Dazed and Confused

The adventures of incoming high school and junior high students on the last day of school, in May of 1976.

• Director:Richard Linklater
• Genre:Comedy / Drama
• Runtime:102 minutes

Cast

Jason London : Randall ‘Pink’ FloydRory Cochrane : Ron SlaterWiley Wiggins :. Mitch Kramer Sasha Jenson : Don DawsonMichelle Burke : Jodi Kramer

It is May 28, 1976, the last day of school at Lee High School in Texas. Next year’s seniors are preparing for the annual hazing of incoming freshmen. Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London), the school’s star football player, is asked to sign a pledge promising not to take drugs during the summer or do anything that would “jeopardize the goal of a championship season.” When classes end, freshman boys are hunted down by the seniors at the local middle school for paddling. The freshman girls are also hazed as they are rounded up in the school parking lot by senior girls, covered in mustard, ketchup, flour, and raw eggs, and forced to propose to senior boys.

Freshman Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins) escapes the hazing with his best friend Carl Burnett (Esteban Powell) when Carl’s mom pulls a shotgun on Fred O’Bannion (Ben Affleck) but is eventually cornered at his baseball game, where he is violently paddled. O’Bannion, a senior participating in the hazing tradition for a second year after failing to graduate, takes special pleasure in punishing Mitch. Pink gives the injured Mitch a ride home and offers to take him cruising with friends later that night. Plans for the evening are ruined when Kevin Pickford’s (Shawn Andrews) parents discover he is to host a keg party. Elsewhere, the intellectual trio of Cynthia Dunn (Marissa Ribisi), Tony Olson (Anthony Rapp) and Mike Newhouse (Adam Goldberg), known as the class nerds, decide to go out and “viscerally” participate in the evening’s activities. Floyd and his friend David Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey), an older guy who still socializes with high school students, pick up Kramer and head for the Emporium, a pool hall popular with the teenagers.

As the evening progresses, students loiter around the Emporium, listen to rock music, cruise the neighborhood and stop at the local hamburger drive-in. Kramer is introduced to sophomore Julie Simms (Catherine Morris), with whom he shares a mutual attraction. Mitch, cruising again with Pink, Kevin, and Don Dawson (Sasha Jenson), drinks beer and smokes marijuana for the first time. They play mailbox baseball, but a neighborhood resident brandishing a handgun catches them and threatens to call the police. They barely escape, but not before the resident fires at their car, narrowly missing. After returning to the Emporium, Kramer runs into his middle school friends. They hatch a plan to get revenge on O’Bannion, who continues to haze freshmen students. The plan culminates with them dumping paint on O’Bannion. Read more

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