Dazed and Confused (1993) by Kanishka jain

Dazed and Confused was released on 24th September 1993; a period film based in the 1970’s, specifically a major niche of the movie was based in the year 1976. At that time, the Director/Writer, Richard Linklater was 33 years old with a fresh memory of his own teenage. The movie was based around a group of teenagers, which ‘the viewer could relate to, but in the end the movie was about nothing’ wrote the Vocabularist from the Movie Cynics.

Linklater was born in Texas and so, based the setting of the film in the state Texas itself and chose the city of Austin. The actor’s casted by the authorities for teenagers of ‘Lee High School’ are supposed to be one of the best. LinkLater made sure to be completely involved in all the operations of the film, his perspective was upmost that I will mention in later too. When he thought of executing this project he had only made three films, one being ‘Slacker’ that received appreciation at a lot of Film Festivals and Art Houses. Linlater jumped from a movie with a budget of $ 23,000 to Dazed and Confused, a film with a budget crossing 6.9 Million Dollars. The producer duo and Richard went through a exhaustive search to find out their wanted cast. Each and every character were practically the same in real life as the characters, they all went on to become successful; the primary were Jason London and Wiley Wiggins. The article gives out extensive information about the casting process that eventually proves to be highly significant as seen in the movie. The movie’s budget provided and monitored by The Universal Studios also ended up in many controversies and problematic situation for Richard, for example when the Studio demanded for the film to be in the vicinity of the PG-13 Ratings, the director reacted with daze to this demand that is pretty practical of him; making a teenage movie with drugs, violence and the usual ambiguous teenage behavior could not be below R Ratings. The title track also created abrupt situations between the studio and the production team.


The Art Direction and Costumes were also kept to the typical American 70’s feel, Linklater played a major role in executing such decision. The character Randall ‘Pink’ Floyd was such a sensation that its being a template for youngsters in today’s age. With this movie Richard Linlater entered in new genre that was a forte of the celebrated Teen movie Director ‘ John Hughes.’ The respective article is filled with the opinion section, with a varied range of them. The general consent was that the movie was a success, but the perception of people varied on the motto of the script. Although the movie from the perspective of how teenagers are, it was remarkable and to conclude, I would agree with Brendan Babish from DVD Verdict who wrote “Dazed and Confused gets nearly everything right… After a little league baseball game the teams are forced to line up, slap the other teams hand, and mutter, ‘Good Game’ (Remember that); on the way to the parking lot everyone yells’ ‘Shotgun!’ At the same time; at night everyone drives around town looking for fun, and nothing much happens… Linklater said with Dazed and Confused he was looking to make the American Graffiti of the ‘70’s’. I think in about ten years another young director making a period teen comedy is going to say he wants to make the Dazed and Confused for the ‘90’s’.”