In his 25-year feature career, Richard Linklater has consistently developed stories about transitional points in people’s lives, whether it’s the first inkling of a shift from adolescence to adulthood (“Dazed and Confused“), a couple’s shifts in relationship status (the ‘Before’ films) or the regular ebb and flow of many years of life in “Boyhood.”
Linklater’s latest film, “Everybody Wants Some!!,” could almost be a direct sequel to “Boyhood” as it begins with freshman baseball player Jake (Blake Turner) arriving at college, and continues through his first few days spent with new teammates. It’s a fond look at a type of masculinity during the summer of 1980, when, for a moment in time, young men like Jake seemed untouchable. Laced through with autobiographical elements, the film continues Linklater’s gently ambling approach to script and character as it observes the competitive and chest-thumping teammates in various social settings. Despite the almost exclusively masculine subjects and tone, the film is often gentle and reflective; there’s an undercurrent of awareness that this time is fleeting.
The Playlist recently spoke to Linklater about his method for threading a large number of pop and rock songs into his films, the parallel development of “Boyhood” and “Everybody Wants Some!!,” and his instincts for staying out of trouble when choosing and developing projects.
Music is an important part of so many of your films. Where do song choices start to come in?s
It’s constant. The songs start for me in the wiring process, I’m listening to hundreds of songs from the era, I’m gathering music. It helps jog the old memory. Music and smells are the most memory-recall, nostalgia-inducing things. It always kinda helps me. So I had all the music, a very deep bench of a lot of music. Some of it was in the script, it was very specific. A lot of those songs ended up not in the movie. When they first went into the disco they’re dancing to Prince’s “I Want to Be Your Lover,” and the very beginning of the film, where “My Sharona” is, was a Van Halen guitar solo. But I reconsidered the beginning a bit. A lot of those early ones don’t end up in the film, but it helps set the tone. And it’s always fun to see what songs the cast likes a lot or is responding to, it’s kind of an ongoing process.
Do you play music on set?
A lot of the sets required it. In the disco we’re listening to a lot of music, but I’m not one of those who keeps music going then turns it off right when I say action.
You used a Big Boys song (“Frat Cars”) which is a very Texas punk song, and there seems to be some relationship between the lyrics and the story, as the lyrics are dismissive of Jake and the characters.
[Laughs] I don’t know if they really are — the lyrics are about fraternity guys, and these guys are not frat. They’re student athletes. That’s kind of the irony, though, and the great thing about punk. Even if they were kind of attacking you, you didn’t feel it was personal. It was more of an attack on society. It was always kind of sad when your favorite punk rockers, like Jello Biafra or someone, would say they hate something you like. It was “oh, I thought we were on the same page.”
The Big Boys presence and the whole punk scene is kind of based on a moment when I was on a road trip to Austin, visiting some friends, actually a girlfriend, and I kinda wandered into Raoul’s, the famous punk club. It wasn’t the Big Boys playing, I would have remembered that, but when I moved to Austin a few years later I got into the local scene, and slowly got absorbed. So it’s my homage to the Big Boys. And the Riverboat Gamblers, the band playing them in the film, he’s imitating [Big Boys singer] Biscuit, he’s got the duct tape around his body, which Biscuit did occasionally.
You’ve worked with music supervisor Randall Poster several times —
Yeah, a lot over the years. Since “SubUrbia,” we’re coming up on 20 years.
He and Wes Anderson have a “vault” of songs they’re waiting to use. Do you do that?
Not really. I don’t have some “Oh, I’ve gotta get this into a movie some day,” but when there are songs I like… the soundtrack to this runs the gamut, it’s the really popular songs, and then you’re sneaking in the little ones that are kinda forgotten, a little more obscure or eclectic. I just think about whatever’s right for the movie, and then when I’m in that zone I realize I can use certain things. I did “Me and Orson Welles” a few years ago, and I happened to love that era of music. I like all those performers and that sound. My quirky big band knowledge meant I could pull all that music for the movie. You can end up in an era where you have a lot of fun.