An auto­mo­tive guide to the films of Richard Linklater

In the free­wheel­ing world of Richard Lin­klater, cars not only trans­port char­ac­ter from A to B, they show­case mix­tapes and spark life-chang­ing con­ver­sa­tions along the way. Fuelled by this phi­los­o­phy, Every­body Wants Some!! zooms in on a car stereo blast­ing ​‘My Sharona’ for its open­ing shot. This intro­duc­tion sees Jake (Blake Jen­ner) dri­ve from his home­town to start col­lege – his vinyl col­lec­tion neat­ly stacked on the seat back­seat, on the free­way to independence.

Linklater’s films roman­ti­cise the open road. They cel­e­brate the jour­ney, not the des­ti­na­tion, and nat­u­ral­ly that entails hitch­ing a ride. With Every­body Wants Some!! revving its engine for the­atri­cal release, here’s a chrono­log­i­cal cruise through the writer/director’s career-long obses­sion with cars. Buck­le up.

Slacker’s sprawl­ing struc­ture unrav­els with Lin­klater play­ing a guy cred­it­ed as ​‘Should have stayed at bus sta­tion’. In a film of odd­balls spout­ing inte­ri­or mono­logues, Lin­klater does so in the back­seat of a taxi where such behav­iour is tol­er­at­ed. In the four-minute fixed shot, there are three things to watch: the driver’s feigned inter­est, Linklater’s sem­a­phore hand ges­tures, and Austin pass­ing by through the win­dows. For­get Hamlet’s ​“To be, or not to be” solil­o­quy; dra­ma stu­dents should mem­o­rise Linklater’s ​“one time, I had lunch with Tol­stoy” ramble.

Accord­ing to Lin­klater, the ini­tial premise for Dazed and Con­fused was a sto­ry set over the course of one night, told entire­ly from inside a car. That’s still appar­ent in the film’s play­ful inter­cuts between pre-par­ty rides, and a sound­track that cost a sixth of the bud­get to ensure McConaugh­ey and oth­ers look impos­si­bly cool behind the steer­ing wheel. Young Mitch though, sep­a­rat­ed from his clique, suc­cumbs to peer pres­sure by chuck­ing a bowl­ing ball through a stranger’s wind­shield, and then helps the old­er guys steal booze. His take­away? A lift in the senior stu­dents’ Pon­ti­ac equates to sit­ting on the cool kids’ table at the cafeteria.

The visu­al style of Sub­Ur­bia, an angry med­i­ta­tion on arrest­ed devel­op­ment, is the set­ting of a super­mar­ket car park and the bored youths who won’t leave. Cus­tomers dri­ve in and dri­ve off, but the cen­tral char­ac­ters – still in their home­town, unsure about the future – loi­ter around the bins past mid­night. Gio­van­ni Ribisi has to raise his voice for the ​“noth­ing ever changes” mono­logue to be heard over the traf­fic, but he’s inter­rupt­ed any­way – Steve Zahn very loud­ly chas­es a pass­ing con­vert­ible full of hol­ler­ing women.

Even if Lin­klater doesn’t share Alex Jones’ lib­er­tar­i­an beliefs, the direc­tor of Slack­er is under­stand­ably a suck­er for some­one com­pelled to rant at length – espe­cial­ly if it’s behind the wheel. Roto­scoped to full woozi­ness, Jones dri­ves around a block while ampli­fy­ing his pol­i­tics on a mega­phone to absent pedes­tri­ans. His anger bub­bles, and the wavy ani­ma­tion sug­gests the car might crash, but ulti­mate­ly it’s just a loud­mouth bab­bling in the sanc­tu­ary of his vehi­cle. As his skin turns red, it’s like a more poet­ic, colour­ful form of road rage.

Jack Black’s infec­tious appeal in a nut­shell is him belt­ing out Led Zeppelin’s ​‘The Immi­grant Song’ to a car full of his stu­dents. The track itself is vital – Black implored the Zepp onstage for licens­ing – because only a cer­tain type of hard rock strikes the right key on the road, and it involves scream­ing, ​“Aaa-eee-aaaa-aaah.” If you pause Black’s grin at the right moment, it’s the same crazed face Jack Nichol­son makes in The Shin­ing. And the child­like exu­ber­ance is relat­able: the dri­ver gets to be the DJ and the karaōke star. It’s like singing in the show­er – except there’s an audi­ence and you get to wear clothes.

Nine years after Before Sun­rise, Céline and Jesse’s reunion in Paris plays out in real time, often at a lit­er­al walk­ing pace. Out­doors in pub­lic they harm­less­ly joke and flirt, but the ten­sion revs up in a taxi ride dou­bling as a count­down: the will-they-won’t‑they conun­drum must be solved before they’re dropped off. Cocooned on the back seat, they drop the smiles and dare to admit they’ve been chas­ing the highs of that night in Vien­na. What­ev­er it is about this par­tic­u­lar vehi­cle that encour­ages such inti­ma­cy, it’s pre­sum­ably not the dri­ver who’s lucky enough to eaves­drop on such dra­mat­ic passengers.

Let’s assume Linklater’s moti­va­tion for this remake was the poster-ready image of Bil­ly Bob Thorn­ton in a con­vert­ible with his base­ball team squeezed into the back. As with the 1976 orig­i­nal star­ring Wal­ter Matthau, the stacked kids are a Jen­ga-style health haz­ard, and Lin­klater applies slap­stick humour when one of them flies off a seat into a soft bush. The les­son here isn’t about seat­belts; Thorn­ton warns, ​“Don’t lean against the door.”

“Don’t take the car – you’ll kill your­self.” This line, said mock­ing­ly by Robert Downey Jr, is a nod to a drunk-dri­ving PSA, but it’s emblem­at­ic of the thriller’s ongo­ing para­noia. On the many occa­sions these guys – boozed-up, high on Sub­stance D – hit the road, it’s in the back of the viewer’s mind that some­thing will go wrong. In fact, Rory Cochrane day­dreams when behind the wheel that he’s hauled over by a police car and shot in the head. Why is a cock­roach flung against the wind­shield? Because you need to jus­ti­fy the painstak­ing roto­scop­ing somehow.

The open­ing text asks, ​“Who is Bernie?” The answer fol­lows with Jack Black, as Bernie, cruis­ing along an emp­ty road and singing a (real­ly catchy) hymn called ​‘Love Lift­ed Me’ – not exact­ly the Led Zep­pelin karaōke of School of Rock. More sub­tle is the scene’s intro­duc­tion of Bernie’s home­town. As he dri­ves and your focus is on his awful mous­tache, through the adja­cent win­dow is a glimpse of the tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty that will lat­er stick up for him.

The open­ing of this catch-up with Jesse and Céline is 12 min­utes of them dri­ving home, prac­ti­cal­ly on autopi­lot, with sleep­ing chil­dren as lit­er­al bag­gage in the back­seat. In a fixed shot, with­out any music or the spark we once wit­nessed, they’re just an exhaust­ed cou­ple ignor­ing the usu­al road­side views. They joke around a lit­tle, but sud­den­ly she won­ders aloud if they’re in a metaphor­i­cal cul-de-sac. Dur­ing all this, the cam­era angle empha­sis­es the claus­tro­pho­bia, their chess-game body lan­guage, and his abil­i­ty to eat an apple while steer­ing the wheel.

With its toing and fro­ing, Boy­hood is a 12-year col­lec­tion of car jour­neys. There’s Ethan Hawke unveil­ing The Bea­t­les’ ​‘Black Album’, the Every­body Wants Some!! pre­cur­sor of Mason dri­ving to col­lege, and so much more. The inte­gral ride is ear­ly on when Hawke hits the brake to ask his chil­dren to talk, and they con­clude it should hap­pen organ­i­cal­ly. As the film pro­gress­es, the road trip con­ver­sa­tions become more nat­ur­al, and even heavy traf­fic pro­duces mag­ic. So much so, Mason is under­stand­ably furi­ous to learn his father sold the vehi­cle and all the mem­o­ries attached to it. We see Mason inher­it­ing a gun from his rel­a­tives; he want­ed the car.

When the gang spit through verse after verse of ​‘Rapper’s Delight’, there’s plen­ty of rhyme but no rea­son – it’s just how Jake (nick­named by Bev­er­ly ​“the cute one in the back”) bonds with a car full of strangers. The scene is fun and infec­tious, groov­ing along in a film that lets scenes flow for as long as nec­es­sary, and of course they chant lyrics about own­ing a sun­roof Cadil­lac. Even more impres­sive, it’s pre-inter­net and they know all the words. Aaron Sorkin has the walk and talk; Lin­klater does it all on the road.

Every­body Wants Some!! is released 13 May.