Cole Hauser: Matthew was like, “C’mon guys, get out of your hotel room, let me take you down to the river.” You’d have these tubes, and you’d just throw a big cooler of beer in the middle, and you’d just float. It’s muggy and nasty in Austin during the summer, so to have a cool spring with a beer in your hand and beautiful girls cruising by? It was heaven on earth.
Adam Goldberg: Floating down the river? I never did that shit.
Renée Zellweger: They were bonding as a cast, and I wasn’t part of that. But the stuff they were doing? That was my life! We were always at the lake on the jet skis, or tubing, or whatever. That’s just Austin.
Chrisse Harnos: We went river rafting. Oh god, you’re in rapids, and I was scared shitless. It was like, Ahhhhhhh! Should we really be doing this?
Rory Cochrane: We went cliff jumping. There was a river, and you’d run and jump off the cliff, but you’d have to wear sneakers because you’d dive so far down, it would hurt the bottoms of your feet. I don’t know why I thought that would be great to do.
Rory Cochrane (left) and Cole Hauser.
Courtesy of Jason London.
Jason London: There was a swing hanging from a tree near the water. You could go up in the tree and swing out, but there were these spikes, like a death pit, that you had to clear to get to the water. You had to let go, and if you dropped at all, you were literally impaled. And apparently, that had happened a few times to people. That was terrifying. I refused to do that.
Sasha Jenson: Oh god, it was horrible. One of the local girls jumped in first, and she didn’t come up. Yeah. Didn’t come up. One of us said, “And that’s the last we ever saw of her!” Like we had to throw in the comedy moment first. And then everybody jumped in looking for her.
We found her, and it wasn’t good. She was under a log. And then I heard that, like, a week later, somebody died there.
Nicky Katt: Cole and Rory and Ben and me, we were all blowing our per diem at Red’s Indoor Range. That was probably me trying to show off, you know, “I’ll show you what real men do” kind of thing.
Peter Millius: Ben liked to be the alpha male. He was definitely one of the guys who was like, “Yeah, let’s go to the gun range!” Him and Cole.
Cole Hauser: We’d shoot all kinds of guns: .44s, 57s, shotguns. Man, they would give you anything. If they’d had a bazooka in there, we would’ve shot it.
Peter Millius: One time, we all went out drinking. At 9:30 in the morning, we get back to the hotel, and someone says, “Hey, let’s go to a shooting range!” I thought, “Guys! We’re all hammered as hell. There is no way anyone’s gonna give us guns.” We get to the gun range, and everyone’s so excited, they all run in ahead of me. When I walk in, half the guys already have guns in their hands, shooting! And I can’t believe they’re giving all of us guns! It’s a Texas thing. They’re like, “You want a cup of water, or you want a gun?”
I think Ben and Cole actually bought guns.
Ben Affleck: Texas had extremely lax gun laws and most of us came from states where it was next to impossible to buy guns, so part of the newfound freedom of being down there was that a bunch of us bought guns and went shooting at ranges on weekends, which seemed fun and innocent at the time, but given the subsequent tragedies with young people and guns, it now makes me uncomfortable to remember.
Rory Cochrane: Cole might have bought a .357. I can’t confirm whether or not he shot it out the window.
Cole Hauser: First of all, you can’t buy a .357 in the state of Texas. And I definitely didn’t shoot it out the window. That’s just nuts.
Rory Cochrane: We went shooting on magic mushrooms. Which was not a great idea. Some of the girls were just waving the guns around, and we were supposed to be in lanes.
Cole Hauser: I wasn’t on mushrooms. Rory might’ve been. He’s pretty good about doing that stuff and you not knowing that he’s on it. He’s not one of those guys dancing around in the tulips, speaking to the sky.
Nicky Katt: He was probably on mushrooms. I was not. But that probably explains why Rory discharged a firearm into the roof of the place. He was like, “Hey, how do I . . .” Boom! And it went off right over his head.
Rory Cochrane: Nobody got hurt, thankfully.
Nicky Katt: In hindsight, it’s incredible that nobody drove off a cliff or anything. We were pretty off the leash.
Chapter 17
Go Ahead and Stab Me!
“Those guys were terrifying. They were like werewolf men.”
(left to right) Sasha Jenson, Ben Affleck, Cole Hauser, and Jason O. Smith.
Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing, LLC.
Cole Hauser and Ben Affleck were already pretty good at playing asshole jocks. Both were bullies in School Ties, a 1992 film about a Jewish high school football star (Brendan Fraser) harassed by anti-Semitic teammates at an elite prep school. “I don’t think Ben had ever caught a ball in his life,” says Hauser. “He was not a great athlete. But he was a big, strong kid. We’d pass the football around, and that was a wonderful experience, and maybe six months later, we were in Austin together. So there was a built-in relationship there.”
They played raging meatheads again in Dazed, but both actors give their roles a surprising fragility. Affleck portrays O’Bannion, a perpetual senior who keeps failing school in order to beat up the next crop of incoming freshmen. He can be funny—he tells one potential victim’s mother that he’s actually protecting her son, because “there’s some ruffians about”—but more often, he’s the butt of the joke, willfully oblivious to the fact that his friends consider him a “dumb shit.” His attempts to intimidate younger kids always seem kind of pathetic.
O’Bannion’s second-in-command, Benny, desperately wants to be viewed as dangerous. It seems like he’s actually performing for the freshmen. He’s a wannabe thug whose baby face and loud, hammy, bad-guy voice are dead giveaways that he’s still just a kid. But according to the actors who played the freshman boys, both Hauser and Affleck were genuinely scary.
Ben Affleck: I hate bullies. I’m not a bully. I didn’t want to play bullies, but I kept getting bully parts. Maybe I looked like a frat dude or something? I can’t explain it, because I had never even been inside a fraternity. I barely went to college. We certainly didn’t have any hazing rituals, and hazing rituals would be an anathema to my personality anyway. But I seemed to fit the part, physically. I’m 6’4”, so I’m taller than most actors. And I was probably around 225 pounds. I was fat, and I didn’t care. I didn’t work out. So if they were looking for a guy to chase somebody around, it was me.
Cole Hauser: Ben and I would do some intense scene where we’re beating somebody up, and we’d come back kind of fired up.
Wiley Wiggins: Those guys were terrifying. They were like werewolf men. I still have nightmares about Ben Affleck running toward me in slow motion, like, drooling.
Ben Affleck: Cole was definitely more scary than I was. Cole was a scary guy! He has a certain menace that I’m not sure he’s aware of, but he’s got this laconic drawl, and he was quite big and strong and very “Method” at the time. And he took that to mean he should be terrorizing those kids.
Wiley Wiggins: It was this fucking Method actor bullshit that those L.A. guys were into. They all thought they were gonna be the next James Dean.
Cole Hauser: I never thought of myself as a Method actor, but who isn’t into James Dean?
Jason Lee: Method acting was quite popular in the ’90s. People were looking up to the Marlon Brandos and the Paul Newmans and the James Deans. There was more of that acting-class dedication to craft, and I think that comes about when you’re new to acting. When you’re older, it becomes more mechanical.
Adam Goldberg: Everybody was trying to be cool. It was like what I imagined was happening with the Rebel Without a Cause guys: Who can be the toughest? Who can smoke the most? Who can drink the most? Who can shoot the most guns? We were all obsessed with James Dean and Old Hollywood history. Everyone wanted to be the next
whatever, and you can sort of see that in us.
Cole Hauser: The guys I liked were Brando, Christopher Walken, De Niro, Pacino, Duvall—you know, when American men were men. They’ve gone through stuff. There’s life in their eyes.
Nicky Katt: You can spot everybody’s influences pretty clearly if you watch Dazed with your eyes closed. Adam’s doing Woody Allen. I’m doing Mickey Rourke. Cole’s doing Christopher Walken. You really notice it with Cole. You’re like, “Wait a minute, why would a football player talk like Christopher Walken?”
Jason London: He was just fascinated with Christopher Walken. He very much had that cadence, and that quasi-Elvis mumble thing, like, “Hey there, guh-bah-guh-bah-guh, Pinky boy.”
Adam Goldberg: Cole was definitely a tough guy. Our joke about Cole was like, “Yo, how ya doin’ kid, I’m from Santa Bah-brah.” He talked like he was from Boston, but he was from Santa Barbara. I mean, he’s half-Jewish!
Rory Cochrane: Cole has been calling everybody “kid” since he was, like, 15. If you don’t know how old he is, you’re not gonna know how old he is, you know what I mean? There were guys 10 years older than him, and they were intimidated by him. And he’s like a 17-year-old kid!
Jason Lee: Wait, Cole was 17? Shit!
Jason London: He had a gravitas to him even at that age. His dad is Wings Hauser, and he had that same attitude. Cole’s dad was notorious for being a badass that you don’t want to mess with. I think he dated the girl from The Exorcist, Linda Blair.
Peter Millius: Cole was a real “Who the fuck are you looking at?” kind of guy, almost to the point where if anybody looked at his crowd wrong, he would want to start a fight.
Jason Davids Scott: One night, we were at a blues bar, Antone’s. It was Adam, Cole, and Ben, but I was the one who had the car, and they were already drinking. We knew very quickly we were not gonna get in. There’s a giant bouncer at the door, and Cole’s like, “C’mon let me in!” And the guy’s like, “No, I can’t let you in,” in a totally nonconfrontational way. It was just sort of, Scram, kid. And Cole was like, “What, you want a piece of me? You wanna start going at me?”
Cole Hauser: Antone’s was a predominantly black place, and we were often the only white guys in there, and we’d just dance our asses off and sweat. I did get in a fight there once, and they threw me out, but I think it was because I ran into somebody inside the club, or he ran into me, and we just got pissed off. It’s one of those moments where they’re like, “Fuck you!” and you’re like, “Fuck YOU,” and boom!
Jason Davids Scott: Instantly, Adam turned to me and he said, “Get the car,” and they both pulled him away like, “We’re leaving.” We’re driving down the road, and then Cole looks at me and he’s like, “Oh fuck. You’re the publicist.” And I said, “You’re fine. I’m not gonna tell anybody.”
Sasha Jenson: Cole definitely stood out as the guy who was in the deepest state of a drunken stupor amongst all of us. A couple of times, I had to bail him out. He won’t remember it, though. We were at a bar, and a guy wanted to stab him.
Cole Hauser: All I remember is Sasha screaming, “Guy’s got a knife!”
Sasha Jenson: Cole pulled up his shirt and said, “Stab me! Go ahead and stab me!” And it was almost like he was in character. I was like, “This is real life, dude! You’re not in Hollywood. You’re gonna get stabbed!” And I literally pleaded with the guy. I was like, “He’s a kid! He’s a baby! Don’t stab him.”
Catherine Avril Morris: Cole Hauser seemed angry as hell. He seemed like a rodeo bull, right behind the gate, before they release it to go kill everybody—which worked. He and Ben used that vibe.
Mark Vandermeulen: We were the incoming freshman kids, and the actors playing the older kids were trying to intimidate us. They were like, “If you fuck this scene up, we’re coming after you.” It was like, “Okay. Shit!”
Esteban Powell: When we were at the baseball field, Wiley got his ass handed to him.
Wiley Wiggins: Rick had asked if I could play baseball and I lied. I think I said something like, “Yeah, but I’m not very good.” And he said, “Oh, it’s gonna be fine.” I had never touched a baseball in my entire life! That is how much I lied. I wanted to be in a movie!
We went out and tossed a baseball back and forth, and I just couldn’t catch it. Couldn’t throw it. And he was like, “Oh. Oh.”
John Frick: Wiley couldn’t get the ball to home plate.
Mark Vandermeulen: Wiley’s throwing the ball, and it’s going the wrong way, every time.
Jason Davids Scott: They got a stunt double to pitch in the movie, but it was a scrawny guy who was about a foot taller than Wiley. That’s the best special effect in the movie: making Wiley Wiggins look like an athlete.
Wiley Wiggins: It was traumatic. I had to throw the ball for the cutaway to be done—and I can’t throw a ball. So there was an entire team of Little Leaguers who were the extras, and they were openly, loudly mocking me as I do this thing that I’m terrible at, over and over and over again. Yeah, it’s fine. Builds character.
Mark Vandermeulen: After the baseball game, that’s when the seniors paddle the freshmen.
Cole Hauser: I used to see jocks who were idiots that beat up on kids who were bad at sports. I was a jock myself, but I wanted to beat those guys up. So I made Benny that kind of guy.
Wiley Wiggins: He was scary. I’ve been getting my ass kicked by groups of testosteroned-out guys forever. I mean, I’m from Texas, man.
Cole Hauser: I know why Wiley and those guys were scared of Ben and me. The stunt guy put a piece of fiberglass on Wiley’s ass with a pad, and he said, “You can hit him as hard as you want.” And I was like, “Really?” I hit Wiley, and he turned around like he’d basically been shot up the ass with a shotgun. He started crying.
Richard Linklater: I’m pretty sure Cole is thinking of the first kid he paddled, right after school. You’d tell them, “Hey, back off a little bit!” But those guys don’t know what it means to “back off a little bit.” By the time Wiley was getting busted, we’d “perfected” the stunt. There was a metal bar in front of his butt—that’s what they’re hitting. It wasn’t supposed to hurt.
(left to right) Esteban Powell, Mark Vandermeulen, and Wiley Wiggins.
Courtesy of Richard Linklater.
Cole Hauser: I thought, Wow, what a pussy! You could’ve hit me over the head with a Louisville Slugger, and I wouldn’t have cried. The whole crew were like, “That was so mean!” And I was like, “The stunt guy said I could!” And that kind of reverberated throughout the cast.
Mark Vandermeulen: Wiley got paddled for real.
Wiley Wiggins: Nope, I was safe. I barely felt a thing. For that scene, they blew menthol in my eyes to make me cry. But I was terrified by how animalistic their performances were getting.
Peter Millius: Cole said, “Oh my god, I really hit that kid hard.” And then there was some sort of competition between Ben and Cole, like, “I want to make my kid more scared than you’re making your kid.”
Deenie Wallace: Just the way he held his chest, you could tell Ben Affleck was a silverback gorilla on set. He had this charge, that masculine authority.
Bill Wise: He was a big dude. Geez, once you put on those platform shoes, everyone was like a member of KISS. Everyone was, like, fucking 6’2” or 6’4” all of the sudden, so it was a lot of territorial pissing and pooping going on. And Ben Affleck had one of those “I am man, hear me roar!” vibes.
Jason London: When Cole and Ben are chasing the freshman guys, they jump out of the car and run. If you watch that scene again, Cole slips and falls. He busted his knee so hard. When he got up to throw the kid against the fence, he was in so much pain. He wasn’t gonna yell “Cut!” and start crying like a baby. He was in agony. So he took it out on the kid.
Cole Hauser: I don’t think I hurt myself. It just pissed me off. So I threw the kid against the chain-link fence.
Jason London: You heard about Cole getting in trouble by someone from
the studio after that? Oh lawdy lawdy. The kid went and told his agent, and his agent threw a fit. It was a big deal. I don’t remember if they wanted to fire Cole, but I’m sure he got a finger-wagging, which Cole would’ve laughed at. He would’ve been like, “Ooh-kay, buddy, ooh-kay.”
Jeremy Fox: My mother wanted to sue because I was totally covered in bruises. When Ben Affleck is paddling me in the movie, he’s actually paddling the shit out of me.
Jonathan Burkhart: The way it was staged was that Ben would wind back, like you do with a baseball bat, and swing, but miss the kid. On the first take, he made contact with the kid. He physically hit him in the back and the ass, and the kid recoiled in absolute pain. If I’m not mistaken, the kid’s mother was on set that day. It was like, “Holy shit, Ben! You weren’t supposed to actually hit him!” And Ben was like, “I’m really sorry! Jesus Christ.”
It was bad. We had to stop work for about a half hour so this kid could regain his composure. And then we had to do another take, and on the second take, we rolled again, and he hit this kid the second time. It was like, “Dude, this is over.”
I was like, “What the fuck did you do? We just told you!” And Ben was like, “What the fuck you talking about? I barely hit the kid!” He was being very defensive. That pissed me off.
Deb Pastor: Ben was doing his Method madness, and you’re watching this weirdness come out of him, and it got ugly. I’m standing there watching somebody get hurt because we’re making a film. A fucking film! Who fucking cares about making a film when someone’s getting hurt!
Richard Linklater: The goal, of course, wasn’t to hurt anyone. We usually put a solid board there, so that the actors would be hitting a board, not a person. The only time we couldn’t do it that way was when the camera was shooting from below, when they catch Jeremy as he’s running away. So that one had to be done with some restraint. We padded Jeremy up, but Ben and Cole hit him harder than I asked. That was definitely a low point.
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