Dazed and Confused [Criterion Collection] [4K Ultra HD Blu-ray]

Director: Richard Linklater Richard Linklater

Overview

"The radios blare Alice Cooper singing ""School's Out"" as an assortment of characters in bellbottoms and love beads voraciously seek out a party in a warm June night of 1976 in Richard Linklater's film about the last day of school in Austin, Texas during the Me-Generation years of the mid-70s. For high school juniors like Randy ""Pink"" Floyd (Jason London) and O'Bannion (Ben Affleck), the day marks their transition to high school seniors and they proceed to humiliate and haze the incoming freshmen from the junior high school. Junior high school graduates Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins) and his pals have to avoid the rabid soon-to-be seniors as they chase the innocent newcomers around town with custom designed paddles. The teens cruise the night in search of the ultimate end-of-the-year blast, accompanied by twenty-something drop-out Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey), as they try to invest some meaning or passion into this rite-of-passage. But as one character says, ""If I ever say these were the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself."""

Product Details

Release Date:	02/21/2023
UPC:	0715515281416
Original Release:	1993
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	1:42:00
Format:	Blu-ray

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jason London	Randy "Pink" Floyd
Rory Cochrane	Slater
Sasha Jenson	Don Dawson
Wiley Wiggins	Mitch Kramer
Milla Jovovich	Michelle
Marissa Ribisi	Cynthia
Adam Goldberg	Mike
Michelle Burke	Jodi Kramer
Shawn Andrews	Kevin Pickford
Anthony Rapp	Tony
Christin Hinojosa	Sabrina
Parker Posey	Darla
Cole Hauser	Benny
Deena Martin	Shavonne,2nd Cop
Christine Harnos	Kaye
Ben Affleck	O'Bannion
Jason Smith	Melvin
Steven Powell	Actor,Carl
Mark Vandermuelen	Actor
Catherine Morris	Actor
Jeremy Fox	Actor
Matthew McConaughey	Wooderson
Zoe Grief	Actor
Autumn Barr	Actor
Pricilla Kinser	Actor
Erika Germinder	Actor
Heidi Cole Trenbath	Actor
Doug Taylor	1st Cop,Actor,1st Geek
Mona Lee Fultz	Mitch's Mother
Diane Perella	Sabrina's Mom
Parker Brooks	Actor
Cathleen Cunningham	Actor
Richard Dillard	Pickford's Dad
Kim Arnette Krizam	Actor
Joey Lauren Adams	Simone
Jacob Jones	Actor
Rick Moser	Actor
Nicky Katt	Clint
Terry Mross	Coach Conrad
Don Phillips	Actor
Kim Krizan	Ms. Stroud
Julius Tennon	Mr. Payne
Erika Geminder	Freshman Girl
Zeke Mills	Old Timer
Fred Lerner	Guy with Pistol
David Blackwell	Liquor Store Clerk

Technical Credits

Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Sean Daniel	Producer
James Jacks	Producer
Fred Lerner	Stunts
Don Phillips	Casting
Charlie Ajar Jr.	Sound Effects
Anne Walker-McBay	Producer

Editorial Reviews

School's out for summer and the kids are looking to party in Dazed and Confused, the brilliant ensemble comedy/drama from writer/director Richard Linklater (Slacker, Waking Life). Set in Austin, Texas, on the last day of the school year in 1976, the film follows a large ensemble cast over a single 24-hour period as they celebrate the arrival of summer with car trunks full of Bud and a seemingly endless supply of pot. While everyone will ultimately converge on one big beer bash, the first half of the film centers on initiation rituals in which the senior girls and guys haze the incoming freshmen. It's a fascinating portrait of a tradition that combines institutionalized violence and tribal rites of passage. Yet here, as in the rest of the film, Linklater eschews the kind of detached satire practiced by contemporaries like Todd Solondz. Dazed and Confused may expose the vapidity of this mid-'70s suburban world, yet Linklater embraces his characters and milieu with the same big-hearted compassion that George Lucas displayed in American Graffiti. Indeed, Dazed and Confused can be seen as a virtual homage to the Lucas masterpiece, with the same loving attention to an era's clothes, hairstyles, and, of course, music. As in Graffiti, period pop songs provide the soundtrack for the characters' lives as they cruise around town, with 8-track tapes blasting the likes of Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, War, Peter Frampton, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The ensemble cast includes Wiley Wiggins (star of Linklater's Waking Life), Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, and a host of others whose naturalistic acting evokes a remarkable feeling of authenticity. And the easy way in which Linklater weaves introspective and even metaphysical themes into a slice-of-life comedy is completely engaging. The result is both a brilliant, microcosmic portrait of an era and an offbeat mediation on the rituals of teen life.