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
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.
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.
