Richard Linklater Assembled the ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ Ensemble Cast Like a Sports GM

Along with the nostalgic soundtrack, relatable story, and totally ’80s wardrobe, director Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! has also been generating buzz for the young, relatively unknown ensemble cast that carries the film.

“I think it’s just like putting a team together in sports,” Linklater told Yahoo Movies about assembling the cast. “There’s the analogy, and that’s kind of what the film’s about. For the particulars of making a movie, [I was] looking for 13 funny, very unique young actors to fill out these parts.”

The movie centers around a college baseball team, which is why the sports analogy is fitting. And that wasn’t the only sports-related analogy he used.

“There was an old GM for the Cowboys. He said he’d just draft the best athletes and then he’ll figure out what position they play. That’s kinda what I felt I was doing,” Linklater said.

Linklater’s search was narrowed a bit because he was looking for college-athlete physiques, and it turns out much of the cast played college sports in one form or another.

“I just wanted it to feel authentic,” the Dazed and Confused director said. “I just love the cast, they’re so fresh and unique. And some of them have been acting all their lives. A lot of them were making their first movie. But they’re all supercool, supergreat.”

Everybody Wants Some!! opens nationwide on Friday.

Watch Richard Linklater talk about the parallels between ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’:

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