Dazed & Confused (The Criterion Collection)

Director: Richard Linklater Richard Linklater

Overview

Like George Lucas' American Graffiti, Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused is an affectionate look at the youth culture of a bygone era. While Lucas took aim at the conservative 1950s, Linklater jumps ahead a generation to the bicentennial year of 1976 to celebrate the joys of beer blasts, pot smoking and Frampton Comes Alive. Set on the last day of the academic year, the film follows the random activities of a sprawling group of Texas high schoolers as they celebrate the arrival of summer, their paths variously intersecting at a freshman hazing, a local pool parlor and finally at a keg party.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/25/2011
UPC:	0715515088411
Original Release:	1993
Source:	Criterion Collection
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Time:	1:42:00
Sales rank:	1,082

Special Features

Audio commentary featuring Linklater ; Making "Dazed," a fifty-minute documentary by Kahane Corn; Rare on-set interviews and behind-the-scenes footage ; Footage form the ten-year anniversary celebration; Audition footage and deleted scenes; Original theatrical trailer; A booklet featuring essays by Kent Jones, Jim DeRogatis, and Chuck Klosterman; reprinted recollections of the filming from cast and crew; and character profiles from the Dazed and Confused companion book

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jason London	Randy "Pink" Floyd
Wiley Wiggins	Mitch Kramer
Rory Cochrane	Slater
Milla Jovovich	Michelle
Joey Lauren Adams	Simone
Marissa Ribisi	Cynthia
Adam Goldberg	Mike
Anthony Rapp	Tony
Sasha Jenson	Don Dawson
Parker Posey	Darla
Matthew McConaughey	Wooderson
Ben Affleck	O'Bannion
Michelle Burke	Jodi Kramer
Cole Hauser	Benny
Jason Smith	Melvin
Nicky Katt	Clint
Deena Martin	Shavonne
John L. Martin	2nd Cop
Diane Perella	Sabrina's Mom
Don Phillips	Actor
Zack Taylor	1st Geek
Christine Harnos	Kaye
Esteban Powell	Carl
Kim Krizan	Ms. Stroud
Julius Tennon	Mr. Payne
Erika Geminder	Freshman Girl
Zeke Mills	Old Timer
Fred Lerner	Guy with Pistol
David Blackwell	Liquor Store Clerk
Doug Taylor	1st Cop
Mona Lee Fultz	Mitch's Mother
Richard Dillard	Pickford's Dad
Shawn Andrews	Kevin Pickford
Christin Hinojosa	Sabrina

Technical Credits

Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Sandra Adair	Editor
Lee Daniel	Cinematographer
Sean Daniel	Producer
John Frick	Production Designer
James Jacks	Producer
Deborah Pastor	Set Decoration/Design
Kari Perkins	Costumes/Costume Designer
Anne Walker-McBay	Co-producer

Editorial Reviews

School's out for summer and the kids are looking to party in Dazed and Confused, the brilliant ensemble comedy/drama from writer/director Richard Linklater (Slacker, Waking Life). Set in Austin, Texas, on the last day of the school year in 1976, the film follows a large ensemble cast over a single 24-hour period as they celebrate the arrival of summer with car trunks full of Bud and a seemingly endless supply of pot. While everyone will ultimately converge on one big beer bash, the first half of the film centers on initiation rituals in which the senior girls and guys haze the incoming freshmen. It's a fascinating portrait of a tradition that combines institutionalized violence and tribal rites of passage. Yet here, as in the rest of the film, Linklater eschews the kind of detached satire practiced by contemporaries like Todd Solondz. Dazed and Confused may expose the vapidity of this mid-'70s suburban world, yet Linklater embraces his characters and milieu with the same big-hearted compassion that George Lucas displayed in American Graffiti. Indeed, Dazed and Confused can be seen as a virtual homage to the Lucas masterpiece, with the same loving attention to an era's clothes, hairstyles, and, of course, music. As in Graffiti, period pop songs provide the soundtrack for the characters' lives as they cruise around town, with 8-track tapes blasting the likes of Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, War, Peter Frampton, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The ensemble cast includes Wiley Wiggins (star of Linklater's Waking Life), Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, and a host of others whose naturalistic acting evokes a remarkable feeling of authenticity. And the easy way in which Linklater weaves introspective and even metaphysical themes into a slice-of-life comedy is completely engaging. The result is both a brilliant, microcosmic portrait of an era and an offbeat mediation on the rituals of teen life.

Barnes & Noble - Gregory Baird

Dazed and Confused is an American Graffiti for the 1990s, set in the 1970s. Though not quite up to the high standard of its spiritual predecessor, it does an excellent job of following an ensemble cast, who, through the course of one day, enjoy the myriad emotions and experiences that compose the teenage years. Writer/director Richard Linklater does not force the film to follow one storyline in particular, and this choice helps him avoid the conventions of the teen genre, in which the kids learn a big lesson after a series of wacky misdeeds. Indeed, the film is notable for its refreshing lack of sentiment. This isn't a movie interested in leading us through standard character arcs, and it gives us a portrait of youth that is surprisingly realistic, wiping away much of the gloss with which we often remember "the best years of our lives," but never going too far in the other direction by indulging in too much grittiness. Dazed and Confused is also remarkable for its sheer number of young actors who went on to big careers, including Milla Jovovich, Jason London, Joey Lauren Adams, Adam Goldberg, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, and Matthew McConaughey, as the memorable Wooderson ("That's what I like about these high school girls: I keep getting older; they stay the same age"). Dazed and Confused offers neither a warmly reminiscent nor an intentionally bleak picture of high school. It is a uniquely astute portrait of those teenage years, which at times seem full of magic and energy and at other times feel as anticlimactic and banal as adulthood.

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