Richard Link later Film Launched the Hollywood Careers of
Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey and Parker Posey
AMC Showcases Network Premiere of the Movie "DAZED AND CONFUSED" to Accompany Special
JERICHO, NY, August 11, 2005 – AMC's newest original production, MAKING DAZED, premiering on Sunday, September 18 at 10:00 PM ET/PT, showcases the 10-year reunion of the cast and crew from the 1993 pivotal movie, DAZED AND CONFUSED . This Richard Link later film featured a cast of relative unknowns, including Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey and Adam Goldberg. For many of these actors, the success of this movie was their springboard to fame, and ultimately launched their Hollywood careers.
AMC will also feature the network premiere of the movie, DAZED AND CONFUSED, at 8 PM ET/PT, prior to the airing of the special. The original special was executive produced by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker R.J. Cutler, and directed and produced by Emmy Award®-winning director Kahane Corn.
"I was definitely one of the most unappealing characters in a film with appealing people," said Ben Affleck, reminiscing about his breakout role of O'Bannion. He adds, "It was one of the most important experiences of my professional life."
In 1992, when director Richard Linklater was an independent filmmaker in Austin Texas, he set out to make a movie depicting small town Texas teenagers on their last day of high school in 1976 that would offer their personal stories and capture the spirit of the decade. The result was 1993's DAZED AND CONFUSED, a film that made a lasting mark in Hollywood and pop culture.
Ten years later in 2003, Linklater reunited the cast, along with legendary casting director Don Phillips, at his country home on the outskirts of Austin to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of DAZED AND CONFUSED. Over the course of the weekend, they look back on the film that changed their lives and on the decade that has passed since its release. Armed with a 16 mm hand held camera, documentary filmmaker Kahane Corn chronicled the rehearsals, conducted interviews and obtained verite footage of the young actors on and off the set.
"I've known Kahane for many years, and have greatly admired her work as a filmmaker," commented Executive Producer R.J. Cutler. "One day, she showed me a reel of amazing footage that she had shot during the making of DAZED AND CONFUSED. It was incredible stuff and I knew right away that there would be a wonderful documentary to be made around that footage. Just like that, Kahane was off and running to make what has turned out to be a really great film about a very special moment in many people's lives."
"If you are lucky, you get that one shot in life, and I think that Dazed, in a way, was my shot," commented writer/director Richard Linklater, on the making of this film.
MAKING DAZED is a record of a fleeting experience of a group of young people who made a film about the summer of 1976 in the summer of 1992. Watching it, viewers will go back in time to find themselves sitting in a 70's muscle car with Ben Affleck as he learns to drive., and hear how Matthew McConaughey, who was discovered in an Austin bar, turned a two-line part into the heart of the movie – and catapulted his Hollywood career. The documentary also features a "lost" scene between Parker Posey and Lauren Joey Adams, which never made the final cut in the movie.
The documentary is directed and produced by Kahane Corn, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Supervising Producer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," where she has been since the show launched in 1996. In 1995, she produced the documentary feature film, Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, directed by Nick Broomfield.
Academy Award® nominee and Emmy Award winning director R.J. Cutler is the Executive Producer of the documentary. Cutler's work includes the feature documentaries The War Room and A Perfect Candidate and the series American High, Military Diaries, The Residents, The Freshman Diaries, and 30 Days.
About AMC
AMC, a division of Rainbow Media's Entertainment Services, which also includes WE: Women's Entertainment and IFC Companies, is a 24-hour, movie-based network, dedicated to the American movie fan. The network, which reaches over 86,000,000 homes, offers a comprehensive library of popular movies and a critically-acclaimed slate of original programming that is a diverse, movie-based mix of original series, documentaries and specials. Over the past three years, AMC has garnered many of the industry's highest honors, including 14 Emmy awards. AMC is "TV for movie people."