POP Montreal bike-in celebrates "Dazed and Confused" turning 20: Party at the Moon Tower!

All right, all right, all right. Come August 17, y’all better be ready to party. POP Montreal’s cinematic sister, Film POP, is throwing a bike-in screening of major movie proportions. Dazed and Confused – that most definitive film of the 90s, about the 70s – is turning 20, and Film POP is bringing out the big guns to celebrate. But what, pray tell, might be the biggest, rootin’-est, tootin’-est gun of all? Well, it just so happens that Austin, Texas’ native son, Wiley Wiggins, who starred as the indomitable freshman Mitch Kramer, is being flown in to chill with all y’all and fête the flick. KAPOW! Now put that in your bowl and smoke it! Recently, NIGHTLIFE.CA caught up with Mr. Wiggins for a little to and fro. Here’s how the whole thing went down.

NIGHTLIFE.CA: Dazed & Confused is such a seminal film. Why do you think it struck a chord with Gen Xers? Why has it remained such a cultural touchpoint?
Wiggins: I was of the generation kind of wedged uncomfortably between Gen-Xers and Millennials, so I can't really speak for Gen-X. It seems pretty universal though, that people mythologize their teen years once they hit their 30s, even if it's in a negative way. I think when you are a kid, it feels like the way the world is fixed and unchanging, and that the past your parents inhabited is a million years ago. Once you get a little older, you see how quickly things change, and how ephemeral everything around you is. It's a frightening realization and it can make you try to reconstruct the world you lost, even if you hated it.

D & C director Richard Linklater was brilliantly prescient in his casting. How did you become involved with the film in the first place?
The two primary casting people working on the film were Don Phillips (who cast Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and Anne Walker McBay, who had also worked on [Linklater’s] Slacker. Anne found me near the University of Texas campus outside of a coffee shop I used to hang out in. She was looking primarily for extras – kids with long hair who wouldn't necessarily have any lines. The casting was very egalitarian though in that all the kids who tried out got a shot at larger parts, and I got very lucky.

Any memories of off-camera shenanigans you’d be willing to share?
I was younger and local, so I didn't spend as much off-camera time hanging out with the other performers who were visiting from out of town. I remember Rory Cochrane trying to get me to quit smoking by sticking a tiny firecracker in one of my cigarettes. I remember watching slack jawed as Parker Posey dominated a bunch of girls I knew from school with squirt bottles of mustard and ketchup (there's no way I can make that not sound creepy, sorry). There were long hours of hanging out waiting to shoot scenes, talking about what an amazing opportunity we had stumbled into and what might happen next.

You chose not to wholly dedicate yourself to acting, like some of your former cast mates, but instead, took a more technological path. What got you interested in programming and video game design?
I don't know if I ever had the drive or talent to devote myself totally to acting. I also haven't wanted to live in Los Angeles or New York, which is problematic to trying to make a living in the entertainment industry. Having a primary career separate from acting has freed me to make movies with friends who I love, in projects that I care about. I also can't imagine giving up the intellectual challenge of problem solving and building little worlds of my own.

I got involved with indie games as a fan, and ended up co-organizing a monthly event called Juegos Rancheros. As that group started to get attention, Fantastic Fest (the largest genre film festival in the U.S., run by the Alamo Drafthouse) began allowing us to curate a new video game portion of the festival. Over the last few years of the event's existence, I've gone from being a volunteer to being the creative director. We bring in oddities from around the world in the hopes of exposing cult film fans and other "non-gamers" to the potential of games.

I've watched filmmaker friends spend decades trying to fund and organize modest budget films, even with today's accessible and relatively affordable equipment. I need to feel like I am creative in my daily life or I will die. I can't wait five years for one opportunity to create something. Also, creating a game is creating a possibility space that you can return to again and again. It's making a living thing that can surprise you, even when you think you know everything there is to know about it.

Despite the odds, you’re still finding fascinating projects in which to flex your acting muscle. Tell me a bit about your latest vehicle, Computer Chess.
Computer Chess fits alongside Dazed and Confused in a way, since they're both these sorts of subjective time capsules. Computer Chess takes place sometime in the late 70s or early 80s and is shot on an antique analog video camera. The movie involves a group of software developers, which is a world I've been in and out of for decades, and it works through all sorts of meaty themes that I obsess over in my own life.

In your opinion, what’s the present status of American film? Are we seeing the same rise in independent production and distribution (and the unseating of the established oligarchies) as in the music industry?
It seems like movie making in America is becoming more and more difficult. Creating movies that aren't narrowly defined by marketing-driven, prefab 'genres' is a huge handicap to securing increasingly timid distribution. On the top of the media food chain, Hollywood can only produce larger and larger theme-park rides that are too-big-to-fail, and there's no room in the media ecology for mid-budget movies that take chances. It's amazing that a movie like Computer Chess was championed and nurtured by a distributor like it has been. I'm also really impressed with the bravery and finesse of companies like Drafthouse Films, who clearly pick their films based on their own taste and are thoughtful about how they present them. I think what is needed now are more small, focused companies like this who can connect small films with their niche but devoted audiences. Otherwise, movies will be market-tested into cultural irrelevancy.

Film POP’s annual bike-in presents: Dazed and Confused with Wiley Wiggins
Saturday, August 17 at 4:30 p.m. (DJs and BBQ) and 9 p.m. (screening)
McAuslan Brewery (by the Lachine canal) | 5080 St. Ambroise | popmontreal.com