The Projector #76: Spirit of ’76 (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

Is it okay if I just make this week’s newsletter a book recommendation? Think of it as an extension of “Your Next Picture Show” but in written form. I’m a bit late to this, since the book came out last fall, but I enjoyed every page of Melissa Maerz’s Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. For starters, it serves as a real “this is how you do it” example of an oral history. Sometimes you’ll see an article promoted as an oral history that, no matter how much time went into the interviews, works as a 10-minute once-over-lightly at best. Maybe you’ll get a headline-grabbing revelation. Maybe not. A proper oral history needs to be long. You can get it done in an article for some topics, I’m sure, but everything about this book confirms the Dazed and Confused story needed to be a book. Secondly, Maerz talked to everyone. Well, almost everyone: the biggest holdout is also someone who blazed in with an attitude, made no friends on the set, then effectively disappeared from show business. It’s one reason that, when book-pitching, I’ve never proposed an oral history. It’s hard to get people to talk to you (to say nothing of combing through all those transcripts).

But, of course, the best reason to read an oral history of Dazed and Confused is it’s a good story. Several good stories, really: that of an indie filmmaker struggling to make a film in the studio system, of young actors trying to figure out their craft between parties and hook-ups, and of the a local film scene on the verge of blowing up. It’s also an example of the kind of mathematical miracle it takes for all the pieces to fall in place to get any film made, but in particular an odd, personal film that the studio was only half-committed to making in the first place. It’s also an example of how some films come along at just the right moment. Linklater tried and (as Maerz points out, failed) to make an anti-nostalgic film that captured how the ’70s sucked by depicting a the last day of school before the summer of 1976. But it arrived at the moment when the ’90s and the ’70s were having a deep and meaningful conversation. Quentin Tarantino and Beastie Boys assembled new art out of old pieces. Cable channels filled with reruns of shows like Kung Fu that hadn’t been in wide circulation in years. Kurt Cobain helped bring back Converse One Stars. Dazed and Confused became a key part of that exchange, one that captured how much had changed — and how much remained the same.

Anyway, good book. It made me, to paraphrase an old Daniel Clowes comics, nostalgic for the ’90s version of the ’70s.

Meanwhile, hopefully you’re enjoying our latest episode on Nomadland. And if you want to get ahead, Jean de Florette is on Prime even though its sequel, Manon of the Spring, isn’t streaming anywhere and out of print on DVD and Blu-ray. (And, trust me, you don’t want to go the cheap route and buy the Korean DVDs on eBay. They might look legit. But they are not.)

Stuff to read? We’ve got stuff for you to read:

• Speaking of Nomandland, Vulture recently ran a couple of relevant piece: an interview with a standout supporting performer and real-life nomad Bob Wells and a look at its depiction of the gig economy.

• At The New Yorker, Howard Fishman checks in with David Lynch to see what he’s been up to during the pandemic.

• This week, Vulture feature a whole package on endings, from a list of the greatest movie endings to our pal Jen Chaney on the art of the TV cliffhanger. Another highlight, Bilge Ebiri on the greatness of the ending of The Godfather: Part III. (Yes, Part III.) Check it out.

• Former child star Mara Wilson weighs in on the Britney Spears conversation with a terrific personal essay about her own experiences growing up in show business for The New York Times.

• For Smithsonian Magazine, Will Harris looks at The Great White Hope at 50 via a conversation with its stars and documentarian Ken Burns.

• For Rolling Stone, Alan Sepinwall revisits The Knick with Steven Soderbergh.

• And InsideHook offers an appreciation of sexploitation pioneer Dorish Wishman.