Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

In the opening scene of Richard Linklater's 2016 movie, Everybody Wants Some!! Jake (Blake Jenner) is driving toward college for the first time. He parks his car in front of a three-story, turn-of-the-century house, and gathers his belongings. A countdown clock appears briefly on screen.

Class starts: 3 days 15 hours

A countdown clock is usually a device that a director uses to bring tension to a movie. The conventional message is that time is running out, and an inescapable climax looms. The conventional use of the countdown clock is to reinforce a feeling of dread.

But in this case, the countdown clock functions more like a snooze alarm that occasionally intrudes on Jake's dreamy interlude. Because this is a movie about dreams.

The residence house that Jake occupies functions as a bit player as it creaks and groans under the weight of a half-full waterbed. But the main role the house plays is symbolic. Much character interaction takes place in and around the house, as it serves as an internal setting players use to measure themselves against their teammates.

When Linklater films the house, it's with brief tracking shots. The camera peers at the exterior, then rises to frame the higher stories. This gives the viewer a feeling that they too, are floating, as if they, too, are part of the dream.

In general, a house is one of the most important, archetypal dream symbols. It represents the dreamer's entire psyche. In Everybody Wants Some!!, the player's house is also a place of transition. Once the players graduate, they will move on with their lives.

Many of the players dream about making a transition from college baseball to the major leagues. There is one player, Willoughby, who is unable to conceive of any such transition. He smokes marijuana in almost every scene he's in, and he forms the philosophical and spiritual center of the movie. His secret is that he is actually thirty years old, and has been showing up every fall at a different school with a different set of forged transcripts, hoping for another season of baseball.

Is Linklater making a reference to college baseball being a kind of nirvana, an exquisite afterlife? That's up to the viewer to decide.

The time setting and music throughout the movie reinforce this theme of transition. In 1980, there was no such thing as AIDS. All the sex is consequence-free, except for one character's girlfriend's late period.


The music soundtrack is mostly rock, with lots of Van Halen, which serves to bridge the disco era, and the coming rap era. The proto-rap song, Rapper's Delight, by The Sugarhill Gang, is sung by the players in one early scene.

Jake, meanwhile, has clear eyes, a strong right arm, and an easy-going assertiveness that allow his quick integration on the team. He meets a young lady, Beverly (Zoey Deutch), and she invites him to a party at the house of her performing-arts friends. This part of Jake's dream turns surreal, in a non-threatening way.

Beverly meets him wearing an Alice in Wonderland costume, and the party has odd things happening, like a skit based on the Dating Game, and a cat that hops down out a refrigerator when someone opens the refrigerator door. After the party, Jake goes back to Beverly's room, and he lies on the bed, pretending to be asleep while Beverly changes. He's not quite ready to wake from this dream yet.

When the clock finally counts down to class time, Jake finds his seat and puts his head down on his desk, quite sleepy from his adventures, a slight smile crossing his face. His dreams are coming true.