Universal STILL doesn't know what to do with this movie - Wooderson content!
OK, so we all know from reading this blog how tied to the movie Matthew McConaughey is, and how he continues to slip in references from it into a lot of the stuff he does. For a recent instance from 2019, let's look at the 3rd season of True Detective.
You'll remember that McConaughey and Woody Harrelson starred in the 1st season of True Detective and apparently one of the parts of their deal to do it involved the two being executive producers for subsequent seasons. I liked season 1, season 2 was fairly awful, and season 3 seems ok so far. But in the first episode of season 3, a high school kid driving an old Volkswagen Beetle picks up a few other kids, and one has to squeeze into the back seat. As he does so, the driver says "Hey, watch the leather, man". Classic Wooderson, right? One of the kids who goes missing also has a 1976 Bicentennial patch on his backpack. Season 3 of True Detective take place in multiple time periods, but the earliest in 1980 so there was really no need to shoehorn a visual reference to 1976 (the year Dazed takes places) other than wanting to reference Dazed and Confused.
Anyway, Universal still owns this movie (the Gramercy sub-studio imprint that it was released under is long gone - didn't even make it a decade past Dazed's release), and they are not above promoting it even in this day and age when it's moved from cult classic to just classic. I am willing to concede that the biggest star from this movie, at least in 2019 and likely for the foreseeable future if not forever, is Matthew McConaughey. You can make an argument for Ben Affleck, but I'm not buying it. Plus Ben is a dirty Red Sox fan from Boston, so I have some bias. Yes, dear reader, Moontower Man is a Yankees fan.
Recently, Universal apparently felt the need to remind everyone on YouTube that McConaughey was in Dazed and Confused and that it was his "breakout" role (I can't argue there, and also it was his first role of any kind). And so they decided to release a montage of all his lines in the movie on their YouTube channel. I applaud this as it can only bring to light how amazing the performance is, and it further promotes the movie for anyone that hasn't seen it.
But this is Universal. The names and faces may have changed since 1992 when Richard Linklater was making this movie, but the stupidity remains the same. Have a look:
Yes, let's take the time to cobble together all of Matt's scenes in Dazed and Confused, but somehow we're going to do it out of order. Not totally randomly out of order, mind you, but carefully constructed so that they start with his first scene in the film and basically kind of follow the arc of the plot, but also making sure they jump around and get a lot of things out of sequence.
They started with his first scene, and ended with his last scene, indicating they were going for some sort of chronological order, But what's in between is just an out of order mess. If you've read my Extended Analysis post here on the blog - here - you'll know the struggles that Linklater had getting this film made, and that this is nothing but expected from Universal.
Again, anything promoting this film is great in my book, but I would expect the actual studio that it came out of to do a better job than that. And speaking of Wooderson and True Detective, here's a mashup well-done by PRI Public Radio International. Check out that 1st season of True Detective, it's pretty good.
You'll remember that McConaughey and Woody Harrelson starred in the 1st season of True Detective and apparently one of the parts of their deal to do it involved the two being executive producers for subsequent seasons. I liked season 1, season 2 was fairly awful, and season 3 seems ok so far. But in the first episode of season 3, a high school kid driving an old Volkswagen Beetle picks up a few other kids, and one has to squeeze into the back seat. As he does so, the driver says "Hey, watch the leather, man". Classic Wooderson, right? One of the kids who goes missing also has a 1976 Bicentennial patch on his backpack. Season 3 of True Detective take place in multiple time periods, but the earliest in 1980 so there was really no need to shoehorn a visual reference to 1976 (the year Dazed takes places) other than wanting to reference Dazed and Confused.
Anyway, Universal still owns this movie (the Gramercy sub-studio imprint that it was released under is long gone - didn't even make it a decade past Dazed's release), and they are not above promoting it even in this day and age when it's moved from cult classic to just classic. I am willing to concede that the biggest star from this movie, at least in 2019 and likely for the foreseeable future if not forever, is Matthew McConaughey. You can make an argument for Ben Affleck, but I'm not buying it. Plus Ben is a dirty Red Sox fan from Boston, so I have some bias. Yes, dear reader, Moontower Man is a Yankees fan.
Recently, Universal apparently felt the need to remind everyone on YouTube that McConaughey was in Dazed and Confused and that it was his "breakout" role (I can't argue there, and also it was his first role of any kind). And so they decided to release a montage of all his lines in the movie on their YouTube channel. I applaud this as it can only bring to light how amazing the performance is, and it further promotes the movie for anyone that hasn't seen it.
But this is Universal. The names and faces may have changed since 1992 when Richard Linklater was making this movie, but the stupidity remains the same. Have a look:
Yes, let's take the time to cobble together all of Matt's scenes in Dazed and Confused, but somehow we're going to do it out of order. Not totally randomly out of order, mind you, but carefully constructed so that they start with his first scene in the film and basically kind of follow the arc of the plot, but also making sure they jump around and get a lot of things out of sequence.
They started with his first scene, and ended with his last scene, indicating they were going for some sort of chronological order, But what's in between is just an out of order mess. If you've read my Extended Analysis post here on the blog - here - you'll know the struggles that Linklater had getting this film made, and that this is nothing but expected from Universal.
Again, anything promoting this film is great in my book, but I would expect the actual studio that it came out of to do a better job than that. And speaking of Wooderson and True Detective, here's a mashup well-done by PRI Public Radio International. Check out that 1st season of True Detective, it's pretty good.
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