Richard Linklater says he still has “PTSD” from filming Dazed And Confused
Aux Features Dazed and Confused
Dazed And Confused is groovy as hell, its realistic look at high school, countless quotable lines, and stellar, mid-70s soundtrack establishing it as a top-tier teen movie. For director Richard Linklater, however, thinking about the film brings back some slightly traumatizing memories of a troubled production and meddling studio executives. In a piece for The Guardian, Linklater discusses what made Dazed And Confused such a difficult experience.
“I still have PTSD when I think of how difficult the shoot was. About a month before we started filming, Tom Pollock, the head of Universal, watched Slacker, at which point he realized who he was doing business with and he thought, ‘Oh no, it’s going to be one of those arty, jerk-offski movies,’” Linklater says, noting how the studio was nervous about the amount of improvisation that was going to be featured in the film. “Everyone was on high alert for me after that.”
Things didn’t get easier once principle photography was done, either. Linklater went to Los Angeles to finish up the post-production and Universal generously put him up in some “soulless corporate accommodation.” What was meant to be a quick process continued to drag on as executives attempted to tweak Linklater’s vision in order to improve the ratings from test screening audiences. “They wanted me to put in modern music or reshoot. But I didn’t take any of their dumb ideas,” Linklater says.
In the end, Dazed In Confused barely made its money back at the box office and Linklater never saw a dime in profits. Since then, however, it has become a widely appreciated cult classic, adored by generations of teens who have no frame of reference for the time period in which it’s set. We can only hope that Richard Linklater can find some solace in other people’s enjoyment of a thing that was, at times at least, a real drag to make.
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61 Comments
‘Oh no, it’s going to be one of those arty, jerk-offski movies.’Movie execs – they’re just like us!
I first read ‘jerk-offski’ as ‘jet-ski’ and thought there was a whole genre of movies I was unaware of.
There was! 1998 was the year of the jet ski – set off by this classic:but that kind of set an impossibly high bar that even “Hard Rain” with its “Jet skis inside a house” couldn’t clear.
And then “Speed 2″ came out and put the kabosh on jet skis in movies.
Good lord, modern music? Now I’m just picturing Green Day or Snoop Dogg kicking in during a scene set in 1976.
as the teens drink during the Keg party at the water tower, Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It” plays during this scene. seriously, someone on the twitter verse should create an account with scenes from Dazed and Confused” set to “modern music”, as the film execs wanted.
Snow’s “Informer” plays when the beer keg is delivered early and the dad says, “We’re not going anywhere.”
Add a record scratch for true 90s authenticity.
1976? Oh, no no no, I’m imagining a lot of ADR work to make the setting current too.“Thank you, students, for wearing period-appropriate clothing and participating in Vintage Week.”
“Hey, man, when are you gonna start driving something more modern?”
“Hey, what day is it?” “It is May 28, 1993.” “Thanks, I almost forgot, I’m so…dazed, and confused.”etc.
That’s the title! They can’t cut that!
When I hear stories like that, it just drives home the idea that Hollywood
executives as a group have
about as much understanding of the tastes and behaviors of younger
people as a hypothetical visiting alien from a distant galaxy would. Yet
because they are surrounded by yes men, they have no idea they are
incompetent and think they are insightful brilliant.
I mean, I can just picture a meeting:“You know, our
research indicates that young people don’t like to listen to older
music. It reminds them too much of their parents. So maybe instead of
Fog Hat you could include… what’s his name? Snoop Dog?”As
if some teenager who wouldn’t be interested in watching this film to
begin with would hear it in the preview and be like, “Sweet, I’m totally
down to go see this 70’s set coming of age hangout movie because there is the music that my generation is listening to now in the soundtrack!”The studio did pretty much everything within its power to bury this upon its release; I am glad it has found an audience in spite of their shortsightedness.
Agreed. My favorite example of this in action and it’s satisfying conclusion: With The Elephant Man, Brooks defied studio convention by hiring an avant-garde director to helm a major production, shooting the film in black and white, and refusing to allow studio brass to tamper with Lynch’s vision. When shown a cut of the film, Paramount executives recommended that the surreal opening and closing sequences be removed from the film. According to Cornfeld, Brooks tersely responded, “We are involved in a business venture. We screened the film for you to bring you up to date as to the status of that venture. Do not misconstrue this as our soliciting the input of raging primitives.” Brooks’s stubbornness was rewarded, as the film garnered eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Director and Actor.
The only response is: “Would it kill you to play some fucking Fog Hat?”
“Shakedown 1979 / Cool kids never have the time…”
Should have been all synthesized EDM music, like Skrillex. Or sampled backtracks on Gangster Rap. It helps set the right vibes for a period piece, no?
“Never saw a dime in profits.”Surely he gets some amount from DVDs, TV, streaming, etc? I understand Hollywood accounting is such that most movies never actually “turn a profit,” but this makes it seem like he worked for free and never made any money off his creation.
If I had seen Slacker before Dazed and Confused I probably never would have watched Dazed and Confused.
I didn’t see this movie for at least a decade after it came out, precisely because I assumed it would be the sort of movie the studio pressured Linklater to make. Once I saw it,I felt stupid for having slept on it so long.
Pictured: studio executive, to Linklater:
I’m adding “jerk-offski” to my repetoire of pejoratives.
Hey, don’t be such a jabroni, ya jagoff!
Racist.
That’s what you call a show off on a jet ski.
Listen, Mikhail Jerkoffski was an extremely important figure in early post-Soviet Latvian cinema and I will not hear you sully his good name!
A gross misunderstanding of PTSD, Mr. Linklater.
But he had to stay in “soulless corporate accommodation” – how can you not pity the poor bastard!
(Though I do have sympathy for Linklater, an unpleasant working environment can be a very shitty thing to have to deal with).
Is it though? PTSD can be experienced by people who suffered a trauma of any sort. If it was a stressful/traumatic experience for him, then it seems pretty possible that he’d have recurring, stressful thoughts associated with this time period.
There’s still a fairly large percentage of people who don’t understand that trauma and stress happen to people and places that have nothing to do with military combat.
It’s a joke, dude.
You his spokesman or something?
Or: he’s joking.
Doesn’t it have to rise to the level of interfering with usual activities to be a disorder? Like how someone who cleans things well beyond hygiene requirements doesn’t necessarily have OCD.
Yeah, and his use of “soulless corporate accommodation” make him sound like a pretentious arthouse snowflake who’s just upset they didn’t let him film in black/white.
‘Oh no, it’s going to be one of those arty, jerk-offski movies,’But enough about Boyhood, am I right?
“Linklater never saw a dime in profits”It would be a lot cooler if he did
I’d say that he ended up doing all right, all right all right.
“I still wake up every night, soaked in cold, sour sweat,
the tail end of a scream fleeing my throat, remembering the editing process. My
God, the horrors of post. You think you understand? When you put your hands in
a pile of tape that used to be your best friend’s performance, then you’ll
understand.” ~ Richard Linklater, Hearts of Dazedness
“They wanted me to put in modern music or reshoot. But I didn’t take any of
their dumb ideas,” Linklater says.Still, it was dumb of him to pass on that big mechanical spider.
it’s funny, but every movie I’ve seen which claimed to be an “accurate representation” of high school has been almost- but not quite- entirely unlike high school was for me. most of the time they seem to be an accurate representation of what adults think they remember high school was like for either the people they never talked to, or the people they wish they were back then.
It was rather close to my high school experience but a decade later. My school actually “auctioned” off the Freshman to Seniors as a fund raiser and the hazing was completely out of control, which the school just looked the other way. It could NEVER be done now.
I’d almost say it was like the school EXPECTED the seniors to police/humiliate/mentor/beat the younger kids to perpetuate a sense of “tradition.”
Yes. It was particularly humiliating when only the dweebs bought you when you were a freshman. I was bought by a nice dweeb. The popular, good looking ones went for an obscene amount of money (I went to a private school where most of the kids came from upper class families). Most of the hazing was getting the Freshmen drunk and sending them through a McDonald’s drive through on a tricycle wearing bathing suits or diapers. That kinda stuff, though legend has it that one group of seniors forced their freshmen to steal one of the Bob’s Big Boy statues from the local Bob’s restaurant and place it next to the statue of the Holy Mother on campus (yes, it was a Catholic school).But the mean senior girls were definitely like Parker Posey in Dazed and Confused. They did some awful shit.
Project X sums up my high school pretty well. All anyone cared about was drugs and parties.
Hmm.
Wrong Project X lol.
I mean, my high school was more War Games, but yeah there was some Project X too.
Whenever I hear Project X, this is the one I think of. The infinitely better of the two movies as well.
My kids would never make it though the M. Broderick version. They didn’t like Coco because it was “too sad”. Oh darling, you have no idea. Project X, My Girl, Transformers the movie (animated). Kids today just don’t understand those levels of emotional trauma inflicted for entertainment.
Dazed and Confused was a remarkably accurate depiction of a suburban high school experience in Texas, even well into the 80s.
it was a remarkably accurate depiction of a suburban high school experience in Colorado, even into the 80s, too.
It was probably the closest a movie got for me. I graduated high school in 91. Instead of Aerosmith tickets it was Alice in Chains.
Other than that you would never have an underage keg party at a moontower in Austin. They’re all in the city. Too many cops around. Party at the lake, maybe.
Yeah.
Graduated just North of Austin in ‘92 and can confirm that while the songs and cars changed a bit, not much else did.
You mean “principal photography?”
*principal photography
Hard to believe that movie was set only 17 years prior to its release, and it’s now 26 years old.
It felt like such distant past. I was a goddamn junior in high school when it came out. So old now.
I feel like my generation (those who graduated high school in the early to mid 90s) think this movie is a good representation of high school life because it looked kinda like our high school days, except within a 70s setting. But my parents graduated high school in 1973 and when they see this movie they say it doesn’t even remotely remind them of their high school days.
One of the great movie entrances…