Film Pick: Everybody Wants Some!
CECILE PIN REVIEWS RICHARD LINKLATER’S LATEST FILM AND INTERVIEWS ONE OF ITS STARS, TYLER HOECHLIN
Before the film’s image appears on screen, classic early 80’s hit My Sharona starts blasting on screen, easily setting the energetic tone of the film. The first image that we see is that of college freshman and baseball player Jake (Blake Jenner) driving to his college house that he shares with the rest of his new baseball team.
What follows is two hours of pure cinematic fun, led by great performances by the ensemble cast. The film deals with the weekend leading up to the start of University. We follow Jake and his flatmates as they do baseball practice, drink, philosophise while stoned and mostly, try to impress girls.
Tyler Hoechlin, who portrays hostile senior Glen McReynolds tells me that they “had three weeks of rehearsal before we started shooting.” This allowed the cast to get to know each other better and work on their chemistry and “find things to play with” in the script, director Richard Linklater redrafting the script as they went along. “The Wardrobe was always very collaborative with us which was very appreciated. Rick [Linklater] encouraged everybody to always have creative thoughts, whether its the wardrobe or the kind of music you think you listen to. We would go on a shopping spree with a personal shopper, where we would decide what to buy together. So it was definitely collaborative, which was fun. […] When the cast arrived for rehearsals we were all given albums and little iPods. Those who brought their cars along would have CDs playing all the time, or anyone using the gym would listen to the iPods. My workout mix changed drastically”.
“It was fun to walk down memory lane but actually live it out a bit as well- without the pressure of having a game the next day”, says Tyler, who himself was a baseball player at University (he attended Arizona State University and then transferred to UC-Irvine and studied Film and Media before moving on to Sociology). After films such as Dazed and Confused and Boyhood, Linklater once again shows his talent at making coming of age films. Even though the characters of Everybody Wants Some!! all seem quite caricatured and wild, the film doesn’t lose its humanity. This is exampled in a scene where Jake remarks they have successively attended a disco, country club, and punk concert, and questions their shape shifting identities.
Everybody Wants Some!! is precisely what you hope it will be – fun and entertaining, touching, with a great soundtrack and performances.