‘Everybody Wants Some!!’
‘Rick-opedia’ Linklater rocks back to 1980 with
Director Richard LOS ANGELES Linklater knew he wanted to travel back to 1980 for Everybody
Wants Some!!, a semi-autobiographical look at his college experience. But he wasn’t quite sure if the movie would capture the big comedy feel he was after.
During disco dance lessons for his young cast of actors, it became shockingly apparent that Linklater was going to be just fine.
“Maybe it was the disco shirts. One of mine had this swan on it, it was cool,” says lead actor Blake Jenner, 23, sitting cabana-side at the Sunset Marquis hotel with his director. “Or those tight pants.”
“They were like, ‘You really wore these pants?’ ” adds Linklater, 55. “I was like, ‘Yeah, man, they were the thing.’ To see how the cast was discovering that period — the hair, the clothes, the music — it hit me: This was a really fun time in my life. And that shows in the movie.” Everybody Wants Some!! (now showing in New York and Los Angeles and expanding across the nation through April 15) is what Linklater calls the “spiritual sequel” to his 1993 classic Dazed and
Confused, which inhabited small-town 1970s high school life.
With a title taken from a rowdy Van Halen song, the new film follows Jenner’s freshman Jake as he moves into a house with fellow members of his university baseball team. Linklater played left field for Sam Houston State University for two years and lived in a baseball house off-campus.
“I showed up and it was 18 roommates in two houses. Just like the movie,” says Linklater. “We were like a fraternity. We’d have mixers with sororities. Ani
mal House had only just come out. So we were like, this is kind of our own Animal House.”
Linklater was resolute about capturing the 1980 mood, which skewed closer to the 1970s than the Reagan years. And he nailed the specifics. On the set, his cast called him “Rick-opedia” because of his encyclopedic knowledge of the era.
He insisted on vintage Wilson A2000 baseball gloves and asked that a Farrah Fawcett poster to be replaced with a Susan Anton poster. (“Farrah was two years earlier.”)
“You’ve got to be so adamant on everything. Music, cars, wardrobe, every detail,” says Linklater. “You have to set a really strict tone. It’s like, if you make one mistake, we all fail.”
His young actors were chosen for their ability to look effective on both the baseball field and in the disco club. Jenner, who starred as Ryder Lynn on Glee, knocked out killer auditions but was told he’d need to cover his buzz cut with a circa-1980 wig.
“The hair was just bigger, longer,” says Linklater. “Back then, a guy would have a hairdryer. Caring about their hair at all, that was a new thing.”
Jenner knew he had captured the time period as he cruised down the street in a classic Oldsmobile 442 with his new hair on his way to disco lessons.
“I was in love with that car. And I was driving around playing
My Sharona in my head, kind of chillin’, checking out the girls,” says Jenner. “And it was like, ‘ All right, we’re doing this.’ ”