Dazed and Confused **** (1993, Jason London, Wiley Wiggins, Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck) – Classic Film Review 856

Writer-director Richard Linklater’s 1993 follow-up to his 1991 no-budget comedy hit Slacker is one of the top 50 best ever high school movies. It confidently and compellingly focuses on a score or more characters in a wide-ranging portrait of the mid-Seventies lost youth generation, closely based on his own high school adventures.

In his story, small town Texas high-school kids in May of 1976 enjoy the last day of school and a night of fun to the sound of a great Seventies rock soundtrack selected by Linklater to represent the range of the era’s music, including of course Alice Cooper’s ‘School’s Out’ and ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’. The music rights accounted for a sixth of the whole budget but it is worth it.

The seniors are hazing the incoming freshmen, and everyone is trying to get stoned, drunk or laid. Conflict centres on whether school football quarterback Randall ‘Pink’ Floyd (played by Jason London) will sign the coach’s pledge not to use drugs or alcohol, and on freshman Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins)’s desperate efforts to survive the traditional hazing.

With its funny dialogue and strongly etched characters, Linklater’s youth movie boasts wit, ideas, edge and a strongly felt and expressed point of view that’s rare in teen movies. With its air of regretful nostalgia, it is both hilarious and strangely poignant.

Future star Matthew McConaughey is 22nd billed as David Wooderson, and looks splendidly geeky in long hair and silly moustache. McConaughey’s production company’s name, JKL Productions, comes from Wooderson’s life credo: Just Keep Livin’!

Another future star Ben Affleck has an eye-catching role as Fred O’Bannion, the oafish older guy unnaturally obsessed with using his wooden paddle to give terrified freshmen their painful rite of passage. Renée Zellweger has a very fleeting role, making an uncredited appearance as Nesi White, the girl in the blue pickup truck. Zellweger auditioned for a larger part as one of the senior girls but only got the non-speaking role.

Michelle Burke, Joey Lauren Adams, Milla Jovovich (as Michelle), Shawn Andrews (as Kevin Pickford), Rory Cochran, Adam Goldberg, Sasha Jenson, Marissa Ribisi, Anthony Rapp, Cole Hauser and Parker Posey are among the fascinating ensemble cast. Linklater has a cameo as Pinball.

1976 is the year of Alfred Hitchcock’s 53rd and last film Family Plot, which is showing at the local movie theatre.

All the wooden paddles were custom designed by the stars themselves.

While filming in Texas, Jovovich and Andrews eloped to Las Vegas and got married. Jovovich was only 16 or 17 and her mother had the marriage annulled.

Led Zeppelin recorded the song Dazed and Confused on their album Led Zeppelin 1 released in 1969.

In October 2004, three of Linklater’s former high school classmates filed a lawsuit claiming he didn’t get their permission to use their likenesses and surnames and now suffer from ridicule. Bobby Wooderson, Andy Slater and Richard Floyd, who still live in Huntsville, Texas, claimed ‘we had fun in high school’ in the lawsuit that was eventually dismissed as the statute of limitations had expired.

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