American Graffiti was George Lucas’ love letter to the teenage life in
the 1960s. Feeling the need to do the same for his childhood experience, in 1993
Richard Linklater made Dazed and Confused,
which followed a bunch of teenagers during their last day of high school in
1970s Austin Texas. In addition to a similar concept, Linklater’s film also features
many actors in their early days who would later find varying degrees of success
in much bigger films. You have Milla Jovovich who would later become the world’s
best-known zombie killer with the Resident Evil franchise and Matthew
McConaughey who would eventually win an Academy Award for Best Actor. Not bad
considering his signature line in the movie is: "That's what I love about these high school
girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."
The movie
perfectly captures the high school experience no matter the decade, yet
watching it for the first time it really made me feel like I missed out a lot.
True, they probably partied a lot harder in the 70s, but since most of the high
schools I attended were in South America I didn’t attend a lot of wild parties.
My last day of high school was at a school in Quebec City and I had only been
there a year, so unlike the characters in Dazed
and Confused I didn’t have life-long friends I could go out and party with
at the end of the end. By the time I rented the movie while living at the
University of Sherbrooke I thought I had definitely missed the boat. Then
again, that’s one of the advantages of movies: they allow you to see things you
don’t usually see, in this case high school hazing rituals.
The hazing scenes
are taken quite seriously at Lee High School, even for the girls courtesy of
Senior Darla Marks (Parker Posey) who relishes at the chance to cover the
Freshmen with condiments and making them propose to the boys. On the other hand
boys Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins) and his friend Carl Burnett (Esteban Powell)
want to avoid hazing at all cost. To do so they have to evade Fred O’Bannion
(Ben Affleck) who is repeating his senior year and would delight to spank their
bottoms with a paddle. They find temporary refuge at Carl’s house, which is guarded
by his shotgun-totting mother. This is Texas after all.
This being the
last day of school the plan is to go out and have fun, and if booze and drugs
are present, all the better. The drug part might become complicated for the
school’s star football player Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London) who has been
asked to sign a pledge promising not to take drugs during the summer or do anything
else that might jeopardize the next championship season. That goes against the
plans of every kid in the town who just want to spend the evening cruising,
playing baseball mailbox, going to a drive-in, and drinking copious amounts of
alcohol in a field. Some of these activities, such as going cruising around
town, are probably not done by teens today but the intent is still the same: to
be living as much as possible while you’re young.
Then there is the
music, which still holds up decades later. As the bell rings unleashing the
students into the hallways for the very last time that year, is there a more
perfect song to play than Alice Cooper’s School’s
Out for Summer? Between Rock and Roll
All Nite by KISS, Slow Ride by
Foghat, and Highway Star by Deep
Purple, the album is a time capsule of a decade, much like the movie itself.
Between American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, and
Fast Times at Ridgemont High it seems
every decade has its iconic high school movie, so I think it’s about time
somebody got started on making one about the 1990s. And no, American Pie doesn’t count. That is set
in the very late 90s and I think we can do better than a guy sticking his dick
in a pie.
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