No drugs
I just watched this film for the first time and found it a very interesting and faithful capture of the 90s as I remember it. Although I was very young when this was released and grew up in the UK not America, I definately identified with the styles, culture and dialogue, particularly from the side of my family who were more hippy orientated.
I did notice however that for a film which captures a time and culture so well, the lack of drugs seemed quite a glaring omission. Of course it is implied that they get high and a few of the characters seem like addicts/regular drug taker, but it seemed odd that such a major part of the lifestyle would be completely ignored. To be fair, the film does skate over the issue of sex too, with only one direct reference to it.
Do you think this was for a reason? Was Linklater trying to avoid controversy (which makes sense given the circumstances that the film was made in), or do you think he just wanted to place the focus on the different areas of people's life.
Something else I wonder is, for people who watched this on release, did you feel it captured the world as you knew it? The film captures a 90s nostalgia perfectly, but I have noticed that whenever films come out that "capture the time" none of them ever seem remotely realistic (such as Thirteen for example) and only retrospection gives them a gloss of realism. I suspect people will look back at Superbad in twenty years and think "man, that totally captured the late 2000s" but few people who watched it on release considered it a realistic depiction of modern times. What do you think?