Alright, Alright, Alright

by Melissa Maerz

  Chapter 32

  Wading into the Shark Waters

  “I kind of had to go and join the real world.”

  Ben Affleck with the puppy he bought during Dazed.

  Courtesy of Richard Linklater.

  People often think of Dazed as a star-making movie, but with the exception of Matthew McConaughey, it took years before anyone was cast in a real breakthrough role. Relatively few could find enough work. Even Parker Posey, who had a career-defining stretch in the mid to late ’90s with Party Girl, The House of Yes, Waiting for Guffman, and Kicking and Screaming, remembers that era as the beginning of the end for her career as an indie darling. “The independent film world in the early nineties had a real independence from the Hollywood system, much like in the seventies,” she wrote in her 2017 book, You’re on an Airplane. “And then, Time called me the queen of independent cinema and that’s when my career in independent cinema virtually ended.”

  Dazed also marked a turning point for some members of the crew. Lee Daniel, Clark Walker, Anne Walker-McBay, and D. Montgomery had worked with Linklater on Slacker, which felt to them—though, crucially, not to him—like a collective project. They helped Linklater, and they believed Linklater would help them. And he did, to a degree. He got them hired on Dazed, and on other projects for years to come. Clark Walker worked with him in various capacities until 2004, Walker-McBay until 2005, and Lee Daniel until 2009. D. Montgomery initially planned on joining Linklater as production designer on Before Sunrise, but when it became clear that she was struggling with a drinking problem, he had to replace her. From the set in Vienna, he sent her home to the U.S. and paid for her to go to rehab.

  Over time, Linklater found new DPs, producers, and assistant art directors to work with him–or, rather, to work for him. No collective is really a democracy, at least not in the long term.

  Joey Lauren Adams: When we were working on Dazed, we were all told, “You’re gonna be stars! This is it!” And you’d have these moments like, “I’m never gonna have to audition again! Thank god!”

  And then none of that happened.

  Adam Goldberg: Dazed didn’t launch anyone into superstardom. It didn’t launch anybody into anything.

  Anthony Rapp: If Dazed was your first thing—and it was the first thing for so many people—it’s special in ways you probably didn’t even realize were special, in terms of how well we were treated and how included we were and how meaningful our contribution was. If that’s your first foray into this business, and then you’re wading in the crazy shark waters after that, it’s tough.

  Parker Posey: It was a big benchmark for all of us to then go into this Hollywood system and see something completely different from Dazed. Not as free, not as loose, not as joyous.

  Sasha Jenson: Casting directors were like, “I don’t want to see anybody from Dazed and Confused.” This wasn’t, like, Less than Zero, where every role was a star-making role. In those kinds of movies, the performances were clearly etched out, and with that comes actors that are very castable in other roles that are etched out. With Dazed, the lines were fuzzier in terms of what kinds of characters they were. It was like, “What do we do with this guy? It’s not like we’re going to put him in a sitcom.”

  Ben Affleck: The movie bombed, but the critical reaction was so strong at the time, it helped some people’s careers. It just didn’t help mine. When the movie came out, I was back to living in my apartment in Eagle Rock. In fact, I brought my puppy back to L.A. from Austin, and it got stolen out of my yard five months later. I was trying to cobble together what life I could with guest-starring in episodic shows and stuff. You just keep hoping each movie will propel you forward in this imaginary list of people who are all ahead of you in line.

  Chrisse Harnos: Renée and Matthew and Ben, it took a good decade for their careers to become what they did. In the meantime, we were all just trying to work.

  Jason London: On Dazed, we didn’t make any money. I think we cleared eight grand each, if we were lucky.

  Adam Goldberg: When I came back to L.A., I had done a day on the Pauly Shore movie Son in Law, because I needed $1,000. Dazed hadn’t come out yet. So I was on the set in a full, bad Native American Halloween costume, and I had one line. And then Son in Law became a shameful blight on my résumé. But at the time, it didn’t mean anything. I just needed to work. I still need to work.

  Anthony Rapp: Right after Dazed and Confused, I was working at Starbucks. My landlord skipped town and the bank foreclosed on the building, and there was no one to pay rent to for two or three years, so I kind of lived there for free. I did little off-Broadway things, but no money gigs. Even when I got Rent, at that time, it was just the tent performance workshop of the show. It was enough to get me not having to work at Starbucks anymore, but money was still tight.

  Adam Goldberg: After Nick and I did the fight scene in Dazed, we thought it was this life-changing experience. We both said, “We’re never gonna do TV again! That’s that! No more television shows! Only films!”

  I didn’t see Nick much after that, and then finally when I do see him, it’s at an audition for a TV show called Love & War, which is a Diane English show with Susan Dey and Jay Thomas. And we’re both auditioning for this fucking cheesy “punk” part. And we were like, “Hey.” “Hey.” Yeah, we’re never gonna do TV again, huh?

  Nicky Katt: We’d see each other at screen tests, wearing the same suit. Like, “Where’d you buy that, T.J. Maxx? I thought we said we weren’t gonna do this.”

  Adam Goldberg: Nick and I were sort of this yin and yang. Someone wrote about Dazed recently and talked about how there was this weird similarity between the two of us. Over the years, we would ape each other’s acting style.

  Nicky Katt: When I sent in my audition tape for Saving Private Ryan, their feedback was, “Too much like Adam Goldberg.” Our personalities started to meld to the point where it didn’t matter who got the part anymore.

  Michelle Burke Thomas: Before Dazed came out, I did Coneheads with Parker and Joey, and it was exactly the same as Dazed. They were rude.

  Joey Lauren Adams: I don’t have any recollection of that, but I don’t remember Michelle making a huge effort to be friends with us, either. I don’t know that it was our job to make her feel included.

  Parker Posey: Not everyone has the same sense of humor. As a conscious adult now, I would’ve gone out of my way to be sweet to Michelle. I hope she’s able to get over those feelings of being hurt.

  Michelle Burke Thomas: Parker auditioned for the role of Connie. I think she really wanted that role. And she would’ve been great at it! But I got it.

  Parker Posey: I knew I’d never get the part of Connie Conehead because I wasn’t as pretty as Michelle and I didn’t have boobs! Michelle is a knock-out. But I convinced Lorne Michaels that Connie needed friends. That was when Joey and I got our first “SAG + 15 percent” job. I was funny at the audition and getting to meet Lorne Michaels was how I got cast in Waiting for Guffman, which led to all that improvisational work with that ensemble.

  Adam Goldberg: When we were doing the movie, we’d talk about who was gonna be the big star to come out of it. Jason London was the obvious one.

  Greg Finton: I thought Jason London was gonna be the biggest star to come out of Dazed and Confused. I couldn’t believe that Matthew McConaughey was the first one to come out of that a star. I was sure that Jason London would be huge. He had a twin brother who had some success, too. Whatever happened to them?

  Jason London: When I went to my very first audition back in L.A. after Dazed, we’d just buried my sister.

  It was traumatizing enough to lose my sister, and then my sister’s seven-month-old baby—who had been born with all of these health issues—had lived through the car wreck, miraculously. This baby was a hemophiliac! He wasn’t even supposed to be able to take a bump on the head! So then it was like, what’s gonna happen with him? There was all this custody shit about who’s gonna raise him. My life got so involved in
that that I stopped caring about other things.

  I strolled in late to the audition, and the casting director was really pissed off at me. I was trying to hold back from crying. I said, “I’m so sorry. I’m having a hard time. My sister died a few days ago. We just buried her.”

  And he said, “I don’t give a fuck. You don’t show up late to my audition.”

  I stood up and walked out. I said, “I just can’t do this. I’m sorry to waste your time.”

  All of the things that had been important to me stopped being important. I probably could’ve had a different career if that hadn’t happened, but the truth is, after my sister died, I didn’t give a fuck.

  Adam Goldberg: The other person we all thought would break out from that movie was Rory. He had been on the cover of High Times and he seemed like the poster child for the movie. The word on the street was that he was the next Sean Penn. But after the movie came out, he kept turning stuff down.

  Ben Affleck: I remember him telling me that he wouldn’t go in and read for this very, very famous actor who was directing his first movie, because Rory thought the script was bad. I was like, “Are you crazy? That’s so-and-so!”

  Rory Cochrane: I waited for a full year to find something that was completely different from Dazed that I really wanted to do. I got offered everything that was a stoner, and I was like, that’s not what I’m trying to do!

  Adam Goldberg: There was a Dazed rip-off that I auditioned for right after Dazed. It was called The Stoned Age, and I auditioned for the Rory part. Thank god I didn’t get that. It’s embarrassing that I even auditioned.

  Rory Cochrane: Years later, they were still offering me stuff like Dude, Where’s My Car? I mean, I did another movie for Rick called A Scanner Darkly, and I played a drug addict. And I’m like, “You know, Rick, I can play other things than a drug addict!”

  Richard Linklater: I reached out to Rory to play the lead in SubUrbia a few years later! But he wouldn’t really discuss it or read for it. He just acted cryptic, which is Rory anywhere near an audition. It ended up going to Marissa’s brother, the wonderful Giovanni Ribisi.

  Ben Affleck: Coming out of Dazed, Rory and Matthew were clearly the two people who were going to get famous, but Rory was a little bit conflicted. He seemed to not want to be famous on some level, whereas Matthew seemed thrilled.

  Don Phillips: After Dazed wrapped, Matthew went back to school. He finished his senior year in Austin.

  Shana Scott: Right after Dazed, I was a casting assistant in another movie in Austin called My Boyfriend’s Back, and Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey are extras in that movie. They got paid $150. The movie was about a kid who became a zombie. Philip Seymour Hoffman was the one who hit the kid in the head and made him a zombie. It’s a horrible movie.

  Matthew McConaughey in the zombie movie My Boyfriend’s Back.

  Courtesy of Jonathan Burkhart.

  Richard Linklater: Within the year between us wrapping Dazed and the movie coming out, Matthew got cast in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, in Austin. He and Renée Zellweger both got in that one.

  Renée Zellweger: I played Jenny, the prom queen in the dirty prom dress, and I did my own stunts and flew down an unfinished tin roof without a safety design. The only stunt that I didn’t get to do was jumping out of the window onto the crash boxes. I would land on the ground in the glass that they put there to make it look dangerous. It was an excellent workout.

  Matthew and I shared an agent in Dallas, but I didn’t really meet him on Dazed and Confused. I just knew there was this guy in Austin who was also at UT and who drove up to Dallas every week for auditions on the same schedule I did. My agent had suggested that we meet and ride together, but there was no way I was going to call an actor I didn’t know and ride for four hours up to Dallas and back. It’s funny, when I met him on Chainsaw Massacre, and we made the connection, we both had the same story. He’d been told about me, too, and he had thought to himself, “There’s no way I’m calling that girl and get stuck in the car for four and a half hours!” We had a good laugh about that.

  Richard Linklater: Matthew and I were driving to a Butthole Surfers concert when he told me about the Texas Chainsaw movie, and I was like, “Hey, Matthew, put it in your contract that if they ever promote this movie based on the fact that you’re in it, they really have to pay you.” He didn’t, and he ended up having a weird experience on that movie. Years later, I was like, “Matthew, remember what I said?” And he was like, “Man, I knew you were gonna bring that up.”

  Wiley Wiggins: It was cool to see Matthew play a scummy, creepy character in that movie, especially in retrospect, since he went on to do that stretch of bland romantic comedies after that.

  Adam Goldberg: In the Variety review of Dazed, they called Matthew a Dennis Hopper kind of guy. Parker’s boyfriend, the producer Bob Gosse, was referring to Matthew as this Eric Roberts–looking dude, and I thought, That’s who he should be! That’s the kind of career I thought he was going to have. The one where he was going to play a fucking scumbag. Eventually he came back to that, and I was like, Oh, there you are!

  Don Phillips: After he graduated, Matthew drove out to L.A. and moved in with me. He brought his truck, Old Blue.

  Matthew McConaughey: I drove out August 12th, 1993, pulling a U-Haul. About 80 miles east of L.A., there is a road sign on the highway that says “Sunset Drive.” You see that, and you’re like, That’s it! I’m going to hit the strip! but you’re still 80 miles out of town. I put in the Doors’ “L.A. Woman,” and I had to play it over and over, thinking I was going to arrive any second. I played it eight times until finally I was like, I’m not even close.

  I pull into Don’s place. I’ve driven 27-whatever hours. I knock on the door, and Don’s not answering. I’m ringing the doorbell. All of a sudden, he comes to the door buck naked. He goes, “Do me a solid. Maybe come back?” I said, “Don, no. Go finish your business with that girl, but I just drove 27 hours to arrive here. You’re the only person I know. I need your couch! I’m wiped, dude!”

  Don Phillips: He came in, and then the phone rang and it was Sean Penn. Sean had just cleared out his past life with Madonna. He had a beautiful mansion in Malibu. Downstairs, they had a huge room that was a dance studio for her. He got rid of all that stuff and put in a regulation boxing ring. So, he called me and said, “Come on down. The boxing ring’s finished.” So I drove Matthew down to Sean’s, and Sean proceeds to have a boxing match with his brother Chris. Matthew didn’t say one word. After we were finished, ready to go back, Sean said, “Don, you’re right! He’s really cool.” If Matthew didn’t say anything, Sean thought he was cool.

  Ben Affleck: Other casting directors, you have these vague relationships with them the first time you read, and then you meet the director, and you never see the casting director again. But Don fostered and maintained relationships with some actors during production, and afterward. People would stay at his house. He would make calls for people. He supported the actors and grew really close to a lot of them. Maybe even too close in some ways.

  Matthew McConaughey: I’m there with Don three, four, five days. I only came out with a couple thousand dollars. I had coolers full of frozen loaves of bread and stuff. I can tell that this isn’t going to last long. I’m like, “Man, I need to get an agent. I got to go get some work.”

  I found a place about eight doors down from him. I paid cash for it. I’m like, “Okay, my money is getting low . . .” Don jumped on me that night and said, “Matthew! Don’t you worry about an f’ing agent! Wear your cutoff shorts. Water your plants. Drink your Bud Lite. Smoke whatever you smoke. Take your dog for a walk on the beach. Read your Greatest Salesman every day. And you just f’ing relax. If this town smells somebody that’s needy, you’re done.”

  I went, “Whoa.” I went down to my place. Three weeks after that, we were sitting there, having a beer, and Don goes, “You’re ready. I got a meeting tomorrow for us at William Morris.”

/>   Don Phillips: Most actors come in and work for a boutique agency that couldn’t get them arrested if their lives depended on it. But if you were at William Morris, especially 25 years ago? You’re gonna get work. So I got him an agent. I got him a manager.

  And I got Matthew an acting teacher, Penny Allen. I put Penny in Dog Day Afternoon, and she was married to the actor Charles Laughton [not to be confused with the Academy Award–winning British actor], who was also a great acting teacher who had only one student, and that one student was Al Pacino.

  Jason Davids Scott: Don clearly had a special relationship with Matthew.

  Lisa Bruna: Don was the consummate mentor. He was committed to getting me on set. He said, “I want you to know what everybody on the film crew does, everybody from the director to the cinematographer to the grips and production assistants.” And I know that he did the same for Matthew. He would invite him on set often and have him understand the making of a film, from the ground up. And I know that he was very intent on making sure that Matthew met other producers and people who could help advance his career.

  Matthew McConaughey: My first audition in Hollywood came about two weeks later, to play a guy named Abe Lincoln in a film called Boys on the Side, directed by Herbert Ross. I got the job.

  The next audition I had was not an audition at all. I went out to Warner Bros. They were looking for young baseball players. Actually to play baseball. And I walked in a room on the Warner Bros. lot, about 2:30 in the afternoon, and the sun was shining in the door, and I opened the door. Evidently, I was backlit and I got a baseball cap on, and this producer goes, “Ah, look at you, all-American kid! Ever played baseball?”

  “Yeah, I played baseball, 12 years.”

  He goes, “You got the part.” Right there in the doorway!

  So, I went out to Oakland and did Angels in the Outfield, and got paid $48,500.

  Rory, Nicky, Cole, all of us partied at my place for a couple of days, on me.

  Ben Affleck: He did Angels in the Outfield in that sort of laconic, Texas drawl again.