Richard Lin­klater: ​‘Mak­ing movies is a lot like putting a sports team together’

The last time we spoke to Richard Lin­klater, short­ly after he intro­duced Boy­hood to his ador­ing home­town crowd at the 2014 South by South­west Film Fes­ti­val, he casu­al­ly dropped a bomb­shell. It turned out that one of the most cel­e­brat­ed film­mak­ers of his gen­er­a­tion nev­er saw a career in the movies for him­self. At least not in his col­lege days. Back then, base­ball was his true pas­sion, and it’s this great Amer­i­can pas­time that informs Linklater’s lat­est home run, Every­body Wants Some!!, which fol­lows the pre-sea­son shenani­gans of a col­lege team in Austin cir­ca 1980. We caught up with the writer/​director to talk first loves and male bonding.

LWLies: When did you fall in love with baseball?

Lin­klater: For as long as I can remem­ber I want­ed to be a base­ball play­er. From about age 12 to 20 it was my biggest sin­gle focus. And then, when I left col­lege, that dream end­ed. I changed direc­tion and it went from mean­ing every­thing to almost noth­ing. But now I look back at var­i­ous stages of my life and there it is, this big back­drop. I think you’re lucky if when you’re young you have some­thing like that to focus on. It keeps you healthy men­tal­ly. You know, I went through my own ado­les­cent exis­ten­tial cri­sis just like every­one else, but I always had base­ball to look for­ward to, to work towards, to be a part of something.

Were you encour­aged by your par­ents to pur­sue it?

Well my dad was an ath­lete, although he played foot­ball not base­ball, so I grew up around sport. He said he lobbed me up a lit­tle plas­tic ball once when I was like three years old and I had a bat and I knocked the ball over the house. He said I could just always hit. I had the right upper body shape for it I guess. I wouldn’t say I was born to do it or any­thing but, you know, it was always in me.

What impact did guys like Ray Knoblauch, who coached you in high school, have on you grow­ing up?

Ray was this leg­endary coach – won nation­al coach of the year a cou­ple times – but real­ly he was just one of many coach­es that I learned from. He was an inter­est­ing per­son to be around, but I wouldn’t say he was any bet­ter than some of the oth­ers. A coach I learned more from was Steve Kerr, who was much more relaxed and kind of fun­ny. A lot of the coach­es from my era were war vet­er­ans and they were pret­ty tough. It was the old school where you yelled at play­ers. Steve was one of the first coach­es who would help you relax and put you at ease on the plate. The coach I admire the most these days is Augie Gar­ri­do, who runs the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas team. He’s some­one I didn’t per­son­al­ly play for but in a way he’s helped me more than any of those oth­er coaches.

In what way?

He worked as a con­sul­tant on this movie and spent a sol­id morn­ing with the guys. I real­ly dialled into how he coach­es. He’s just an inspir­ing guy to be around. He’s in his sev­en­ties now and he has the dis­tinc­tion in all of col­lege sports his­to­ry to have the most wins. But his whole phi­los­o­phy is not so much about win­ning but tak­ing things moment by moment. The wins will take care of themselves.

Were you ever part of a win­ning team?

Oh sure, my col­lege coach John Skeeters led us to a 40 game win­ning sea­son one year. We got beat in the play­offs but it was def­i­nite­ly the best team I played on.

What are you reflec­tions on that peri­od in your life?

I remem­ber dig­ging out an old team pho­to a few years ago and my daugh­ter asked me if I could name every­one in the pic­ture. I said, ​‘Name them? I could tell you every­thing about them! What high-school they went to, what posi­tion they played, every­thing.’ I think if you’ve ever played sports, if you’ve ever been part of a team – I’m talk­ing male, female, all over the map – then you’ll under­stand what I’m try­ing to cap­ture in this movie. That group dynam­ic and cama­raderie and bond­ing and the scape­goat­ing and the humour…

So how do you cap­ture that on film?

It’s a lot like putting a sports team togeth­er – you get the best play­ers, they all play their roles. All the guys had played sports, they all were good ath­letes. That was part of their cast­ing con­di­tions to a large degree. It was real­ly about get­ting them to buy in. There’s a thing in all team sports which I think is true of act­ing as well, which is that it’s easy to be self­ish, to want more for your­self. But these guys imme­di­ate­ly knew that they were there for the team, to make a good film. That’s the team that wins, the one that gets togeth­er and decides every­one is going to pull in the same direction.

There’s an amaz­ing scene where you actu­al­ly get to see the guys on the prac­tice field.

I think it was impor­tant to actu­al­ly see them for all their blus­ter and all their ener­gy. You see it in off­shoot, side­bar kind of ways, the arch com­pet­i­tive­ness they all seem to have. But it was impor­tant to actu­al­ly show how good these guys are as well. That this is a real team. You know, they don’t even have a coach there, they’re there on their own but there’s a real sense that they know what they’re doing. There’s a rou­tine, there’s lead­er­ship there and they’re seri­ous. They care, you know. So to see all that real­ly helps bond them, I think, and sto­ry­telling wise it pays off a lot of lit­tle lines that have been build­ing to that moment.