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    Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused
    Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused
    Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused
    Audiobook12 hours

    Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused

    Written by Melissa Maerz

    Narrated by Brittany Pressley and George Newbern

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The definitive oral history of the cult classic Dazed and Confused, featuring behind-the-scenes stories from the cast, crew, and Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater. The production includes an exclusive conversation between Melissa Maerz and Richard Linklater at the end of the audiobook.

    Dazed and Confused not only heralded the arrival of filmmaker Richard Linklater, it introduced a cast of unknowns who would become the next generation of movie stars. Embraced as a cultural touchstone, the 1993 film would also make Matthew McConaughey’s famous phrase—alright, alright, alright—ubiquitous. But it started with a simple idea: Linklater thought people might like to watch a movie about high school kids just hanging out and listening to music on the last day of school in 1976.    

    To some, that might not even sound like a movie. But to a few studio executives, it sounded enough like the next American Graffiti to justify the risk. Dazed and Confused underperformed at the box office and seemed destined to disappear. Then something weird happened: Linklater turned out to be right. This wasn’t the kind of movie everybody liked, but it was the kind of movie certain people loved, with an intensity that felt personal. No matter what their high school experience was like, they thought Dazed and Confused was about them.

    Alright, Alright, Alright is the story of how this iconic film came together and why it worked. Combining behind-the-scenes photos and insights from nearly the entire cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and many others, and with full access to Linklater’s Dazed archives, it offers an inside look at how a budding filmmaker and a cast of newcomers made a period piece that would feel timeless for decades to come.

    Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateNov 17, 2020
    ISBN9780062908520
    Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused
    Author

    Melissa Maerz

    Melissa Maerz has worked as an editor at Spin and Rolling Stone, a staff writer for Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times, and a supervising producer on HBO’s Vice News Tonight. She was a founding editor at New York magazine’s Vulture website. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

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    Reviews for Alright, Alright, Alright

    4/5

    33 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Thank you to NetGalley for this opportunity to read 'Alright, Alright, Alright' before it's publish date. As a fan of the movie 'Dazed and Confused" I was very interested in this book. After reading it, I had to watch it again, so I could pick up on a lot of the inside information mentioned in the book.
    • 5/5
      Essential for D&C fans.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating and informative. Fun read. I love the movie and this really goes deep into the behind the scenes of how it all came together, and the aftermath of the film's not very successful initial run and how the film slowly but surely built into a cult classic and a bit of a cultural phenomenon. It's a movie that would never get made today. The large ensemble cast spent a month together staying in the same hotel, hanging out off-set, forming cliques, hooking up, getting drunk and stoned, etc. Sounded a lot like some experiences I had as a younger person, working at fancy resorts and living in the free-for-all that was employee housing.

      So many young actors would go onto careers after. Everyone thought Jason London would be the breakout star but that never happened. Matthew Mcconaughey was supposed to have a bit part but sort of willed his way into a bigger and bigger role, he was so mesmerizing onscreen that Linklater kept finding ways to get him into more scenes. Parker Posey, Joey lauren Adams, Anthony Rapp, Milla Jovovich, and of course Ben Affleck and Renee Zellweger went onto significant careers. For people like Michelle Burke, Shawn Andrews, and Deena martin, their careers never panned out.

      Maerz masterfully weaves together quotes from all the main players except Jason O. Smith, who played Melvin and is apparently MIA. His perspective would have been interesting as the only non-caucasian (that I can recall off the top of my dome) in the cast. I enjoy the oral history format if done well, as this book definitely was.