I can’t remember if I saw Richard Linklater‘s Dazed and Confused when Universal unceremoniously dumped it into only 183 theaters on September 24, 1993, but seeing how it topped out at 191 theaters I have to assume I was among the masses that caught it on video shortly thereafter.
No matter when I first saw it, I do remember when I fell in love with it. It was 1995, my freshman year in college and while I wasn’t a teen of the ’70s, it didn’t take much to find a connection. My college roommate and I would damn near have this film playing on a loop, and while I can’t speak for him, for me it hit home because while the film is centering on a junior high student’s initiation into high school, I had a similar experience transitioning from high school to college.
While many aspects of Dazed and Confused are teenage dreamworld scenarios, it still feels real. We’re looking at a hyper-reality for sure, but just below that exaggerated existence are characters that feel as if they could very easily exist in situations all of us have faced before. You may have been the sports star at your school, the geek, the shy girl or the absolute bitch and/or bully and there is a place for you within Dazed and Confused.
Taking a page out of Alfred Hitchcock‘s book, Linklater begins Dazed and Confused on May 28, 1976 at exactly 1:05 PM. It’s the last day of school at Lee High School in Austin, Texas and while the seniors are heading off to college (well, most of them at least) the juniors are ready to be kings for a year, which includes the annual ritual of hazing the incoming freshman class.
The girls are neat and orderly, loading their victims into the back of pickup trucks, placing pacifiers in their mouths and beginning a planned out afternoon of humiliation. For the soon-to-be freshman boys it’s the beginning of three months of terror, which is when we meet Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins). Mitch’s sister (Michelle Burke) has already told the boys to “go easy on him”, which only puts him in greater danger. For the guys, it’s not entirely about humiliation, but ritual pain as the juniors carry wooden paddles, personalized with tiny holes for less wind resistance and sayings such as “Soul Pole” and “Fah Q”, all meant to send the young men home with backsides blistered and red.
Mitch becomes our eyes and ears into this new world. It’s as if we’re seeing something familiar for the very first time as his inevitable paddling leads to a night out with the cool kids, thanks in large part to Randall ‘Pink’ Floyd (Jason London), star quarterback and friend to the geeks, jocks, stoners and just about everyone else.
As much as the film may be viewed through Mitch’s eyes, it’s Pink’s story that we largely follow as he’s experiencing pressure from his coaches to sign a piece of paper that promises he won’t partake in any illegal activity, most prominently smoking weed and hanging out with the wrong crowd, something he’s actively against more on principal than anything else. He could be like the rest of his teammates, sign it and ignore it, but this is where Dazed and Confused tries to be more than just a teenage stoner comedy and actually take a look at the lives these kids are not only “L-I-V-I-N”, but what they have to look forward to. Though, let’s not pretend comedy isn’t the first and main reason this film lives on and is loved to this day.
It’s not often I can rewatch a film, especially one I’ve seen as many times as Dazed and Confused, and actually laugh out loud more than once all these years later, but no scene makes me laugh more than when Matthew McConaughey rolls up alongside Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi), Tony (Anthony Rapp) and Mike (Adam Goldberg) and we get what was actually McConaughey’s very first lines every caught on film — “All right, all right, all right” — not to mention a truly hilarious scene.
I love how Linklater captures Wooderson from the other side of Cynthia’s car, the distance makes us a third person to the opening of the conversation, almost as if we see it happening and nudge our friends as if to say, “Get a load of this guy.”
This is not to dismiss the ladies. Parker Posey as Darla is perfection and to hear Linklater describe the character as he first conceived her as something more imposing rather than someone so all-out “bitchy”, for lack of a better word, speaks volumes to how much Posey brought to the character. It’s the same as how that scene above featuring McConaughey wasn’t in the actual script, but created to not only offer a scene where Cynthia, Tony and Mike learn of the beer bust being planned, but to primarily give McConaughey more time on screen.
As fondly as we can look at all of this now, Dazed and Confused didn’t come together easily. Linklater’s approach was to create something of an authentic film, but he was met with confrontation at every turn, if not from the studio, from corporations unwilling to give him the rights to use their products.
The statues painted to look like KISS were originally meant to be Ronald McDonald, Linklater wanted to use Schlitz as the main beer the kids were drinking and he wanted to use Sonic as the drive-in food joint. All turned down to which he says, “That was the drag, you’re trying to make something realistic and they won’t let you touch corporate America.”
He was, however, able to pack the film with songs such as the cliche, yet perfect opening scene as the sound of Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” accompanies a slow motion shot of Kevin Pickford’s 1970 Pontiac GTO The Judge. It’s probably the most expensive scene in the movie, which came in at a budget of $6 million, and it cost them $100,000 for the rights to “Sweet Emotion” alone. For you trivia nuts, Linklater’s previous film, Slacker, cost a whopping $23,090 altogether.
Linklater fully embraced the film’s 1970s setting. He didn’t use a steadicam, approaching it with the goal of creating something that looked “pre-MTV”, saying he would have even preferred to use ’70s film stock had it been available. His inspiration were films such as Easy Rider, Mean Streets and, obviously, American Graffiti with nods to other films such as The Night of the Hunter as Carl’s mother pulls a shotgun on soon-to-be fifth year senior Fred O’Bannion, played by a very young Ben Affleck in a performance you love to hate.
The film is endlessly quotable, favorites of mine being “I want to dance”, “Check you later”, “Wipe that face off your head, bitch” and perhaps the one line that put McConaughey on the map, “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”
Along with those already mentioned, Milla Jovovich has a great scene where the sparking of a lighter makes her jump before she’s entranced by the flame. I love Rory Cochrane as Slater, a character that shows it can be funny to be a pothead as long as you aren’t pretending it’s cool and an achievement to applaud as an adult. You hear me Seth Rogen?
Of the film’s cast that never really went on to do much of anything, I thought Sasha Jenson as Dawson was perfect casting. He fell into his character and had perfect timing. Perhaps it’s because he was the oldest of the bunch as a 28-year-old playing a 17-year-old, which may also speak to why I so closely related to the film as a freshman in college.
All that said, while Linklater had to battle his producers over whether the word “cocksucker” was actually worse than the word “fuck” and just to get the “good game” sequence into the final film, the end result is an all-time classic as far as I’m concerned.
The film tested horribly with test audiences wondering where the ending was, unable to see the path that lay ahead for these teens. As a result, Universal pretty much dumped the film. After releasing it in 183 theaters it never went wider than 191 theaters in 1993 where it would end its theatrical run after only four weeks bringing in $3.1 million.
It has since continued to play on and has now grossed nearly $8 million all-time and has a pristine Criterion Collection Blu-ray loaded with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, a 45-minute making of, 25 minutes of deleted scenes and a wonderful audio commentary from Linklater.
I was a little curious as I popped this film in to rewatch for the purposes of this piece, wondering if it would hold up and play as well as I remembered it and it didn’t take long before I realized why I considered this movie to be one of the best and still do very much to this day.
