‘Dazed and Confused’ Was a “Magical Moment” That Could Never Happen Now

Richard Linklater wanted his first studio film, Dazed and Confused, to be an “anti-nostalgia” movie. After all, it was all about being a high school kid in the ’70s—which obviously sucked, right? But then, something funny happened. First, the cast and then the audience came to the opposite conclusion. For all the bad hair and warped hazing rituals and unreconstructed patriarchal bullshit, the ’70s looked like a pretty great time to be young, hot, stoned, and completely unencumbered by responsibilities.

Released in 1993, and jam-packed with future stars as yet unspoiled by success—Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Renée Zellweger, Joey Lauren Adams, Anthony Rapp, and Adam Goldberg, to name a few, plus Milla Jovovich, then the only famous one of the bunch—Dazed flopped at the box office, then almost immediately caught on as a cult phenomenon. The execs at Universal may have thought they were buying American Graffiti for a new generation, but what they got was weirder—and much cooler. There’s no corny plot to slow things down. Really, there’s no plot at all—just a deeply felt portrait of high school kids (and one notable older guy) smoking, drinking, laughing, lusting, arguing, fighting, and livin’. Just livin’, man.

For the cast, it was a hedonistic—and totally unrealistic—initiation into the world of filmmaking. Shooting in Austin, Texas, Linklater created a permissive and democratic environment where those with star quality, ingenuity, and a knack for improvisation—like McConaughey, Posey, and Adams—could grow their parts, while others, including Jovovich and her then boyfriend, Shawn Andrews, faded into the background. For Linklater, beset by dubious studio minders eager to fit his quirky vision into a proven template, it was an agonizing ordeal. And for the ’90s teens in the audience, like me, it was a thrilling “fuck you” to the world of scolding adults. To the extent that there is a plot, it centers on star quarterback Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London) and his deliberations over whether to sign an anti-drug pledge foisted on him by his coaches. “What are they gonna do next, give you guys urine tests?” scoffs his intellectual friend Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi). That line got a big laugh back then. I wonder what young people today even make of it.

Anyone young or old who wants to experience Dazed and Confused on the big screen will have a chance starting this Sunday, when theaters across the country mark the film’s 30th anniversary (Christ, has it really been that long?) with a series of “Dazed Day” screenings of a new 4K restoration. To mark the occasion, Linklater Zoomed in from his ranch in Austin to discuss the cast, the chaos, and the film’s afterlife as a beloved time capsule.

Vanity Fair: Dazed and Confused was your first studio picture, and your immediate follow-up to Slacker, a movie you made for five figures that got you tagged as a “voice of a generation.” What was that like?

Richard Linklater: There was all this Gen-X talk because of Doug Coupland’s book, Nirvana, grunge. They were just kind of putting trends together, and Slacker seemed to fit a niche. It’s kind of quaint now that mainstream culture would even give any attention to an underground, anti-establishment, anti-narrative film. It was kind of interesting, but it quickly became less interesting. What I wanted to do next was just this film about my high school life. And then that got kind of laundered into it too.

You mean the voice of a generation aspect of it?

Yeah. Even though if you really look at the dates, I’m slightly older. I was born in 1960, which is the end of the baby boom. So whatever, it’s not the kind of thing you think about when you’re trying to express yourself, but it didn’t hurt. And this is what’s lost today: the idea that you could make a weirdo film like Slacker, but it’d be a kind of a cult hit on its own indie terms, and then a studio would like your script and give you $6 million to just make a film. That is just never happening again. Studios just aren’t in that business. So I was fortunate. I wrote a script and they liked it. They thought, Oh, this could be a fun high school movie. It was kind of in a genre.

Reading the excellent oral history of Dazed by Melissa Maerz, it sounds like the head of Universal was looking for the next American Graffiti, and you can see why they would go to an anointed “voice of a generation” for that. But the script was nothing like American Graffiti. It was loose and shaggy and not really going anywhere, plot-wise.

I was doing a little bit of a shell game. My beef with most high school movies is they would have something very authentic about them, but then there would be some plot thing that seemed phony. So I thought, Could I just do the hanging-out, authentic part the whole way? How far can I push that? The sop I threw to them was to beef up this one element I remembered from playing football in high school. They thought we were all getting high, and they made us sign these anti-drug pledges. We all signed it and didn’t think that much of it, except that it was proof that the coaches didn’t trust us or were trying to control behaviors. Later, I saw it as a true violation-of-my-sovereign-rights kind of thing. So I boosted that, but it’s still a small-potatoes plotline. I think we were so low-budget by studio terms that they really were just throwing some dice in a corner. We were not their big concern.

Well, it was thrilling to us in the ’90s, the freedom that was represented in the film and the righteous anger the kids felt at the encroachment of it. Now, it all feels like a relic—the’ 90s and the ’70s all feel like relics of a pre-iPhone era.

Oh, yeah. You look back and think, we were a neglected generation, but the upside of that was: look what you could get away with. You thought, Oh, poor me. No one cares about me. And then you get to a certain age and you’re like, Good. I’m going to take advantage of that.

Let’s talk about the casting. So many incredible actors were in the film. Joey Lauren Adams said in the oral history, “For a lot of us, getting cast in Dazed and Confused is our origin story.” Tell me about how you approached the whole thing.

I remember asking the head of casting at the studio. I said, “This is a great opportunity. I’ve got all these great young parts for young actors.” And I guess teen movies weren’t the big thing at that moment. So I asked around and they were like, “Oh, there’s nobody.” And I just knew that to be untrue on a talent level. But that freed us up to get the best people. And again, a notion that would never happen today: that you could make a film with largely unknowns. Now they’re in a studio-backed feature. That’s a big leap for people. It certainly was for me.

It was Matthew McConaughey’s first onscreen appearance, and he became the breakout star. But his role as Wooderson, the creepy but weirdly charming guy who likes high school girls because he gets older and they stay the same age, was much smaller in the original script. Was there a moment when you realized he was doing something really special?

It was his audition. He had famously met [casting director] Don Phillips in the [hotel] bar, but at some point, he had to come meet me and see if he’s my Wooderson. At first glance, he wasn’t right for the part. He was too good-looking, too clean-cut. But when we started talking about Wooderson, he says, “I’m not this guy, but I know this guy,” and that’s all an actor needs. He told me later that he was doing his middle brother, Pat. I said, “OK, don’t shave. Don’t cut your hair. We’re going to mess you up a little bit.”

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And then because of your somewhat unorthodox approach to making the film, there was room for his character to grow once you realized what an incredible performance he was doing.

I invited all of them to bring themselves to it. I said, “I don’t want to do the script word for word. This isn’t a play. I want you to breathe some life into this.” We’re not improvising on camera. We’re just building their characters out and trying to make the scenes work and find humor and meaning. And so that was the assignment. That’s what we were all in on, and some actors had that ability. Matthew was able to do that. He just had ideas and he was good. To the very end, we were incorporating things.

It seems like the actors were having the time of their lives. But it was a tough shoot for you, wasn’t it? You were fighting every step of the way.

It was a very bifurcated experience. I was very aware they were having fun. It was summer camp. But for me, it was my trial by fire. I think every filmmaker has to do it. It was the first time I was making a film with someone else’s money, and it wasn’t just a producer, it was a studio. At the same time, the zeitgeist of that era was real anti-sellout. So I also had this pressure that, oh, Mr. Indie is now Mr. Sellout. I learned a lot, and I’ve never had that problem since, but it was a psychic battle. I wasn’t in over my head, but I was definitely up to my nostrils.

That’s a tough position to be in. You’re fighting for your vision.

I love the film industry. No one’s a bad person. Everybody wants this to be a good film, and they’ve trusted me. I guess my complaint was, even though it was my third feature, they still treat you like you’re a first-timer. The default assumption is you don’t know what you’re doing. I would say, “Hey, I want a helicopter shot.” And they would just laugh. It was just kind of a blanket disrespect. You just have to get used to it. I was the freshman being initiated. They were all O’Bannions to me. On one hand, I had PTSD. I still do. But on the other, I’m super grateful that these people, bless them, took a chance with me and made this movie. It exists.

It seems to have evolved into more of a party movie than you imagined in the first place. And to the extent that it was intended to be “anti-nostalgic,” that seems to not have worked out. How do you feel now about the reaction to the film, the people who love it, the reasons they love it?

It’s so wild. I guess I was inside the movie. I was living it. I remember those times, like age 17. I was never more existentially alienated from the world than I was at that age. And yet on paper, I was having a good time. And I think it was the same way with the film. I started from this pretty angsty, interior, dark place. These were not great memories, all of them. Aimless youth riding around, wasting your time, the meanness of the initiation rituals, the alienation. But maybe I’m a clown. I knew it was funny too. So I’m kind of laughing at it, but it’s hitting old wounds in my own psyche. I had a lot of dark thinking and existential thinking in the script, but those scenes just didn’t really come alive the same way. I mean, there’s hints of it, but it just wanted to be a party movie. It’s just, Hey, we’re rock and rolling. Let’s have a beer, let’s have fun. What can I say? Looking back, you remember the good times and you neutralize the bad.

I was a pretty countercultural, pissed off lefty teenager, and I experienced it as a rebellious movie. It was a movie that made me want to party, but in a spirit of rebellion. I think that’s there.

Oh yeah, I think that’s there. “Fuck the man. Fuck the authority.” It can’t help but have that, because that’s how you feel at that age. But then it’s all these ridiculous adults. They’re just kind of in your face. The coaches, the neighbor who you busted his mailbox, but so what? You know, they’re in your face. These adults, what are they so obsessed with? Get a life. So I was trying to capture that, how ridiculous a lot of the teachers and adults are.

You’ve obviously made a lot of films that echo your own life, and you have talked about how you’re represented by two characters, Pink and Mitch, in Dazed and Confused. But is there any other character you’d want to make a new film about?

Oh gosh. No. I couldn’t. That would be hard to decide. Each one of them in my mind has their own little film or their own sequel.

Can you tell me about where, in your mind, any of the other characters ended up?

I don’t know. It was a fun thing to talk about with cast members over the years. What would they be doing now? I feel like I’d be invading the space of an actor if I told them what they did all those years later. They’d be like, No, that’s not what happened. But I’d be very curious, especially the young ladies: Christine Harnos’s character, Kaye; Parker’s character; Joey; Michelle [Burke, who plays Mitch’s popular older sister, Jodi]. I wonder what’s in store for them.

There was some criticism that the film was more tilted toward the men and the women didn’t get as much airtime. Do you think there’s truth to that?

That’s my failure. If you read the original script, I did have much more of the female characters. But the shoot was like high school. The young men just totally swamped the whole place with their testosterone and their aggressiveness and their humor. The women had to kind of fight for their space, and it was a losing battle. I’m just glad I had actors like Parker and Joey, Michelle Burke, Marissa. They’re wonderful. They did their best and I think they did a great job. It was just, they were facing an onslaught. So that’s why I think the film is—I’m glad people like it, but I see where I came up short.

My very next film, Before Sunrise, I really tried to rectify that. I was going to make a film about a young man and woman and have it truly be 50-50. I really wanted that feminine voice.

Anything else you want to tell the fans as they head out to see it in theaters?

Just do what they did back then. This film was a cult film out of the gate. It went from theatrical to midnight, and people were getting high. And that’s when I realized, Oh, I’ve made a party film. That’s not a bad thing. I like that genre. And that’s why I think you can keep coming back to it. There’s not a plot point that gets old once you’ve seen it seven times. Maybe you know what’s coming, but it’s not that big a deal. It doesn’t really matter. What’s coming is time is going by and it’s getting later and you’re getting more drunk or high.

Today, it reads as nostalgic not only for the ’70s but for the ’90s too.

It was ultimately kind of a magical moment that we were given, the actors and myself and everyone working on it. And it’s funny what time has done to it too. In 1992, when we shot it, 1976 was only 16 years before that. Add 31 years to that, it’s all becoming a blur. I saw a scratchy print of it maybe 20 years ago, and it hit me. I was like, Oh, it’s a drive-in movie from the ’70s. So I don’t know if a 4K restoration that looks perfect is the thing. It should be kind of faded and scratchy. So I apologize for the perfectness of the 4K restoration. We should have put in scratches and maybe a weird reel change or little flaws of wear and tear. I really do want people to think we dropped a camera down in 1976 and just filmed what was going on in these people’s lives on that night.

For more information about “Dazed Day” screenings, check local listings for participating theaters and showtimes.