Linklater published a diary of the making of Dazed and Confused and about dealing with the studio in the Austin Chronicle. It was online somewhere a couple of years ago, but I can't find it now.
Hopefully someone at ILF has seen it?
― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Friday, 30 July 2004 16:53 (twenty-one years ago)
It was called "Dazed by Days" and published in 93. I've been searching for it the past day too (never heard about it before but love Dazed & Confused), the main link that (apparently) was hosting it is now dead. Below is all I've managed to find -
From "Dazed by Days" by Richard Linklater in The Austin Chronicle, September 24, 1993:
AUGUST 1992
Baseball Field
Another two nights in one. At lunch, I get the typical lecture and opinions about what to cut out of the rest of the day, what we "don’t really need." As if anyone other than myself should even be allowed to have an opinion on that—this is a perversion of filmmaking. Jim, whom I’ve learned to pretty much ignore when he’s on the set, is suddenly on a producer power roll. He has singled out as expendable one of my favorite shots, in which all the boys line up after the game and tell each other "good game," over and over. It’s a fairly complex setup and just one of those things I’ve always had in my mind for the sequence. And then he thinks we can do a super-rush job on what I have planned for a music montage of shots of all different angles and speeds in which the senior students catch Mitch after the game and paddle him in the brutal initiation ritual. And now it looks like I’m supposed to make these major compromises for both scenes. Then there’s the call from the two executives at Universal on the film. Everybody’s suddenly freaking about the language in the film—too many "fucks" by the boys, they’ve decided. Even the junior high boys are cursing now, they complain. Junior high boys curse quite a bit, I tell them. Not in 1976 they answer. Oh really? Must not have been the same 1976 I lived through. Theaters in the South won’t show the movie, they say. Oh, I forgot, people in the South don’t use bad language. I walk back to the set after lunch in a daze, as depressed as I’ve ever been in relation to this project. What could have been an interesting film is going to be a compromised piece of shit, and then at the end of the day, I’ll get blamed for the underachievement. Fuck ‘em all.
I have a very frighteningly real urge to just keep walking, get in my car, and leave. If they have it in their minds how I should make a film, then maybe they should just do it themselves. Since we’re at a baseball field, the proper analogy hits me: they are sending me up to the plate with a size 28-inch bat and with two strikes on me but still expecting a home run. As I walk by, I notice Wiley is on the pitcher’s mound working on his wind-up and pitch. Unlike his character Mitch, Wiley’s never really played baseball and can’t throw or catch at all convincingly. I’ve told him that through the use of a stunt double and close-ups of various details, I’ll have him looking like Roger Clemens before it’s all over—he just has to have a tough competitive expression. But he still looks fairly awkward and I know most actors would be embarrassed and have a horrible attitude about being the focus of the set and to not be good at what they’re supposed to be doing, take after take. But he’s nothing but professional and positive. I hear Wiley tell one of his friends, "If we have to stay out here all night, we’re going to get this right!" This sends a chill through me and brings me back to life. I’m moping around, ready to quit, and then I realize the people who matter are busting ass, for the film, for their commitment, and I owe my absolute best to all of them. Things have a way of turning on a dime. My script supervisor, Catherine Jelski, has convinced Jim why we need the "good game, good game" shot—important information, we can’t jump such geography without this shot as a transition, it won’t cut, etc. I know what she’s doing, and it works. My saying I need something to make a sequence work means nothing—I’m just being indulgent. But if a professional like her says it, they throw in the towel, thank God. I feel I’ll only have to put up with this kind of shit once in my life. This throws the schedule off and makes getting the paddling sequence impossible for tonight. Woe is me and the production—I end up getting all the field shots the way I want and a couple of weeks later, we have time to do the paddling shots properly, rock & rolling along.
― Mil (Mil), Sunday, 1 August 2004 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)
Woo-hoo, thanks. The name led me to the (now-defunct) webpage, which the Internet Archives has a copy of.
http://web.archive.org/web/19991010085323/http://hyperweb.com/linklater/DAZEDAYS.HTML
The "more Dazed..." etc. links at the bottom of each page work, there are four total. If I get time, I'll try to edit the html into one long document and mirror it at a non-archives site.
― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Sunday, 1 August 2004 23:10 (twenty-one years ago)
this is great! but the last 2 pages wont access?!
it's way way revealing, but ultimately what u already fear about
american movie making. got to love that slimy 'you guys gotta real
great movie in there somewhere, keep at it' type of talk. brrr.
― piscesboy, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 14:28 (twenty-one years ago)
he is a mite precious about the music i think!! what is it about zeppelin and american indie types?!! i mean at some point u just have 2 accept that slow ride works better than led zep anyway, anyday of th week. still i feel his pain 4 the main. whoever knew that when we all moan "aw the soundtrack's rubbish, half the songs that are in the film arent even on here!" that the film maker types have already done the same.
― piscesboy, Thursday, 5 August 2004 16:09 (twenty-one years ago)