Everybody Wants Some!!

For all the praise lavished upon it, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was overburdened by its need to treat its slight coming-of-age tale as a profound state-of-the-union address. By comparison, Everybody Wants Some!! is the director at his loosest and funniest; he’s working in the plotless, discursive mode that has defined much of his strongest work. The film follows the members of a Texas university baseball team in 1980 through the three days before classes begin—essentially the international waters of adulthood, where all laws seem momentarily suspended, after you have left your parents’ watchful eyes but before the realities of post-secondary education have set in. In these giddy first few days of university life, everyone seems as drunk on possibility as they are on, uh, more mundane substances. But Linklater is not simply taking easy shots at horndog jock culture here. He’s diving deep into the hormone-addled tribal dynamics of campus life, and viewers might very well feel at times like amateur anthropologists along for the ride. The first 15 minutes alone could aptly be titled, “Put ‘er there, champ: A study of the ritualistic purposes of handshaking in post-adolescent American athletic subcultures.”

Linklater treats the hyper-competitive, testosterone-fuelled adventures of the group with a fond, if occasionally mocking touch, although nostalgia does admittedly soften the film’s edges at times. Still, nostalgia is a barbed emotion, and its presence is also a sign of things lost. Small conflicts flare up between the teammates only to be muffled by the endless roundelay of parties, but there is a strong sense of future tensions that will push these people in different directions. (You can almost imagine one of those closing 1980s college comedy where-are-they-now montages running over the credits, outlining each person’s diverging life path in a few pithy lines.) Everyone is in the early days of discovering themselves, and it becomes clear as the film progresses not everyone will like what they find. Some seem destined to drop out or fail, others to remain forever outside of the group, and others to abandon the sport that has defined their lives up until that point. If time feels suspended for these three days, that just makes the looming threat of its resumption all the more potent. Fittingly, the film ends with a pair of our raunchy Rip Van Winkles dozing through history class. One suspects their eyes will remain shut until the final exam—and that they’ll wake up screaming.

Bernie

With its serene perversity, Richard Linklater’s Bernie could easily be taken for the modern-day equivalent of Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux. Admittedly, the comedy of Chaplin’s film is several shades blacker—save for that flash of righteous moralizing near the end—but both films balance an almost naïve sweetness with a pitiless glimpse into the void. Bernie’s final mincing jailhouse walk even evokes the famous closing shot of Chaplin’s film, where his bluebeard killer totters forth like the Tramp. But beyond such surprising synchronicities, there is also the sense that both of these killers are the true lovers of their victims, their violence not a contradiction of that love but an extension of it. Mrs. Nugent, the blackhearted widow who is the first and only victim of Bernie Tiede, offers no shortage of motives to an eager killer, from her controlling ways to her casual cruelties. Surely only someone who cared so deeply for the old woman could kill her for the simple fact she chews her food too much.

But Linklater’s film is also a tricky beast of its own breed, and its portrait of small-town life is no less pointed for its fond familiarity with the setting. The citizens of Catharge, Texas—the location of the real-life crime that inspired the film—appear as a kind of gossiper’s chorus, providing colour commentary on the murder trial and rising to Bernie’s defence. Real people speaking scripted lines, they create a disjunction between fact and fiction more disturbing than any of the film’s dark comedy (the appearance of Jack Black and Bernie Tiede himself together during the credits even provoked gasps from several audience members). Of course, the film is all about disjunction: the truth is that Bernie killed someone, but the truth is also that he is a good man. How do you reconcile that? It’s a strange morality that damns a woman for not going to church yet forgives a man for stuffing her corpse in a freezer, but Linklater approaches these contradictions without judgement or disdain. His depiction of small-town life is as openhearted and brutal as Bernie himself—faithful love, and four shots in the back.

Me and Orson Welles

I’ve always thought Zac Efron looks more like a doll than a human being (I envision some giant 10-year-old girl combing his hair incessantly and setting him up on dates with her other toys). Fortunately, his dewy blankness is ideal for his role in Me and Orson Welles as Richard, an eager young actor coming to grips with the dispiriting realities of art and idolatry. He's an empty vessel craving substance, and the charismatic, commanding Welles (here played by Christian McKay, superbly mimicking the master) offers a template any uncertain adolescent could adore. When Richard lucks his way into a bit part as Lucius in Welles’ 1937 black-shirt version of Julius Caesar, he finds himself with a front-row seat for the full pyrotechnics show of a young genius about to burst onto the scene.

What follows is a fairly familiar coming-of-age tale rendered with some buoyant backstage hustle and nicely observed period detail (although the fascist allusions of the play suggest a different version of 1937 than the apolitical one we see here). I was utterly charmed by the film, imperfections aside—like so many other Richard Linklater projects, the whole is so smart and welcoming that it’s easy to forgive a few flawed parts. Even just as an illumination of Welles’ theatre work, the film is quite rewarding: the condensed re-enactment of his Julius Caesar that we see here is so thrilling and enticing I wish some brave director would take on the thankless task of bringing it to the stage for real.

Me and Orson Welles could easily get by on its abundant surface charms, but beneath the inside jokes and rich atmosphere the film does have some ideas about Welles and genius in general. In the span of his one week at the Mercury Theatre, Richard begins to realize the dark side of these artists he idolizes as he learns of the volatility—indeed, the immense, gaping vulnerability—that often accompanies the most brilliant creators. He witnesses the sobbing terror of George Coulouris before the man goes on stage (ultimately reduced to something cringing and baby-like as Welles coddles and comforts him), and even Welles hints that his own insecurity and self-loathing are at the root of his acting.

In death—as in life too, come to think of it—Welles is valued more as a myth than a man. He’s become this symbol for the pitfalls of precocious genius, the battle of ego and fame versus art and inspiration. This is a trap many have fallen into while attempting to capture Welles in fiction. One of the biggest weaknesses of Tim Robbins’ Cradle Will Rock—another period piece about Welles’ theatre work—is the oversimplified treatment of Welles and the readiness with which Robbins accepts the received notions of the director’s persona. By contrast, Linklater’s treatment is a little more affectionate, while still exploring the sharp edges of Welles’ character. Even if he’s still more symbol than flesh, at least the film has something to say about it.

The film is ambivalent about the nebulous quality that is genius—admiring its fruits, yet wary of the cost. After Welles tosses aside Richard, the boy seems at first hurt, but eventually acquiesces to his fate with what seems like relief. It’s a terrible burden, this being a tool of greatness, forced to submit to its every whim (again, I imagine poor doll-like Efron in the hands of that infant ogress, finally stuck in a toy car next to Hannah Montana).

Fittingly for such an enchanting yet minor work, there’s a fable-like quality to all of this, as if the whole week with the Mercury Theatre were somehow a dream that Richard has woken from by the end. Unwisely, the film tries to cling to that same wistful, daydream atmosphere in its final scene and tempts mawkishness as a result. What's so wrong with just waking up?