The Hotels Behind Dazed And Confused

The Hyatt Regency Austin on the left, and the Sheraton Crest Inn 

(currently The LINE Austin) on the right, watching each other from across the Colorado River

 a/k/a Town Lake a/k/a Lady Bird Lake

When Richard Linklater got his way and Dazed and Confused was greenlit to shoot on location in Austin (and thank God he did), it meant things like locations, some casting, and a good bit of the crew would be coming from in and around the city. 

But it also meant a whole bunch of actors from around the country had to move to Austin for the summer, as well as a bunch of folks from Hollywood and Universal Studios.  And all those people coming in from out of town needed someplace to stay, and that's where a couple of hotels in Austin enter the picture and make themselves known as vital cogs in the history of Dazed and Confused.  The coolest thing is, they're basically across the river from each other.

Now, a lot of folks have heard the legend of Matthew McConaughey being discovered and cast back in 1992 in his first movie (Dazed) in a small part (Wooderson) that he turned into a big part.  You may have even heard that he was discovered in a hotel bar.  That hotel was the Hyatt Regency Austin, which still stands today, right on the south side of the Colorado River between the First Street Bridge and the South Congress Bridge.  The casting director, Don Phillips, normally stayed at the Four Seasons, but on this trip into town there were no rooms available and he was placed in the next best hotel, the Hyatt Regency.  

Today there are several other Hyatts in Austin, and I have no idea if any of them existed back in 1992 when Austin was a smaller city than it is today.  But I know that the "McConaughey Hyatt" is most definitely the Hyatt Regency because I confirmed it with an excellent source - author extraordinaire Melissa Maerz, who wrote Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, and she knows because she checked with Matthew's friend who was bartending there at the time and told him to come down because a casting director was at the bar (at least that's the version of the story I believe, it's slightly different whether you ask Matthew, his bartender pal, Don Phillips, etc).   

The Hyatt Regency Austin in August 2023. While renovated inside since 1992, 

the exterior of the building is essentially the same, although the hotel bar

 is now in the lobby, not the top floor.

At the time, the Hyatt had a bar on the top floor with amazing views of Austin.  And that's where the genesis of Wooderson as we know him began.  The top floor bar isn't there anymore, but the hotel is still lovely. I stayed there the last time I was in town and had a drink at the bar (which is now in the lobby) and closed my eyes and pretended it was all the way up top, and I could almost hear McConaughey and Phillips having a grand old time and getting throw out for it (yes, that happened, they got a little loud). 

Now, if you ever stay in the Hyatt, and you get a river view, you'll be able to look across the river and see another hotel, currently called The LINE Austin.  Before we get into the storied history of that building, I'll just note that next door to it is the Four Seasons that Don Phillips usually stayed at when in town - we'll get back to it before we wrap this up.

The LINE Austin in 2023 as seen from the Hyatt Regency. In 1992 The LINE was

 called the Sheraton Crest Inn, and served as the home of any out-of-town

 Dazed cast and crew for that summer while the film was being shot.

The LINE Austin began life as The Crest Hotel in 1965.  According to articles out there on the interwebz, the hotel's Club Seville was quite a hotspot for jazz music in Austin in its early years.  Sometime in the early 70s Sheraton bought the property and it became the Sheraton Crest Inn.  In 1992, it was acquired by Radisson.  In 2018 it became The LINE.

The Sheraton Crest Inn in the late 60s or early 70s.

Dazed was filmed in Austin during the summer of 1992, and the hotel during that exact period of time was still owned by Sheraton.  How do we know this?  Because the cast and crew say it was called "the Crest" in the Dazed oral history book.  In fact, many said it was kind of run-down at that point, although Marissa (Cynthia) Ribisi argues that the Dazed cast and crew were as much to blame for the condition of the hotel as the property itself.   Cole (Benny) Hauser said it was a dump.  Ben (O'Bannion) Affleck even said it was referred to by everybody as "The Crust".

The atmosphere during June, July and August 1992?  Well, as Wiley Wiggins puts it in the book, "All these attractive children, unsupervised!"  It was quite the scene as the cast and crew moved in for 3 months and basically took over the place.  The Sheraton Crest was essentially the off-camera version of Dazed and Confused.  Drama and romance in the rooms, the hallways, and the lobby.  As Linklater said, it was like "summer camp in Austin".  

Offscreen, friendships were made and very much like the movie, cliques were formed.  Jason (Pink) London's room looked like a "drug den", according to Sasha (Don) Jenson.  They listened to 70s music and hung out, talked, got drunk and high, and had sex (sound familiar?), and Linklater didn't want them watching the TVs in their rooms because it would bring them back into 1992 instead of 1976.  Adam (Mike) Goldberg says that the experience was like the college experience he never had.

There were lots of hookups in the Sheraton Crest!  Nicky (Clint) Katt would be returning to his room at sunrise, and he's see certain cast members coming out of another cast members' rooms.  It's where Milla Jovovich and Shawn (Pickford) Andrews developed their insanely close relationship during filming, and they were all over each other anywhere and everywhere in that hotel - the bar, the lobby, breakfast, dinner, the hallway, etc.  

And speaking of "Prickford", it was in his room at the Sheraton Crest where his castmates began to know he was an out of control ego that wouldn't work well in the ensemble vibe they were building with Linklater.  How, you say?  It's where, according to casting director Don Phillips, Shawn cut up his bed sheets into swatches to autograph and sell to the maids for $25 because "I'm gonna be a superstar!"  No wonder no one liked him, eh?

I'm not a huge collector of memorabilia, but I did locate a room key from the old Sheraton Crest Inn and in my dreams it was used by someone in the cast or crew in the Summer of 1992

Lastly, let's get back to the Four Seasons, sitting there next door to the Crest trying to be all innocent and fancy and 4 stars and above it all.  It doesn't get through this unscathed, though.  Deena (Shavonne) Martin-DeLucia's boyfriend at the time, Peter Millius, says that when the Dazed people got bored of the "Crust" they would venture over to the Four Seasons to see what they could get up to.  In the lobby, there were big Texas longhorns displayed on top of the mantlepieces, and they grabbed them, held them up to their heads, and began running into each other like they were steers fighting.  It was a lot of fun until they got thrown out.

The LINE in 2019 as seen from the river.

And that's the story of the hotels behind Dazed and Confused, all right near each other and all still standing today!  The next time you're in Austin, go stay in a piece of history and see if you can hear the ghosts of Dazed past...

To get the full background on the film and the full scope of the stories behind the hotels, I HIGHLY recommend the wonderful book by Melissa Maerz, Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused