Alright, Alright, Alright

by Melissa Maerz

Renée Zellweger: I felt so bad for those girls. I remember thinking, “That cannot feel good to have mustard on your skin in this heat. That’s gotta hurt.”

  Priscilla Kinser-Craft: We wore that food. Literally. For hours. It started baking on us. I had tan lines where the lines of the food were. The smell of ketchup has never been the same for me after that.

  Robert Janecka: Parker would stand over those girls and spit and hold it two feet below her, and then suck it back into her mouth. I’d never met anyone who could do that before.

  Parker Posey: My brother used to do that to me. He’d be watching wrestling on television and I’d walk into the room and he would jump on me from the couch and pin me down onto the floor and do that thing.

  Wiley Wiggins: Parker improv’ed one of the best lines in the movie: “Wipe that face off your head, bitch!”

  Parker Posey: I had done a play in college, a Brecht play called In the Jungle of Cities. And the mistranslation from one of the lines was “Wipe that face off your head.”

  I was going out dancing and seeing RuPaul at the Love Machine, a party in New York. And RuPaul was like, “Work it, bitch! Yesssss, bitch! Come on, bitch!” in that way of not really meaning “bitch.” Being like, “Yeah, you tough bitch! You’re tough! Get on the pavement and fry like bacon!” So “bitch” was positive.

  Joey Lauren Adams: We were shooting all the hazing stuff, and we were running behind. We finished what we shot-listed, and Rick was like, “I want to do this thing with Joey.” And it’s like, “We don’t have time!” And Rick’s like, “No, I want to do this thing with Joey.” And everyone’s just looking at me like, Grrrrrr.

  (left to right) Freshman girls Priscilla Kinser, Heidi Van Horne, and Erika Geminder.

  Courtesy of Richard Linklater.

  Rick says, “What do you need?” And I said, “Two girls.” So he got two freshman girls and he was like, “Where do you want the camera?” And I said, “Right there.” And he was like, “Alright, let’s go!” He didn’t even know what I was gonna do! And I did that scene where I say, “Fry like bacon, you little freshman piggies!”

  That “fry like bacon” line came from a real thing. I went to the University of Arkansas, and my sister was a Tri Delt, and my mom was like, “You have to pledge! Please!” So I pledged Tri Delt and I was miserable. They’d be like, “Come on girls, you’re going to go sing ‘I’m a Little Teapot in front of the Sigma Nu house!”

  I was walking to class one day with my friend, and one of her sorority sisters walked by, like, “Fry like bacon!” And my friend got down and fried like bacon! And I was like, “What are you doing? That is so humiliating!” And that’s when I de-pledged. Watching her fry like bacon was the last straw.

  Ben Affleck: I would watch these scenes unfold, like the senior girls hazing the younger girls with the ketchup, and I’d watch them add dialogue and make it better. I’d always thought the ideal was, you have a scene and you try to get as close to that scene as you can. And here they were, like, “No, forget about that. Just take the scene and make the actual scene itself better.” That was revolutionary to me.

  Adam Goldberg: Parker and Joey both really understood that we were supposed to be doing an improvisational thing. Maybe that’s part of the reason they were so close. Not everyone understood that.

  Michelle Burke Thomas: Joey and Parker glommed on to each other fast, and that was that. And no one else was part of that. And it’s sad, because there could’ve been other lifelong friendships there, at least between me and Parker. I don’t know about Joey. Joey can’t stand me. Never has, never will.

  Joey Lauren Adams: You can’t be friends with everyone. You click with certain people. You just do! This probably sounds harsh, but I don’t know if I felt that Michelle had much to teach me. It’s like, you’re searching for a specific thing, at a specific moment, and at that moment, I’d found what I was looking for in Parker.

  Jason London: There ended up being a lot of inter-turmoil between the girls.

  Richard Linklater: It was so high school. The only thing I could wrap my head around was like, “Okay, well, it’s a film about high school, so maybe it’ll feed into that.”

  Chapter 14

  The Next Marlon Brando Probably Wouldn’t Call Himself “the Next Marlon Brando”

  “Save my sheets, I’m gonna be famous.”

  Shawn Andrews and Milla Jovovich.

  Courtesy of Richard Linklater.

  Remember Shawn Andrews, the often bare-chested actor in Dazed with the lustrous alt-rock hair and pouty lips? He played Pickford, the stoner whose house party gets busted when the beer delivery man unwittingly tips off his parents. Nobody knew who Andrews was before he got cast in Dazed. And yet, everyone says that he already took himself pretty seriously as an actor.

  Andrews was born Shawn Milgroom in Littleton, Massachusetts. Not a lot is known about his life before Dazed. According to the biography that appeared in the movie’s press materials in 1993, he lived in New York for a while, starred in an off-Broadway production called Pretty Sue—“A powerful story of disenfranchised youth”—and wrote and starred in a short film called Marky Boy about “heterosexual AIDS” (whatever that means) that was featured on the E! network. According to his IMDB page, he quit the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California, by storming into class wearing a trench coat and sunglasses, lighting a cigar, and flipping off the whole room. As he turned and walked out, his teacher deadpanned, “That was his best performance all year.”

  When he was cast in Dazed, Andrews’s handlers were positioning him as a future leading man. And who knows? With his looks and his confidence, maybe he could’ve been one. Dazed was a crapshoot, or maybe a lottery ticket—some of its principals became stars, while others completely dropped out of acting. But the cast believes there’s a good reason why you haven’t seen Andrews much since.

  Richard Linklater: Dazed was about high school, and it was high school. Factions were starting to form.

  Jason Davids Scott: There were lots of little cliques. But Shawn and Milla were completely on their own.

  Jason London: Listen, there’s a reason why we all called him Prickford. I never had any behind-the-scenes drama with anyone, except with Shawn.

  Ben Affleck: Shawn’s part was written as the main stoner in the movie, and in a ’70s movie, the stoner is, like, Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He’s the hero.

  Greg Sims: I was Shawn’s manager at the time. Don Phillips wasn’t particularly interested in seeing Shawn for Dazed and Confused, but I told him I had a gut feeling he would be a good choice, and to Don’s credit, he brought him in.

  Don Phillips: Shawn was a showboat. He was kind of nice-looking, but he was so over the top. I didn’t want him. But, for some strange reason, when you’re casting a movie, you’ve got to go with the director’s choices.

  Richard Linklater: When Shawn first came in, he had a bullshitty attitude. I said, “Oh, I remember guys like that in high school.” He seemed like he had a slightly shady side, but I liked that. I thought, that’s what makes Pickford different from the jocks. He’s not an athlete. He’s the guy who drives the Trans Am. He’s probably dealing drugs. Don correctly sensed that, “Oh, Shawn’s not like these other guys.” And I said, “Well, he’s not, but that’s good.” I wanted the ensemble to be all different types.

  Greg Sims: There was interest, and they went even further. Universal wanted Shawn to structure a three-picture deal—a guarantee that they could have three pictures at their election—before he even did a final test. So we made that three-picture deal, and then he got the role. That was crazy, because what are the odds? He’d never done anything like that before. He delivered. And they thought he could be the guy.

  Richard Linklater: Oh, Universal made all the actors do that three-picture deal. It was like, “All these young actors! What if one of them becomes a huge star?” Even though they’re paying them shit—everyone’s getting scale—they hope you become huge. Like, �
�You owe us another film, and you’re not getting a million dollars.”

  Jason Davids Scott: Before I’d even gotten to Texas, Shawn’s manager called me and said, “This is the guy who’s gonna be the breakout star!” No one else’s manager called me.

  John Cameron: His management published an ad, something about him being the next Brando.

  Greg Sims: I don’t believe I would ever actually include copy in a client’s ad saying he was the next Brando, but I recall an ad that was definitely hyperbole, and I did believe in his talent.

  John Cameron: His manager hung that millstone around Shawn’s neck.

  Greg Finton: Someone took out an ad in the trades that said, “Congratulations, Shawn Andrews, on getting the lead role in Dazed and Confused.” Rick saw that and thought, “Wait a second! There isn’t a lead role in this film.”

  Richard Linklater: Yeah, it seemed aggressive. And it further isolated him, that someone would invest those couple thousand dollars on a client who hasn’t made them any money yet. Overly pushing someone just pisses off everybody else. At some point, you quit taking the manager’s calls just because you’re like, “Dude, leave me alone. I’ve got a whole cast. It’s more than just your guy.”

  Bill Wise: The first time Shawn stepped off the plane, they had told him not to fucking cut his hair, and he had shorn the back of his head completely short. That was his entrance. Not only did he cut it, he cut it to a skeetch. As we say in the poker game, that’s his tell. I remember Rick being fucking furious with him.

  Ben Affleck: Shawn was always going around with his shirt open and flexing his abs, and he earned the loathing of everybody because: A) he was showing off his bod all the time and doing a hair flip, and B) he quickly took up with Milla, so naturally every guy was jealous of him. Somehow, the energy that was happening in the hallways of the Crest hotel was also bleeding into what was happening on camera.

  Jason London: Because he was banging Milla, he thought he was the biggest stud in the world.

  Rory Cochrane: He was too confident. To the point where he would tell the hotel staff, “Save my sheets, I’m gonna be famous.”

  Don Phillips: He cut the sheets into swatches to sell them to the maids, saying, “I’m gonna be the superstar of all time. Here, give me $25 and here’s my autograph and you have a piece of the sheets!” Jerk-off.

  Don Stroud: One time, I was just going to the restroom and Shawn stopped me. He said, “Hey, bro! Who’s your favorite actor?” I said, “I don’t know, Robert De Niro?” And he said, “You’ll say the same thing about me one day.”

  Nicky Katt: Shawn Andrews was just a piece of shit. When I got to the hotel lobby, he shook my hand, and he had something gross all over his hand. It was like, “What are you doing?” He was doing that Jared Leto bullshit. Like, you know, Jared Leto was sending people rats and used condoms for that Suicide Squad movie? It was like that.

  Greg Sims: He’d put everybody off with his personality the minute he walked in a room. He would mindfuck people. It becomes really hard to work with someone like that.

  J.R. Helton: I was two seconds away from kicking his ass. He was going to paint a Jimi Hendrix poster for Pickford’s room. It was like, “Yeah, he wants to get into his character” but then it was like, “Oh, he’s too busy.” So I ended up painting it, and then he came in to “improve” upon it.

  Shawn sat down and he’d say, “Okay, I see a train!” and Milla would paint a train. Like, a comically childish train. And then he’d say, “I see a flower!” and the other girl would say, “Groovy!” and paint a flower. It was really that stupid. I think my IQ dropped 50 points just having to listen to these three idiots.

  He was looking in the mirror, looking at his hair, when I was trying to talk to him. And then, the next day, I heard somebody say, “Hey, did you see that Hendrix poster that Shawn did? He did that all by himself!” He was such a pretentious jerk.

  Jason London: Shawn and Milla had decided that they were going to live as if they had been to Woodstock. In their hotel room, they took the bed apart, and they built like a fort out of it, and they stayed just to themselves and didn’t interact with anybody else.

  Richard Linklater: Poor Shawn. He was just kind of in his own movie, you know?

  Sasha Jenson: He was playing a character that wasn’t in the movie the rest of us were making.

  Richard Linklater: Shawn wanted his character to die in a car accident. I’m like, “I don’t know what James Dean movie you were playing in your head.”

  Bill Wise: They needed to take all these yearbook pictures of the cast, for publicity. And Shawn had a cigarette, which you would have never done when you took your high school photo! But Shawn wouldn’t be denied. It was one of those things where Shawn was so young and so gripped in his own self-excitement, he didn’t listen.

  Matthew McConaughey: That was a first major role for him. You come in, you’re learnin’ how to do it. One thing you can always do is just completely commit to the character, and I think he went very into . . . I’m not gonna use the word “Method,” because it’s overused.

  Tracey Holman: He was constantly reciting Cat in the Hat. That was his acting exercise. All the time. People were like, “Can’t he at least choose something else today?”

  Joey Lauren Adams: Shawn would make us listen to Green Eggs and Ham in the van on the way to set. And we were like, “For real?”

  Melanie Fletcher: You could hear him playing bongos in the trailer. The people on either side of him would go into their little honey wagon and try to collect themselves for the next scene, and they’d complain. He was constantly playing the bongos.

  Chris Barton: I was writing for the Daily Texan, and when I was interviewing people from the movie, I asked him where he was from and he said, “Everywhere.” I don’t think I got a lot of straight answers from him. He called acting “painting.” That seemed kind of pretentious.

  Jason Davids Scott: He warmed up for scenes by listening to Jim Morrison and doing a weird dance.

  Chris Barton: Oliver Stone’s Doors movie was out around that time.

  Jason London: Other people would be right in the middle of doing a scene, and he’d get up and get a big boom box, turn the music all the way up, and walk straight through our scene.

  Kari Perkins: All the different departments were trying to mess with him. He’d set his jam box down and someone took his batteries out. And he came back and he was trying to play it and couldn’t figure it out. We were all laughing.

  Joey Lauren Adams: We were rehearsing and Rick was letting us improvise, and Shawn improvised, I’m gonna go off by myself. And Rick was like, “Uh, okay, but . . . you’re not gonna be in the scene if you do that?”

  Matthew McConaughey: We were all supposed to be sittin’ around talking, and Shawn goes, “Well I wouldn’t be right here, I’d be over there, under the tree with my girl, and I’d be reciting some poetry.” And I remember Rick was like, “Cool, but you could do that here in the group.” Rick’s thinking, I don’t have time to go set up a whole new shot over there. And Shawn’s goin’, “No, no, no, no, no! It’s more true to me that I’m over here under the tree with my girl.”

  Greg Sims: Linklater gave the actors a lot of rope, and Shawn kind of hung himself with it.

  Katy Jelski: He wasn’t into being a workaday actor. He was going to be a breakout actor. Maybe he’d read something about Marlon Brando or something, but he had this idea that each take had to be unique and different and you just kept the surprises coming.

  In the scene at Pickford’s house, when he goes downstairs to sign for the keg, we were doing these wide shots, because there’s a lot of people. Then we came in to do coverage. He could not do the same thing twice!

  Wiley Wiggins: Shawn would improvise in the middle of shooting a scene as opposed to when stuff was being worked out beforehand.

  John Swasey: So, Richard wants to rehearse the scene where I’m delivering the keg. We do the scene. Afterward, Shawn says, “So in that moment,
I was trying to be stoned . . .” We do the scene again, and Shawn goes, “Okay, that time, I was trying to act hungover . . .” This wasn’t some critical moment. It’s like, you’re saying goodbye to the fucking beer guy. Just do the scene!

  Richard Linklater: He really wanted to be good. He cared so much. He’d call me at night, and we’d have these long talks. He was focusing too much on his relationship with me and not on his relationship with the ensemble. He just didn’t fit in.

  Jason London: I think the whole situation with Shawn came to a head when we got pretty close to getting in a fight. There’s a scene in the high school where we’re in the classroom, and Sasha is flirting with the teacher. Shawn is in the back of the classroom, and he’s got a big red rubber ball, and while we’re doing these scenes up at the front, he’s in the back, throwing the ball across the room. It was like, whatever he could do to take attention away from other people and put it on himself!

  Rory Cochrane: He did that to all of us. That’s a shitty thing to do to other actors. If you’re so fucking confident, then be good and shut the fuck up.

  Jason London: Linklater was trying to diplomatically talk to Shawn about it. But I was like, “I’m gonna go punch this guy in the face.” I was just fed up with his crap. I think Rick saw it about to happen, and he was just like, Whoa!

  Richard Linklater: I think I prevented a fight. It was like, “Oh, we’ve got a problem. You have to be best friends, and you hate each other.”

  I mean, everybody wanted to kick Shawn’s ass.

  Rory Cochrane: If all the people in this book are all saying the same thing about him? That’s fucking karma.

  Chapter 15

  Anyone Who Had a Cell Phone Was Instantly an Asshole

  “What are you doing here? You’re, like, 80, dude.”

  Jim Jacks, checking his watch.

  Courtesy of Jonathan Burkhart.

  Our ridiculous schedule means basically having to do a day and a half’s work every day,” Linklater wrote in his “Dazed by Days” diary. “I go in with my shot list and get to spend lunch hearing how we can’t get all of it because we can’t have any overtime or meal penalties, etc. This kind of shit is the most obvious difference between this production and the making of Slacker. On this, time is money, and there’s not time to think or go very far with new inspirations—you better have it all going in. On Slacker, time was our least expensive commodity, and there was more room for variations on the original plan if it was an improvement.”