Dazed and Confused - The Extended Analysis

When considering his next project after his indie debut (Slacker), Richard Linklater thought, “I want to capture the moment-to-moment reality and energy of being a teenager.”

Upon first viewing, some will be asking why and/or how this is my favorite movie of all time.  I’ve heard the question more than once, as I tend to show this movie to anyone I feel might like it – isn’t that one of the things you do with your favorite, I-could-watch-it-every-day movie?  I first saw it in the theater during its brief run in 1993 – one of the many reasons I was thankful to live in a major metropolitan area.  If you asked me about it then, I would’ve said it was a good movie, I enjoyed it.  I picked it up on VHS and watched it a few times, so I liked it enough to buy it.  When I watched it again about 10 years later on DVD, it really started to sink in that the movie was special for me.  Sometime after that, if you again asked me the question, I would say it was a great film and my favorite movie.

Coming from a truly independent film (Slacker) with a self-imposed budget of $23,000 based on his credit card limits, Linklater’s marriage to a big studio for Dazed and Confused had many ups and downs.  The budget of $6.9 million allowed him to spend money to get the period correct cars, music rights and wardrobe.  But the studio (Gramercy, a then-new sub-studio of Universal), poorly marketed and branded the film.  Before any footage had been shot, Universal had decided this was a dumbed-down teenage pot comedy and they were going to promote it as such, no matter what was actually on film. On the flip side, Linklater didn’t want to make an art house movie, but he did want to make a good film with a lot more depth than a pot-laced coming of age tale.  Universal wanted the football players actually playing football, and for the characters and plot to be more conventional.  Now go back and read Linklater’s quote at the top of this page and you can see how the road would be rough.

Everything, from the movie poster on down, was completely driven by bad marketing from Universal.  The stupid smiley face on the posters and TV ads, the endless stoner references like the tag lines “See it with a bud”, “Have a nice daze” or the awful Clinton-era reference with “Finally, a movie for everyone that DID inhale!”, and the fact that a minor character with no actual lines of dialogue is prominently feature on the movie poster all show they had no idea what to do with this movie.  They wanted Brendan Fraser to play Randall “Pink” Floyd so they could have a known, marketable actor.  “I can’t tell you how hard it was to deal with the awful branding that Gramercy gave that”, said Wiley Wiggins (Mitch Kramer) in 2011.  They wouldn’t even use the font from the actual film titles on the movie posters.

Rehearsals started in June 1992 and principal photography started in July, ending sometime during the last 2 weeks of August.  On the day prior to the start of shooting, having learned the studio execs had labeled him “difficult”, Linklater remembers thinking, “The lines are clearly drawn: all they care about is money and all I care about is wresting my movie from the jaws of their compromised, mediocrity machine.”  Two weeks into production he felt he was on the losing end, and in a handwritten note to Producer James Jacks wrote, “Whether this is an okay movie or a great movie, your job is to enable me room to make a great movie.  Two weeks in, I’m making a compromised piece of shit.”

Perfect example: the scene at the Little League game where the teams line up to “good game, slap hands” each other.  Jacks saw no value in the scene.  As anyone who knows Little League baseball and has seen the movie, this is a valuable, atmospheric scene.  This is the exact type of little scene that makes this movie special.  It’s a nothing moment, but at the same time it’s everything.  It’s an important part of Little League and it’s there for a reason – it’s the polite thing to do, it teaches the kids manners and sportsmanship.  At the same time the participants may have many opposite feelings about it: “this is stupid, I’m trying to pretend to care about saying this, well, I don’t mind that guy, he’s my friend, but later on in the line there’s a complete asshole that I hate” type of a thing.   

This battle bled into everything, and Universal was constantly upset.  Linklater wanted the drinking and driving and smoking and cursing and sadistic hazing, but didn’t see how nudity fit into his story.  The studio said hey, it seems with the drinking and violence that you’re aiming for an R, and if it’s an R we want nudity.  If you don’t want nudity, fine, but tone down everything else so we can get a PG-13.  And this is how great art dies unless the visionary fights tooth and nail for it.  Producers (namely the aforementioned James Jacks) would go behind his back and talk directly to the actors, like Ben Affleck during the infamous paint scene, asking them to tone down their language.  Jacks yelled at Affleck when he used the word “cocksuckers” in that scene, saying it was way worse than the F word.

Universal was also upset with the overall footage Linklater had shot.  They wanted more “coverage”, which is to say that you shoot many different scenes with different tones and flavors, and then the studio can try to force an edit to make the movie look like whatever they want to – more of a comedy, more of a drama, etc.  Jacks to this day defends his contribution to the movie and says that he is proven out by the fact that Linklater’s next 3 movies “weren’t nearly as good”.  Those three movies were “Before Sunrise” (100% on Rotten Tomatoes), “SubUrbia” (64%) and “The Newton Boys” (63%).  Most directors would kill for those critical receptions, but I guess it depends on your definition of “good”.  

The soundtrack was the biggest war waged between the two.  Universal, to save money (of course), wanted to do the soundtrack in-house.  The studio had seen most of the footage and didn’t feel the film was going to be worth the cost of the rights to the music Linklater was targeting.  They also didn’t feel anyone wanted to hear the 70s songs Linklater had chosen, because they were old and this is a movie for 90s teenagers.  So, after the whole film was shot and basically edited, instead of the original songs they suggested that current 90s Universal recording artists could record sound-alikes of some 70s classics and use that.  As Wiley Wiggins (Mitch Kramer) said: “I think they wanted somebody like Jackyl to play seventies guitar licks throughout the film. I remember Rick talking about showing up at Universal with an Uzi.”  In fact, Linklater wrote a letter to the band Jackyl (an early 1990s band caught between 80s metal and 70s southern rock that featured a chainsaw solo in one of their songs, and in 1997 had Brian Johnson of AC/DC as a guest vocalist on a track) asking them to turn down the offer from Universal so that he could make the movie per the artistic vision in his head.  To their credit, they backed out of participating. But Universal eventually forced Linklater to give up all his royalties on the soundtrack in order to finance the cost of film’s original song rights up front.  Universal’s issue is that while they didn’t “get” the movie, they had committed money to paying for the soundtrack.  They didn’t feel like it was worth it, so they forced the cost on Linklater.  Linklater noted at the time that, “I’m living through an abuse of power that is in every way analogous to that depicted in the film.”  Linklater would do anything to protect the film’s integrity, so he gave up his soundtrack rights. 

Universal had originally nixed Linklater’s plan to release a double CD as the soundtrack, due to cost and their other concerns.  Once he relinquished his rights, they released the original 11 song soundtrack that to Universal’s surprise sold quite well.   Then when the film eventually hit a wider audience on video, they released a second CD labeled “more” music from Dazed and Confused.  Linklater, who had the vision to pick these songs and suggest a double CD soundtrack up front, never made a dime from any of it.  In fact, it was the soundtrack that made money from the get-go, pulling in major cash way before the film itself had broken even due to cult status. 

If Universal wasn’t happy while the film was being made, imagine their joy when it was released September 24, 1993 on 183 screens (a pretty small release), and grossed only $1.26 million in its opening weekend. The following week, it appeared on just 31 more screens … and made about $144,000 less. By October 15th the film disappeared from most theaters altogether, having grossed $3.25 million, less than half of its $6.9 million budget in the original theatrical run.  Despite great reviews, Universal’s inability to manage the release on the proper number of screens spelled doom.  Linklater had already resigned himself to the fact that the studio was basically dumping the movie.   

It was ever really given a chance.  Opening on only 183 screens showed a severe lack of confidence on the studio’s part and when it didn’t take off in week 2 they dumped it pretty quickly.  All this combined with the fact that it was a movie about nothing and may take repeated viewing for people to fall in love with, and you have a perfect recipe for the post-theatrical “cult classic” status.

The number one thing driving this movie (pun intended, as it is a car movie, to a certain extent) is the music.  Linklater has said this is a rock ‘n roll film.  He knew it was so important and essential that the money spent on obtaining the rights to “Sweet Emotion” was four times the entire budget of his debut indie film, Slacker.  The music compliments the film better than any I’ve ever seen.  It is almost always there, weaving in and out, making you notice it one minute and then slinking into the background to subliminally influence and quietly support the film the next.  This soundtrack and the way it’s used is unbeatable.  Much has been made of the film title being a Zeppelin song, and indeed Linklater wanted it to run over the closing credits, but the song he really wanted within the film was “Rock and Roll”.  At the time Led Zeppelin was still in their phase of not allowing their music to be used in any films or ads.  Page and Jones were on board.  In fact, Jimmy reviewed Linklater’s heartfelt videotape “letter” explaining why “Rock and Roll” needed to be in the film and showing the scene where it would be used, Jimmy responded that he did understand the need and that “it was important to the artist’s vision.”  Early test screenings of the movie resulted in a lackluster response from the audiences.  But at one point in May 1993, the film was screened yet again and finally got good feedback from the test audience, mostly due to better editing of the soundtrack.   But Robert Plant held fast and refused.  Nine years later he allowed “Rock and Roll” to be used for something so artistically important as a fucking Cadillac commercial.  So that’s just another reason to be annoyed as fuck with Robert fucking Plant.

Another major aspect that makes the film great is, naturally, the characters.  When you have almost no traditional plot, it’s all about the characters and the actors bringing them to life.  I think the characters are unusually deep for such a movie.  They certainly reflect real life, not just black and white but many shades of gray.  I’m not sure I even like any of the characters in this movie!  The “good” characters can be real assholes sometimes.  You can feel sympathy or empathy for the “bad” characters.  You may even put time into thinking about why they are the way they are and do the things they choose to do.  These are characters you become engrossed in and want to watch.  I’ve seen some argue the characters lack depth.  I might begin to agree with that if you had a very limited or sheltered school experience, or were home schooled.  Otherwise, any gaps in these characters will be filled in by your brain because they’ll remind you of someone you knew or still know very well.  I’ve read reviews and retrospective pieces by people saying that the 90’s time period shows through in the film, that it’s easy to tell it was made in the 90s.  I believe it’s because those authors had similar experiences or knew similar people in high school in the 90s and don’t realize the universality of it all, 70s or 90s or whatever.

The next thing that strikes me is the depiction of the amazing lack of adult interaction and control over the kids.  I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so I know it was a different time and restrictions on kids were much looser.  I rode my bike anywhere I wanted and walked all over the neighborhood (at night too), even across busy parkways and into town to buy comics or stop at the 7-11.  They had to come find me by driving around the neighborhood when I was playing whiffle ball too late.  I took the public bus alone the summer I turned 12 to travel miles and miles away to go see movies at the theater.  However, I also didn’t grow up in a small Texas town, essentially in the middle of nowhere.  But even still, the lack of adult interference in Dazed and Confused is startling.  In 2019, to imagine that a group of high school juniors could show up at a middle school in the middle of the day, openly drinking beer while driving and using a megaphone to threaten physical violence upon the middle school’s male students for the remainder of the summer while the teacher laughs about it is almost beyond comprehension. Even if the parental figures were turning a blind eye, you would think the cops would show up earlier than the very end of the film, and then only for a few people trespassing at a locked high school football field.  You’d also think the local cops would be familiar with which high school kids might be driving around with a trunk literally full of beer.  I would call it a massive plot hole, but I’ll give it a pass because as mentioned there are many things happening in this film that seem completely insane to me, but they were 100% experienced by Linklater when he was in high school in this area of the country.

The violent beatings given out on the male side of the hazing rituals are truly horrific.  No one, except a potential victim’s mother, steps in or takes notice (but she does do it in the very Texan fashion of pulling a shotgun on the assailant).  The “it was done to me so I’m going to do it to you, and then you’ll be damaged and want to do it to someone else” attitude is very strong, regardless of the level of hazing.  OK, yes, Pickford’s father is quick to pick up on Kevin’s plans for a house party while they are gone, but at the same time he seems oblivious to the fact that his son is not only a huge stoner but the #1 pot dealer at the high school.  But on the male side the various characters show intricate levels of participation in the beatings.  Note that Randall "Pink" Floyd does not make a paddle, and the one time he is shown using someone else’s paddle, he doesn’t actually hit Mitch, despite that fact that he later mentions that he was paddled horrifically when he was a freshman (actual progressive thinking!).  On the flip side you have O’Bannion, who wants to paddle freshman boys all day and night if possible.  In between you have Benny (edging to the O’Bannion side), Melvin (who seems excited and happy to participate, but note that he slyly stops O’Bannion from getting a second paddling on Mitch in the parking lot at the baseball field by saying Pink has next turn) and Don who seems to just be going along with the general consensus.  After Mitch is beaten, he spends the rest of the night around the guys who beat him and other than O’Bannion they begin to accept him as a person to hang with and not a test dummy to beat with paddles.

This complexity is seen again when they bust Hirschfelder.  Don doesn’t really do much in the way of paddling, but clearly has no issues with it and then opens the trunk of O’Bannion’s car to expose 8000 (I assume warm) beers.  He's nice enough to throw a beer to Hirschfelder as he’s walking away but does manage to call him “Tubbs” to insult his weight.  Benny, who seems to get more O’Bannion-like as the evening goes on, is pissed that Don “wasted” a beer on the freshman.  O’Bannion, meanwhile, is pissed that Pickford’s party was busted, and even just having paddled Hirschfelder isn’t enough to make him happy.  What he’s really pissed about deep down is his sad life and the fact that he’s a dick.  He throws a full beer bottle at something off-frame, and Benny admonishes him about wasting beer as well because Benny is all about the beer.  And of course, as soon as the girls get their free alcohol, they leave.  Absolutely one of my favorite scenes.

On the female side of the equation, Darla (Parker Posey) is sort of the Senior girls’ version of O’Bannion.  She is mean and enjoys degrading and inflicting discomfort on the freshman girls, but instead of physical violence the female methods are more on the verbal abuse, emotional degradation, and humiliation side of things – getting messy foods dumped on you, getting yelled at and called names, being forced to do embarrassing things, etc.  However, the Senior girls kind of show they care a little bit by taking the filthy freshman ladies in their pickup beds through the car wash to get cleaned off.  The contrast is actually jarring, which has been my experience in life and why I’ve always been more comfortable around women. 

Jodi is, of course, the female counterpart to Randy Floyd.  She shows her lack of interest in degrading the freshmen by a long sigh and mustering up a friendly smile before putting the pacifiers in their mouths, and then like Randy she finds a freshman, Sabrina, to take under her wing.  In fact, in the scene where she spots Sabrina and orders her into the truck, you’ll notice complicity and consent on Sabrina’s part.  Initially the new Freshman tries to get out of the order, and then Jodi asks her, “Well, are you in or are you out?” and Sabrina realizes the opportunity and says she’s in.   There’s no such veiled invitation and consent anywhere on the male side of things.  Did Jodi scan the grounds looking for a bit of her Freshman self?  Did she see her younger self in Sabrina and pick her out?  Probably, much like Randy sees some of himself in Mitch and wants to become his mentor.  

In fact, it’s clear that this is something both Jodi and Randy need for themselves as they become seniors and feel the pull of imminent change tugging at them.  If you watch both of the “Hey, we just did bad shit to you, but do you want to hang out with us tonight?” scenes closely you can see both Pink and Jodi are a bit nervous about asking and are actively thinking about the best way to spin the invite to their new freshmen buddies.  They’re clearly trying to convince them to come along and they’re hoping for a positive response, which is a really nuanced and realistic touch to the entire story arc.

Another complex scene is at the beer bust party where Darla tells Sabrina to “air raid” when she’s sitting with Tony.  It really underscores the cliques in play – Tony, part of the never-go-out poker playing nerds, is feeling confident that for once he’s actually at a party, drinking beer and talking to a girl, even one 4 years younger than him.  He’s feeling his oats and tells Darla that Sabrina doesn’t have to air raid because she’s with him.  Darla just glances at him and laughs in his face because in her mind and her world, he’s still a total geek that she can look down on, even though they are both now “Seniors”.

The short scene that follows, between Mike and Tony, with Mike completely obsessed with his encounter with Clint, and Tony just wanting to get back to his (well-earned) sweet talk with Sabrina, is also pretty amazing. 

Stunning back to back scenes:  Darla, Shavonne and Simone cruising to the Top Notch in Darla’s pickup talking about what the girls in Shavonne’s other clique say about them.  Simone’s reaction to it is priceless and spot on.  Then onto Mike from the backseat with Tony and Cynthia, complaining that he’s maybe concluded he doesn’t want to be an ACLU layer to help people because he’s realized he hates people in general.  “I have to confront the fact that I don’t really like the people I’ve been talking about helping out…I’m just trying to be honest about being a misanthrope.”  Just amazingly well-written stuff.

Another scene, again at the beer bust, where Jodi talks to Mitch about his amount of drinking and when he was supposed to be home – when she puts her hand firmly on Julie’s shoulder, watch how realistically Julie must re-balance herself as someone would do when they’ve had a few and are more easily knocked off balance. 

Speaking of acting drunk, McConaughey’s performance at the end of the beer bust moontower party is by far the best acting he’s ever done and maybe the best drunk/stoned acting ever – when Slater calls for the joint party on the 50-yard line and then calls shotgun, and Don dives into the Chevelle, and McConaughey says “Hey, hey, hey man, watch the leather”, it’s absolutely brilliant – the way he holds the cigarette, how slow he moves, his voice, his eyes, his face, the little laugh at the end of his line.  The other scene involving a drunkard that really stands out is at the end of the beer bust when Benny goes to get up from one of the lawn chairs in his pickup bed and quickly sits back down, realizing he’s more drunk than he thought and can’t actually stand.

The pacing of the film is spectacular.  It helps that Linklater has taken many events he remembers over the course of high school (he’s called it “sort of the greatest hits” of his high school life) and condensed them into one 24-hour window.  Yes, it’s a movie with “no plot”, but at the same time there’s always something going on.  It also helps that the film features a wide and strong ensemble cast and those interesting characters allow Linklater to bounce back and forth between them all, getting different perspectives from clique to clique.  It allows him to show the best and most pertinent parts of conversations within the groups, and to even morph the cliques as characters move in and out between them.  At no point ever did I watch this movie and think man, I wish we could get to this scene or that scene, because what’s happening right now just isn’t that interesting.  I love the pacing of this film.

Casting, casting, casting.  You can write the best characters in history, but without the right actors, you’ve got nothing.  This film was the first work of any real gravitas or consequence for McConaughey, Jason London, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams, Milla Jovovich, and Adam Goldberg.  Affleck, Cole Hauser, and Anthony Rapp were in School Ties the year before, which did receive some critical praise but didn’t even recoup costs at the box office and isn’t even close to the cult classic that Dazed eventually became.  

Don Phillips came out of retirement to act as Casting Director.  You may not know his name, but prior to this film he had cast: Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Car Wash (the only 2 redeemable things about this film are the title song and the casting), Animal House and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  He also produced Melvin and Howard. His crowning achievement might be Dazed, and the legendary story that takes place at the Hyatt Regency in Austin one Thursday night.  A 23-year-old Matthew McConaughey, just a film student at the University of Texas in Austin, is convinced by his girlfriend to go out for a few drinks (he claims he wanted to stay in that evening).  So, they went to the bar at the Hyatt Regency that night because he had a friend bartending there who would give them a nice discount.  Upon arrival, the friend mentioned to Matthew that there was a guy at the other end of the bar who was in the movie business and in town to cast for a studio film.  Sitting at the other end of the bar was, of course, Don Phillips.  Don had already noticed the extremely good looking young couple that had seated themselves at the bar.  McConaughey introduced himself and immediately hit it off with Don.  They drank and talked film and golf, eventually becoming so boisterous in discussing one local golf hole that the Hyatt threw them out of the bar. 

Because Wooderson only had a few lines, it was a role they were casting locally in Austin.  At the end of the evening, Don asked Matthew to come into the casting office the next day, and the rest is history.  Well, it wasn’t that smooth, really – at first blush Linklater felt McConaughey was too good looking and not creepy enough for Wooderson but, as he describes, that quickly became a non-issue: “But Matthew just sunk into character. His eyes shut to little quarter slots, and he said, ‘Hey, man, you got a joint?’ He just became that guy. He told me ‘I’m not this guy, but I know this guy.’  I thought, ‘Okay, don't cut your hair. Can you grow a beard and a mustache?’ ”  Linklater wrote in his diary about McConaughey’s arrival on set: “Matthew McConaughey (who plays high school has-been Wooderson) shows up a couple of weeks into the shoot (when we start nights), and I can feel the crew completely catch a groove that will be with us the rest of the way. ‘Alright, alright, alright,’ I hear them start repeating after an inspired bit was improvised on his first night.”   Eventually, Matthew would pack up his things in a U-Haul and set out for California in August of 1993, the month before Dazed premiered, to pursue acting.  When he reached LA he stayed with none other than his buddy Don Phillips.

During casting (and even closer to production, for camaraderie purposes), the hopefuls and those already cast would be thrown together for an event – a pizza party or social get-together to see how they interacted and see how the chemistry was working .  Wiley Wiggins: “The night before we started shooting, everyone went to the Hole in the Wall bar to play pool. I tried to play it cool with Nicky Katt and the guys who were going to beat me with paddles as part of the film’s freshmen initiation scenes, but the first thing I did was shoot the cue ball off the table. It was a very close-knit cast and a lot of great relationships were formed. Most people were staying in the Radisson hotel, but I was a local kid who still lived at home. So, I only heard about their off-hours shenanigans – going to gun ranges, taking mushrooms and rafting down the river.”  McConaughey would get a bunch of people together on off days and take them rafting on the Guadalupe River.

This brings up the only stumble in the casting for this film:  the character of Kevin Pickford.  The initial script had Pickford and Pink as best buddies.  Pickford was supposed to be one of the characters at the 50 yard line near the end of the film.  At the same time, Wooderson had exactly 2 lines in the original script.  So what happened?  Shawn Andrews was cast as Pickford and he did not gel with the rest of the cast, especially Jason London (Pink).  At least once Linklater had to separate them before it got physical.  Andrews would tear his hotel bed sheets into squares, autograph them and try to sell them to the maids, telling them he would be “as big as Brando someday”.  I’ll let some of the people who worked on the film comment:

Don Phillips (casting): “He was an asshole.”

Jason London (Pink): “Shawn just didn’t want to interact with really anyone except Milla Jovovich.”

Joey Lauren Adams (Simone): “Shawn and Milla had started dating, and I think they were just shy. But they didn’t seem to want to hang out with us.”

Jason London: “He really hurt himself, and it translated into losing a good amount of screen time and allowing McConaughey to come in and become a star.”

Once they got McConaughey on camera and he provided that spark, they kept writing new lines and scenes for him (and he kept writing new lines and scenes for himself, improvising the famous Alright line and others) and pulling back lines and scenes from Andrews.  And thus, Wooderson ends up on the 50-yard line with the others instead of Pickford, and no one knows who Shawn Andrews is today.  Well, other than the fact that he was insane enough to take a 16yo Milla Jovovich off a movie set in Austin (not just a movie set, his first studio feature film!), head to Vegas and marry her.  Milla kind of went down with him as far as her character goes – Pickford isn’t going to get a lot of screen time, so his girlfriend didn’t get much time or any lines either.

McConaughey has also mentioned several times that Wooderson was modeled after “who he thought his older brother was” when he was young, Patrick McConaughey.  Also, he had been listening to a live Doors album (“Live in Boston” from 1970) and in between songs an insanely drunk Jim Morrison yells “Alright!”, but he does it 6 times, getting quicker for the last 3.  McConaughey took the idea, used the slower pace of the first 3, and out of Wooderson’s mouth they flew.   McConaughey has told the story and he claims he remembers Morrison yelling it only 4 times, not 6.  This is not hard to fact-check, less than a minute with Google results in a YouTube video of the audio that shows six times.  Of course, if I was living Matthew’s life I would also have the attitude of “4, 6, what difference does it make”.  He went with 4 to be able to tell this story:  he explains that he felt Wooderson was about four things: his car, getting high, rock n roll, and picking up chicks.  The first scene he shot was driving into the Top Notch, and he figured he had his car, he was high and he had rock n roll blasting, but was missing the chick and had to stop and talk to Cynthia.  Although I have never seen the film, he does actually say “Alright” 6 straight times in Magic Mike as an homage to…himself?

Matthew McConaughey: “I always saw Wooderson as an American classic. Soon as I read his response, ‘That’s what I love about high school girls: I get older, they stay the same age,’ I flew with him. I said to myself, anyone who believes in that has massaged a massive perception into a personal truth, without attitude or a need to defend. That is a classic character.” 

Wiley Wiggins (Mitch) was an actual high school freshman at Austin high school, and was spotted by longtime Linklater collaborator Anne Walker-McBay coming out of Quackenbush’s coffee shop on The Drag (2120 Guadalupe St) near Austin’s University of Texas campus.  He had actually been in a local PBS series in 1986 at the age of 10, but didn’t mention the experience when he auditioned. 

Another amazing back to back scene: the great juxtaposition in the attitude of the incoming male seniors vs the incoming male freshman.  In the “Check you later” scene, Slater laments their class of high school girls and their attitude toward sex and calls them prudes, and that he can’t wait to get to college where he will be scoring all the time.  This also slips in the male competition angle when Don challenges him and Slater says, “Hey man, it’s quality not quantity.”  On the other side of town, Carl and Tommy convince Hirschfelder to leave the 8^th grade year end dance.  Hirschfelder is annoyed because he was making out with a girl.  But his friends don’t listen because they are excited to be in the “big time” where all the girls in high school will “put out”.  Of course, Carl and Tommy conveniently miss the fact that Hirshfelder has a point and was happy and having a good time with a girl when Carl and Tommy inexplicably make him stop and leave. 

The sound work in the film is a bit underrated as well.  Not the voiceovers added in post-production, they suck (at that point Universal probably didn’t want to spend much money to make them better because they didn’t like the film).  But for instance, the car engine sounds…the muscle cars sound like muscle cars, and when Jodi’s VW convertible Bug pulls through the Top Notch lot, it sounds like a damn VW Bug from the 70s (I definitely know that sound)!  Another scene where the sound work is insane is when O’Bannion is playing pool in the Emporium right before busting Carl Burnett…his pool-related trash talk on a surround system carries on forever if you listen closely for it.

Speaking of which, obviously the automobiles in this movie play a huge part.  In a rural setting in the USA, you need a car.  Cars are everything, it’s a car culture.  The cars are perfect for the characters.  Pink would most certainly drive an El Camino, right?  Wooderson’s Chevelle?  Perfect.  Jodi’s convertible VW Bug?  The 70s precursor to the 80s convertible Rabbit/Golf “Cabriolet” that was insanely popular among high school girls.  O’Bannion’s spray painted Duster?  A huge POS that’s maybe a work in progress, just like O’Bannion.  Cars are a huge thing in this movie.

Mitch touching his nose repeatedly: some people have made this into a drinking game, and some critics feel this is a sign of “bad acting”.  I don’t buy into this bullshit for a minute because there’s no way it was acting.  I’ve never seen anyone else do this – not in a film and not in real life.  This is obviously a personal tick (at least at the time) of the actor, Wiley Wiggins, who was cast off the street with very little acting experience.  There's no way he sat around and decided to touch his nose like that, and certainly Linklater didn't direct him to do it.  I find it endearing and real and wonderful.

Mike’s fight scene is foreshadowed by Cynthia when they are cruising and Mike suggests they need some alcohol, and Cynthia says “Yeah, you know you’re right man, I’m just gonna get drunk, maybe get laid, get in a fight” and Mike says they should be up for “anything” and I guess he really means it.  The interaction with Clint later at the beer bust and then stewing and drinking brings him to the brink and he decides to fight (with a strategy that sounds good to a guy with little party experience but in reality, isn’t a good idea).  It’s yet another great set of scenes and sub-plot in this film.

Another scene that is so wonderful is when Cynthia, Mike and Tony are at the Top Notch eating and Wooderson pulls up to talk to Cynthia.  Beyond the great exchange of “Hey you need a ride?” – “No, I’ve got my own car, thanks” as she’s clearly sitting in the driver’s seat of her own car – pay attention to the off-camera lines from Mike in the backseat, starting with “Oh Christ” when Wooderson arrives and then the fake, overly-chipper “OK, we’ll be there!” response to the beer bash invite.  The cherry on the cake is the “Do you realize that when he graduated we were 3 years old” line, not to mention that the disgust of Tony and Mike disappears and they answer yes when Cynthia asks “So, are we still gonna go?”  It’s a fine line for Mike, a guy who earlier declared “we should be up for anything”, but is repulsed when Cynthia shows interest in the local older weirdo in his 20s who hangs with teenagers.  

The scene where Pickford is driving Don, Pink and Mitch around and they bust mailboxes: I love to watch Mitch’s face during this whole thing.  The older male apes are teaching the younger one how to have fun, and fun is destroying private property!  You can see it on his face the first time it happens – the expression of “is this really what we should be doing?” quickly turns to “oh, they think this is cool and fun” and then rapidly to “I need to do this too if I’m going to be accepted among them”.  You’ll note that he has a particular reaction not when Don first does it – that’s just Mitch realizing this is acceptable and fun - but when Pink (the guy who didn’t paddle him, gave him a ride home, invited him out and is the starting QB on the football team) does it, he realizes hey, if Pink’s doing it then it’s probably something I have to consider doing it as well.  And thus, a bowling ball is thrown through the back window of a parked vehicle, and Pickford bestows the highest honors on Mitch: “Ha ha, you’re nuts Junior, you’re nuts!”  Mitch is one of the boys just like that, which is probably what you desperately wanted to happen when you were a freshman hanging out with older kids.

Another subtle theme is alcohol vs pot.  There are a few instances where stoners are made fun of by people who absolutely consume copious amounts of alcohol.  O'Bannion and Slater particularly go back and forth a bit , e.g “Slater you stoner”, and even more banter in one of the deleted scenes.  This is another interesting but ridiculous sub-culture war.

Here’s a great quote from Michael Agger from The Slate/New Yorker: “High school doesn't have any auditorium slow-hand-clap moments: It's mostly feeling confused, driving around, taking advantage of opportunities to be stupid or temporarily sublime.”  Linklater has echoed this idea many times in interviews over the years.  Nobody died, nobody was pregnant every other week, etc., everyone was just looking for something to do.

A quote from Stephen Marche (Esquire): “All the kids in Dazed and Confused want nothing but to be out of high school. All the people watching Dazed and Confused want nothing more than to be back in high school.”

The film is often compared to another nostalgia-laden movie, American Graffiti.  Indeed, it’s clear Linklater borrows a lot of the basic framework – a group of high schoolers (Dazed gets seniors and freshmen, AG only has seniors), AG is the last day of summer vacation, Dazed is the last day of school, both less than a 24-hour timeframe (basically an afternoon, a night and early the next day).  Each has an ensemble cast of mostly unknowns (that went on to stardom), no real plot, car culture plays an important part, creepy older college-aged guy looking for chicks, stellar soundtracks from the respective eras that also play a huge part, etc.  There are some themes taken as well, but they are few and far between.  Once you get past the basic framework and nostalgia angle, I think they are very different movies.  New Yorker critic Anthony Lane said (and also sadly tries to re-enforce the common idea that it’s a pot movie): “If American Graffitti turned high jinks into epiphanies, Dazed and Confused moves in the opposite direction: fueled by joints, the characters yearn for significant events that never quite arrive.”  Of course, if you have experience in life, you know those significant events did indeed arrive in Dazed and maybe the kids (and definitely Anthony Lane) just didn’t realize it.