My 2020 Post-(Virtual) Reunion Analysis Part III

Here is Part III of my Dazed and Confused Virtual Reunion analysis and recap. If you missed Part I, check it out here.  If you missed Part II, you can find that one here.

So far I've touched on just a few or the original cast and their performances, so let's dive further into that topic.  First up is Jason London (Pink).  Jason delivered some inspired lines, but his performance was very uneven.  Here's the thing about Jason that frankly annoyed me during the entire script read, and it only partly touches on the way he handled Rory's issues.  He was kinda all over everyone's case the entire night.  He almost seemed to try to take over the role of narrator/guide from Reitman.  He told Michelle Burke (Jodi) to get closer to her mic, and when Ricky Whittle was late/slow on delivering a line as Mr. Pickford he jumped all over him, yelling "who is playing Dad, come on!".  And as mentioned in Part II, he was pretty rough on Rory (Slater).  

The thing is, Jason made his own mistakes left and right.  You know how many people jumped on him for it?  Not one.  No one told him to get it together, or yelled, or seemed frustrated.  And Jason had a lot of gaffes.  Right off the bat, the very first scene when he was muted and seemed lost in his parking lot scene with Joey Lauren Adams (Simone).  He came in very late on his first line during the first ever Wooderson scene when they pick up Mitch (the "be a lot cooler if you did" scene). He was really late and lost going into the keg in the woods kissing scene with Jodie.  He pretended to throw the car keys to Wooderson before he said the "Reefer on One, Marijuana on Two" lines, which made no sense.  He had a lot of issues staying centered on his camera and at best you saw just part of his face during a bunch of lines.  Jason seemed to very much enjoy listening to and laughing at a lot of the classic scenes and lines that others delivered, and he laughed and reacted at them.  But when delivering some of his lines he seemed to want to just get it over with.  Sometimes his delivery was robotic as if he was just reading the script for the first time.  He did have a random piece of paper to serve as the pledge sheet, so props for bringing a prop.

OF COURSE it was great to have him there, wouldn't want anyone else playing Pink, and none of this is a big deal, but if he jumped all over some of his castmates then I'm gonna give him a bit of the business for it here.  

Michelle Burke as Jodi was a bit uneven.  She was certainly into it, but her technical setup seemed less than ideal, with no headphones, and she was often too far away from her mic and a lot of her lines were lost due to automatic muting because she wasn't using headphones.  She did get lost a few times, too, and found it hard to stay centered just like Jason.  But she ended her last line with a genius move, as she took a joint out and lit up as she and Kaye (Christine Harnos) delivered the lines walking off after the beer bust is over.  Her lines for the night were over, so she toked up.  That was a boss move!

Parker Posey (Darla), really enjoyed herself!  She lovingly dove right back into Darla and was visibly into delivering her infamous lines, including Air Raid and wipe that face off your head, bitch!  She messed up a bit on the beer bust air raid scene, she didn't laugh at Tony which is a favorite detail of mine, but she was still overall great.  If she was in her New York apartment, I bet the neighbors wondered what was going on with her yelling all of the Darla lines.  The coup de grace was her pouring out something all over the table or dresser in front of her during the food parking lot scene.  I don't know what they hell it was (not even sure it was a squeeze bottle), but she was definitely trying to recreate that as best she could in real life.

Matthew McConaughey as Wooderson.  Well, he delivered every line perfectly, including all the infamous ones.  The best word to describe his performance was smooth.  No hiccups, laid back, very Wooderson.  As noted previously, he helped out Jason when he was missing or lost page 93 at the very end.  He did have a small delay on his audio which was slightly distracting from a visual perspective but no big deal.  The most jarring thing about Wooderson this night was that he had on reading glasses!

Christin Hinojosa reprising her role as freshman Sabrina was fantastic.  She had the subtle, quiet Sabrina vibe going on and it was so good to see her again!  She had no issues at all and really did a great job.

Marissa Ribisi reprised her role as Cynthia and did a fine job.  She really delivered her lines pretty much just like in the movie and was always on time, unmuted and ready to go.  Just rock solid Cynthia, especially during the scene at the Top Notch.

Anthony Rapp (Tony) was wonderful.  Just like Marissa, he was always ready, always unmuted when he needed to be, and really did that whole Tony thing.  The many scenes with Cynthia, Tony and Mike were great because they all were so smooth together, just perfect.  The good night driveway kissing scene between Tony and Sabrina was just as sweet as the movie, they even kissed the camera at the same time for effect.  

Adam Goldberg (Mike Newhouse).  Folks, I've made no secret that I like Adam a lot.  I think he's a great actor and seems like a really good guy.  We have a lot in common, and that helps.  So maybe I am biased, but I have to hand it to Adam and I'm going to go on for a bit about it here.  First, Adam dressed as his character.  Yeah, he didn't shave his beard or anything, but it shows effort.  He even added the flannel shirt for the evening scenes.  Second, he was on top of it from a technical aspect, no late lines, never lost.  Third, he improvised updated versions of some of his biggest lines and it was all hilarious.  Let me do a quick rundown:

- instead of "You're telling me, I'm being stalked by a Nazi", it was "You're telling me, I'm being stalked by flat-earther Fonzie".

- instead of "dominant male monkey motherfucker", it was "dominant male MAGA motherfucker"

- right after Pink and Wooderson break up the fight, Adam added the lines "You motherfucking fascist!" and followed up with "You're gonna be changing my fucking oil in a decade, you cunt!"

The fight scene prompted narrator Jason Reitman to say, "This is the most Daniel Day (Lewis) performance of this script of all time".  Adam was screaming so loud that he apparently blew out his mic.  No one from the original cast, and I mean no one, brought it to this table read like Adam Goldberg.  My hat is off, sir.

Sasha Jensen as Don - one of everyone's favorite characters.  Sasha did a fantastic job, and had that 1992 Don energy and pacing when he delivered the lines.  He was definitely into it and it was great to see him again.  He even pulled out a beer for prop effect a few times (although I think he was just having a beer at the same time, lol). Don Dawson was pretty perfect in this table read.

Deena Martin as Shavonne.  Deena did well, had no issues, delivered her lines pretty well.  The jarring thing is that she now has very dark hair, and obviously she was very blonde in the movie, and was wearing glasses so I did a double take every time she was on screen.  Not that she looked bad (no one looked bad at all - newsflash, people age!), just very different from the movie.

Let's get into Mitch's freshman crew - Carl, Hirshfelder, and Tommy, played by Esteban Powell, Jeremy Fox and Mark Vandermeulen, respectively.  Great to see them all again.  Jeremy and Mark did very well with their lines.  Esteban not so much in my opinion.  His delivery and cadence was weird, not much like the movie at all and he seemed to be trying to remember the lines from his head instead of the page.  Mark gets the award for not having aged at all, I think if he shaved off his beard he would be an exact match to his 1992 movie self.

Catherine Avril Morris as Julie, Mitch's older (by one year, ha) love interest.  She did a great job, exact match to the movie, and wherever she was in her house Zooming, she had a Dazed movie poster hanging up on the wall behind her which was awesome to see!  Her performance in the movie was really natural, just like Wiley's so they always worked well together on screen and did the same for the reunion script read.

Last but definitely not least, Wiley Wiggins as Mitch Kramer.  Wiley did a wonderful job and really put in effort to deliver his lines.  He was on top of it all night and never missed a beat.  His scenes with Julie were really perfect.  He had another great moment when he just totally cracked up laughing during the climbing the moontower scene.  Rory's delivery was rather unusual and slow (as it was all night) and it was a very funny moment, I was laughing out loud the entire scene.  Wiley nailed it for the last scene when he comes in at dawn.  He was doing the Zoom call from a bedroom and after delivering the last line he unplugged his headphones, walked over to the bed, laid down and put them on again and folded his hands behind his head.  Totally amazing!  The wall above him had the word Vote on it and the nightstand had a lava lamp too!

Reitman did a decent job keeping it together.  You could hear the cast reacting to some of the more famous lines, which was a great thing.  They did make use of some silent clips from the film to help some scenes and transitions, which was a great idea.  The narration also made frequent mention of some of the classic songs from the film which couldn't be played but it didn't matter, I heard them in my head.

All things considered, I don't think we could have hoped for a better script read.  I tried to temper my high expectations, but once it started everything fell into place and the little things (tech issues, cast losing their place) didn't matter at all.  The gang was back together, all was right with the world for an hour and 47 minutes, and I still had the Q&A to look forward to.  There was absolutely nothing to complain about, that's for sure.  The other script reads I've seen in Covid times had more issues than Dazed.

Speaking of the Q&A...this Part III is getting pretty long so guess what that means?  Yup, the Q&A will be covered in Part IV.  I haven't had a chance to re-watch the Q&A section yet and refine the notes I made on the night of, so let me do that and I'll be back in a flash.  Stay tuned!