Confusion - summer of the freaky

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Movie
German title Confusion - summer of the freaky
Original title Dazed and Confused
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1993
length 98 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Richard Linklater
script Richard Linklater
production Sean Daniel ,
James Jacks ,
Richard Linklater
music Richard Linklater (selection of pieces of music)
camera Lee Daniel
cut Sandra Adair
occupation

Confusion - Sommer der Ausflippten (Original title: Dazed and Confused ) is an American coming-of-age film by director Richard Linklater from 1993 based on his own script. It shows the last day of school of a teenage group in Austin in 1976, the film title is derived from the song " Dazed and Confused " by the band Led Zeppelin .

action

On 28 May 1976 the last day of school at Lee High School in the suburbs of Austin , a group of students prepares the final year of the coming school year ( Seniors ) to the annual Hazing the new incoming students ( freshmen ) ago. The traditional initiation rite for male pupils consists in letting the older ones spank their buttocks with cricket bats, while those female sex are gathered by the older pupils in the parking lot, smeared with mustard, ketchup, flour and raw eggs and finally to do so be forced to propose to the older (male) students.

The freshman Mitch Kramer succeeds first to escape with his best friend Carl Burnett to the rite, after Carl's mother, threatened a pursuing both, older students, Fred O'Bannion with a shotgun. Fred, however, ambushes Mitch after a baseball game with friends and catches up with the hazing . One of the seniors in this group, Randall “Pink” Floyd, brings Mitch home and invites him to cruise through town with friends that evening . Pink is the star of the school's American football team and is due to sign an agreement with his coach at his coach's request that he will not use drugs or do anything else during the summer that could undermine the team's goal of winning the championship . Pink, however, has so far refused to sign.

Kevin Pickford had invited them to a keg party that evening , but his plans got a different twist due to the early delivery of the eponymous beer kegs, as his parents decided not to go away as planned, but rather to stay at home. Considered nerds at school, Cynthia Dunn, Tony Olson, and Mike Newhouse decide to go out and join classmates' activities. Pink and his friend David Wooderson, a slightly older guy, take Mitch Kramer to the Emporium , a billiards hall that is also very popular with the city's youngsters this evening. There, Mitch is also introduced to Julie Simms, who is a grade above him as a sophomore . The two are drawn to each other. Mitch himself lets himself be carried away by his new friends, drinks beer, smokes marijuana for the first time in his life and participates in mailbox baseball : You drive down the street in your car and try to knock off the mailboxes with a baseball bat. One of the residents finally catches her doing it and threatens to call the police. You can escape, but the resident's revolver barely misses the car. Back at the emporium, Mitch meets some old middle school friends with whom he hatches a plan to take revenge on Fred O'Bannion, who continues the hazing , for the humiliation he has suffered by pouring paint on him.

After the emporium closes, Mitch accompanies his new friends to a spontaneous keg party outside of town in the open field at one of Austin's famous " Moonlight Towers ". This is also where Cynthia, Tony and Mike are drawn, who will have their first celebration of this kind. Cynthia meets David Wooderson and exchanges phone numbers with him, because she finds him likeable. Meanwhile, Tony befriends Sabrina Davis, whom he had previously met at Hazing , and hangs out with her. Mike, on the other hand, is threatened by Clint Bruno, who seems to be looking for an argument, defends himself and is then physically attacked by Clint. However, Pink and David walk between the opponents and end the fight. Football player Benny O'Donnell confronts Pink for refusing to be the only player to sign the contract with his coach. However, Pink continues to refuse to do so, as he cannot reconcile it with his beliefs. Meanwhile, Mitch leaves the festivities with Julie and drives her to a nearby hill overlooking the city to "snog" around. Tony brings Sabrina home, where they kiss goodbye.

As dawn breaks, Pink, David, Don, and a few other friends - including Ron Slater and Simone Kerr - meet on the 50-yard line of the football field to smoke marijuana. When the police arrive, they quickly make the drugs disappear. The policemen recognize Pink and call his coach Conrad, who gives a lecture about hanging around with "losers" after arriving - and insists that Pink now signs the contract. Thereupon Pink throws the contract in the face of his coach and emphasizes that although he should play football, he will not sign the contract under any circumstances. He leaves the field with his friends to get tickets to an Aerosmith concert. Mitch has meanwhile arrived at home, where his mother is already waiting for him and admonishes him not to come home so late again, but waives punishment. Mitch retires to his room, puts on headphones and finally listens to Foghat's song "Slow Ride" .

background

Development and script

Even before the premiere of his previous film Slacker (1990), director and screenwriter Richard Linklater had the idea of ​​telling a story about young people on a single spring day in 1976. First of all, he wanted to turn this idea into an experimental film that would only have played in a car with several characters in the album Fandago! Hear from ZZ Top . The film would have been the length of the album, which would always have been running in the background. After his surprise success with Slacker at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991, noteworthy Hollywood studios first noticed the independent filmmaker Linklater and joined the planned project.

The script ended up being much less experimental, as it was Linklater's first film with a larger budget and he didn't want to take extreme risks, and is structurally similar to the classic youth film American Graffiti by George Lucas . Even before he wrote the dialogues, he thought of defining songs from this era and used them as a kind of memorandum for the atmosphere of the film. Therefore the music also plays a decisive role for the film and its inner workings.

Linklater, who was born in 1960 and thus attended high school like his characters in 1976, also incorporated autobiographical elements. He processed the " Greatest Hits " of his time in high school in the film. Linklater identified himself with the figure of Pink, as he was an athlete who also hung out with other high school cliques, as well as with the figure of Freshman Mitch, as he also had to go through rituals such as the first party at the beginning of his high school days . At the same time, like the three "nerdy" characters in the film, he already counted himself among the intellectual students. Breaking garbage cans while driving is also based on Linklater's personal experiences. In October 2004, three of Linklater's former classmates at Huntsville High School , Texas filed a defamation lawsuit against him, citing similar characters in the film for whom they would serve as role models. However, the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.

In September 1993, St. Martin's Press published a 127-page paperback ( ISBN 0-312-09466-3 ) that was inspired by Linklater's script. Linklater and Denise Montgomery were responsible for compiling the content, and Erik Josowitz was responsible for the design. The book is based on a high school yearbook and contains profiles of the individual film characters, among other things, essays written by them and a timeline for the years 1973 to 1977, as well as black and white photographs of film scenes.

Themes and motifs

Although Dazed and Confused was later perceived as a celebration of the zeitgeist of the 1970s, Linklater wants his film to be understood as "anti- nostalgic ": "I thought the 1970s sucked", he said in a text for the Guardian in 2019 - a similar one The first sentence is spoken by the character of Cynthia, who praises the 1950s and 1960s compared to the present of 1976, in the film. Even so, Universal's advertising campaign for the film put a heavy emphasis on nostalgia, which annoyed Linklater. In addition to many cheerful scenes, Linklater shows in the microcosm of high school an American society drifting apart from the post-hippie era, in which there is a left-liberal, feminist teacher, as well as thugs and strict sports teachers. Linklater shows characters who move away from society, which is disappointing for them, and seek their happiness in parties and fun that have a healing effect on them. Small attempts to break out of the respective role in high school - like Pink's to rebel against the PE teacher, or the "geek" Mike to defend himself against a thug - are rarely completely successful and often combined with punishment. The morality of the film, expressed by the character of Wooderson, that one should not bow to social rules and expectations and “just go on living”, also goes in this direction.

"[The film] explores the plight of the teenager: trapped and oppressed, but with the budding consciousness of being trapped and oppressed, but still trapped and oppressed nontheless."

"[The film] explores the plight of the teenager: trapped and oppressed, but with the budding awareness of being trapped and suppressed, but still being trapped and suppressed."

- Richard Linklater

actor

According to Richard Linklater, a large number of young actors applied for roles in the film, especially since the wave of brat-pack teenage films was over in the early 1990s and only a few films with young people were being produced at the time. Castings for the actors have been held in Los Angeles, New York City and Austin. The casting director for the film was Lee Phillips, who had already spotted several Hollywood stars ten years earlier in the same role on the high school comedy I think I'm standing in the woods . Linklater housed the actors all in an Austin hotel and rehearsed extensively before filming. He also tested and changed the script over and over again when the actors suggested it or when people laughed more at some points than at others.

For Dazed and Confused , Matthew McConaughey was discovered, among others , who had previously only played in a few local commercials and thus made his film debut. Linklater was so taken by McConaughey's performance that he significantly expanded his role during the filming. The opposite happened with actor Shawn Andrews, who took on the role of Kevin Pickford , who is slated to host the house party. The role of Shawn Andrews was significantly larger, but since he fell out with many members of the cast and crew during filming, his role size was reduced significantly. Renée Zellweger was not mentioned in the credits for her tiny, wordless appearance as a partying student.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was very important to Linklater: When Universal started thinking about some MTV- friendly cover versions of current artists at the time for the film instead of the original 1970s music , the director resisted. In the end, 15 percent of the film budget went into purchasing music rights. So the played on film leader costing Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith $ 100,000, which Linklater already in the first three minutes of Dazed and Confused his previous film, the entire budget Slacker exceeded. Ironically, the title-giving song Dazed and Confused could not be included in the soundtrack because Led Zeppelin refused to approve.

  1. Rick Derringer - Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo
  2. Foghat - Slow Ride
  3. Alice Cooper - School's Out
  4. Black Oak Arkansas - Jim Dandy
  5. ZZ Top - Tush
  6. Nazareth - Love Hurts
  7. Ted Nugent - Stranglehold
  8. The Runaways - Cherry Bomb
  9. The Sweet - Fox on the Run
  10. Was - low rider
  11. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Tuesday's Gone
  12. Deep Purple - Highway Star
  13. Kiss - Rock and Roll All Nite
  14. Black Sabbath - Paranoid

reception

Dazed and Confused only took in around $ 8 million at the box office , which (including other factors such as marketing) was no profit on a budget of around $ 6.9 million. Universal had previously passed on the marketing of the film to a short-lived, soon-to-be insolvent company called Gramecy Pictures, who half-heartedly took care of the marketing.

Only later did the film develop into an audience success , also through its release on Video Home System , and achieved cult film status over the years . Quentin Tarantino named it in 2002 and again in 2012 in his top 10 list of the "best films of all time" for the film magazine Sight and Sound , Entertainment Weekly lists the film at number 3 in the list of 50 Best High School Movies as well as on Place 10 of the Funniest Movies of the Past 25 Years .

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times notes that the good film is a cross between anthropology and art, and also shows viewers how much most teenage films portray their subject in an overly romantic light. Desson Howe of the Washington Post would like the film a place in the Library of Congress alongside the great masterpieces of film history, as it reflects American culture to a special degree; Among the acting achievements, he particularly highlights those of Jason London (Pink) and Wiley Wiggins (Mitch), and the style of the film also reminds him of Robert Altman . James Berardinelli from ReelViews, however, criticizes the minimal plot of the film and the lack of depth of the characters, he is easy entertainment and suffers from a weak script; Nevertheless, the realistic acting achievements should be emphasized, especially that of Wiley Wiggins, who is particularly remembered. The Lexicon of International Films calls Dazed and Confused "an appealing study despite the conventional design that takes the differences in characters seriously and does not spare generational conflicts."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jon Lebkowsky: First Interview with Richard Linklater. In: Mindjack. Retrieved August 10, 2010 .
  2. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. p. 47.
  3. ^ Marc Spitz: An Oral History of "Dazed and Confused". Retrieved October 9, 2019 (American English).
  4. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. p. 49.
  5. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. p. 47.
  6. ↑ Keynote: The teenage utopia of Dazed And Confused, in 10 screenshots. Retrieved October 9, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Interviews by Phil Hoad: Richard Linklater: How we made Dazed and Confused . In: The Guardian . June 11, 2019, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 9, 2019]).
  8. ↑ Peter Carlson: Bummer, Man. In: Washington Post . December 8, 2004, accessed August 10, 2010 .
  9. ↑ Interviews by Phil Hoad: Richard Linklater: How we made Dazed and Confused . In: The Guardian . June 11, 2019, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 9, 2019]).
  10. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. p. 51.
  11. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. pp. 51-52.
  12. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. p. 52.
  13. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. p. 47.
  14. ↑ Interviews by Phil Hoad: Richard Linklater: How we made Dazed and Confused . In: The Guardian . June 11, 2019, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 9, 2019]).
  15. ^ Marc Spitz: An Oral History of "Dazed and Confused". Retrieved October 9, 2019 (American English).
  16. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. p. 48.
  17. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. p. 47.
  18. ^ Marc Spitz: An Oral History of "Dazed and Confused". Retrieved January 30, 2020 (American English).
  19. ↑ NME: This Is What The Cast Of 'Dazed and Confused' Look Like Now. August 3, 2016, Retrieved October 9, 2019 (American English).
  20. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. pp. 49-50.
  21. ↑ Marlow Stern: 'Dazed and Confused' Director Richard Linklater on Its 20th Anniversary . In: The Daily Beast . September 24, 2013 ( thedailybeast.com [accessed January 30, 2020]).
  22. ↑ Interviews by Phil Hoad: Richard Linklater: How we made Dazed and Confused . In: The Guardian . June 11, 2019, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 9, 2019]).
  23. ^ Rob Stone: The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Walk, Don't Run. Columbia University Press, New York, 2013. pp. 51-52.
  24. ^ Adam Chitwood: Check Out the Sight & Sound Top 10 Lists from Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, Woody Allen and More. In: Collider. August 24, 2012, Retrieved October 8, 2019 (American English).
  25. ↑ 50 Best High School Movies by Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved August 10, 2010 .
  26. ^ The Comedy 25: The Funniest Movies of the Past 25 Years: 10. DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993). In: Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved August 10, 2010 .
  27. ^ Roger Ebert: Dazed and Confused. In: Chicago Sun-Times. September 24, 1993, accessed August 15, 2010 .
  28. ↑ Desson Howe: 'Dazed and Confused'. In: Washington Post . October 22, 1993, accessed August 15, 2010 .
  29. ↑ James Berardinelli: Dazed and Confused. In: ReelViews . 1993, accessed August 15, 2010 .
  30. ^ Dazed and Confused. In: Lexicon of International Films . Retrieved June 30, 2011 .