Alright, alright, alright lets jump in! This week was a lot of fun and honestly a great break from the cult abundant horror genre. We got to watch Dazed and Confused and read some pretty great articles on nostalgia and the Alamo Drafthouse.

I first want to talk about Dazed and Confused. While its not even my favorite Richard Linklater film, more on that later, its presence as a cultural meteor is undeniable and the crater it left on American society is huge. Not only did it introduce the world to Matthew McConaughey and is infamous catchphrase it was also the first movie for big names such as Ben Affleck, Parker Posey and many other young actors who went on to great things.

This was also Richard Linklater’s first studio film, and even though he might not be a household name many of his later films are *cough* School of Rock *cough*. I have included a great 45 minute documentary from youtube about the behind the scenes of Dazed and Confused that I highly recommend checking out. It really goes into the tight constraints the producers placed on Linklater during the filming of this movie and how he still did what he wanted to do in the end and really had to fight for the movie he wanted to make.

Another thing that I found really interesting in this documentary that I think really plays into our reading Outsider Nostalgia in Dazed and Confused and Detroit Rock City is how Linklater prepared his novice actors for their roles. The reading talks a lot about how the music and the soundtrack of the films is what hits the nail on the head with the nostalgia factor and evokes the feel of the 70s time period. This wasn’t something that the Dazed director took for granted and the documentary describes how after the final casting Linklater sent everyone a packet with how he thought their character would behave, a mix tape of the kind of music he thought the character listened to, along with a note saying “if the finish product of the movie is as written it will be a massive underachievement” to really get the actors into the vibe of the film. I thought this was really trusting for director of such an inexperienced cast.

I said I would touch on one of my favorite Linklater films later because I was really happy it got mentioned in class. I stumbled upon Everybody Wants Some when it came out in 2016 in my just general quest to leave very little teen movies/rom coms unwatched. At first I just wrote it off as just another one of those before I did further research and found out it was from Richard Linklater! Not only was it written and directed by him, it was his follow up to Dazed! I watched again after that with the new information and it was a whole new experience I highly recommend it as its a great follow up to the first film.

The last thing I want to talk about is the Alamo Draft house because I just thought that sounded like the coolest place in the world. I wouldn’t necessarily want to attend its nude screenings thought and was momentarily turned off by that. However, one of my best friends in high-school and I watched all of Trapped in a Closet and constantly quoted it to each other so we would’ve been over the moon to be in a whole theater singing along to it. I also have a mother who refuses to go into the deep end of pools let alone the ocean because of the movie Jaws so I thought the screening of the film on the river with scuba divers under the water grabbing peoples legs was hilarious and I would have loved to try and dragged her to that one.