Hokie-
Some of the people who inspired the film aren't quite the fans of it that most of us are, it seems:
Three Huntsville residents who say they went to high school with Austin film director Richard Linklater accused him of using them as the basis for the girl-chasing, drug-taking characters in his film "Dazed and Confused" in a lawsuit filed last week, 11 years after the movie was released.
"Dazed and Confused" is Linklater's 1993 cult classic following the drug-and-alcohol-fueled antics of teenagers on the last day of high school in the 1970s. Universal Studios, also included in the suit, is scheduled to release a special edition DVD of the movie Nov. 2.
According to their civil complaint, the men claim the movie subjected them to "relentless harassment, embarrassment and ridicule."
Linklater, who wrote and directed the film, used modified versions of the three plaintiffs' names in the movie.
Bobby Wooderson, Andy Slater and Richard "Pink" Floyd are portrayed in the movie as David Wooderson, Ron Slater and Randall "Pink" Floyd, respectively.
The similarity in name and likeness of the characters is obvious, said attorney Ernest Freeman.
"My clients were not asked nor did they give their permission to be portrayed in this movie," he said.
The movie has turned these men into unwitting celebrities and cast them in a less than flattering light, Freeman said.
Sarah Johnson, assistant to Linklater, said he had not been notified of the lawsuit and only read about it in the paper.
The movie's depiction of Wooderson, who was played by actor Matthew McConaughey, as an "aging high school wannabe with the bad-ass car who, despite graduating years ago, can't leave his high school 'daze' behind him," reads the suit.
The suit alleges lines attributed to Wooderson in the movie include McConaughey's comment to an incoming high-school freshman, "Hey, man, got a joint?" When the freshman says he does not, McConaughey replies, "It'd be a lot cooler if you did."
Freeman said these quotes have become infamous, and the real-life Wooderson has never said anything similar, adding that the personal lives of Slater and Floyd have been similarly disrupted over the years by people making assumptions on their personal habits.
When classmates of Bobby Wooderson's son at Harvard learned the boy's father was the basis for David Wooderson in the movie, "they asked him for autographs and wanted to smoke pot with him," Freeman said.
The suit was filed in New Mexico because it has a longer statute of limitations than other states for claims of defamation and false light, Freeman said.
When it came out, the plaintiffs thought the movie would fade out, Freeman said. But they decided to sue years later because the popularity has only grown.
The plaintiffs are still living in Huntsville, Freeman said. Slater runs a construction company, Wooderson has a job in the technology sector, and Floyd works at a local car dealership.
Wiley Wiggins, who portrayed Mitch Kramer, said in an e-mail the people pressing the suit do not have a valid claim.
"It's half-baked and pathetic opportunism, and I can only imagine how it must make [Linklater] feel," he said.
Wiggins said at one time Linklater proposed making a sequel, showing how the characters had degenerated into "gas-pumping, hungry ghosts of their former selves."
"It was a cool idea, but I think the real movie would be a documentary about the sad sacks back in Huntsville who are trying to cash in 11 years later over vaguely having something to do with a movie," he said.
