting to watch people who've had athletic careers — what they do after. Some are pretty sad, some get satisfaction in something they find meaning in. But it's a struggle. What are you going to do?
"Everybody Wants Some!!" is currently in theaters.