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The Rewatchables ·

Dazed and Confused

year 1993decade 90sdirector Richard Linklatergenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Chris Ryanhost Sean Fennessey
All 15 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 28:25

Wooderson's slow-motion entrance to the Emporium pool hall to Bob Dylan's Hurricane

The whole movie is a rewatchable scene and is hard to separate into candidates, since it is never clear what time it is until daylight arrives at the very end; the five picks are scenes you could identify from a single picture, knowing the music and exactly what happens.

Wooderson going to the pool hall in slow motion to Bob Dylan's Hurricane is a great four minutes, a great 70s hang, the entire movie cracked into one thing, and may already be the answer.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 1:01:12

"I get older, they stay the same age"

Wooderson's line about getting older while the high school girls stay the same age was hilarious for about 20 years and is less so lately; the line about only coming to do two things, kick some ass and drink some beer, and being almost out of beer, and the great high school yearbook line about killing yourself if these are the best years of your life, are classics.

The film

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Directed by Richard Linklater · Drama

102 minutes

IMDbLetterboxdJustWatch
Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Jason London Randall "Pink" Floyd
Joey Lauren Adams Simone Kerr
Milla Jovovich Michelle Burroughs
Shawn Andrews Kevin Pickford
Rory Cochrane Ron Slater
Adam Goldberg Mike Newhouse
Anthony Rapp Anthony "Tony" Olson
Sasha Jenson Don Dawson
Marissa Ribisi Cynthia Dunn
Deena Martin Shavonne Wright
Michelle Burke Jodi Kramer
Cole Hauser Benny O'Donnell
Christine Harnos Kaye Faulkner
Wiley Wiggins Mitch Kramer
Mark Vandermeulen Tommy Houston
Esteban Powell Carl Burnett
Jeremy Fox Hirschfelder
Ben Affleck Fred O'Bannion
Jason O. Smith Melvin Spivey
Christin Hinojosa Sabrina Davis
Parker Posey Darla Marks
Matthew McConaughey David Wooderson
Nicky Katt Clint Bruno
Renée Zellweger Nesi White
Kim Krizan Ms. Stroud

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

22:51

Roger Ebert's review
In the discussion (1)
Approx. transcript time · 00:22:51Read transcript
  • Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 93 from critics and 78 from everybody; Ebert gave it three stars and liked it, continuing a hot streak on the show of five good opinions in a row, and the hosts congratulate him.
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28:25

Most Rewatchable Scene

Wooderson's slow-motion entrance to the Emporium pool hall to Bob Dylan's Hurricane

Wooderson's slow-motion entrance to the Emporium pool hall to Bob Dylan's Hurricane

In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:28:25Read transcript
  • The whole movie is a rewatchable scene and is hard to separate into candidates, since it is never clear what time it is until daylight arrives at the very end; the five picks are scenes you could identify from a single picture, knowing the music and exactly what happens.
  • Wooderson going to the pool hall in slow motion to Bob Dylan's Hurricane is a great four minutes, a great 70s hang, the entire movie cracked into one thing, and may already be the answer.
  • The mailbox-smashing drive, with Don Dawson laughing in the front seat and the angry hillbilly pulling a 9mm on them, recalls a host's own college Halloween runs smashing pumpkins in a rich part of Worcester; people were idiotic in the 70s and 80s.
  • The paint dumped on O'Banion is a sting operation in which the ninth-grade girls get a little retribution; it is one of Affleck's most committed performances, he gets in his car and is never seen again, and together with Mallrats it suggested he would play a dipshit in every movie before Batman and Armageddon.
  • Adam Goldberg's character getting beaten up is enjoyed as a very realistic fight: he put thought into it and out-thought himself, and the other guy just gets him; Cole Hauser's character shoves people back to let it go on until Pink comes in with McConaughey and stops it.
  • The ending is probably the best two minutes of the movie: four people who would not have been together eight hours earlier end up in one car listening to Slow Ride as the road rolls toward nowhere over an imaginary hill, after the wind-down of everyone going home, Wiley Wiggins's character caught by his mom, Sabrina getting a kiss from Anthony Rapp's character, and Pink admitting to Don that football is not for him.
  • The entrance to the Emporium is settled on as the pick.
  • Asked first which song would soundtrack a slow-motion walk into a high school bar or party, picks Can I Live by Black Rob. — Sean Fennessey
  • The other answer is Cash Rules Everything Around Me by Wu Tang, so both picks are hip-hop songs from kids of the 90s, obsessed with rap, though rock options like Whole Lotta Rosie and Houses of the Holy are floated; a middle school class spent two years reciting Wu Tang skits; one host's own pick would have been L.A. Woman by The Doors, which plays in the room, and a Doors Rewatchables is dangled to one host, who is accused of begging for it and told to name the day and time.
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33:42

What’s Aged the Best?

The combination of McConaughey and the cast

The combination of McConaughey and the cast

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:33:42Read transcript
  • Opening nominations are McConaughey, the 70s music, the cars, the cast and the high school hierarchy, with others invited to add their own.
  • The limited temporal narrative structure, with everything taking place over one day, never gets old and feels like a full day, recalling how the social part of a school day started after the last class, ran through practice or a game and then seven to ten hours of hanging out; the action is the juice.
  • It is hard not to say the cast: McConaughey's first movie, Affleck, a golden generation, plus indelible characters for people who went on to have no careers; even though there was no tape on McConaughey in 1993, like drafting a player with no tape, he reads as a movie star, having done only one Miller Lite commercial.
  • Around 1996, with Lone Star and A Time to Kill, McConaughey was pushed as a star on Premier and Vanity Fair covers, and that is when the film's cult-classic status grew because people saw him as Wooderson; in a making-of documentary he recounts being nobody on the Friday and famous, stopped on the street, by the Monday after A Time to Kill opened.
  • A Time to Kill is far less remembered than Dazed and Confused, which is a more generationally beloved movie, though it is defended as good; Grisham was the MCU of the era, with real excitement for The Firm and The Client.
  • The answer offered is the combination of McConaughey and the cast, with the pleasure of seeing McConaughey at that point of his career.
  • Late additions: count how many times Don gets into a car, about 15, since apart from two school scenes he is in a car the whole time; Tim Lincecum looking like an adult Mitch Kramer became a running joke through the 2000s; and the nerds' theory in the car that President Ford's football concussions were affecting the economy now reads as a CTE subplot, which Chevy Chase's portrayal would support.
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38:15

What’s Aged the Worst?

Mitch Kramer's performance; his pitching, which needed a cutaway; Wooderson's interest in high school girls; the hazi...

Mitch Kramer's performance; his pitching, which needed a cutaway; Wooderson's interest in high school girls; the hazing and bullying; the lack of accent work beyond McConaughey

In the discussion (13)
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:15Read transcript
  • Number one is Mitch Kramer, the biggest flaw in the movie: a bad, miscast performance, which leads to his pitching, where a cutaway was needed and makes Freddie Prinze in Summer Catch look like 1999 Pedro Martinez; even in the cutaway he releases the ball beside his neck as if he had a herniated disc.
  • Texas baseball could not have him as its innings eater; Everybody Wants Some (transcribed as Everybody Wants Him) is read as Linklater's reaction to botching the Mitch Kramer casting, since its players looked like real ballplayers, maybe the most credible baseball movie ever, including the mustached one, Tyler Hetchling (as transcribed) from Teen Wolf, who looks like Mike Trout.
  • A counterpoint: 70s and 80s ballplayers were not athletes like Bryce Harper or Mike Trout, and Houston pitcher Mike Scott, a Cy Young winner, looked like a science teacher; the reply is that Scott was a cheater who tried to cheat the Mets out of the 1986 World Series.
  • The counter to the counterpoint: Criterion making-of footage of Wiley Wiggins having a catch with Richard Linklater is one of the saddest things, since he cannot catch from three feet away; research says he claimed he had played baseball, could not, and they edited around it, which raises what Mitch Kramer brought to the movie versus a 12- or 13-year-old River Phoenix or another good child actor of 1993.
  • The defense: even as a bad actor he has something, since eighth grade is awkward and his lack of confidence and signature nose-and-face touching read as nervousness, so the bad acting works in his favor; the rebuttal is that River Phoenix could have done that, and the what-if game is mocked with James Dean and the Doors Val Kilmer as Mitch Kramer.
  • Kristen Hinojosa (as transcribed), who plays Sabrina, the other eighth-grade girl, is liked for playing it low-key in a movie full of big performances; Mitch needed to be cooler and to be seen pitching, since he is set up as the Randy Pink Floyd of four years later, and Pink at least carried himself like a quarterback.
  • A tangent assigns football positions: Don a defensive end, linebacker or maybe safety, Cole Hauser clearly the best player and a left tackle or defensive end captain, Mel on defense, O'Banion the best player on the defense and a good blocker, Wooderson a tailback or, given his key-catching skills, a Jerry Rice wideout in a pre-West Coast ground-and-pound offense, and Pink a scrambling quarterback like Manziel, a young Jim Zorin (as transcribed) or Tarkenton rather than Stabler.
  • The disagreement over Mitch Kramer is left standing: one side calls the defense the wrong opinion, the other says it is okay that he is a bad actor, something they would say in almost no other case.
  • Wooderson's interest in high school girls, including the implied statutory issue, has not aged well and he may be a predator; the clip of him asking a freshman about this year's crop of girls and his line about getting older while they stay the same age is played.
  • The hazing and bullying have also not aged well.
  • Not a lot has aged badly: in the version of the country we live in now none of this is acceptable and society has changed, but as a period piece the costumes, music and performances hold up, it is full of stars and not riddled with problems. — Sean Fennessey
  • When Mitch Kramer is raised again, Kramer's pitching is conceded as bad, and the Wiggins catch footage is now wanted; a side trip into the 1986 World Series box set, which includes the Astros-Mets NLCS games six and seven and Scott's chicanery, follows.
  • Cole Hauser is not a convincing Texan, few in the cast were and it did not matter, but there is little accent work besides McConaughey, which may be what has aged worst.
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47:06

Casting What-Ifs

Vince Vaughn was runner-up for both Affleck's and Cole Hauser's parts; Renee Zellweger auditioned for Parker Posey's ...

Vince Vaughn was runner-up for both Affleck's and Cole Hauser's parts; Renee Zellweger auditioned for Parker Posey's part; Claire Danes did not get Sabrina; Ashley Judd did not get Jodie

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:06Read transcript
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47:52

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Parker Posey

Parker Posey

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:52Read transcript
  • The award is a tough one: McConaughey is in the movie too much to qualify, and the same goes for Don Dawson, so something more creative is wanted.
  • Parker Posey, in about four or five scenes, is proposed and was going to be the other host's vote; her high-pitched initiation scene is played, she is likened to Hannibal Lecter and called the answer, while Slater is ruled out as too prominent and iconic, with his long monologues, including his thoughts on George Washington's wife, saved for later.
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49:13

The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award

Jason O. Smith (Mel)

Jason O. Smith (Mel)

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:49:13Read transcript
  • Clint the Bully, played by Nicky Cat (as transcribed), is the runner-up: seen in nine things without being placeable, including Boston Public, A Time to Kill and a cut-down role in The Dark Knight as one of the cops chased by the Joker while escorting Aaron Eckhart; at about 5'7" he could be more imposing but has the greaser attitude.
  • The answer is the one black actor, who plays Mel, Melvin Spivey: Jason O. Smith has no Wikipedia page and two IMDb credits, this film and Overexposed nine years earlier as Jerry Solomon, a film with a salacious cover about a rock singer secretly posing for a men's magazine; the award could be renamed for him.
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52:22

Half-Assed Internet Research

Mitch's pitching scenes apparently needed a double; the cast lived and partied together at a Radisson; Linklater want...

Mitch's pitching scenes apparently needed a double; the cast lived and partied together at a Radisson; Linklater wanted Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll for the end credits but Robert Plant refused; the beer was real except for the minors; 'man' is said 203 times; Mitch touches his nose 42 times; Linklater made character mixtapes; classmates sued over the film and lost; Wooderson's Ted Nugent t-shirt; Sean Andrews's part was phased out as McConaughey's grew

In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 00:52:22Read transcript
  • The first, garbled item seems to concern Mitch's pitching scenes and a double, with the view that when you need a double for a sports scene you should hang it up; the cast all lived together at a Radisson in a free-for-all party hookup, like Survivor with showmances and alliances.
  • Linklater originally wanted Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll over the end credits; Jimmy Page agreed but Robert Plant denied him, which draws abuse for Plant as the kind of guy who likes money.
  • The beer in the movie was real, though the minors did not drink; Cole Hauser's ten-second bit of trying to stand up hammered, burping and sitting back down is one of the best in the film, and he may really have been drunk.
  • 'Man' is said 203 times and Mitch touches his nose 42 times, yet another arrow against Mitch Kramer; the Jovovich and Sean Andrews annulled marriage is recalled from earlier.
  • Linklater made individual mixtapes for the actors' characters, Adam Goldberg's being Elo (as transcribed) and the like; he was later sued by classmates who said the film disparaged them, as someone named O'Banion might feel, and the suit was thrown out.
  • Wooderson's t-shirt is a Ted Nugent album cover, and the shirt can be bought online; a host recounts two absurd days in their early twenties hunting with Nugent outside Auburn Hills, Michigan, while he hosted a hunting reality show, stocking his acres with wildlife, killing it and butchering it in real time, simultaneously the worst person the host had ever met and a really nice guy; Nugent is now a controversial hard-right figure, but his records in the film are great.
  • Nugent has two songs in the film, Stranglehold and Hey Baby.
  • Sean Andrews, who played Pickford and married Mila Jovovich, is key in the first 20 to 25 minutes but had his part phased out during filming because nobody in the cast liked him, he feuded with Jason London and he isolated himself with Jovovich; the film opens on the two of them in that incredible car.
  • As the cast turned on him, Linklater, a who's-vibing-with-whom director willing to add scenes and ad libs, kept giving scenes to McConaughey, who was supposed to be in only two since Wooderson is not in the class but was clearly a movie star; the driving at the end and the final football-field scene were supposed to be Sean Andrews's, and McConaughey is in the last 15 minutes instead.
  • Nicky Cat (as transcribed), already a pretty cool actor, stands next to McConaughey in the car-hood scene when he was basically an extra, and may have wondered about it, though they were both in A Time to Kill in 1996; the most memorable Wooderson scenes were improvised or written on set, including the spelled-out L.I.V.I.N. and the Top Notch invitation to the nerds, making Wooderson the glue and the second most important character despite not being there from the beginning.
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55:25

Apex Mountain

No affirmative selection

No affirmative selection

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 00:55:25Read transcript
  • Arguably nobody here is at Apex Mountain unless you say Linklater, but the second Before Sunrise film is considered his peak instead.
  • Jason O. Smith is offered as obviously peaking here, as are Michelle Burke, Sean Andrews, Rory Cochran and Wiley Wiggins, but these are not famous people and anyone never seen again does not really count, since Apex Mountain is usually for bigger names.
  • It is obviously not McConaughey's peak; Dina Martin, who plays Siobhan (as transcribed), peaked in Swingers, where she is so good a host still has a crush on her.
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56:12

Is This Movie Better With…?

Michael K. Williams as a young Mel; Danny Trejo hanging out at the Emporium; Steve Buscemi as the offensive coordinat...

Michael K. Williams as a young Mel; Danny Trejo hanging out at the Emporium; Steve Buscemi as the offensive coordinator reading the letter

In the discussion (1)
Approx. transcript time · 00:56:12Read transcript
  • A young Michael K. Williams could have played Mel; Trejo would have been fun hanging out at the Emporium, someone who knew Wooderson; Buscemi could have been one of the coaches, the offensive coordinator reading the letter.
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56:43

The Ruffalo / Hanna / Rubinek / Partridge Overacting Award

Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck

In the discussion (4)
Approx. transcript time · 00:56:43Read transcript
  • The Mark Ruffalo category is now the Saul Rubinick (as transcribed), renamed on the True Romance podcast, and Zach, absent last time, hears the new name live for the first time.
  • Delivers the renamed award's line, 'I treated you like a son and you stabbed me in the heart.' — Chris Ryan
  • Affleck is the guess and then one host's vote: he turns it up nine notches when the paint goes on him, and his furious screaming clip is played; another view is that it is a bit in the movie that O'Banion takes this stuff so seriously, he played it correctly and should not be blamed.
  • Ben Affleck squealing like a pig is one of the most disturbing sounds in modern times and very committed; squeal-like-a-pig, the Deliverance reference to Ned Beatty's assault, was a big 80s and 90s joke that nobody under 30 in the Ringer office would recognize now, an example of a movie humor bit dying with time.
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59:13

Picking Nits

Driving around with that many beer bottles in the trunk, and the drunk driving; continuity errors about who is in whi...

Driving around with that many beer bottles in the trunk, and the drunk driving; continuity errors about who is in which car; 13-year-old Mitch buying beer so easily; Jodie's run at Pink with no payoff; the oath as the source of dramatic tension

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:59:13Read transcript
  • Mitch Kramer's pitching has already been picked; the next nit is whether you could drive around with that many beer bottles in the trunk without them going everywhere, and the drunk driving in general.
  • One host has done a version of it, with a hundred beers: line the trunk with a garbage bag and pack it tight with ice so nothing moves; the talk turns to college years in upstate New York and western Massachusetts where there was nothing to do, the others tease about dark years and the middle of nowhere, and the Wu Tang and Black Rob era is invoked.
  • Nitpicks are hard because the movie is so in the flow and loved; there are continuity errors about how a person in one car ends up in another, such as Don being in the car when the man with the gun nearly kills them and then turning up somewhere else, and like Amy Adams in Sharp Objects, driving would become impossible for these guys at some point.
  • Mitch Kramer buying beer so easily at 13 is defended as very 70s.
  • Jodie's run at Randy Pink Floyd, bringing him into the woods to make out, has no real setup or payoff beyond showing that the quarterback can hook up with anyone and appeals to many kinds of people; she matters because she warns the guys not to be too hard on Mitch, which introduces him into the movie.
  • Michelle Burke is the champ of the pod and the one the hosts wanted Pink to end up with, Jodie Kramer being cool; in a Maxim oral history she recounted having some shots at an anniversary event and remarking about having kissed Jason London without realizing his wife was there.
  • Signing an oath in high school was weird and is probably a nitpick: the movie's dramatic tension revolves around an oath everybody is supposed to sign, yet it has been established that nobody in 1976 cared about anything and everyone was getting drunk at the Emporium every night, so it is a stretch.
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1:01:12

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie

"I get older, they stay the same age"; "I only came here to do two things, kick some ass and drink some beer"; "If th...

"I get older, they stay the same age"; "I only came here to do two things, kick some ass and drink some beer"; "If these are the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself"; "All right, all right, all right"; "You just got to keep on living, man"; "She was a hip, hip, hip lady"; "Wipe that face off your head, bitch"

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 01:01:12Read transcript
  • Wooderson's line about getting older while the high school girls stay the same age was hilarious for about 20 years and is less so lately; the line about only coming to do two things, kick some ass and drink some beer, and being almost out of beer, and the great high school yearbook line about killing yourself if these are the best years of your life, are classics.
  • 'All right, all right, all right' became the McConaughey joke for years and is still his catchphrase; Don Dawson's speech about doing the best he could, having fun, playing hard and chasing girls while stuck in this place is recited and attributed to Don, played by Sasha Jensen; the joint exchange and the keep-on-living speech with its spelled-out L.I.V.I.N. follow.
  • Slater's George Washington speech is played: Washington was in a cult tied to aliens, grew fields of weed at Mount Vernon and had people growing it across the country as a cash crop for the southern states, and Martha Washington had a bowl waiting when he came home, a hip, hip, hip lady; Slater's line imagining how many people are having sex at that moment is also liked, and the Martha Washington line is loved.
  • From 93 to 96 little movie monologues meant a lot because there was no internet yet, like Tarantino in the kitchen doing the Top Gun theory in Sleep With Me, an otherwise unremarkable Eric Stoltz movie, which felt mind-blowing, like the internet in one scene you wished was the whole movie; now the internet is full of such riffs, and the Martha Washington bit once landed as a great point.
  • The cult-and-aliens line is preceded by Washington being in a cult; one of the best ad libs is Parker Posey's 'Wipe that face off your head, bitch' as she wraps up the initiation, which in a making-of she traced to a badly translated Chekhov play whose line stuck with her; Don's fake punch at a kid walking past in the school hallway is a classic crazy football bully move.
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1:05:19

Probably Unanswerable Questions

What was Lee High School's 1976 football record? Did Randy Floyd play? Who did Randy Floyd take to the senior prom? W...

What was Lee High School's 1976 football record? Did Randy Floyd play? Who did Randy Floyd take to the senior prom? Why didn't Jason London have a bigger career? How good was that Aerosmith concert?

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 01:05:19Read transcript
  • Lee High School's 1976 record is guessed at 9-3 or 10-3: not going to state, but in the mix after making the tournament in the last week; the program was big enough for a real football coach with coordinators and a player personnel liaison pushing the oath, but not Friday Night Lights-level national emergency stakes.
  • Randy Floyd is believed to have played, since he came back; his senior prom date was probably Joey Lauren Adams, unless they broke up over Jodie making a move, though monogamy was fluid and Jodie irresistible; Joey Lauren Adams was so drunk the night she and Parker Posey fell down together that she may never have gotten that information.
  • Why Jason London did not have a bigger career: he is a cipher, fine in an important part but not someone you leave wanting to see more of; being great in a high school movie does not translate to playing people in their 20s or 30s, since those parts let you play a type with your own personality without being an antihero, so many John Hughes and Dazed actors never had huge careers.
  • A counter: one host's wife loves Randy Pink Floyd, character and actor alike, says she is not alone and did not understand why he lacked a bigger career, and the host adds a call for justice for Pink; in the movie he was a game manager like Ryan Tannehill, never asked to do too much though he is the thread to everyone, after earlier comparisons to Fran Tarkenton and Johnny Manziel.
  • Hypotheticals of a better actor as Pink: Mark Wahlberg as a Texas quarterback would have given Randy Pink Floyd an edge in the woods; Leo, in the perfect age range, would have been great but would have overpowered the movie and made it about Pink, and part of the film's perfection is that so many of its actors never went on to sully it with later fame; still, it is argued that it is a better movie with Leo in it and they win if Leo is in it.
  • How good was that Aerosmith concert: 1976 was two months after Rocks came out and the band was headed to the Cotton Bowl, so it would have been awesome; research confirmed Aerosmith played Texas three times that year, so Linklater must have checked, and the Back in the Saddle era explains the obsession with tickets.
  • 1976 was a top-four music year with many artists at the music version of Apex Mountain, and concerts mattered because they were the only way to see anything; much popular music, like Stevie Wonder and funk, is absent because the setting is Texas; the cars probably had 8-tracks rather than cassettes, which is what the imagined ZZ Top record would have played on.
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1:10:16

Who Won the Movie?

Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 01:10:16Read transcript
  • The choices offered are Linklater, McConaughey or Martha Washington, who took a big win; Don Dawson is floated and dismissed, since within the story Wooderson won, the way Chevy Chase won Fletch with his name atop the poster and Harrison Ford won Indiana Jones.
  • The case for Linklater is that this launched a 25-year career and made him a two-track filmmaker rather than just an experimental director emerging from the indie scene.
  • The case against McConaughey is that his career cratered in the early 2000s into bad Wooderson-impersonation rom-coms, as one host's 2001 movie-quotes column had jabbed, before the McConaissance.
  • Linklater is one of the nine most important directors since 1990; this is the first Linklater Rewatchables, and the Before films have been discussed, imagined as the hosts and their wives crying through the five-hour trilogy.
  • Linklater is the answer: every film he makes is interesting even when not his best, he has had a great career, and this is a masterpiece that Tarantino has had in his ten best films; alongside Pulp Fiction it emerges from that era as the standalone masterpiece and is the definition of a rewatchable.
Podcast choices
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Richard Linklater
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More from the conversation

It is roughly the 25th anniversary of the film, with anniversary pieces appearing; it holds a staggering amount of young Hollywood talent, so a poster today would carry McConaughey and Affleck, then Zellweger and Parker Posey; with School Ties and Dead Poets Society it is one of three movies of the era that found about 15 actors for the next 25 years.
Approx. transcript time · 00:02:13Read transcript
Did not see it in theaters, probably too young; once seen it felt like it played 100 consecutive days and instantly became part of the movie lexicon without any clear reason why.
Approx. transcript time · 00:03:22Read transcript
Another host did not see it until 1998 despite pot-smoking Massachusetts friends insisting, catching it on cable after Good Will Hunting and recognizing Affleck; a third saw it at the crucial point of still remembering high school with just enough distance to laugh, which is why it resonates: it lionizes a time you also recognize as stupid, with rituals you still remember crystal clear.
Approx. transcript time · 00:03:56Read transcript
76 to 78 were great years for high school movies, with kids driving around looking for somewhere to go; Linklater was trying to make American Graffiti for kids who grew up in the 70s, a template every generation rebuilds, with Jonah Hill's Mid90s next; films about teenagers now, like Spring Breakers, 13 Reasons Why and Assassination Nation, are about social media destroying everything, Superbad may be the last pure hang-out movie, and Eighth Grade and Lady Bird focus on one character where this follows about 18.
Approx. transcript time · 00:04:51Read transcript
A childhood memory from Brookland (as transcribed) around 1978: a high school babysitter named Teddy took the nine-year-old out with friends to drive around, park and drink, which framed what going out meant until age 16; the 90s were the same, driving around and drinking in the Memorial parking lot, though you could also rent a movie or hang out in a basement; this is how teenagers while away the hours.
Approx. transcript time · 00:06:21Read transcript
The film's social fluidity is truer to life than Hollywood's drawn battle lines between jocks and nerds: you end up in the back seat of a car with people you barely know and go on a beer run, with beer, pot and a fake ID the three crucial questions; making Randall Pink Floyd the center is smart, since as quarterback he is friends with the jocks, with nerds like Adam Goldberg's character, maybe because he is smart, and with the stoners, the fulcrum of a movie without a main character; high school was more sociable than The Breakfast Club's tribal warfare, which is one reason the movie is loved.
Approx. transcript time · 00:07:41Read transcript
The soundtrack is the star, a murderers' row of songs belonging to the 1976 range; about a sixth of the budget went to music, with $200,000 for Aerosmith's Sweet Emotion, and Sweet Emotion and Free Ride (as transcribed) are crucial bookends; 72 to 77 was a music renaissance and 76 one of the best years, with a year later disco creeping in; rap dominated one host's 93-95 high school, but the point is how important music is at that age, whether Aerosmith tickets or Wu-Tang; Linklater excluded any song released after the setting, even a Deep Purple song he wanted.
Approx. transcript time · 00:09:37Read transcript
The miracle of the movie is its mundanity: mini golf, first malt liquor, a CD single, micro moments rather than big ones, in the time of life when every day is improv; it has a John Hughes quality, or is consciously an anti-Hughes movie about 1976; Linklater always aims for something real, as in Boyhood and Slacker, without being a Ken Loach or 7-Up documentary, and at a reunion event described the drama as low-key because his teenage years were about fitting in, with Aerosmith tickets the big stakes.
Approx. transcript time · 00:11:40Read transcript
By 2001 or 2002 one host loved it enough to use it for the NFL movie quotes gimmick, during peak pot years; Klosterman wrote for Criterion that he had seen it 65 times, 64 of them stoned; like Outside Providence it belongs to a small group of films that become far funnier stoned, as if Easter eggs appear through stoner goggles, and this is the champion.
Approx. transcript time · 00:14:00Read transcript
Seen before high school it set the template for how to engage with high school, with Slater modeling what stoners acted like, so Linklater's true-to-life portraits became archetypes people imitated, from Parker Posey's and Joey Lauren Adams's characters to Don; classic rock still held a big share of mid-90s culture, with WMMR in Philly playing full Dead concerts; the film's pop metal and hard rock, ZZ Top, Black Sabbath, Kiss and Deep Purple, turned a New Yorker onto records; in the mid-80s there were only 15 to 17 years of decent music and Frampton Comes Alive was a go-to; Steve Miller's Living in the USA is in it.
Approx. transcript time · 00:15:02Read transcript
A 2000 piece called it the best capture of the mid-70s, between Vietnam and MTV, with drugs, hazing and aimless driving without repercussions; a host's daughter, watching 20 minutes, asked why everyone is so mean at Parker Posey's initiation; the hosts' own schools had initiation and taunting, conversations turning into roastings, Darlas existed, and the film uniquely captures juniors becoming seniors with puffed chests, something Friday Night Lights touches a little.
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:25Read transcript
A small prep school put younger kids on teams with older ones, while at a big public school falling in with older kids was instructive about how to be; seniors going after ninth-grade girls is real, a worry for a host's daughters; none of them met a Wooderson in high school, though 32-year-olds still at the bar appeared in their late teens and twenties, and Kicking and Screaming has its Eric Stoltz version.
Approx. transcript time · 00:19:48Read transcript
The film cost $7 million and made $8 million, an official flop; it feels like a 96 movie near Swingers rather than a 1993 Singles-era release and was a slow burn into the consciousness; Linklater had imagined a far more experimental film of guys in a car listening to ZZ Top's Fandango three times for 90 minutes, which he later approached with Tape and his real-time obsession from Boyhood to the Before films.
Approx. transcript time · 00:21:28Read transcript
Cast rundown: Affleck, Parker Posey, Jason London (not Party of Five's Jeremy) as Pink, Cole Hauser, Joey Lauren Adams before Chasing Amy and Mallrats, Adam Goldberg of Friends and Saving Private Ryan, McConaughey as Wooderson, Anthony Rapp recently in the news over the Spacey matter, Marissa Ribisi now known as Beck's wife, Rory Cochran (as transcribed) as Slater, Sasha Jensen as Don, whose failure to become a star baffles, Michelle Burke of Coneheads who never worked again, and Sean Andrews as Pickford, who fell for Mila Jovovich and briefly married her.
Approx. transcript time · 00:23:05Read transcript
A Firm tangent: one host rewatched The Firm three weeks ago and is warming to a Firm episode, earning a clap that Zach Mack hates; Hackman and Brimley are great in it, Hackman oddly sexual and confident with Triple Horn (as transcribed).
Approx. transcript time · 00:36:16Read transcript
Why there is only one black guy here and in Everybody Wants Some: Linklater had one black friend growing up; a dream 1993 addition for Mel would be a then-unknown who went on to a career, with Will Smith a no-brainer, Don Cheadle and Method Man floated, and Philip Seymour Hoffman ruled out as not fitting the character.
Approx. transcript time · 00:51:09Read transcript
Whether Anthony Rapp's and Adam Goldberg's characters are consciously doing Woody Allen's 70s characters: Woody may not have resonated in 1976 Texas, but Goldberg's performance reads as Woody Allen and Rapp's Abe Lincoln dream joke fits; Linklater has made ten films since with characters who talk like that, so it may just be his way of staging smart conversations; by 1976 Sleeper, Bananas and Take the Money and Run were out, Annie Hall not until 77.
Approx. transcript time · 00:58:11Read transcript
You can jump in at any point, since the movie has no beginning, middle or end; Everybody Wants Some is the spiritual successor, underrated and a year from rewatchable, also a bomb put out by a major studio that did not get behind it, with Glenn Powell and Zoe Deitch (as transcribed) about to be huge; it had a Netflix run and deserves a bigger audience.
Approx. transcript time · 01:12:26Read transcript
The show goes on a short hiatus, then a couple of horror movies and the four Rockies that matter with Shay (as transcribed), Creed having been done already; the Creed 2 trailer with Lundgren stunned one host; Roger Sherman's take that the Rocky movies are bad is declared one of the worst takes in history; sign-off.
Approx. transcript time · 01:13:49Read transcript