SAY MAN, YOU GOT A JOINT?

Am I ever glad the Washington Post decided to put its resources into following up the recently-reported lawsuit against Universal Studios and director Richard Linklater — by a trio of Texans named Floyd, Slater and Wooderson. Reporter Peter Carlson, in a highly readable if somewhat fanboy-ish feature story, is appropriately skeptical of their claims. Specifically, they're suing for defamation, violation of privacy and causing severe emotional distress and mental anguish. Here's Slater-san himself, sounding something less than anguished:

When Andy Slater saw "Dazed and Confused," he was peeved about the character named Ron Slater, played by Rory Cochrane -- a stoner in a pot-leaf T-shirt who makes bongs and inhales deeply and launches into a stoned rap about how George Washington used to toke up, smoking righteous weed in pipes packed by our first first lady, Martha Washington.

"Who knows? I might have said that," says Slater, a bachelor and a building contractor in Huntsville. "I said a lot of things. I was quite outspoken back then. That's probably why Rick Linklater might have chosen me as a character -- because I disagreed with marijuana laws and I was vocal about that even in high school. But I was never walking around with a marijuana leaf on my shirt or handing out joints. I was not that character in that movie."

I'm certainly inclined to be sympathetic, because I sure would hate for my reputation as an adult to be that of my reputation as a teenager. Then again, as much as they protest, Carlson catches them laughing about the situation:

"I was skiing in Colorado one time," says Wooderson, "and I turned in my skis and said, 'Wooderson,' and the kid goes, 'Wooderson? Like in "Dazed and Confused"?' I didn't say anything, but somebody with me says, 'Yeah! This is him!' And the kid says, 'Dude, you need to come party with us!'"

I seem to have misplaced my subatomic Stradivarius. Yet lawyers they have found and suits they have filed. And it looks like they're going for the gold:

["Dazed" actor Wiley] Wiggins told the Daily Texan that he and Linklater had previously discussed making a "Dazed" sequel that would show how the characters had degenerated into "gas-pumping hungry ghosts of their former selves."

The lawyers find that comment very interesting.

I'm not sure that I do. For one, that movie was never made (and almost certainly shouldn't be.) Two, as mentioned, Slater is a building contractor. It turns out Wooderson is a computer systems engineer whose son goes to Harvard. And Floyd is the service manager at a Dodge dealership. Perhaps they would have been astronauts but for Linklater's slander against them, but I doubt it. Under what circumstances can a non-famous person contest the use of their identity, or use of the likeness of their identity? Maybe FLOG™ has a better-informed take on all this. I don't know, but it would seem that this case could set an absurd precedent. Is it more relevant that these characters are similar to the real-life individuals, or that the characters are not literally about these individuals? The line here seems very thin:

"Like, for example, the scene that shows me showing somebody how to make a bong in shop class," says Andy Slater, now 45. "I did not do that. I never did that. But they used my name and they show me making a bong in shop class." ... Well, of course. Making bongs in shop class -- that is a tad far-fetched.

"Oh, no, they did that," says Slater. "But it wasn't me."

It'd be a lot cooler if you did.