Everybody Wants Some!! makes a case for the brospace: Way Late Baseball Movie Reviews

Some of this is NSFW. Anyway Richard Linklater's 2016 college baseball movie is too be a lost classic, but it captures a bygone time in North America when you were given time to find yourself.

May 15, 2023

Do not look so shocked that a “comedy about pathological competitiveness,” which is how Rick Linklater describes his college baseball movie Everybody Wants Some!!, was not a hit in 2016.

Tro mig, though, EWS!! should resonate with anyone who played competitive sports in their youth while figuring out which person they will become. The foundation of Linklater’s “spiritual sequel” to the classic Dazed and Confused (1993) is a college-guys-up-to-no-good party movie. The tangents within the framework, to bogart a line from one of the characters, are that it peers into the group dynamics among athletes.

Dazed, whose 30th anniversary is coming up this fall, follows a group of high schoolers on the last day of school in a Texas town in 1976. Everybody Wants Some!! takes place on the first weekend at university in the same general area of Texas in the late summer of 1980. Both drew on the personal experiences of Linklater in his path to becoming an artist, and both had sports at their heart.

There is one reason why it is a spiritual sequel. The actors in Dazed & Confused largely cherish the experience. Per Alright, Alright, Alright author Melissa Maerz, “All of them were hanging out together smoking weed and partying in each other’s rooms.”

In EWS!! Linklater just puts that on screen. The director also told CBC’s Q in 2016 that had far more positive experiences during his days at Sam Houston State in Texas than the “mixed emotions” that coloured his high school years.

The central tension in Dazed, as you would recall, is that Randy (Pink) Floyd, the quarterback of a high school team in Texas, balks at signing his coach’s pledge that he will “voluntarily agree to not indulge in any alcohol, drugs or engage in any other illegal activity that may in any way jeopardize the years of hard work we as a team have committed to our goal of a championship season in ’76.” His non-jock pal Mike labels it as “neo-McCarthyism,” and that does not sound good.

Pink, after partying all night at the moon tower, tells Coach he will refuse to sign, and hops in the car with Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) and pals to drive to Houston to get Aerosmith tickets. Randy has seen that Coach and the guys are going to need him more than he is going to need football, and the rest is left to fan-theorizing.

There will be no big spoilers to how EWS!! ends up. Linklater was on the baseball team at Sam Houston State for two seasons before a heart condition forced him to quit, and he has called that the “providence” that re-routed him from Jockworld to moviemaking. Initially, Linklater conceived of the movie following a college baseball team through an entire season.

Instead, the plot is pared to the bonding weekend between a bunch of baseball bros at fictional Southeast Texas State University (STU for short). Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner from Glee) is a freshman righthanded pitcher who is about to make the quantum leap from being a big fish in a small high school pond to Division 1. Given that this is set four years after Dazed, he’s the same age as Mitch Kramer and his junior high pals.

This is almost the polar opposite of A League of Their Own. The former is female-centered and the highest-grossing baseball movie. Everybody Wants Some!! lost money, and it’s a Bechdel test fail on sight. Zoey Deutch plays the only fully realized woman in the cast, a theatre major named Beverly who becomes Jake’s love interest.

The story quickly informs us that Jake and most of his teammates are not going to be living in an athletic dorm. Instead, they are going to live in two houses. Evoking what Charlie Pierce once called the “best parts of baseball’s lost renegade character,” it is established these 18- through early 20-something young men are left unsupervised, for good or ill, and for shits and grins. As Finnegan (Glen Powell) says of the adults in charge, “Do they realize what they’ve done?”

New guys such as Jake are going to be tested right off the hop.

One of the smartest moves Linklater made was to have his cast out to his ranch for two weeks to help them bond, finetune dialogue, and write their characters. (The PBS series American Masters did a feature on Linklater’s process that informed this part.) Linklater also had his cast listen to popular music from the period. They were also put through a baseball camp and had dance lessons, since on successive nights, Jake and the boys visit a disco, a country bar, a punk bar, and a party thrown by the theatre kids. Hey, it was 1980.

Making fast friends is part of an athlete’s social survival skill set. This is probably true of everyone in the social media age, but in sports, getting along with people you only encountered because of one shared skill or interest is part of the game. And, at the same time, you never know if that person might be gone the next day — or if you might be the one who is leaving. Either way, by the time the filming started, Linklater had a cast who really seemed immersed in playing young men. Since this is obscure, it might be best to introduce the main characters, like a starting lineup.

The ballplayers

Jake Bradford, righty pitcher (Blake Jenner). Jake is the eyes and ears of the audience. He is one of two incoming freshmen pitchers, and it is ambiguous whether he’ll make the cut.
Walt (Finn) Finnegan, first base (Glen Powell from Scream Queens and Top Gun: Maverick). Finn is a senior, a team leader, and self-aware. He drinks tea, reads, and presents himself as anything but an alpha male when flirting with women. Presumably, 60 percent of the time, it works every time.

Another case in point: how he introduces himself to two frosh women after another teammate is rebuffed.

“Excuse me, ladies. You know, I couldn't help but notice you ladies being hassled by that asshole in the car back there. It’s a shame. You know, some guys are just so aggressive. Myself, I'm a firm supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment… although I doubt it’s gonna have an immediate effect on the societal norm of the male gender initiating virtually all contact with respect to females. You know, which might seem predatory on the surface, but I assure you…”

Cut off by one woman, he turns to the other: “Do you also hate guys that are athletic, intelligent, sometimes endearingly clumsy, or is that just her?”
Glen McReynolds, lefty-batting shortstop (Tyler Hoechlin). Team captain and cannot-miss MLB prospect. Described by Finn as “resident all-American… on the field. But up here” — tapping his temple — “total benchwarmer.”
Tyler Hoechlin actually grew a mustache for Everybody Wants Some!!
Kenny Roper, centrefielder (Ryan Guzman, 9-1-1). Veteran player who fancies himself somewhat of an, uh, swordsman. Sports the shaggy hair you see in every junior hockey team photo taken in Canada from 1974 to 1986.
Dale Douglas, second base (J. Quinton Johnson, Last Flag Flying). The only Black player on the roster with a name and story and another keeper of The Baseball Codes. He explains to Jake and his fellow frosh they have not earned teammate status.
‘Coma,’ third base (Forrest Vickery). His real name is never heard, but Coma is the team’s most superstitious player. He is a reliable vet but is referred to as a .230 hitter, which is pretty bad since college baseball uses metal bats.
Nez Nesbit, lefty pitcher (Austin Amelio). A submarining southpaw who is also a ginger. Nesbit likes to make ridiculous wagers. He is also the reigning team knuckles champion — until dethroned by one of the freshmen.
Alex Brumley, outfielder (Tanner Kalina). The earnest, bad teenage mustache-wearing freshman who gets corrupted. Brumley appears to be the team’s No. 1 position player recruit, and he’s self-conscious about messing up and, what, embarrassing his entire hometown?

Brumley: “Hey, is Coach gonna know if we’ve been drinking?”

Nez: “Fuck, Brumley, you’ve seriously asked that at every bar! ‘Are you sure Coach isn’t gonna know if we’ve been drinking? What if he smells my breath?’ We’re fucking drinking, man! That’s what we’re doing!”
Tyrone (Plum) Plummer, catcher (Temple Baker). Another newcomer who is outwardly laconic and laid-back, but smarter than he lets on. He tends to say a lot while saying little.
Billy Autrey, righty pitcher (Will Brittain). Jake’s roommate and the most rural guy, who is also attached to his hometown girlfriend. The older players immediately change his name to Beuter Perkins, and nominate him for Finn calls, “The freshman numb-nut of the year award.”

“The what award?” Billy replies.
Charlie Willoughby, righty pitcher (Wyatt Russell, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Goon 2: Last of the Enforcers). A senior transfer with a vague California background. Willoughby is an off-speed pitcher and also the resident stoner.
Jay Niles, righty pitcher (Juston Street). Another transfer pitcher. Introduced thusly by Finn: “The second coming of Nolan Ryan. Ninety-five-mile-per-hour fastball — self-professed, mind you. He’s this intense fuck from Detroit who spouts all these stats about what a pro prospect he is.” Street is the brother of former MLB all-star closer Huston Street.

The girl

Beverly (Zoey Deutch, Vampire Academy, Buffaloed). An auburn-haired theatre major who becomes Jake’s girlfriend over the course of the film. If Jake seems a bit on the fence about whether D-1 baseball is for him, Beverly has much more agency and ambition. She attended a performing arts high school and has designs on moving to New York to pursue acting after completing her degree.
Jake (Blake Jenner) and Beverly (Zoey Deutch) in Everybody Wants Some!!

(Like Bill James with his Vito Kowalski analogy — “Vito never believed in using an ounce of finesse when a pound of force would do” — I do have to spoil the mood a bit. Blake Jenner was outed as an intimate partner abuser by ex-wife Melissa Benoist. Benoist went public with that in 2019, and Jenner has only one film credit ever since.)

Slow your roll, know your role

The beat is set right off the hop. There are no parents dropping off their children at university. In an era when less was known about the health effects of alcohol, beer-enhanced fun flows like wine. Outwardly, this seems like a movie that Homer Simpson would watch to learn about the richness of college life. A Bra Bomb would not have been out of place. There is a scene at a party where Finn talks two women into mud-wrestling in their underwear, but that seems like the least interesting hijinx put on the screen. After all, anyone who was old enough to watch 1980s teen comedies has seen a lot more.

They have not seen someone hit a baseball with an axe.

Ultimately, this is one of the most innovative films about group psychology, and how a team comes together, that these eyes have seen. Here one thinks of something the greatest coach in Canadian sports history, Dave Smart, once said about his Carleton Ravens basketball teams. As Smart once said, part of Carleton’s success was that their players understood when it was their time to be followers, secondary leaders, and primary leaders.

Upon arrival, Jake Bradford gets the signs that let him know he needs to fall in line in the follower group. He notices Niles sitting on the porch of the other house alone. He meets Billy Autrey/Beuter Perkins as he is on the phone with his girlfriend. Autrey, completely in his head somewhere back on the farm, calls Jake “Jacob” for the rest of the movie.

McReynolds and Roper notice that a stranger is the one who shut off the water to keep the waterbed they were filling from falling through the ceiling into the house’s kitchen.

McReynolds: “Who the hell are you?”
Jake: “Jake Bradford.” (They shake hands.)
Roper: “Infielder?”
Jake: “Pitcher.”
McReynolds (breaks the handshake, wipes his hand on his tank top, then on Roper.)
Roper: “Oh, whoa! Just what we need. Another… fucking… pitcher.”
McReynolds: “You’re not a lefty, are you?”
Jake: “No, no. Righty.”
McReynolds (as he opens two beers on the edge of the kitchen counter in the pre-twistoff age): “Thank God. Those guys are always so fuckin’ weird! Like Nez? I hate that guy.”
Roper: “I love Nez.”
McReynolds: “He’s fine. He’s just fuckin’ weird.” (Clinks beer bottles with Roper, regards Jake.) “Hey, I’m just gonna tell you something right now: I hate pitchers. So, you and me, we’ll be teammates, but we’re not gonna be friends, or anything like that. It might give you some kind of edge, if I ever have to face you down the line in pro ball — if you ever make it there. I’m just not gonna do that.”
Jake: “Alright.”
McReynolds: “Those your bags? Wanna pick your shit up?”

In all gushing fanboy alt.nerd.obsessiveness, while EWS!! Is rated 6.9 (nice!) on IMDb, it is note-perfect. The method Linklater used to help the actors build out their characters means there are very few false notes; every inflection and emphasis seems to fit.

Subtly addresses aggrievance culture

I stumbled across it in 2017 when I had a Kodi box on my laptop, and my viewings are in the double digits. The characters are so well-defined that it is a record scratch to see any of the actors in another movie or a TV show where they have modern hairstyles and wardrobes instead of shaggy late ’70s hairpieces, mustaches, and loud-and-tight clothing. Juxtaposing Glen Powell’s Finn vis-à-vis his character in the 2018 rom-com Set It Up practically raises a question of where the culture broke so badly.

Linklater, as you know, has a bit of the mystical about him. When you really get into one of his works, you are forever fan-theorizing about what was intentional and what was coincidental.

For a time, the timing of the 1980 setting and the 2016 release raised a Spockian eyebrow. It puts the setting of a freewheeling college campus right on the eve of the election of Ronald Reagan. The release came just months before the election of The Former Guy.

There is a deleted scene where Jake and Beverly talk about the 1980 American election. She plans on voting for Carter. He plans on voting for third-party candidate John Anderson. She asks, in the way that women are quicker than men at spotting existential threats, whether that is a good idea. That can be definitely free-associated with Bernie Brodom, just saying.

Aggrievance culture was, and is, part of the political-capital portfolio of both the first movie president and the first reality-TV president.1 Linklater is a bit more laid-back and relaxed than, say, Adam McKay, with leading audiences to conclusions about the political viewpoint — if any — in his work. The idea for EWS!! first came to him around 2002. He was also a university-aged 20-year-old in 1980, so the Write Whatcha Know force is strong with this one.

The way the movie handles male entitlement and the entwined jock culture is through the performances. The baseball bros know they have a certain cachet since they are on a College World Series contender at a D-1 school where, as Dale puts it, “The football team wins maybe three games a year and the basketball team never wins shit.” They also know their glory days are finite. While McReynolds seems bound for the majors, Finn says the quiet part aloud when he blurts, “Am I the only one under the illusion that I’m not going to be playing this game forever?”

Besides, politics would only get in the way of a larger point. The crisis in North American masculinity comes down to too many men feeling isolated and alone. In this film, brospaces are idealized, but it argues that we need them.

That stands separately from the aims of inclusion and representation. There are many ways to obtain cinephilic offset. Watching Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman (2020) is one place to start.

Besides, one should never put ‘The Deeper Themes’ cart before ‘The Funny’ horse. Do the comedy and aspire to pick more than low-hanging fruit. As Hannah Gadsby once said, comedy is supposed to be hard.

This spiritual sequel seemingly takes no such line about whether nostalgia is neutral good or neutral evil. It also undercuts the power of the male gaze.

When Roper leers at a couple of first-year women in an early scene, it is clearly meant to be received as skeevy. He looks like a dude well into his 20s. The fellow students look like actual teenagers — not Movie Teenagers.

Similarly, the first night that the boys hit the disco, everyone hooks up. The next night, same bar, same lines, and everyone gets The Heisman.

Then Niles picks a fight with a bartender and gets everyone ejected. Essentially, it is a ‘What I Think I Do’ / ‘What I Actually Do’ two-panel meme.

Whatever baseball action there is in Everybody Wants Some!! is sufficiently convincing. (Jenner was body-doubled for a pitching scene, just like Wiley Wiggins in Dazed.) That is necessary since we have to believe these guys are a contender for the College World Series.

The gold, though, is in the bonding. It is a classic case of getting to the universal through the highly particular.

Some 2,600 words ago, I mentioned something about “tangents within the framework.” That is lifted from a scene where Wyatt Russell’s Willoughby, as he, Jake, Dale, and Plummer are taking hits from a bong as Pink Floyd’s “Fearless” plays on a stereo.

The scene cannily assumes audience agreement that the 1980s were the worst decade for the rock music genre. Suffice it to say, the differences of opinion about Van Halen in that scene could have easily been repeated between 1996 and 2002 with The Dave Matthews Band at any university in Canada.2

The bottom line: this a hangout sports movie where the self-actualization has a sneaky-quick fastball.

Please see it sometime. I'll buy the first pitcher of beer.

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