Dazed and Confused

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1993

Dazed and Confused
Richard Linklater
USA, 1993
94 minutes
Colour/35mm
Production Company: Detour Film Production
Producer: James Jacks, Sean Daniel, Richard Linklater
Screenplay: Richard Linklater
Cinematography: Lee Daniel
Editor: Sandra Adair
Art Director: John Frick
Sound: Jennifer McCauley
Music: Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, War, Edgar Winter, Peter Frampton, Deep Purple, Ted Nugent, Bob Dylan, Nazareth, ZZ Top, Foghat, Black Sabbath, Sweet, Black Oak Arkansas, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Thin Lizzy, Lynyrd Skynyrd
Principal Cast: Jason London, Joey Lauren Adams, Milla Jovovich, Shawn Andrews, Rory Cochrane, Adam Goldberg, Anthony Rapp, Sasha Jenson, Marissa Ribisi, Wiley Wiggins

Crammed between the remnants of Woodstock hippietrash and the new wave of “Just Say No,” the seventies may well have been the most debauched period in American history. Fueled by an endless supply of beer, dope, fine tunes and great threads, this proto-Genex army was born in high schools throughout the continent. The wasted generation. No wars. No ideals. No plans. No problem. This is the world of Richard Linklater’s Dazed And Confused. And, in keeping with the outrageous excess and desperate directionlessness of post-Boomer life, Linklater (of Slacker fame) hangs the film on stoned personalities rather than a traditional narrative.

Everything takes place during the last day of high school in 1976, somewhere in America. Pink (Jason London) is about to become senior quarterback, but has to sign a coach’s pledge that forbids him to drink beer or smoke dope. Mitch (newcomer Wiley Wiggins) is an eighth-grader entering high school who must undergo sadistic hazing rituals, but hooks up with Pink and the party crew after the butt-slapping pain dies down. There’s lots to be impressed by in Dazed and Confused. It’s a formal triumph, at once blithely non-narrative and utterly compelling. The actors, mostly unknown, are terrific. The music—Rick Derringer, Kiss, Thin Lizzy, War, Peter Frampton and Zep—is beyond superlatives. Most impressive, though, is Linklater’s ability to capture the minutiae of seventies teen life, such as the horror of a gymnasium crammed with kids swaying to the satanic finale of “Stairway to Heaven”. But Linklater eschews easy utopias. This is an anti-nostalgia film seeking to overcome any sentimentality it might engender. As Pink says, “If these are the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.”
—Noah Cowan