Frontiers: Richard Linklater's "Everybody Wants Some!!"
Frontiers: Richard Linklater's "Everybody Wants Some!!"
When I first saw Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! in 2016, hyped for some time as a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused, I spent much of its running time looking for a different movie—or, rather, looking for a clearer pronouncement of some kind of critical lens on its portrayal of testosterone-driven antics. Like the great many who misinterpreted The Wolf of Wall Street as some kind of rah-rah glorification of its characters’ behaviour, a take that I righteously scoffed at, I found myself in a similar position. It all just seemed too fun with little drawback. Where was the paddling scene á la Dazed that brought out the underbelly of adolescent hedonism? The overtly pathetic creepiness of McConaughey’s Wooderson? Where was the malaise? A lifelong lover of the game of baseball, Linklater was once upon a time a promising athlete with another path ahead of him entirely before a heart rhythm problem laid those plans to rest. Everybody nostalgically looks back on that lifestyle and more generally on the open possibilities of early college days when your whole life is ahead of you but soon will take shape and before you know it, the track you were on takes you in one direction and away from many others. This is the genius of structuring the film over the first day of college for its protagonist, Jake (Blake Jenner). The excitement and pleasure of being a hunky jock without a care in the world aside from the game they love, good times with the boys, and the pursuit of similarly promiscuous young women. Most of the film consists of frat(-like) shenanigans, nights on the town and parties galore. And it’s all a great time. Which it is. If you’re looking for some kind of indictment of toxic masculinity you have come to the wrong place: Linklater generously lenses his squad of bros with a diversity of personality, intelligence, and humour. Their supposedly single-minded pursuits are undercut by hints of thoughtfulness, of depth. And the pleasures they seek are genuine.
There’s an ingenious balance of looking at the cast’s boneheadedness (mostly performative, something made very clear and that some of the characters briefly reflect on in quieter moments), competitiveness (deeply engrained and part and parcel with their way of life for better and worse rather than one or the other), and their creativity, curiosity, and camaraderie. Linklater looks at them and their way of life fondly even as points to the deeper possibilities of life that it may be covering up—and hints at what it may mean for those who doubledown on the former further down the road. Linklater’s baseball career-ending health issues allowed him to shift his attention to more intellectual and artistic pursuits—something that some of Everybody’s characters have the potential to discover for themselves but may or may not be able to because of their narrower trajectories. “Who are these people?” asks one character during a stroll with the fellas, “I know what we’re doing here. We’re playing baseball. What are all these other guys doing?”
The possibilities life can offer us is a matter of exposure. Jake is quickly presented with an alternative in the form of a theatre student named Beverly (Zoey Deutch) who captures his eye and gives him a hint of another world. At one point, Jake explains to Beverly that his teammates have the same range of intelligence as any other clique, something that Linklater makes abundantly clear in how he articulates the ensemble and how, on occasion, some of them articulate themselves. Linklater’s jocks are not as closed-minded as they may seem. They embrace tastes of other lifestyles, crashing a punk show and an arts kids’ party without rolling their eyes. These successful instances of cross-pollination suggest the arbitrariness of lifestyle divisions. Conflicts you’d expect to emerge in such a movie never truly do, whether between these cliques or in clashes amidst the teammates whose competitive streaks bring on moments of tension that never really boil over. The closest it gets is between the team’s alpha dog, McReynolds, and Jay Niles (Juston Street), an overly intense hot shot pitcher, who after a tense moment in scrimmage, share an understated and surprisingly affecting moment of reconciliation. Linklater finds tenderness under even the most seemingly stereotypical sports bros in his ensemble.
The film plays out like one extended party with only the most minor bumps in the road. Shades of irony and reflexivity are subtle but effective. Wyatt Russell’s Willoughby (perhaps a Wooderson stand-in after all) is revealed to be a 30-year old trying to pass as a college player just so he can cling to this transient passage in life that has already passed him by (“you gotta appreciate it while it lasts,” he remarks early in the film, before he is found out and kicked off the team). In the final scene, after a wild weekend of fun and passion leaves Jake too exhausted to pay attention to his first ever college class. The professor writes “frontiers are where you find them” on the chalkboard, and Jake shuts his eyes. He is on the brink of finding frontiers but will he open his eyes to others? How much of that is personal choice and how much of it is circumstantial as in the case of Linklater himself?
This is the bittersweetness of Everybody Wants Some!!. Their single-mindedness will fast-track some of these characters to dead ends when they will discover, or not, that the unexamined life is not worth living. Meanwhile, others will and in so doing will discover new frontiers. Some of them are inquisitive and will crave ways out (ways that their purviews may obscure from them even as they seek them). The most uncanny balance of the film is in finding meaning within these limited trajectories even as it suggests those limits are encroaching. Appreciate it while it lasts, sure, but don’t blind yourself to what lies beyond the next hill. It could be the rest of your life—and it could be a good one.
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