Dazed and Confused

Richard Linklater built the picture out of his own adolescence: names borrowed from former classmates in Huntsville, Texas, shooting around Austin, Bedichek Middle School standing in for the fictional high school. No single lead, no central conflict: the last day of school runs as threads brushing past one another. The edit came down from 165 minutes to 102, and a number of darker scenes went with it. The set ran on the same slack: the cast picked their own clothes, Parker Posey and Joey Lauren Adams wrote extra scenes for their characters, and Wooderson’s part grew as another actor’s shrank. Matthew McConaughey improvised “all right, all right, all right” at the burger stand, thinking of a live Jim Morrison recording. 30 songs went in and the music strained the budget. Jimmy Page cleared the Led Zeppelin track wanted for the closing scene; Robert Plant did not. Gramercy sold the film as a stoner comedy, smiley face poster included, over Linklater’s objection. It opened in 183 theatres and stopped at $7.9 million in North America. A good fit if you want the day shown as it passes rather than tied into a knot, with driving around town as the scene itself. Not for anyone who needs the film to judge the freshmen being hunted, paddled and doused in condiments.