Alright, Alright, Alright

by Melissa Maerz

She looks back down where all the people were gathered earlier.

  KAYE

  What’s going to happen to all of us? I mean, everyone that was here tonight, within a year or so, we’ll all be scattered and most of us will never see each other again.

  JODI

  Yeah. It’s like you’re all alone but the people around you will keep changing.

  Jason Davids Scott: Rick shot some of that scene, focusing on their eyes, just panning back and forth between them.

  Jason Reitman: Here’s a movie where, up until this moment, to think about your future is to think about, are you going to be able to get booze tonight? Your future is basically 10 minutes ahead of you. And all of a sudden, these young women are pondering their existence and wondering who they will become. I love that scene. I always wonder why he cut it.

  Richard Linklater: It was at the end of the movie, after that big party, and we’re coming down from that to hang out with two of them in a graveyard? It just sent the movie in a sideways direction. But I loved that scene so much, I put it in my next movie. In Before Sunrise, they’re walking through the cemetery. I totally recycled that scene.

  Don Howard: Dazed was more of an art movie at one point. I probably argued with Rick and Sandra too much, because I wanted more of the class stuff in the movie to be visible. One of my favorite scenes got cut. Early in the movie, when you first meet Sabrina, the older girls pull up to a house and they let her off. She gets out of the truck, and she’s clearly waiting for the truck to leave, then she walks down to this other little house in the back, and her mom is there. It’s not like her mom says anything mean to her, but you get this feeling that they live a hard life. Later, Sabrina has her first kiss outside the house where the older girls dropped her off. She lets Tony kiss her in front of her neighbor’s house because she doesn’t want him to see where she lives.

  Richard Linklater: That was personal to me. She’s kind of ashamed of the house she lives in. She doesn’t want the other girls to know where she lives. So she gets dropped off next door and she walks home. I remember doing that, because my mom bought a really crummy little house in Huntsville. I mean, single mom, inflation in the ’70s—we were poor. I just didn’t wanna look like white trash.

  The day we shot that was the one day my mom visited the set. She was like, “What’s going on in this scene?” I couldn’t tell her straight up. I was like, “Oh, she’s getting dropped off after school. Have you visited the craft service table?”

  Don Howard: I was always pushing for some aspects of the movie that were more harsh in terms of those kids’ view of the world. There was a scene where the guys are at the moon tower, looking down on the town, and they’re talking about the people in the town and how they all go to work and live these dead-end lives. It’s always been a good scene, but it was fatter in the beginning. When they brought that scene back, it had devolved to just, “Imagine how many people are out there fucking right now.” And to me, that’s emblematic of the direction the film went.

  Richard Linklater: It was just part of this ongoing process of having screenings, and trimming the movie. You squirm in your seat when something’s clearly not working. And the film did get better. Somewhere along the way, you go, why go dark? There’s enough little dark rings around things. You’re in the editing room with your 2 hour 45 minute movie and you’re like, “Well, it’s not consistently funny.” You have to let a film be what it’s meant to be, and ultimately Dazed wanted to be more of a party movie. I think that’s why we’re here talking about it almost 30 years later.

  Robert Brakey: For the first preview, which was in Dallas, we had to drastically cut the film from the original runtime. Sandra said, “Have you been through this before?” I said, “No. What can I expect?” She dragged her finger across her throat, like, this is death.

  Excerpt from Richard Linklater’s “Dazed by Days” Diary

  Dallas, November 1992

  We have our first obligatory preview to a half-full theater in some Dallas shopping center. The audience seems to really like it, but, of course, the critics emerge when it’s time to fill out those stupid cards. Everyone’s a Siskel or Ebert.

  Later, the company conducting the preview writes a letter to Universal trying to cover their ass for not filling up the theater. Instead of rightly saying there was a Cowboy game going on at the same time and maybe they shouldn’t have scheduled a suburban Dallas preview right then, they blame it on the film: no one thought it even sounded interesting enough to want to attend for free—there was nothing appealing about the seventies, and no stars in the movie, so they were unable to even give the tickets away. Furthermore, when trying to explain why they didn’t get a response card from almost everyone in the audience, they, of course, don’t admit they forgot to tell everyone to wait after the show to fill out a card. Instead the audience “bolted” from their seats after the screening, apparently completely disappointed with the film.

  Welcome to an industry that’s all about not looking bad no matter who you have to fuck over in the process.

  And for this kind of bullshit Universal throws away about twenty grand per preview. It’s completely ludicrous—a total waste of cash.

  I don’t even bother to look at the cards—I don’t want to give them that power. I’m only concerned with how I feel watching with an audience and in that way it is helpful. You’re forced to confront your material in a big way when you know others are watching. You can no longer tell yourself something is working when it isn’t or that the film can’t be any shorter when you feel it dragging in spots.

  The worst thing now is, they want us to come to L.A. to keep editing and to prepare for the next preview. “It’s in the best interests of the picture.” Hmmm.

  Russell Schwartz: You’re familiar with research screenings, right? When a movie is tested, there is a recruited audience that comes, and you try to make sure that’s the audience that will respond most to the movie. Then 20 or 25 people are asked if they want to be in a focus group, which will happen after the screening. So there’s a public reaction, then there’s a smaller focus group where we ask things like “Would you definitely recommend it?” And then, based on that, you look to see whether the film is clicking with the audience or not.

  The norm for screenings was probably that 35 percent would say the film was excellent, and maybe 30 percent would say the film was very good, so you’ve got 65 percent in the top two boxes. Everybody thinks if they hit that norm, they’re really doing well, but in fact they’re not, because that’s equivalent to a C. It just means you passed.

  Robert Brakey: The Dallas preview did not go well and word came down that we were packing up and moving to the Universal Studios lot. They wanted us under their thumb. Sandra asked me if I could drive all the dailies from Austin to California—in a U-Haul. I didn’t know what it would be like to work in a cutting room, so it definitely showed me what that was like, and not in a glamorous way.

  Greg Finton: We were treated like the bastard stepchildren once everyone got to L.A. Rick was an out-of-towner, so the studio needed to rent him a car. Normally, a director working from out of town is gonna get a BMW or a Mercedes. They rented him a Geo Metro.

  Richard Linklater: Part of the psych ops they did on me was, I was staying at the Oakwood Apartments, right by Universal, which was really horrible. I found out later, Nirvana was there at the same time doing In Utero, and Cobain writes about it, like, “It’s a sad place. All Star Search moms.”

  Greg Finton: Most films are brought to L.A. to finish if it’s a studio film, and this was technically a studio film, but we certainly did not get the respect a studio film would get. They put us in a completely dilapidated building at Universal.

  Robert Brakey: It was the costume warehouse. Greg and I would go exploring and find an office with a box of old scripts and costumes from some ’70s TV show.

  Greg Finton: They were just waiting for us to finish editing so they could tear the entire building down. We were on th
e second floor, and it rained a lot that winter. We constantly had leaks that were dripping onto our work print, and I had to move the film from one room to another to get away from the leaks. We had our sound editors down the hall, and when you walked down the hallway, the floor would flex under your legs.

  Sandra Adair: We had a small earthquake while we were editing. All the film reels on the rack were shaking and I thought the whole building was going to crumble. It probably wasn’t safe for us to be in there.

  Greg Finton: Universal wanted to have control over the film. They didn’t trust Rick. It was odd that they’re hired him to make this cutting-edge indie film for them but they didn’t trust in that process at all.

  Russell Schwartz: After the first research screening in Woodland Hills, Tom Pollock said, “My wife doesn’t like the movie.” I said, “Oh shit.”

  Richard Linklater: Tom only came to one screening. And it’s like, if you only came to one screening, why’d you drag your wife to a teenage movie in fucking Woodland Hills to do your job?

  Tom Pollock: She’s now my ex-wife, so please don’t get me in trouble. I vaguely remember that she didn’t like it. I don’t remember why.

  Nicky Katt: I heard she thought it was some booby, druggie movie, like Porky’s or something, so he was like, “I’m gonna bury this film.”

  Richard Linklater: That definitely had a chilling effect.

  At some point, Universal decided to release Dazed as a much smaller thing. They had formed a company called Gramercy Pictures to do specialty films. So I went through the whole studio experience, and then I got the specialty film release. Which sucked, because it’s the worst of both worlds.

  Russell Schwartz: Gramercy was a co-venture between PolyGram Films and Universal. The idea was that both companies were feeding into this centralized marketing system.

  Samantha Hart: Gramercy was created as a dumping ground for movies the studios didn’t know what to do with.

  John Pierson: Gramercy was supposed to be the artsier direction. “Oh, we’re not really a Universal film, we’re a Gramercy film.” So Dazed was caught in betwixt and between. “Are we commercial? Are we art? Are we Universal? Are we Gramercy? We’re neither fish nor fowl.”

  Greg Finton: We kept endlessly previewing the film in L.A. Normally when you preview a film, you do it far enough outside the city where you don’t have people within the industry showing up to your screenings, and you never do it in the same place. But I remember us going out to the same theater in the Valley and seeing half the audience look like the same kids who were there two weeks earlier.

  Richard Linklater: It was so weird. You’d sit through test screenings and it would be through the roof. People would applaud at the end. They’d laugh through the whole film. They’d have a great time. And then the scores would come in and they weren’t that good. The first screening in Dallas was a 38 or so. We progressed up as we trimmed and polished, ending up in the high 70s, or low 80s. Better, but not “enough.”

  Russell Schwartz: Most independent movies don’t test well. Fargo tested at about 26 percent in the top two boxes. About Schmidt tested at about 30 percent. If you went by traditional research methodologies with these movies, they would never get released.

  Richard Linklater: When we did these screenings, they’d press the audience about the ending, and lo and behold, everybody had a problem with the ending. It was like, “What ending?”

  Greg Finton: Yeah, it was, “What ending? What beginning? What middle?” The beauty of the film was completely lost on them.

  Richard Linklater: They’d ask the audience, “Who are your least favorite characters?” Well, what do you know, Darla and O’Bannion are their least favorites. And we’d hear from the studio, “People don’t like them.”

  And I’m like, “They’re the bad guys! Are you telling me to cut them out of the movie?”

  Adam Goldberg: I remember Rick telling me that it was like, “What’s your favorite part of the movie?” And someone had written, “The part where the Jew gets his ass kicked.”

  Richard Linklater: That’s the kind of stuff you have to go through. Constant stupidity.

  Greg Finton: It felt like we were doing preview screenings every week. I’d worked on Robert Redford’s film A River Runs Through It, and the experience of working with Redford as a director versus Linklater couldn’t have been any more different. Redford said to the studio, “You can preview my film, but you can’t take any numbers. You can’t do any Scantron sheets. You have to sit in the audience and watch them and read them yourselves.” He had the power where he could do that.

  Rick didn’t have any power. But the beauty of what Rick did with Dazed is that no matter how many times it got cut down, no matter how many notes he got, the film stuck to his vision. It probably survived more than any other film I’ve ever worked on. The guy with the least amount of power maintained the most amount of power in the end.

  Jim Jacks: Toward the end, Universal had a real lack of confidence in the movie. They were spending enough money that they couldn’t just throw it away—but ultimately, they did, because of the whole thing about the soundtrack.

  Richard Linklater: I’d already made up my mind: If the ship was gonna sink, I was gonna go down with it.

  Tracklist from Richard Linklater’s Original Dazed and Confused Mixtapes

  Songs that ended up in the movie appear in bold.

  SIDE A

  Aerosmith, “Sweet Emotion”

  Foghat, “Slow Ride”

  ZZ Top, “Thunderbird”

  KISS, “Rock and Roll All Nite”

  Led Zeppelin, “D’yer Mak’er”

  Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”

  Isley Brothers, “Fight the Power”

  The Edgar Winter Group, “Free Ride”

  Ted Nugent, “Stranglehold”

  Sweet, “Fox on the Run”

  Rick Derringer, “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo”

  SIDE B

  Aerosmith, “Dream On”

  Ohio Players, “Love Rollercoaster”

  Golden Earring, “Radar Love”

  Led Zeppelin, “Rock and Roll”

  ZZ Top, “Balinese”

  Electric Light Orchestra, “Strange Magic”

  Nazareth, “Love Hurts”

  Bruce Springsteen, “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”

  War, “Low Rider”

  Peter Frampton, “Show Me the Way”

  Jethro Tull, “Locomotive Breath”

  Black Sabbath, “Paranoid”

  Grand Funk Railroad, “Some Kind of Wonderful”

  Bee Gees, “Jive Talkin’”

  SIDE C

  Roxy Music, “Love Is the Drug”

  David Bowie, “Golden Years”

  Head East, “Never Been Any Reason”

  Foghat, “I Just Want to Make Love to You”

  Jigsaw, “Sky High”

  Ted Nugent, “Hey Baby”

  Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Sweet Home Alabama”

  Deep Purple, “Woman from Tokyo”

  Steve Miller Band, “Living in the U.S.A.”

  KC & the Sunshine Band, “That’s the Way (I Like It)”

  Orleans, “Dance with Me”

  Seals & Crofts, “Summer Breeze”

  Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, “Fallin’ in Love”

  The Stylistics, “Break Up to Make Up”

  SIDE D

  Led Zeppelin, “Communication Breakdown”

  Aerosmith, “You See Me Crying”

  Electric Light Orchestra, “Evil Woman”

  Led Zeppelin, “Dazed and Confused”

  ZZ Top, “Backdoor Medley”

  Chapter 28

  Instead of Led Zeppelin, How About . . . Jackyl?

  “I was going to go into Tom Pollock’s office with a razor.”

  Wiley Wiggins and Jason London pose with KISS statue.

  Courtesy of Richard Linklater.

  The soundtrack to Dazed and Confused has become just as iconic as the mov
ie itself. It now seems like a brilliant encapsulation of what many kids would have actually listened to in 1976. But at the time of its release, it was hard to tell if the songs were supposed to reflect the era of music or if they were commenting on the characters’ pedestrian taste.

  In June 1992, before production began, Richard Linklater sent a mixtape to the cast with all the songs he wanted to use in the movie. “A few of the songs are a little cheesy (there are a few places for ironic usage, etc.) but for the most part I believe this music I want is like the movie itself: straightforward, honest and fun,” he wrote in the accompanying letter.

  Linklater’s song choices were risky at the time. Throughout most of the 1980s, ’70s arena rock was viewed as totally irrelevant. Somehow, Linklater was prescient enough to pick songs that were not only true to the era but also memorable and durable, to the point where they’d soon be collectively regarded as timeless.

  Nearly 10 percent of the film’s budget was originally set aside for securing the music rights—about the same percentage George Lucas spent securing the music rights for American Graffiti. The movie’s title came from a Led Zeppelin song. (Legally, they were able to use the song title without clearing it with the band.) Linklater believed the music could end up defining the film, and he was right. The soundtrack sold more than two million copies and yielded a sequel, Even More Dazed and Confused. Dazed is now remembered as one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll movies of all time.

  Yet when Linklater talks about the soundtrack now, he mostly remembers it as the singular detail that nearly made him lose his mind. To the average person, Universal’s suggestions about the soundtrack might seem unsurprising: the studio wanted to cut the music budget, and they wanted the album to be released by Geffen Records, a subsidiary of MCA Records, which had corporate ties to Universal. But to Linklater, Universal was calling for major, film-destroying sacrifices, especially once the executives started making demands about which bands to include on the soundtrack. Linklater had a choice: concede to the music titans or go to battle over a cloddish hard rock band known for using a chainsaw in concert.