Alright, Alright, Alright

by Melissa Maerz

  Adam Goldberg: I was with him in his little Malibu bungalow, and he said something like, “Wooderson’s dead, man.” We were stoned and I remember thinking, “No, I’m having a conversation with him right now.” The guy was unbelievable in Dazed, but if you look at McConaughey’s roles, I don’t think he’s ever not done that accent.

  Rory Cochrane: Matthew got Angels in the Outfield, and then he got a bigger place. He was sort of set up.

  Nicky Katt: When Dazed came out, my pal was Joel Schumacher’s assistant, and he took Joel to see it. You know that moment when Wooderson pulls into the Top Notch and says “Alright, alright, alright,” and all the lights from the Emporium light up? It’s like in the “Billie Jean” video, where everything Michael Jackson steps on lights up. It’s like he’s Jesus.

  Schumacher saw that, and it was like, “Here we go, here’s the star.” And that’s how he got A Time to Kill.

  Rory Cochrane: When A Time to Kill came out, Matthew’s life changed in such a dramatic fashion, kind of overnight. He was on four magazine covers, and they were all like, “Number One Movie!” And I think he withdrew from being Matthew. I think anyone would. It freaks you out.

  Nicky Katt: Matthew wanted that. He wanted to be this messianic figure. I mean, he said he was gonna do it! And he did. And then you know what happened when Ben Affleck met Kevin Smith.

  Kevin Smith: Well, first I met Jim Jacks at the Sundance Film Festival right after Clerks won the Filmmakers Trophy, January 1994. And I’m like, “I know who you are! You produced Dazed and Confused!”

  So my second movie, Mallrats, was with the same dudes that produced Richard Linklater’s second movie. And then Richard did Before Sunrise, and then my third flick was Chasing Amy, which certainly wasn’t me going, “I’m gonna do Before Sunrise!” but it was also the movie where everybody took me seriously again. So those first three movies, Richard was my role model.

  Jason London: Rick and Kevin Smith, their brains work the same way. And I think Kevin Smith saw Dazed and Confused and was like, “I love all of these people. These are gonna be the people in my movies.”

  Joey Lauren Adams: One night, I was hanging out with Jim Jacks at the bar and he told me he was producing a film called Mallrats and would like me to be in it. Don Phillips was casting Mallrats, so I thought I had a good chance at a part. We had to do that “pizza party” thing again with Mallrats, and it was terrible then, too.

  Adam Goldberg: I auditioned for Mallrats. Same fucking office at Universal as Dazed. I went in, and I got a call from Don on Friday night like, “It’s you! It’s between you and another guy, but it’s basically you.”

  Then, like, radio silence. And then Jason Lee was at the pizza party and I wasn’t. And it was like, Thanks, Don. Probably best not to make those calls after 5:00 p.m.

  Jason Lee: Mallrats was my first movie. I don’t know if Don remembered me at all. Gay Ribisi, my manager—Marissa and Giovanni’s mom—basically called in a favor with Don.

  Don Phillips: I made an agreement with Kevin that nobody from Dazed and Confused would be in Mallrats. Kevin and Rick both had the same attorney, and they’d both worked with me and Jim Jacks, so there was a little competition between them.

  Richard Linklater: First I’ve heard that I’m competitive with Kevin!

  Don Phillips: But we ended up with a lot of people from Dazed. There was a character who’s really an asshole, so I said to Kevin, “There’s no doubt in my mind that the best guy for that is Ben Affleck.” Ben was the perfect asshole.

  Kevin Smith: Ben didn’t audition for the bully role. He was auditioning for the lead, the TS role. All the guys auditioned for TS and all the girls auditioned for Brandi. But because of his size, it was like, oh man, you’d be a great Shannon Hamilton. I think there was a trifecta of bully roles. There was O’Bannion. There was the School Ties anti-Semitic kid. And then Shannon Hamilton in Mallrats.

  Ben Affleck: I remember Rick telling me a story about Quentin Tarantino, whose movie Reservoir Dogs I adored. Tarantino had left Rick a message going, “Who is that guy who played the bad guy in your movie, man? What an asshole!”

  I didn’t want Tarantino to think I was an asshole. Matthew and Rory and Jason London played these cool, sexy, funny guys in Dazed and Confused, and I was bummed out about being the only unappealing guy, which is probably why I did not want to do Mallrats. I was like, “Dude, people are going to see the movie and hate me.” I started to become aware that the audience didn’t necessarily appreciate, “Oh, what an effective and moving portrayal of a villain!”

  Kevin Smith: Ben needed a job. It wasn’t like he had many options at that point.

  Joey Lauren Adams: They’d told me I got a part in Mallrats. And then I get a call from my manager telling me that I don’t have the part, because it’s going to Parker.

  Kevin Smith: I’d written the Rene part in Mallrats for Stacie Mistysyn, who was on Degrassi Junior High, but Don was leaning toward Parker as Rene, and Jim liked Joey.

  Joey Lauren Adams: Parker was visiting from New York at the time, so she happened to be standing right next to me when I got the news. And I hugged her and congratulated her, but I just hated her then.

  Parker Posey: I didn’t feel like doing Mallrats. That’s something I couldn’t do now. As a twentysomething-year-old actor, I could be like, “It doesn’t resonate with me.” Now it might be like, “Okay, you don’t have a career anymore!”

  Joey Lauren Adams: Shannon Doherty got that part. And I got a different part. And I had to show my tits.

  Kevin Smith: Jim Jacks really liked Joey. Like, liked her liked her. Jim was like, “She was hired to do nudity! If she’s not gonna do nudity, we’re gonna hire someone else!”

  So Joey was like, “Let’s talk about it. How long does this have to be?”

  And I was like, “I don’t know. As long as you want it to be!”

  And she just opens her shirt real fast—like foomp, foomp!—and she goes, “Is that fast enough?”

  And I’m looking at her face! I don’t look down or anything, because I’m a neck-up guy to begin with, but also it was so fuckin’ fast! So I go, “Oh my god, of course! That’s way too much!” And then we went and shot it.

  I don’t know if Jim was ever happy with the amount of nudity that was in the film. It was the first moment that I was like, Ewww, the movie business is so dirty.

  Joey Lauren Adams: When I first showed up to do Mallrats, Kevin and I were having our initial conversations, and he said something about me dating Jim Jacks. And I was like, “What are you talking about? We’re not dating!” And I turned around and cussed Jim Jacks out.

  Jim never tried to sleep with me or anything, but I had to have several dinners with Jim before getting that role, and I guarantee that Ben Affleck never had to do that. None of the guys did. But I had to maintain that relationship. Had I not met Jim Jacks, I don’t know that I would have done Mallrats and met Kevin Smith, and I wouldn’t have done Chasing Amy.

  When Kevin started writing Chasing Amy, it was going to be some kind of John Hughes–type high school film at Universal. Ben and I were gonna play high school teachers, and the high school student was going to be gay. That was the gist of the story. But once Mallrats tanked, Kevin decided he was going to go back to doing indie film again, and that script changed.

  By then, Kevin and I had started dating. He had issues with my past—not that I was gay, but, like, that I was really good friends with a guy I had slept with. It was just little things, like that I had lived with an artist in Bali for six months, and Kevin was this kid from New Jersey who’d never left. One time he got really upset, because he had this girlfriend who he’d dated all throughout high school, he told me he was gonna go to her college graduation and I was like, “That’s awesome!” And he lost it and started crying, like, “Why aren’t you jealous?”

  He’d write certain scenes from Chasing Amy after fights like that. In some ways, that movie is a huge apology to me.

  Anthony Rap
p: Joey was really good in Chasing Amy. And Parker was working a lot during that time, too.

  Kevin Smith: Throughout the early ’90s, Joey and Parker were often up for the same roles.

  Joey Lauren Adams: Parker and I had a falling out later. For a lot of reasons. I was always her sidekick and I needed to get out from under that.

  Parker Posey: Friends part ways when there’s an imbalance—it gets competitive and jealous—and that’s human, and understandable. I loved Joey as a friend and the “being actors” part was secondary, for me. We’d go out dancing and I’d stay with her when I was in L.A. The falling out was over the career part.

  Joey Lauren Adams: When she was doing Clockwatchers, she called me and said something very condescending. It was like, “You should take this other role in Clockwatchers! It’s a ditzy blonde role, so it’s perfect for you!”

  Parker Posey: This was a great role that Lisa Kudrow ended up playing—she’s genius at ditzy blondes. I remember Nora Ephron asking me how my friendship was with Joey—this was a decade later, maybe more. I’d introduced Joey to Nora when I was on the set of Mixed Nuts [in 1994] and she cast Joey in Michael with John Travolta [in 1996]. When I told Nora we’d had a falling out, she said we’d be friends in our 40s.

  Joey Lauren Adams: When I had Chasing Amy at Sundance, they were giving Parker some award for Clockwatchers, and she was mad at me that I didn’t go watch her accept the award. And I was like, “I have my own movie that I have to be there for!” Parker had like three movies that year, and it wasn’t enough for her to have three movies when I only had one. She also had to get a special award for one of them.

  Parker Posey: That was a crazy year at Sundance for me—three films and not a lot of time to do anything but press. The special acting award, for The House of Yes, was something I was alerted to that day. I wanted support from a friend, not for her to watch me. I had no idea what to say about accepting an award. I’d never gotten one, and really wanted to hide. I was freaking out.

  J.R. Helton: Parker Posey and McConaughey, I remember thinking, “Oh, these two people could definitely keep doing this.” But I didn’t even know Ben Affleck was in Dazed until somebody told me.

  Valerie DeKeyser: I came out to L.A. in ’95. Ben and I had talked now and again since Dazed, and he was having a party with his roommates, and he’s like, “Come to the party.” So, my sister and I parked at the bottom of the hill. Beautiful house, Hollywood Hills, by the Bowl.

  Ben Affleck: Matt Damon and I got a house, and Cole was always over there, too. I remember McConaughey over at that house one night. People were sleeping in the closets. It was like, we were 22 and we were in Hollywood! Every night was fun.

  And we were hanging out with another group of guys, which was the Vince Vaughn/Jon Favreau crew, and I went to parties with them—parties that literally became the story of Swingers. That $250,000 movie was very Dazed-influenced.

  Valerie DeKeyser: Ben introduced us to Matt Damon. And I’m going, oh, he’s a frat boy. That’s all I’m thinking. And Ben’s like, “We’re doing a little work on this film.”

  It’s Hollywood! Of course, you’re working on a film. It was like, “Yeah, whatever.”

  Ben Affleck: When I auditioned for Dazed, I was aware of a trend that was happening, with the Sundance Film Festival and certain filmmakers. Like, Rick Linklater had made Slacker, and Quentin Tarantino had made Reservoir Dogs, and the idea was starting to emerge that you could do it on your own, or do it on the cheap, or do it in a way that didn’t require studio gatekeepers to give you approval that they would never give you in a million years. And that was an exciting time to be part of, to be a struggling actor in Hollywood.

  Kevin Smith was one of the guys in that movement that I was really interested in. And then Kevin made Clerks, and he wanted me to be in Mallrats, and it was like, these were the people I want to be working with, and I want to learn about directing and making movies on that scale. When I worked with Kevin, Good Will Hunting was basically dead. And I gave it to Kevin, and he single-handedly resurrected it by giving it to a Miramax executive named Jon Gordon. I don’t think Good Will Hunting would have ever been made if I hadn’t handed it to Kevin Smith in the Mall of America in Minnesota, in 1994, on the set of Mallrats, which never would have come about had I not been cast as O’Bannion by Rick Linklater in 1992. My life has got these weird connections that go back to Dazed.

  Richard Linklater: After Dazed, I did Before Sunrise with Castle Rock. I got a call, about ’94 or ’95, from Martin Shafer at Castle Rock. Martin says, “What do you think of Ben Affleck?”

  And I was like, “He’s a great guy, really smart, good actor. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, there’s this script, Good Will Hunting.”

  Castle Rock ended up buying it. So, I’m thanked in the movie, I guess for answering the phone.

  Ben Affleck: In the letter Rick had sent us for Dazed, he had said, “If this movie is produced as written, it will be a massive underachievement.” That stuck with me so profoundly that I showed it to Matt [Damon], who I was living with when I got cast in Dazed. When Matt and I made Good Will Hunting, we used that line over and over again with the actors. Minnie Driver’s role was written American, but we wanted her to play her more natural, comfortable self as a British person, and we encouraged her to improvise. Because of Rick, we were aware of the fact that actors had something to add to a project, and that it could make it better.

  And Dazed also taught me that people tend to be like, “I don’t like that person who played the villain, but I do like the person who played the hero.” So that was an education in choosing roles in Hollywood, and that’s why I wrote Good Will Hunting. I wanted to play a character who was lighthearted and kind and supportive of his friends. He wasn’t beating people up.

  Jason Davids Scott: I worked at Castle Rock at the time, and I was in development, and I read this script. They’d taken the cover off it, so I did not know who wrote it, but seven pages into it, I said, “It’s like I’m reading a conversation between Cole Hauser and Ben Affleck.” Then at the premiere of Before Sunrise, Ben was there. And he was like, “Remember I told you that I was gonna write a script? I wrote a script! Castle Rock bought it!” And I’m like, “Oh my god, that was you? I loved that script!”

  The next time I saw Ben, he was coming into the office and I was going out, and he was parked on the street. And he pointed to a big SUV and he said, “I just bought that car because of you.”

  Anthony Rapp: We were all these young actors, circling each other. When Dazed came out, I was doing this play, Sophistry, with Ethan Hawke and Steve Zahn, and they came to a screening of Dazed and were really crazy about it. It really made an impact on Ethan especially.

  Ethan Hawke: I felt a kinship with the film, as do a lot of people. I saw the whole thing as a modern-day Chekhovian comedy.

  Anthony Rapp: And then of course Ethan went on to work with Rick on Before Sunrise, and Steve ended up being in SubUrbia.

  Nicky Katt: For a minute there, I thought I was gonna be Rick’s Robert De Niro. But then he found Ethan Hawke.

  Jason London: I thought Rick and I were gonna have this lifelong bond. But as soon as Rick met Ethan Hawke, my days working with Rick were over.

  Parker Posey: Rick found a real collaborative bond with Ethan, and that was it. Rick needed a star to facilitate Before Sunrise, and Ethan’s been a star since Dead Poets Society. Rick wouldn’t have been able to do that with us. I’m not a big enough star.

  Ben Affleck: Rick never wanted to use me again for anything after Dazed. For a long time, I felt disappointed and a little resentful, like, “God, he went and hired everybody else! I guess he didn’t like what I did.”

  Richard Linklater: In the late ’90s, I approached Ben with what I thought was a good part about a factory worker who was also a writer. It was funny and real and had a political dimension. I thought Ben would have been great in it, but I never heard anything back from him. I guess I figured he’d moved
on to another level.

  Kevin Smith: It wasn’t until I hung out with Ben on Mallrats and got to know him as a person that I was like, “Oh! He’s funny and charming! Someone should make him a leading man!” That was where we split, me and Richard. He didn’t write anything for Ben. So I wrote Chasing Amy. I remember on Chasing Amy, Ben said something like, “Well, Matthew has Richard. I’m lucky that I’ve got you.”

  Adam Goldberg: Obviously, everyone’s had varying degrees of success since Dazed. Some were insanely successful, and some quit acting altogether.

  Wiley Wiggins: Love and a .45 was the first thing I did after Dazed, and it was also the first bad review I ever got.

  Shana Scott: Love and a .45 was a poor man’s version of Bonnie and Clyde, but funnier. It was shot in Texas.

  Wiley Wiggins: The guy in the Austin American-Statesman said that in the space of one movie, I’d lost all of the naturalism that Rick managed to get out of me. This was a goofball, arch, exploitation true crime movie—why would it be naturalistic? Plus, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I was 16!

  Shana Scott: Renée Zellweger and Rory Cochrane were also in Love and a .45.

  Renée Zellweger: The momentum of how your career evolves, that didn’t start with Dazed and Confused for me. It started with Chainsaw. When I was working on Chainsaw, the crew were talking about working on another movie in Texas, and the script was floating around set, and that’s how I heard about Love and a .45. We did Love and a .45 in summer of ’93, and I moved to L.A. in December of ’93. I started dating Rory Cochrane when I moved to Los Angeles.

  Adam Goldberg: I mean, Rory has a type. Rory came back to L.A after Love and a .45, and I was genuinely confused. I saw Renée coming toward me and went to hug her because I thought she was Joey. I think that happened a lot to Renée in the beginning of her career.

  Rory Cochrane: I didn’t actually meet Renée during Dazed. We met in Texas, and then she came back to L.A., and she was trying to get her foot in the door with proper agents, and I think she found her manager in Adam Goldberg’s building.