Imagine
Huntsville as a fun place to grow up, party and survive adolescence. It's kind
of difficult to imagine, now isn't it?
Yet, for
those who have seen the movie "Dazed and Confused," it is reality if
they know the truth.
The truth is, Richard Linklater's
movie "Dazed and Confused," which was released last fall 1993, portrayed
the lives of several Huntsville residents during their last day of school at Huntsville
High School in 1976.
"It was all about riding
around, drinking and being cool," said screenplay writer Linklater. I made
the movie because I always wanted to make a good teen-age movie. It's really never
a good time to be a teen-ager, but this was one time to be alive and I lived in
the time."
Linklater said he did not make
actual composite characters in the movie from real people he associated with during
his high school years.
Although he said that
the characters were designed from a variety of friends and peers he was involved
with while in high school, it seems all too funny that three residents of Huntsville,
whose last names were included in the film, though slightly altered have all agreed
that they knew Linklater in high school.
Their
actual high-school lives coincided with most of the storyline of the movie.
"The
movie was real close to the truth," said Rick Floyd, a Huntsville resident
who was possibly the source of the character Randall "Pink" Floyd. "It
was true to form, yet a bit outlandish. The way he (Linklater) had everybody dressed
wasn't real close. I mean, nobody's hair was that long or anything."
"Now,
Slater, he was a little different. He walked to his own tune."
Slater
was the character in the movie that supplied, used and abused all sorts of substances.
He appeared as a long-haired hippy type that was always feeling fine.
A
local bookstore owner, Andy Slater, coincidentally went to school with Linklater.
The true-life Slater said he thought the movie portrayed him as a character but
that Linklater had included a good bit of "artistic license: to make the
movie more enjoyable.
According to Linklater,
the character Slater was not based on Andy Slater, the manager of The Other Bookland
located here in Huntsville.
"He was a good
guy, but I guess you could say he was one of the non-conformists in high school
you know. Everybody's got one," Floyd said.
Floyd,
according to Linklater, was not a composite character, either. Yet he went by
the nickname Pink, referring to the music group Pink Floyd.
In
the movie, Randall "Pink" Floyd was the main character of the story.
"My
character, the guy they have playing me, he was way out," Floyd said. "I
mean, I was not the high quarter-back in high school. I played some ball until
was a senior, but then I had to concentrate on getting out."
"The
Randall Floyd in the movie was the rebellious star athlete who everyone was counting
on for the next year's football season. He was also the partying type who loved
to drink beer and smoke marijuana.
But the real
Floyd was no necessarily that.
"I was not
the kind of guy to get out there and get my head beat in," Floyd said. "I
was more of the guy that wanted to go out and drink beer and smoke dope."
One
thing that Linklater did agree upon was that several of the landmarks where parties
occurred in the movie were actual places in and around Huntsville. The Moon Tower,
as it was called in the movie, was actually called the Fire Tower by many flocked
to its location to drink and toke.
"We'd
all meet on a Friday or Saturday night, "Floyd said. "Everybody would
put in a buck or two and we'd get a keg of beer. Now we'd either go out to the
Fire Tower or where the old Wal-Mart used to be. We called that Tequila Hill.
We'd go up there and just get ripped."
The
Emporium, which was a pool hall and football hang-out that was inhabited by high-school
students in the movie, was actually real in name and purpose. It was located off
of South Sam Houston, but has since been leveled and turned into a used-car dealer.
Besides
The Emporium, older high-school students frequented the streets of Huntsville.
"Cars
were the big thing back then," Slater said.
Slater
was characterized in the movie as a hippy that fit in with the jocks, the nerds
and anyone else that was around the halls of the school.
"Your
wheels were your freedom, you know. Anybody that had a cool car, well, everybody
wanted ride with 'em," he said.
"The
cool students would work all they could and save their money and buy the hot rods,
but you didn't see them too much unless they came out in their cars."
Slater
and Floyd said their nights of partying seemed so much like the night in which
the movie setting took place."
"I knew
Ricky mainly from going out partying," Slater said. "That's how I knew
most everybody. That's how I knew Linklater. There was kind of a redneck group
and a hippy group and there was a nerd group, pretty much the movie, but it seemed
like everybody got along pretty good when everybody went out at night. There was
an extreme hippy group, and there weren't welcome too much."
Slater
added, "I was probably one of the only hippy sorts. I crossed the border
somehow, because I was accepted. I was a decent person. I didn't cause trouble.
I took a bath. I don't know, really. I guess I was kind of different from the
stringed-hippy sorts. But that was the cool thing we all got along. It was cool."
Slater
explained that back in the '70s there was a feeling much different from the feeling
and attitude that young people have today.
"Back
then it was get away with as much as you could and not get caught, and nowadays,
it seems like it's get away with as much as you can with disregard to other people's
property. If you get caught, it's no big deal," Slater said.
"Back
then it was a big deal to get caught. It was like a badge of honor not to get
caught, and now it seems like it's a badge of honor to get caught."
Times
have changed since 1976. So has the feeling that Slater speaks of. Linklater explained
that "coming out of the '60s passed a lot of personal freedoms into my generation."
He added, "The movie was more of a moment-to-moment reality of a teenager
in the '70s."
"We romanticized the
pop-culture history of the '50s and '60s the same way that young people today
sometimes try to relive the late '60s and early '70s. As a teen, I had the feeling
of a displaced love to escape to a different time and place."
As
for Slater and Floyd, they are content with their lives during the '70s as well
as their present lives.
"We all liked to
party back then," Floyd said. "We all left Huntsville after high school,
but hell, we all ended up back here somehow. I guess some things never change."
Drinking
beer and smoking dope seemed to be the main focus of the movie. Running a close
second would be the hazing of the incoming freshmen from junior high.
Incoming
freshman would be subject to severe paddling from juniors who were graduating
to the senior class. The main hazers in the movie were the football athletes.
The
routine was for the incoming freshman to exit the junior-high school doors and
run for their lives before the older boys with paddles in hand could reach them
or their behinds. The partying and the hazing went hand in hand. After the hazing
rituals retired for the evening, a party began and lasted until sunrise the following
day.
The Emporium sheltered many intoxicated
or otherwise stoned persons.
"Yeah, when
that place opened, that was, of course, a haven for drug addicts and hippies and
all that," Floyd said.
In the movie, a pledge
sheet was passed around to all of the football athletes saying that they should
commit themselves to quit any drinking or drug-related activities that could jeopardize
the possibility of a championship season the following year.
"I
can remember the coaches from the football team calling a meeting with all of
us, and they told to stay away from the Emporium, but I don't remember anything
about a piece of paper. I don't remember having to sign anything, but I sure remember
that there was a lot of pressure on us not to go there," Slater said.
"They
used to race over there by where the Taco Bell is now. We had a drag strip over
there that headed back into where those houses are now. The street curved down
at the end, but only a couple people raced that far. I don't ever remember anybody
getting hurt from that," he said.
"A
few people did get killed one year, though. You see, Huntsville used to be dry,"
he said. "I think they changed it around '73 or so, because in my older brother's
era, they would have to drive to Trinity to get beer."
Trinity
is a small town 22 miles north of Huntsville on Highway 19.
"It
was a two-lane road back then, and I think three people got killed driving back
and forth to get beer. So, the city changed the law or I think the parents pretty
much changed it, because they knew the kids were going to do it anyway and they
didn't want anyone else getting hurt," Slater said.
"It's
a different atmosphere now. Back then it was 'don't hurt anybody.' There wasn't
anything to fight over like people do with drug nowadays, and you didn't have
gangs back then. It was a happy-go-lucky sort of feeling," he said.
"I
remember the first time there was some crime in this town, and it was done by
a guy breaking into churches, and stealing P.A. systems and stuff, and it shocked
the whole town.
"Nobody even locked their
doors up until that point. There were lots of drugs and drinking back then but
no crime up until that point at the end of the '70s into the early '80s. It was
weird compared to how the two go hand in hand nowadays. I guess times change,"
Slater said.
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