Austin, Texas and this film - a more personal Dazed blog

No matter what you've read about it, let's get one thing out of the way: the movie is absolutely not set in Austin.  Austin is where Linklater was living when the movie was made, and most filming happened in Austin, but it was a stand-in, 1992-era backdrop for his pre-teenage and teenage experiences in smaller Texas towns like Hunstville, which is smaller than Houston or Austin (and geographically north of Houston and east of Austin).

Yes, you may have seen many things over the years like this Daily Beast article that says "the movie is set on May 28, 1976, during the last day of high school in the suburbs of Austin, Texas".  But leave it to Texas Monthly to set the record straight in this article, with a cool note about a special college scholarship available only to Huntsville High School attendees, and even cooler because it was released on the 25th anniversary of the release of the movie.  And it has a cool conversation with Richard Linklater, who refutes the movie being set in Austin, so there you have it.

In actuality, they don't ever mention the state let alone the city/town during the movie.  OK, yes, they are driving to Houston to get Aerosmith tickets, so it's fair to assume it's set in Texas.  More on that in a few sentences. Once you hear they can drive to Houston and you've seen that the high school is "Lee High School" and the mascot name is "Fighting Rebels", you're pretty sure you're watching something set south of the Mason-Dixon line.  You also get the distinct impression that this is a fairly small town in the South.  Austin is kind of a big city (nowadays for sure, but even back then).  However, it may not be Texas!  Check out Google Maps and you'll see that the state line with Louisiana is closer to Houston than Austin is.  Lake Charles is as close or closer to Houston than Austin any way you want to cut it, mileage or as the crow flies (more of the ride from Lake Charles is on major highways with higher speed limits - theoretically, of course, and may not apply to high people in Melba Toast 😃).

But that's only if you watch the film in a bubble or have no experience with this area of Texas.  As mentioned, Dazed is set in a smaller town in Texas (I could say small town but this place seems maybe a bit bigger than a "small" town).  Everything points to that, let's be real.

So what does it mean that this film takes place in Texas and how does Austin fit into that?  Is Austin present in the film other than being the backdrop?  Was it simply used because it is where Linklater had filmed Slacker two or three years earlier?  Let's discuss.

In reality, he was probably lucky that Universal allowed filming in Austin, let alone a smaller town in Texas.  They could've insisted he spend his (their) budget money on location and actors, and filmed it in LA's suburbs.  They could've forced Brendan Fraser into the role of Pink and filmed the high school scenes on some set or an LA area high school.  But thanks to Richard, and Slacker, and luck, we have the amazing thing we have, filmed in Austin and starring some very important local talent that maybe never would've been discovered at all had it not been filmed where it was.

What I mean to say is, Austin was big and cool enough to film Slacker there and to get attention for it to be released and give Linklater a resume to go on.  I suppose it could be argued that Linklater's next move should've been another super-low budget film like Slacker that again takes place in Austin, or some other smaller city.  But he'd already done that with Slacker, and could probably make such a film anytime he wanted to at that point.  Luckily, he decided his next film should be different, a studio collaboration with some money behind it, because we got Dazed and Confused.  

I should mention that I have more than Dazed roots in Austin.  Austin is a very important city to me, even though I never stepped foot in it until 2019.  If you read the blog you know that I love the Dazed soundtrack, and that's because I grew up worshiping classic rock.  Most of that was popular heavy metal and hard rock like Zeppelin, etc.  But a modern blues master named Stevie Ray Vaughan hit me square in the face around 1984-1985.  Stevie was born in Dallas but in his teens he adopted Austin as his hometown, having moved there in 1971 (which is the exact same year The Top Notch opened in Austin! I'm trying to keep you Dazed fans involved as I go off on my little tangent here, ok?).

Around 2016-2017 I started to realize that the locations where Dazed was shot in Austin were mostly still around.  I googled and found a few videos on youtube, as well as a few websites with pictures and information.  No matter what my Dazed filming location experiences (which I am hoping to finally document over this COVID winter), I still consider the gold standard Dazed filming location material to be what I've set out in this post and this post, and all kudos go to others.  BUT I knew that I had to see these locations for myself.  I like a lot of films and movies.  With very few exceptions (and all of those are in Los Angeles, a place I would travel to anyway), I cannot see myself planning a visit to any other filming locations for anything.  For example: Fargo?  I love the movie and the series, love love love them.  No interest in going to Minnesota to see the filming locations, zero.  John Hughes movies filmed in Chicago?  Nah, Kevin McCallister's house and Neal Page's house look the same to me (in reality, they aren't the same house), and I can't imagine planning a trip to Chicago to figure it out. Nothing against Minnesota or The Windy City.  Dazed is just a different thing and level altogether.   

So where are we here?  Ah yes, two of my heroes, people who've produced some of the most important art I've ever consumed, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Richard Linklater, were both born in Texas and both decided to move to Austin because it was a place that called them.  It whispered to them.  Come to me and I will make you feel better about your calling in life, your creative outlet that needs to be satisfied.  Austin, especially in the 70s and 80s, was radically different than the rest of Texas.  Austin's music and art scene was like a beacon in the night for people like Stevie and Rick.

Once in Austin, they both met the right people to get them through it, to further their goal.  Eventually they both moved on, but also stayed put.  They both achieved success greater than Austin, TX, but always gave back to Austin, TX.  That's part of why they are among my heroes, and why Austin is so important to this film.  For example, without everything Linklater did before 1992, this film wouldn't have been made in Austin.  If it wasn't made in Austin, we wouldn't have local Austin actors in it like Wiley Wiggins, Matthew McConaughey, and Renee Zellweger (even if she had no lines).  The same goes for some smaller but amazing performances in the film by various other locals.

So the answer to Austin's involvement in Dazed is: no it wasn't set in Austin (it was just filmed in Austin) and even though that's the case, Austin is a huge part of the movie and it's safe to say the movie may not even exist without Austin.  It certainly wouldn't be the same without it.