what the film does
may 28, 1976, the last day of school at lee high school in an unnamed texas town. the seniors run the annual hazing on the incoming freshmen. the boys are chased down and paddled. the girls are covered in mustard, ketchup, flour, and raw eggs. freshman mitch kramer escapes at first, gets caught later, and gets paddled by fred o’bannion, a senior held back a year who takes real pleasure in it. the quarterback randall “pink” floyd is being pressured by his coach to sign a pledge promising a clean summer. he will not sign. the film follows these kids and a dozen others through one night: the pool hall, the drive-through, keg party plans that collapse, mailbox baseball, a moonlight tower, and finally the football field at dawn.
why this one
there is no plot, and that is the point. the film refuses the machinery of the teen movie: no prom to win, no big game, no transformation. nothing happens except that a night happens. linklater structured it so that the audience does not watch the characters move through a story but simply exists in the same hours they do. most teen films compress adolescence into events. this one expands an evening into a film.
the casting is a document of a moment. jason london, wiley wiggins, rory cochrane, adam goldberg, anthony rapp, milla jovovich, parker posey, cole hauser, joey lauren adams, ben affleck, renée zellweger, and matthew mcconaughey, whose wooderson became the film’s signature. linklater cast mostly unknowns, encouraged improvisation, and let the actors develop their own characters. the result reads less like performances than like recovered footage.
the period detail is unforced. linklater drew on his own adolescence in huntsville, texas, lifted names from people he knew, and shot around austin with crew members from slacker. the soundtrack of 1970s rock, foghat, kiss, black sabbath, alice cooper, sweet, took up a large share of the budget, and it is the film’s connective tissue. every car ride has a song that belongs to the characters, not to a montage.
what stays with me
wooderson’s line to pink on the 50-yard line at dawn, where the last few kids smoke weed on the football field. “that’s what i love about these high school girls, man. i get older, they stay the same age.” it is the most honest line any older character gets in a teen movie, and the film does not flinch from it or redeem it. then, seconds later, the same character tells pink to keep livin’. both statements are true at once.
on hand
the dvd is the universal release in the canon.
image: tmdb backdrop (key jBz16NsAeKjpHNznl1EHlcr704P); genuine production still, the theatre marquee scene. source luma 150.7, pre-darkened 0.60, baked at factor 0.45, lanczos to 1200x675, on-disk luma 30.9