Dazed and Confused

**for so long its not true** I only saw it once. I dare not watch this again. For some reason it was playing at a dingy burlesque-haunted cinema on old Granville Street in Vancouver on a Sunday afternoon in 1993 where wasted men usually shuffle in to deposit their sperm. (Not enough credit goes to internet porn for cleaning up the streets). Richard Linkater wasn't a story at the time. The guy who made Slackers. The bastard love child of Jim Jarmusch and Chrissie Hynde for all I knew. No clue he'd be the chosen one to eventually deliver us to _Boyhood_. I went in with a friend on a lark and floated out on a psilocybin cloud of joy. I was awestruck. I know these guys! I wanted to endlessly sing its praises but my friend didn't get the same charge out of it. (Although months later at a Christmas party of wayward misfits, he couldn't stop playing the sound track). Maybe it was me. But this was exactly how I remembered High School in the 70's. Was I hallucinating the whole thing? Indeed I was stoned much of the time, but all that was brilliantly accounted for. All that was missing was a bit of Pink Floyd and a whole lot of Led Zeppelin as alluded to in the title. _Dazed & Confused_ isn't merely the best movie about High School in the 1970's. It is the best movie about High School, and the best movie about the 1970's, and perhaps the best movie about male adolescence (yes, yes, IMHO, of course, what else). I dare not watch it again for what if I burst the bubble of such virgin memories to forever spoil my love and admiration for it. Or was it the dingy cinema I have fond nostalgic feelings for? Something. I'll have to watch it again, probably soon, once Linklater finally gets the grand red-carpet treatment along with the golden trinkets he so long deserves.

Really solid sophomore effort by Linklater. Loved his Hitchcock homage, especially.