Fun Facts, Observations and Quotes
Most of the movie was shot in
sequence, so some of the last scenes committed to film were the football field
50-yard line scenes.
Linklater is nothing if not a slave
to accuracy. The Aerosmith concert wasn’t made up for the
script. The band played the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston, Texas
on June 24th, 1976, approximately 3.5 weeks after the last day of
school. As Wooderson tells Cynthia, “Hey, Aerosmith. Three weeks.
Front row seats, babe.”
Linklater’s very first idea was 4
guys in a car cruising around listening to ZZ Top’s live album Fandango on
8-track on repeat, specifically “Thunderbird”, a song from 1961 by a band from
Dallas named The Nightcaps (which was one of the first songs Stevie Ray Vaughan
ever learned to play and was a staple of his sets in his early
career). The whole movie would be a view looking inside the car and
looking out from the inside of the car, with various characters encountered
along the way – pulling up next to people, going thru the drive-through, etc.
As this was Linklater’s first big
studio movie, he wanted to use his people who were mostly locally based in
Austin and had worked on Slacker. Universal insisted
that he use some outsiders (so they could keep control and monitor what was
going on). The tension between the Austin-based crew that had mostly
worked on Slacker and the Hollywood folks that Universal brought in was
palpable.
Actors turned down for roles in the
movie: Claire Danes as Sabrina, Ashley Judd tried for the role of
Jodi, and Elizabeth Berkley, Mira Sorvino, Ron Livingston, Jon Favreau and
Vince Vaughn all went out for various parts. They liked Vaughn for
the O’Bannion but like Affleck better, and also liked him for the Benny role,
but felt he looked too similar to Affleck and decided to go with Cole
Hauser. Renee Zellweger tried for Darla but Parker Posey was just
too good. Renee appears several times in the film as a nameless
senior girl (she walks across the screen right around the time Wooderson
delivers the “get older” line, and holds the beer bong for Darla at the beer
bust, but she has no lines).
Marissa Ribisi was 17 at the time
and her legal guardian attended the set with her. The weird part is
that her legal guardian was actor Jason Lee, her boyfriend at the
time. He wasn’t acting yet, he was a pro skateboarder and 4 years
older.
Cole Hauser (Benny) is the son of
veteran character actor Wings Hauser, and his great grandfather was Harry
Warner, a founding partner of Warner Brothers Studio.
Linklater: “I still have PTSD when
I think of how difficult the shoot was”
When shooting Mike’s fight with
Clint, Adam Goldberg (Mike), spontaneously and even surprising himself, began
to cry at the end of the scene. He had listened to Neil Young’s
“Cowgirl in the Sand” repeatedly to get ready in the trailer. I
assume it was the sonic vibe of the song and not the lyrics that inspired him.
I love the way Slater’s insane and
bullshit soliloquy during the beer bust about George Washington ends with him
saying that Martha made sure the weed was sold because they “had to make ends
meet” and then quickly diverts to the “spooky stuff” on the dollar bill…”and
it’s green, too!”
The word “man” is said 203 times
and Mitch touches the bridge of his nose 42 times.
Although the geographical setting
of the movie is never mentioned, it’s fairly clear that it’s set somewhere in
the South (Robert E. Lee High School). Although they couldn't do much to
hide the Texas license plates on the cars, I still don't think Linklater wanted
to broadcast or convey the idea it was set in any specific location. And
the only nod to Austin itself is the moontower. No other city in
America had a moontower in 1976 except Austin (and that hold true today as
well).
Quentin Tarantino lists Dazed as
one of his top 12 films of all time. “It’s my favorite movie of the
90s. Maybe the only movie that three different generations of
college students have seen multiple times.” While making Pulp
Fiction, the only two movies Tarantino made an effort to see in the
theaters were Carlito’s Way and Dazed and Confused.
The film did indeed get 2 thumbs up
from Siskel and Ebert. If you know who they are,
great. If you need to google it, go right ahead. It also
made Peter Travers’ 1993 year-end list of top 10 movies in Rolling Stone.
“You know, the ’68 Democratic
convention was probably the most bitchin’ time I ever had in my life. Hey guys,
one more thing: This summer, when you’re being inundated by all the American
bicentennial Fourth of July brouhaha, don’t forget what you’re celebrating, and
that’s the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn’t
want to pay their taxes.” – Ms. Stroud
Linklater’s “appearance” in the
movie is audio only – he’s the voice that yells from a passing car in the scene
right after Hirschfelder gets busted (this is disputed in the Dazed oral
history book, where Wiley Wiggins says it's actor Jason Lee, who was on set as
the legal guardian/boyfriend of Marissa Ribisi and had yet to actually become
an actor).
Linklater wanted Schlitz beer, but
of course that didn’t fly with with the owners of Schlitz (Stroh’s at the time
of filming), so generic/defunct labels were used. The one seen most often
is “Grand Prize” beer which is a defunct
brand out of Houston, to the point that when Mitch goes into the Centennial
to buy Melvin his 6-pack (which appears to be branded “Murphy’s”), there is a
“Grand Prize” branded clock on the wall next to the door. Also, the clerk
that believes Mitch has just graduated high school also plays a liquor store
clerk as a tribute/throwback in Linklater’s wonderful film Boyhood.
Probably his best line to the obviously pregnant woman is not the health advice
he gives her, but the subtler “See you tomorrow night” that he ends the conversation
with. I also enjoy the vintage metal cans of Planter’s peanuts behind him
in the shot. Additionally, I love that when Melvin gives Mitch one of the
beers from the six pack, the shot also shows the sign behind them on the wall
in the Emporium declaring that “It is illegal for minors under the age of 18 to
consume alcohol”.
Mitch: “Uh, Mr. Payne, sir, you
know, eh, every second that you could let us out early would really increase
our chances of survival.”
Mr. Payne: “It’s like our sergeant
told us before one trip into the jungle – Men, 50 of you are leaving on a
mission. 25 of you ain’t comin' back.”
Linklater has a strong link to the
game of baseball. He played backup QB in grades 9-11 at Hunstville High
School, and the team was ranked #1 in the state his junior year. But he
was better at baseball and the family moved to Bellaire, TX because the
Bellaire baseball coach was well known. He went on to play baseball at
Sam Houston State University starting in 1980 (here
is a link to my post about his “spiritual successor” to Dazed,
titled Everybody Wants Some, based on this time in his life).
Linklater also made a film in 2009, Inning By Inning: A Portrait of a
Coach, a look inside the world of University of Texas baseball coach Augie
Garrido, the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history in any sport.
Linklater obviously wrote the
character of Mitch with himself in mind, and incorporated baseball into the
script. The producers asked Wiley Wiggins if he could play baseball
convincingly, and Wiley said yes because he wanted the part. In reality,
Wiley had never thrown a baseball in his life, and had never even had a
baseball glove on his hand. They had to do a lot of work to make the
baseball scenes convincing.
Linklater on Wooderson’s famous
line about high school girls: “It concerns me that I could write such a line.”
Anthony Rapp: "Honestly, when
I was first auditioning and reading the script, it was hard to tell exactly
what it was going to be," he said. "It's a film that's so much about
the quiet moments between people, that slice of life, so it's not exactly like
an action-packed screenplay. I couldn't get a real sense of what it was. … Then
when we were in rehearsal, the way that all of those textures came together,
then I'm like, 'Oh my God, I love this.' And then that came through onscreen
when I saw the film. So, it was an evolution of falling in love with it. At
first, I was just happy to do anything, and then it turned into something --
and I'm not just saying this because I'm here tonight -- but it is the film
that I'm the most proud of being a part of."
The older man that approaches the
car with the gun at Ballard’s Grab 'N Go over the smashed mailbox is actually
Fred Lerner, the stunt coordinator for the film. Fred had a long list of
credits and performed stunts on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Dirty
Harry, The Towering Inferno, Smokey and the Bandit, E.T., TRON, Beetlejuice, Die
Hard, Total Recall, and The Rock.
Linklater wanted the drive-in food
establishment to be a Sonic, which is what he experienced back in the day in
Huntsville, TX. But again, Sonic corporate would not approve and they
went with the local establishment, The Top Notch (a lot cooler, actually).
Only one Top Notch ever existed, but they treat it like a franchise in the film
because Tony says, “I can’t believe I’m doing this, I swore I’d never come to a
Top Notch.”
Linklater: "There
was a guy who died, and this old perv had a tape that looped Wiley getting
spanked/paddled. It was just creepy, creepy, creepy. And that's the only time
I'll say that aloud!"
Linklater on the opening scene:
"This idea I got when I was in a dentist chair. I was under Nitrous Oxide.
These two ideas, the Aerosmith song and the slow motion GTO shot, they just
popped into my head under drugs. Legal drugs. ... The opening song, 'Sweet
Emotion,' was like $100,000. Four times the budget of my previous movie,
eclipsed in the first 30 seconds."
Goldberg (Mike), Katt (Clint),
McConaughey, Rory Cochrane (Slater), and Cole Hauser (Benny) were all living in
LA as aspiring actors when the film was released, and they often hung out and
went to see the movie during its theatrical release. Adam Goldberg:
“We showed up for a screening at the Beverly Center. We were the
only people in there and we were smoking and drinking beer. It was
just like we couldn’t get enough of it. And I think that goes for
everybody (in the cast). We were talking about it for the entire
year that it took to come out.”
McConaughey has made his appearance
in this film into an entire industry and part of his persona. His
charity is called the “Just Keep Livin' Foundation”. In his Oscars
acceptance speech, he snuck in “Alright, alright, alright.” He
resumed the role of Wooderson (visually, no speaking) in a music video from
2012. In November 2019, when he joined Instagram for his 50th birthday,
he posted a video featuring a Just Keep Livin' hat AND shirt, and he mutters to
himself "Do I have an Instagram? It would be a lot cooler if I
did...but guess what, it's now a lot cooler because I do."
Catherine Morris played Julie,
Mitch’s sophomore “older woman”, but she was actually an Assistant Casting
Director on the movie and had to be convinced to take the part.
Thankfully, she did!
Pickford: “Don, give the beer back
man!”
Don: “I paid for
the beer, man”
Linklater: “As for the clothing,
that was even easier to acquire - it's only sixteen years in the future (when
we shot). Texas is way behind the times. We could go to stores in East and West
Texas and pull the stuff on the rack. A lot of the clothing was brand new and
just sitting there forever. It’s the advantage of living in a backward
place."
Linklater was obsessed with the
music for the film. For a moment, he had considered using Thin
Lizzy’s “Cowboy Song” over the closing credits, “but that song didn’t come out
until July 1976, so I didn’t use it” (the film’s set on May 28th,
1976).
Linklater gave mix tapes (following
the same rule of nothing after May 1976) designed for each character to the
respective actors as preparation for the film. Adam Goldberg: “My
mix tapes? I always took umbrage with them. I was a gigantic Neil Young fan at
the time, and I was getting ELO and Foghat?”
Linklater: “I wanted them to own
their characters, so I gave them music to listen to. Cynthia, you’re listening
to Joni Mitchell and Carole King, but Simone, you’re listening to KC and the
Sunshine Band.” After the cast arrived in Austin, he asked them not
to listen to any music that wasn’t specific to the period. The crew
even delved into this, playing period correct music while setting up and
building sets.
Ribisi: “Cynthia was supposed to
have a huge crush on Tony, but in real life, I just didn’t. When it came down
to shooting, Rick was like, ‘I need to find another guy for Cynthia. Maybe
Wooderson?’ I thought, ‘Oh, this is genius.’ He’s everything she’s against.
She’s this girl with a future, kind of preachy, and suddenly she’s into this
guy who only likes high school chicks. She’s so smitten she can’t speak.”
Lee Daniel, Director of Photography
on many Linklater movies, came up with the idea for the FAH-Q on O’Bannion’s
paddle. Lee was also a focal point of the tension between
Linklater’s Austin crew and the Universal people. To this day,
Producer James Jacks feels that Daniel was lucky to get the job and that if it
had been up to him he would’ve hired someone more experienced. But
then admits, “maybe the film would have lost its energy.” Uh, yeah,
I think so, it would've lost a lot.
Affleck had to be convinced to play
the part of O’Bannion. “It was the bad guy part. I didn’t
want to play the bad guy. But I figured I’d do it anyway.”
As mentioned previously, rehearsals
started in June 1992 and principal photography started in July, ending sometime
during the last 2 weeks of August. In mid-June he sent a letter to
the cast encouraging experimentation and improvisation, saying “if the final
movie is 100% word-for-word what’s in the script, it will be a massive
underachievement.” He encouraged the actors to work up different
angles on scenes and to bring it to him. If he liked it, he would
send out the B crew to shoot it. Affleck: “He was true to his
word. I would write stuff, and it appeared in the
movie. I felt empowered to have a voice in that, and it gave me the
notion that you could make movies that way.” Examples of this in
action: it was 2 weeks into shooting when, as mentioned above, he
walked up to Marissa Ribisi (Cynthia) and said, “You know, I really want to
find a love interest for Cynthia.” The entire hood-open gearhead
talk scene between Wooderson and Clint was mostly
improvised. Working collaboratively and in the moment helped this
film immensely.
Darla: “Lick me, all of you!”
The entire cast was put up in the
Sheraton Crest Hotel, at First Street and Congress Ave. (First St is now named
Cesar Chavez St). This is right in the middle of downtown Austin and
next to Lady Bird Lake and the Congress Ave Bridge. It's actually
right across the river from the Hyatt where McConaughey and Don Phillips
met. Due to the downtown college atmosphere, the cast began to fall
into cliques that mirrored the movie. Jason London: “…it was very
true that I was very much like Pink and hung out with every single group at
different times.”
You can thank Editor Sandra Adair
for the movie’s focus on Mitch. Linklater’s script mostly focused on
Pink, but as Adair says, “If it was in the script it didn’t reveal itself the
way it did when Wiley Wiggins took on the character.” Wiggins’s
memorable performance drew the editor’s storyline away from Pink a bit to give
more time to Mitch in a more balanced way.
Regarding editing and deleted
scenes, I can only comment from my perspective. I watched this movie
many times before they released the deleted scenes. As I watched the
deleted scenes for the first time, I immediately felt that the editor did an
amazing job, because not one of them is good enough to either add to the story
or to supersede any final cut footage. I’ve watched them more than
once, too, and my opinion remains the same.
Although “Slow Ride” is used twice
in the film and got the closing credits slot once Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll”
was unobtainable, “Sweet Emotion”, “Free Ride” and “Low Rider” are my picks for
the best songs in the movie. “Sweet Emotion” in the opening credits
provides so many iconic shots to start this movie. “Free Ride”
starts the transition from the end of the school day into the
evening. And with “Low Rider”, Linklater flips and bounces from shot
to shot and clique to clique as they prepare for the night out during this song
like no other portion of the film. It’s the Randall “Pink” Floyd of
the soundtrack, it fits in with everyone getting ready for the evening and
starting to cruise. Honorable mention: a song I didn’t
even know before I watched the film, “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan. That song
playing in the background while Pink, Wooderson and Mitch make their
slo-mo entrance into the Emporium elevates the scene to new heights.
Three older classmates of
Linklater’s at Huntsville High School in Texas, Bobby Wooderson, Andy Slater,
and Richard Floyd, filed a defamation suit against Linklater and Paramount in
2004, claiming that they were the basis of three central characters in the
film, and that the filmmaker didn’t get their permission to use their
likenesses/names. Linklater also mentions in the commentary track that he had a
friend named Tony who really had the Lincoln dream, so it seems many character
names were based on his real schoolmates. However, no character in
the film has the exact same name as anyone that attended school with
Linklater.
For instance, the character of
Kevin Pickford was originally Keith Pickford, but changed due to the fact that
Keith Pickford was/is a real person in Linklater’s Texas high school
life. Same deal for Bobby Wooderson changing to David Wooderson,
etc. For this reason (and others), the lawsuit from Wooderson,
Slater and Floyd was thrown out of court almost immediately.
Per Linklater: “The head of
Universal at the time of release called the movie 'the single most socially
irresponsible movie in the history of Universal.’"
During the filming of Dazed and
Confused in Texas, actress Milla Jovovich (Michelle) and actor Shawn Andrews
(Kevin Pickford) eloped to Las Vegas and tied the knot. Andrews was 21 at the
time, but since Jovovich was only 16, her mother had the marriage annulled.
At one point director Richard
Linklater had to break up a fight (or what was about to surely become a fight)
between Jason London and Shawn Andrews. Thus, the ending of the film was
eventually changed, as it was meant to feature Pickford instead of Wooderson
(McConaughey) smoking weed with the group on the 50-yard-line. As mentioned
before, the film was shot mostly chronologically, so this is why the dialogue
that exists between the characters of Floyd and Pickford is found in the first
1/3 of the film.
The statues that Michelle (Milla
Jovovich) paints over with KISS makeup were originally supposed to play a
bigger role in the film. The statues were to be shown being stolen by Pink
& Co. from in front of the local bank, before eventually being confiscated
by the cops (as seen in the deleted scenes). KISS frontman Gene Simmons
reportedly purchased the statues to add to his collection well after the movie
wrapped, and later sold them at Butterfield’s KISS auction in 2000 for
$6,000. In the original script, instead of Revolutionary-era statues
from a bank, it was a Ronald McDonald statue from a McDonald’s drive through,
but again they wouldn’t clear the use of their trademark so they had to
re-conceptualize to the bank motif. And yes, in real life Linklater
had a friend who helped steal a Ronald from the drive through and painted it
with KISS makeup.
Life imitates art: Michelle Burke
(Jodi, Mitch’s older sister who is interested in Pink but a bit hesitant
because he has a girlfriend): “At the 10-year reunion, I got completely
blitzed. I’m not a big drinker, but I was doing shots and I said to Jason, ‘I’m
curious, are you still as good a kisser as you used to be? Why don’t you show
me?’ Which didn’t go over very well with his wife.”
Anthony Rapp (Tony): “I feel like
the film has tremendous depth to it.”
At one point post-2003 but before
2011, Wiley Wiggins was working phone tech support for Apple’s Final Cut Pro
software (Wiley has done a lot of different work in the tech industry, writing
apps and programs, etc.). He gets a call from a user named Jason
London. He thinks well, this name is just a
coincidence. At the same time, it actually is THE Jason London and
when he gets assigned a call agent named Wiley, he’s like huh, must be a
coincidence. Then Jason hears the voice, and Wiley hears Jason’s
voice, and Wiley says, “Are you Jason London from Dazed and Confused?” and
Jason says yeah and Wiley says, “Hey, it’s Wiley”. Totally 100%
true. Jason tells this story with zero hesitation, while Wiley
corroborated it for the first (and possibly only time) in a 2011 interview
where he stated, “I used to work at Apple doing Final Cut Pro support, and I
took a support call from Jason London once—which was really humiliating. He’s
like, ‘You’re a Mac Genius now?’ and I’m like, ‘No, I’m a Pro apps support
specialist, Jason. It’s very different. I don’t have to wear a uniform.’”
“Not to worry, there’s a new fiesta
in the making…” – David Wooderson
Mitch (reminding me of me in High
School):
Slater to Mitch: “You cool man?”
Mitch responding: “Like how?”
Yes, Slater is always wearing that
hat. Why? Because it’s actually a hat/wig, that hair is
fake.
Slater: “Check you later!”
The fact that Mitch’s 70s shirt
blends in perfectly, even camouflages, into the blanket he and Julie are lying
on in the pre-sunrise dawn make out scene, is just amazing to me.
Goldberg: “Phenomenon? The day the
movie opened, I remember going to a bar, and somebody started talking to me
about that film, and that has been happening constantly ever since then.”
Dazed cast (plus Linklater) who worked together in the years after the movie:
Adams/Burke/Posey in The Coneheads
Adams/Posey in Sleep With Me
Adams/Powell in Bunny Whipped
Adams/Affleck in Mallrats
Adams/Affleck in Chasing Amy
Cochrane/Zellweger in Empire Records
Cochrane/Affleck in Argo
Cochrane/McConaughey in White Boy Rick
Cochrane/Wiggins/Zellweger in Love and a .45
Goldberg/Hauser in Higher Learning
Goldberg/McConaughey in EDtv
Goldberg/McConaughey in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Goldberg/Rapp in A Beautiful Mind
Goldberg/Katt/Hauser/Linklater (Goldberg as writer/director) in Scotch and Milk
Goldberg (as writer/director) and Katt in I Love Your Work
Hauser/Affleck in Good Will Hunting
Hauser/Goldberg in Running with the Devil
Hauser/Adams in The Break-Up
Posey/Ribisi in Kicking and Screaming
Posey/Katt and Linklater (as writer/director) in SubUrbia
Ribisi/Goldberg (Ribisi as writer) in Some Girl
Wiggins/Goldberg/Katt/Krizan and Linklater (as actor/writer/director) in Waking Life
McConaughey and Linklater (as writer/director) in The Newton Boys
McConaughey and Katt in A Time To Kill
McConaughey and Linklater (as writer/director) in Bernie
Cochrane and Linklater (as writer/director) in A Scanner Darkly
Katt and Linklater (as director) in School of Rock
Katt and Affleck in Boiler Room
Katt and Posey in The Doom Generation
Katt and Affleck in Phantoms
Comments
Post a Comment