400 - Dazed and Confused, United States, 1993. Dir. Richard Linklater.

Sunday, February 4, 2018

400 - Dazed and Confused, United States, 1993.  Dir. Richard Linklater.

School's out.

Time for Summer.

Time for the incoming Seniors to initiate the incoming Freshmen.

Randall Floyd is the star Senior.  He is the quarterback of the football team.  His coach has asked the players to sign a pledge that they will not abuse their bodies or get into trouble over the Summer.  But to focus on winning State this Fall.

Randall goes by Randy to the adults.  He goes by Pink to his peers.  Pink as in Pink Floyd.

Pink does not want to sign the pledge.  He intends to party.  And he wants to tell the truth about it.  The rest of the team have signed the pledge.  They are practical about it.  Sign the pledge and then do what you want.  But Pink has convictions about it.  He will not sign as a matter of principle.

Mitch Kramer is the star Freshman.  He is the pitcher of the baseball team.

He has been targeted by a group of Seniors--led by Fred O'Bannion--for a hazing by way of paddle.  The Seniors have made their own paddles during shop class.  They intend for them to hurt.

O'Bannion should be graduating.  But has has flunked his senior year.  So he will be coming back next year.  The Freshmen believe he is coming back just to be a jerk again.  A two-time jerk.

Mitch has an older sister named Jodi.  A Senior.  She approaches O'Bannion and his gang.  Please be gentle with my brother Mitch.  She has good intentions.  But her intervention only serves to make things worse.  O'Bannion intends to bust Mitch.

Mitch has a baseball game tonight.  O'Bannion will show up and taunt him throughout the game.  Mitch is a good pitcher.  They are leading 6-1 in the top of the ninth, and he is throwing strikes.  But it is hard for him to concentrate with O'Bannion's gang shouting at him through the fence.  Waving their paddles at him.  Promising what will happen after the game.

Where are the adults?  The adults of Dazed and Confused are like the adults of Peanuts.  This is a young person's world.

Mitch's friends are practical.  Carl Burns plays shortstop.  Tommy Lawson plays catcher.  They go to the mound.  They reason with him.  Please do not allow those jerks to distract you.  Concentrate on the game.  Get the strike.  Put the game away.  Oh, and would you mind please to exit out the right-field gate so that the jerks will follow you and not get us?  They are going to get you anyway, so you might as well steer them away from us.

Thanks, friends.

Yet Mitch is a friend too.  And he agrees with their logic.  He throws a strike.  He wins the game.  He exits out the right-field gate and takes a beating.

Pink gets along with everybody.  He is popular with every group.

He hangs out with the jocks.  He hangs out with the gangs.  He hangs out with the nerds.  He hangs out with the stoners.

So when they decide to have a party at Pickford's house--because his parents are going out of town--Pink invites the writers of the school newspaper just as freely as he does anyone else.  They are his friends too.  And they are there for him, to talk about his dilemma, the signing or not signing of Coach's note.

The newspaper staff includes Tony Olsen, the editor, Cynthia Dunn, a redheaded writer, who has a secret crush on him, and Mike Newhouse, a staff member who is into poker and speaks philosophically.  He will later take action at the beer bust.

Pink arrives at O'Bannion's gang as they are busting Mitch.  And pretends to take a turn with O'Bannion.  But after O'Bannion leaves, Pink is kind to Mitch.  Good to him.  He takes him under his wing.  He gives him a ride home.  He tells him how to heal his bum.  He invites him to the party tonight.

Pink will be Mitch's big brother.  His friend.

Darla is like the female O'Bannion with a dose of the female Pink.  She is in charge of the hazing of the girls.  She makes them suck pacifiers.  She makes them drop whenever she shouts Air Raid!  She, with the help of Simone and, yes, Jodi, pours flour on the Freshmen, along with ketchup and mustard and raw eggs.  The Seniors put dogs collars on the Freshmen and make them kneel at the feet of the boys and propose to them.

Darla will shout Air Raid! again at a beer bust, but otherwise, after one rough day, the Senior girls befriend the Freshmen.  And they spend the rest of the Summer as friends.

As the gang gets ready for the party, Bobby Wooderson joins them.  Wooderson has already graduated.  He too was a star football player.  And he still enjoys the glories of high school.  And the girls.  He is thinking of going to junior college, but in the mean time he has more partying to do.

All the kids converge on this one epic evening.

The last day of school.  Into the night.  Into the morning.  Everything happens in under 24 hours.  Aristotle's unity of time.

They begin with Pickford's.  The house of the party.

But the keg man arrives before the parents leave.  The parents bust him and decide to stay at home.  No more party at Pickford's.  Change of venue.

They go the Top Notch Restaurant, a hamburger drive-in joint.

They go to the Emporium Club.

They go to the Moontower at West Enfield Park.

They go to the football stadium of the Lee High Rebels.

They drive their cars.

People hang.  People fight.  People hook up.  People talk.

And with this rite of passage they launch the next phase of their lives.

Dazed and Confused is noted for its monster soundtrack.  Its muscle cars.  For capturing a time and place.  And for launching the careers of many of today's actors.

Jason London.  Joey Lauren Adams.  Rory Cochrane.  Adam Goldberg.  Anthony Rapp.  Marissa Ribisi.  Cole Hauser.

Parker Posey.  Milla Jovovich.  Ben Affleck.  Matthew McConaughey.

McConaughey had gone to UT for film school to be a director.  He had made a short film.  He was still an Austin local.  On a Thursday night he went to the bar at the top of the Hyatt.  The bartender had been his classmate in film school, so he gave him free drinks.

While there he ran into a man named Don Phillips and they started talking about golf.  They had played the same course and were talking about a particular hole.  They got drunk.  They got kicked out.

Don Phillips just happened to be a Casting Director.  He was casting Dazed and Confused.  He asked McConaughey to stop by the office the next day.  And to improvise his opening lines.

McConaughey was listening to The Doors.  A live album.  Where Jim Morrison shouts out between two songs.  So he went to the office the next day and repeated what Jim Morrison said.

And got the role.

A small role.

But while on set the actor playing Pickford did not get along with Jason London, the ostensible star of the ensemble film.  He fought.  So Richard Linklater shifted lines from him to Matthew McConaughey.  And McConaughey's small role started growing.  And getting bigger.  And he ended up in the final scenes at the football stadium and in the car driving down the highway.

Into stardom.

He began his acting career with the first words he ever uttered on film.  Words not in the script but which he made up.  After listening to The Doors.

All right.  All right.  All right.