Set over the course of the last day of school, told from the perspectives of a bunch of different kids who are partying to celebrate the beginning of their adult lives, Dazed and Confused is the quintessential hangout movie.
Richard Linklater didn’t give it much of a plot. Instead, he decided to create an ensemble of interesting characters and bask in the milieu of the story in a series of vaguely interconnected vignettes. It has a heck of a soundtrack, made up of classic rock hits, and it launched the careers of several big movie stars. Here are 10 behind-the-scenes details from the making of Dazed and Confused.
10 THE ACTORS DESIGNED THEIR OWN WOODEN PADDLES
All the wooden paddles featured in Dazed and Confused’s brutal hazing scenes were designed by the actors wielding them. In various shots, you can see that one of the paddles has been engraved, “17 yrs,” a reference to the 17-year gap between the film’s 1976 setting and its 1993 theatrical release.
In the scene in which the kids are making the paddles, the sleeping shop teacher was played by a real teacher who worked at the school where filming was taking place.
9 VINCE VAUGHN WAS REJECTED FOR LOOKING TOO SIMILAR TO BEN AFFLECK
Vince Vaughn auditioned to play Benny in Dazed and Confused, but Richard Linklater turned him down for the role, because he felt that he looked too similar to Ben Affleck, who’d already been cast, and thought that audiences might not be able to tell them apart.
Now that they’re both separately famous, that wouldn’t be the case, but back then, they were both relative unknowns. Cole Hauser was given the role of Benny instead.
8 LICENSING THE SOUNDTRACK TOOK UP A SIXTH OF THE MOVIE’S BUDGET
The soundtrack of Dazed and Confused is filled with legendary pop songs from the 1970s by such artists as Alice Cooper, ZZ Top, Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Deep Purple, and Kiss. Since Richard Linklater wanted to use such iconic hits, he had to spend a large chunk of the budget – one-sixth of the movie’s total cost – on the licensing fees.
The movie is named after a Led Zeppelin song, and Linklater wanted to use one of the band’s other songs – “Rock and Roll” – on the soundtrack. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones agreed to let him use the song in the film, but Robert Plant refused, so he couldn’t do it.
7 A LOT OF MILLA JOVOVICH’S SCENES GOT CUT
Although she gets a high billing in the cast and was featured on all the film’s posters, most of Milla Jovovich’s scenes were removed from the final cut.
Jovovich was understandably upset about this, and even put her acting career on hold for a few years and focused on music instead. She returned to acting when Luc Besson cast her in his sci-fi masterwork The Fifth Element, which hit theaters in 1997.
6 SOME OF THE ACTORS DRANK REAL BEER
Although most movie productions will provide the actors in drinking scenes with prop beer for insurance purposes, the set of Dazed and Confused was more laidback than that. Most of the cast members drank real beer in the movie to achieve a sense of verisimilitude.
The only exceptions to this were minors, for obvious reasons, and Jason London, because he was avoiding alcohol and was also trying to quit smoking.
5 THE STUDIO WAS ANTSY THROUGHOUT PRODUCTION
Dazed and Confused faced a difficult production, as the studio worried that Richard Linklater was making an arty indie-style movie that they wouldn’t be able to sell to a wide audience. The director was encouraging his actors to deviate from the script and improvise a lot of dialogue, but the studio executives wanted him to stick to the script.
The editing process took a lot longer than expected, too, because the studio was dissatisfied with every cut that Linklater turned in. Linklater has since joked that the experience gave him PTSD.
4 RICHARD LINKLATER WAS SUED BY THE PEOPLE HE NAMED THE CHARACTERS AFTER
Richard Linklater named a few characters in Dazed and Confused after real people he knew. The real Andy Slater, Bobby Wooderson, and Richard “Pink” Floyd all sued Linklater after being unhappy with how the movie portrayed their namesakes.
The lawsuit was filed, oddly enough, a full eleven years after the movie came out. The case was dropped before it was resolved, so it remains to be seen whether the personalities of the characters were taken from the real people or it was just their names.
3 CLAIRE DANES, RENEE ZELLWEGER, AND ASHLEY JUDD ALL AUDITIONED FOR PARTS IN THE FILM
Ashley Judd auditioned to play Jodi in this movie. Claire Danes, who would go on to achieve fame with Romeo + Juliet and Homeland, auditioned to play Sabrina, but Richard Linklater deemed her to be “too classy” for the role.
Renee Zellweger was initially under consideration for the role of Darla, but instead got an uncredited minor role, Nesi White.
2 THE MOVIE WAS CONCEIVED AS THE ANTITHESIS OF A JOHN HUGHES MOVIE
Richard Linklater conceived Dazed and Confused as the antithesis of a John Hughes movie. Hughes’ movies had a very white-bread view of American high school life, with affluent, relatively well-behaved characters who fell in love under schmaltzy circumstances.
Linklater wanted to make a movie about high school kids who drank beer and smoked pot and gleefully broke the law. Dazed and Confused can be seen as the anti-Pretty in Pink, or the anti-Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
1 MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY’S MOST FAMOUS LINE WAS AD-LIBBED
Matthew McConaughey’s most famous line from this movie – which, of course, is his opening line, “Alright, alright, alright...” – was ad-libbed. The actor got the idea for a recording he’d heard of Jim Morrison quickly saying, “Alright,” four times in a row.
The scene in which McConaughey’s character flirts with Marissa Ribisi’s character was filmed on the evening of McConaughey’s wardrobe fitting, and he wasn’t even supposed to be in the scene at all. Richard Linklater put him in the scene after seeing him in his costume and getting excited to bring the character to the screen.
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