Everybody Wants Some!! (USA, 2016)

Everybody Wants Some!! (USA, 2016)
Director: Richard Linklater.  Starring: Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Ryan Guzman, Zoey Deutch...

Whereas Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993) [previously covered in this post] was the high school years, this one is Dazed and Confused Goes To College. A disappointing movie, but the director's love of pinball shines once again with this lineup of very classic machines in beautiful condition, including Black Knight (Williams, 1980), Gorgar (Williams, 1979), Lost World  (Bally, 1978), Space Invaders (Bally, 1980), Kiss (Bally, 1979), and Capt. Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy (Bally, 1976).

There are also a couple of classic video arcade games... Battlezone (Atari, 1980), which is a slight anachronism, since the movie takes place August 28 to September 1, 1980, but this machine was released in November of that year), and Space Invaders (Midway Manufacturing Co., 1978)...

It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (USA, 1988)

It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (USA, 1988). Director, producer, writer, cinematographer, editor, actor, etc. : Richard Linklater.

His first feature, filmed on Super 8, an experimental road movie of sorts, but on busses and trains. Starting in his home base of Austin, Texas, Linklater travels to visit a friend in another state, and takes a roundabout route home. One could almost consider it a documentary, as there’s no real plot. It’s frankly not very interesting, but it can be seen as an experiment in filming the mundane, which is the opposite of what most movies want to show.

At least there’s a pinballspotting... in a stop in Missoula, Montana, he plays a FirePower (Williams, 1980)  [Pretty sure... the cabinet artwork is definitely that, but the backbox seems to jut out strangely. Anyway, good enough...]

Game over.

Before Sunrise (USA, 1995)

Before Sunrise  (USA, 1995). Director: Richard Linklater. Stars: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy...

Perhaps this is not really a USA film, since it was shot entirely in Europe, mostly Vienna. Anyway, it’s an interesting, talky romance which became a sociological movie experiment of sorts, since Linklater, Hawke and Delpy went on to make two sequels (so far!), each set 9 years apart.

Linklater manages to fit yet another pinball machine in one of his films, this time a widebody Space Riders (Atari, 1978). Although associated mostly with video games (at least in my mind), Atari did produce about a dozen different pinball machines between 1976-1983...

Sadly,  the sequels do not have any pinball in them, although the characters did refer to this playing session in one of them.

Waking Life (USA, 2001)

Waking Life (USA, 2001). Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy...

A very interesting film about thinking and dreaming that was shot in live action, then animated over. The animation provides a bizarre, dreamlike quality, as well as illustrates some of the things people are talking about.

Writer/director Linklater acts in the last scene, playing a Fireball (Bally, 1972), which belongs to him in real life and appeared in his movie Dazed And Confused which I wrote about in this post. In fact, there’s a little nod to that movie when we see the score reel change values and for a second it shows a smiley face (which was part of the poster for the movie)...

As mentioned in the Dazed And Confused post, Linklater said “I love pinball. There should be pinball in every movie”.

Dazed And Confused (USA, 1993)

Dazed And Confused (USA, 1993). Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Jason London, Wiley Wiggins, Matthew McConaughey, Rory Cochrane...

Cool! A film named after the Jake Holmes song :-) . I can’t really relate to this film...  perhaps because I was not quite in high school at the time (1976), living in a Canadian suburb rather than an American small town. The hazing rituals, the cars, the dope... nope.

Anyway, there are a couple of scenes in the Emporium, a heavenly place with pinball machines, pool tables, and a few other coin-operated machines. On the pinball wall, we can make out 8 pinball machines plus a bat (baseball) game…

Flying Carpet  (Gottlieb, 1972), Hi-Flyer  (Chicago Coin, 1974), Odds & Evens  (Bally, 1971)...

... Pop-A-Card  (Gottlieb, 1972),  Line Drive bat game (Williams, 1972), Aztec  (Williams, 1976), Sweet Hearts  (Gottlieb, 1963)...

 ... Pat Hand  (Williams, 1975)… Fireball (Bally, 1972)...

Director Linklater says in the DVD commentary that he bought the Fireball for the movie, and still owns it. It was his favorite machine from when he was a kid...

We can also spot an Emerald bowler machine (United Amusement Co., 1976)...

There’s also a Zodiac fortune teller / horoscope machine. This appears to be an "Astroscope", made by Crabb Manufacturing circa 1939, with a lit "topper" sign on the top that reads “Is this your lucky day?“ This same machine can be spotted in The Hustler (1961)...

Linklater also stated in the DVD commentary: "I love pinball. There should be pinball in every movie”. I can’t argue with that, although he didn't manage to do it.