43 Fun Facts About Dazed and Confused

In Dazed and Confused, what does Coach Conrad demand that his football players sign?

A pledge to stay off drugs, due in by the end of the day. Pink alone holds out, and at dawn he tells the coach he might play next season but will never sign it.

On which day is Dazed and Confused set?

The last day of school in 1976, 28 May. Before the bell, a history teacher warns her class that the coming Bicentennial really celebrates aristocrats who did not want to pay their taxes.

In which Texas city was Dazed and Confused shot?

Austin stood in for a town the film never names, one modelled on the much smaller East Texas place where its director had gone to high school.

The success of which Richard Linklater film got Dazed and Confused financed?

Slacker caught the eye of Universal producer Jim Jacks while Linklater was promoting it in 1991. Jacks flew him to Los Angeles, and his idea for a 1970s high-school film became a studio project.

Roughly a sixth of Dazed and Confused's budget went on what?

Song rights: the studio wanted cheaper re-recordings, but Linklater insisted on the original 1970s hits and gave up his own soundtrack royalties to get them.

Which Texas prison town, where Richard Linklater went to high school, supplied several Dazed and Confused character names?

Huntsville, where names such as Slater and Floyd belonged to real schoolmates of his. Three of them took the film's makers to court over the characters in 2004.

Which actor plays the senior bully who leads the paddling of freshmen in Dazed and Confused?

Ben Affleck, years before his fame, plays the bully. His character flunked his final year, which is why he is back for a second summer of hazing.

Where did Matthew McConaughey first meet Don Phillips, the casting director of Dazed and Confused?

In a hotel bar, where a classmate tending bar pointed Phillips out. The two got on so loudly that they were thrown out, and Phillips told him to come in and read the next day.

Which character does Matthew McConaughey play in Dazed and Confused?

David Wooderson, a twentysomething still hanging around the high-school crowd, was written as a small part to be cast locally. It grew as the shoot went on, much of it improvised on the spot.

Where did Matthew McConaughey say he got the line 'alright, alright, alright' for Dazed and Confused?

A live Jim Morrison recording, on which the singer barks 'all right' four times. McConaughey reasoned that his character had three of the four things he cared about, so he said it three times.

Which Dazed and Confused scene was the first Matthew McConaughey ever shot for the film?

The Top Notch hamburger scene, at a real drive-in. He asked for half an hour alone to work out who his character was, then rolled up and improvised his first lines.

Why was Shawn Andrews's part as Pickford cut back in Dazed and Confused, with his scenes passing to Matthew McConaughey?

His behaviour with the cast, by Linklater's account: Andrews never clicked with the others, so the big closing scene planned for Pickford went to McConaughey's character instead.

What position does Randall 'Pink' Floyd play for his high-school football team in Dazed and Confused?

Quarterback, and the star of the team, which is why his coach frets about the 'wrong crowd' he runs with and ends up lecturing him about his 'loser' friends.

What happens to the incoming freshman girls during the hazing in Dazed and Confused?

They are covered in condiments, ketchup and mustard above all, then made to propose marriage to senior boys and driven through a car wash in the back of pickup trucks.

Which Dazed and Confused character delights in paddling the freshman Mitch Kramer?

Fred O'Bannion is the night's chief bully until the younger boys lure him outside and get even. He is last seen breaking his own paddle in a tantrum.

Where do Pink and his friends smoke marijuana as night turns to dawn in Dazed and Confused?

On the football field, at the 50-yard line, where the police find them and summon the coach. It was among the last scenes shot, with lines worked out with the actors on the night.

Where are Pink and his friends heading in the final scene of Dazed and Confused?

Houston, for Aerosmith tickets, which Pink calls the top priority of the summer as he walks away from his coach. The drive down the highway was the last scene of the shoot.

At which pool hall do the teenagers of Dazed and Confused gather once the keg party is cancelled?

The Emporium is where the night's threads cross: Mitch springs his revenge on a senior there, and its crowd moves on to an outdoor keg party thrown in place of the cancelled one.

What did the crew build in a park for the keg party scenes of Dazed and Confused?

A replica moontower went up because the park has none. The real ones are towering street lights of the late 1800s, built to bathe whole neighbourhoods in a glow like moonlight.

Why did Dazed and Confused need a double for the young actor playing Mitch in his baseball scenes?

He couldn't pitch: he had talked up his baseball to win the part, so a Little League player in a wig threw for him, filmed from behind, while a team of young extras jeered.

Which actor was nearly cast as the bully O'Bannion?

Vince Vaughn auditioned for O'Bannion and came close, but the part went to Ben Affleck after a search through Texas, New York and Los Angeles.

How did Richard Linklater help Dazed and Confused's cast find their characters' musical taste?

He made each of them a mixtape before the shoot. The girls got plenty of Joni Mitchell, while the freshman Mitch got glam and prog, as the kid who would be first to buy the Ramones.

Which Led Zeppelin song did Richard Linklater want to close Dazed and Confused?

Rock and Roll was meant to blare over the final drive and the credits. Linklater recorded a personal plea to the band and kept the song in his sound mix while he waited, but the permission never came.

Which Led Zeppelin member refused to let Dazed and Confused use one of the band's songs?

Robert Plant said no even though Jimmy Page had agreed, and a furious Linklater wrote in his production diary that he would 'boycott Plant for life'.

Which Aerosmith song plays over the slow-motion opening of Dazed and Confused?

Sweet Emotion opens the film yet appears on neither of its two soundtrack albums, which became big sellers without it. Bob Dylan's 'Hurricane' is missing from them too.

Which Dazed and Confused cast member briefly performs a song she wrote herself in the film?

Milla Jovovich put 'The Alien Song' on her debut album in 1994. A poster sold her as the cast's best-known name, yet her role had been cut right back.

Dazed and Confused took only $8 million in cinemas; where did it then find its audience?

On home video. Its distributor had opened it on fewer than 200 screens, and it was the tapes and discs of the years that followed that made it a cult favourite.

In Slater's stoned history lesson in Dazed and Confused, which Founding Father grew marijuana as a cash crop?

George Washington, says Slater, walked in each day to find that Martha had 'a big fat bowl waiting for him'. Martha, he concludes, was one hip lady.

What does Wooderson call his Chevrolet Chevelle in Dazed and Confused?

Melba Toast gets a proud inventory of its parts, ending on its '390 horsepower'. The actor behind Wooderson built him on four loves: his car, getting high, rock music and girls.

How did the 2004 defamation suit brought by three of Richard Linklater's old classmates over Dazed and Confused end?

It was dismissed. The three men, whose surnames match characters in the film, had filed in New Mexico because its time limit for such claims is longer than that of Texas.

Which home video label released a two-disc edition in 2006?

The Criterion Collection issued its two-disc DVD of Dazed and Confused in 2006, complete with a Linklater audio commentary.

Which 1970s symbol fronted the marketing campaign for Dazed and Confused?

A smiley face, printed on posters and on tins in a press kit that also held rolling papers. The campaign sold the film on its pot-smoking, with taglines such as 'See it with a bud'.

Which phrase from Dazed and Confused became the name of Matthew McConaughey's foundation?

Just keep livin' gave the just keep livin Foundation its name. McConaughey says the phrase took hold of him as he grieved for his father, who died while the film was being shot.

What do Mitch and his fellow freshmen drop from a rooftop onto their tormentor in Dazed and Confused?

A bucket of paint: a false rumour that another freshman has been caught lures the bully outside, paddle in hand, and the boys make off in a getaway car.

Which actor plays Randall 'Pink' Floyd in Dazed and Confused?

Jason London's character is named for a real schoolmate of Linklater's, Richard 'Pink' Floyd, one of three old classmates who later sued over the use of their names.

Which Texas teenager, the casting team's 'big find', played the freshman Mitch Kramer in Dazed and Confused?

Wiley Wiggins, 15, was handed a casting flyer outside a coffee shop where he hung around. He went on to play the lead in Linklater's animated Waking Life.

Which Foghat song does Mitch listen to on headphones at the end of Dazed and Confused?

Slow Ride fills the closing slot that Linklater had wanted for a Led Zeppelin track: it starts in Mitch's headphones and carries on over his new friends' drive down the highway.

Which future Oscar winner appears uncredited in Dazed and Confused after missing out on the part of Darla?

Renée Zellweger, a Texan then unknown, can be glimpsed in the back of a pickup truck holding a beer funnel. Her first Oscar, for Cold Mountain, was a decade away.

Which 2016 Richard Linklater film, set at a Texas college in 1980, is often called a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused?

Everybody Wants Some!! follows a college baseball team in the days before term begins. Linklater has also called it a continuation of Boyhood, which ends as its hero arrives at college.

Which young actress did Dazed and Confused's casting director want but judge too young to leave school?

Claire Danes was 13 that summer, and Don Phillips recalled that she 'couldn't leave school'. Two years later she was the star of My So-Called Life.

Which distributor sold Dazed and Confused as a stoner comedy, to Richard Linklater's dismay?

Gramercy Pictures, a new joint venture of Universal and PolyGram, filled its press kits with pot-leaf earrings and articles on the comeback of marijuana, over the director's objections.

Quentin Tarantino named Dazed and Confused one of the ten greatest films ever in which magazine's 2002 poll?

Sight and Sound printed his ballot, which set it beside Taxi Driver, Rio Bravo and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In 2013 he called it his favourite film of the 1990s.

In Richard Linklater's earliest concept, Dazed and Confused took place entirely in a car, with which band on the stereo?

ZZ Top's Fandango! would have played from start to finish, with the film lasting exactly as long as the album. Linklater drew the idea from a real night of aimless driving and mailbox-bashing.