Everybody Wants Some!! is the follow-up to Academy Award-nominated director, writer and producer Richard Linklater’s sublime Boyhood, which in 2014 charmed audiences and critics alike with its heart-warming – and ambitiously executed, having been filmed over 12 years – story.
Everybody Wants Some!!, however, is described as a spiritual sequel to the director’s 1983 hit Dazed and Confused which chronicled a group of teenagers during their last day of school in 1976.
The film is set in September 1980, a time of cultural changes across the world and it tells the story of a group of friends a few days before they start college as they discover the joys of independence.
“It’s pretty autobiographical,” says Linklater of the film. “Looking back, I realise it was a fun time to be in college, not only personally, but it was an interesting cultural moment. It was still the end of the 1970s. What people now think of as the 1980s really didn’t kick in until 1982 or 1983.
“This feels like a film I would have done a long time ago,” adds the director. “It feels good to be flexing these muscles and using that part of my brain again, but bringing a lot more experience.”
As he had previously on Dazed and Confused, Linklater assembled a cast of young and relatively unknown actors to populate the film. Dazed and Confused launched the careers of many of today’s stars, including Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck.
“It’s so much fun working with a large ensemble and a new generation of talented actors,” Linklater explains. “On both films, I cast who I felt was the best actor for the part, regardless of experience or how well known they were.”
The ensemble is led by Blake Jenner, known to many TV audiences from Glee, plays freshman Jake Bradford. His posse of pals include Glenn McReynolds (played by Tyler Hoechlin), Roper (Ryan Guzman), and Glen Powell’s Finnegan.
Music is a crucial element of the film, as the boys hit the town
Also in the mix are Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), Jay Niles (Juston Street), Nesbit (Austin Amelio) and Will Brittain as Billy Autry, Temple Baker as Tyrone Plummer, J. Quinton Johnson as Dale Douglas, and Tanner Kalina, as Brumley. Tempering the testosterone somewhat is Zoey Deutch as Beverly, a freshman theatre student who catches Jake’s eye.
Given the emphasis of the story is on the bond that forms between this disparate group of young men, Linklater worked towards forging that bond off-camera. He gathered the cast together at his Texas ranch for rehearsals a month before shooting began.
“To get the best results, I wanted everyone comfortable with each other, developing a short hand and really getting to know each other,” Linklater explains. “I don’t see it as just a work environment; they’re creative people as well and I wanted to give them room to play with the material, push boundaries and figure out who their characters are.”
It’s an experiment that seems to have paid off, the camaraderie that joins the boys together permeating off the screen as the characters make the most of the free time they have before classes proper begin.
Music is a crucial element of the film, as the boys hit the town, dancing the night away to tunes that epitomised the 1980s. “I have a personal connection to every song in the movie,” Linklater explains. “I wanted to share the feeling of what it was like to hear these songs coming out of the radio, dancing to them at discos or country bars, or on your home or car stereo”
The soundtrack includes music of all genres. “Disco was still happening,” elaborates the director. “Country was suddenly cool in places where it hadn’t been… metal was huge, punk and new wave were the new and exciting alternatives, and the earliest examples of what we’d eventually know as hip-hop were popping up.”
There is one in particular song that completely embodied the spirit Linklater wanted for the film. He explains that: “it is a song that perfectly captures the humour and raunch of being 18. When you’re young and passionate, you want to have it all. You assume it’s your birth right, because you’re too young to know better.”
That song is Van Halen’s Everybody Wants Some!!