Essential for fans of the film but also for anyone with ambitions to work in film on either side of the camera.
A charming oral history of everyone’s favorite stoner film.
When 23-year-old Matthew McConaughey uttered the three words of the title, which weren’t in Richard Linklater’s shooting script, set decorator Deb Pastor knew that history was being made. “The minute he said that ‘alright, alright, alright’ thing,” she recalls for interviewer and archfan Maerz, “I just went, ‘Oh my god, for the rest of time, people are going to be saying everything this motherfucker says.’ ” As it turns out, McConaughey was an accidental addition of sorts, and his role expanded both when Linklater realized how good he was and when Linklater fired a couple of actors from the production, expanding the role of Wooderson. Joey Lauren Adams recalls of the director, “Rick always treated you in a nonsexual way, and for all of us women who had been treated in sexual ways for so long, to have a man who’s not like that? It’s weird.” Linklater’s film, like his debut, Slacker, tanked when it appeared in 1993, but it rode the first wave of commercial DVDs and is now a staple on cable TV. It also caused controversy during and after production: As the interviews make clear, some of the cast were resentful that Linklater didn’t use them in later films and were bitter that their careers didn’t advance further with the film. Meanwhile, three of Linklater’s high school classmates on whom film roles were modeled sued years after the fact, looking for a piece of the action. Some of Maerz’s interview subjects are regretful of behavior that was appropriate to high school but not to professional life, which just shows how far they sank into their roles. Says Linklater, who enshrined his high school years in the cult hit, “Note to actors: Get along with people you’re in an ensemble with. Especially with the director. Don’t forget who edits and controls all this, you know?”
Essential for fans of the film but also for anyone with ambitions to work in film on either side of the camera.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-290850-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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