Main Cast: Richard Linklater, Mark James, Stella Weir, John Slate, Louis Mackey
Release Year: 1991
Country: US
Run Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
One of the key American independent films of the 1990s, Richard Linklater's feature debut is an audacious look at the twentysomething culture in the college town of Austin, Texas. Set over the course of a 24-hour period, the film is a collection of short, unconnected glimpses into the dropout subculture, touching base with a variety of musicians, students, street people and general eccentrics. While there's no real plot to speak of, Linklater's eye for nuance and gift for dialogue are superb, and the portrait he paints is so uncannily accurate that the term "slacker" was almost immediately co-opted as a media buzzword, one interchangeable with the similarly-overused "Generation X." Regardless, the film is an evocative reflection of a community and its culture and remains a definitive artifact of its time and place. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
Review
History may be written by the winners, but in movies like Slacker we learn that life's lovable losers often have a far more engaging story to tell. The spiritual anomie afflicting the generation of the then-29-year-old director Richard Linklater provides the backdrop for this meandering and essentially plot-less tale. These college-aged people in Austin, Texas have the freedom and resources to do just about anything, but they choose instead to do nothing. There is a morbid attractiveness to their subversiveness. In most cases, their non-participation in life is a well thought-out stance: "Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy," as one of the slackers informs us. Like others before them (beatniks, hippies, punks), this generation of twenty-somethings need time to sort things out. The movie's titular characters represent America's subconscious; these are the midnight neuroses that we keep bottled up in our waking hours. Comparisons to such filmmakers as Luis Bunuel and Max Ophuls are apt, as Linklater's stream of consciousness direction follows a winding road that leads to no particular place at all. Ironically, this studied attempt to appear unscripted and spontaneous succeeds mainly because it is so carefully plotted. Thankfully, Linklater clearly identifies with his subjects, and celebrates their wackiness without resorting to a bitterly ironic pose that would have distanced us from the characters. The film's 97 minutes -- made for $23,000 -- provided more filmmaking bang for the buck than just about any film of the early 1990s; Slacker's no-budget breakthrough success prefigured other Sundance discoveries such as Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi (1992) and Kevin Smith's Clerks (1994). ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
Joseph Jones - Old Man Recording Thoughts; Brecht Andersch - Dostoyevsky Wannabe; Aleister Barron - Peeping Kid; Rudy Basquez - Taxi Driver; Albans Benchoff - Coke Machine Robber; Nigel Benchoff - Budding Capitalist Youth; Stewart Bennet - Sitting on Ledge; Louis Black - Paranoid Paper Reader; Bob Boyd - Officer Bozzio; Meg Brennan - Sitting at Cafe; Eric Buehlman - Cafe Card Player #2; Jean Caggeine; Lori Capp - Traumatized Yacht Owner; Jennifer Carroll - All-Night Partier; Sean Coffey - Super 8 Cameraman; Janelle Coolich; Brian Crockett - Sadistic Comb Game Player; Jerry Deloney - Been on the Moon Since the 50's; Samuel Dietert - Grocery Grabber of Death's Bounty; Daniel Dugan - Comb Game Player; Keith Fletcher - Cafe Card Player #1; Skip Fulton, Jr.; Regina Garza - Smoking Writer; Charles Gunning - Hitchhiker Awaiting "True Call"; Ed Hall - Band Playing at Club; Sarah Harmon - Has Faith in Groups; Jan Hockey - Jogger; Stephan Hockey - Running Late; Phillip Hostak - Hit Up for Cigarettes; Bruce Hughes - Card Playing Waiter; Marianne Hyatt - Late Night Pick-up; Stephen Jacobson - S-T-E-V-E with a Van; Terrence Kirk - Officer Love; Dan Kratochvil - Espresso Czar/Masonic Malcontent; Shelly Kristaponis - Shoplifter; Kim Krizan - Questions Happiness; Michael Laird - Burglar; Gina Lalli - Sidewalk Psychic; Kelly Linn - Bike Rider with Nice Shoes; Eric Lord - Doorman at Club; D. Angus MacDonald - Video Playing Store Security; Nick Maffei; R. Malice - Scooby Doo Philosopher; Scott Marcus - Ultimate Loser; Ron Marks - Bush Basher; Kathy McCarty - Anarchist's Daughter; Keith McCormack - Street Musician; D. Montgomery; Abra Moore - Has Change; Nolan Morrison - To Be Buried By History; Charlotte Norris - Convertible Driver; Frank Orrall - Happy-Go-Lucky Guy; Tom Pallotta - Looking for Missing Friend; Debbie Pastor - Wants to Leave Country; Robert Pierson - Based on Authoritative Sources; Gary Price - Watching Early Morning TV; Mark Quirk - Papa Smurf; Rachel Reinhardt; Tamsy Ringler - Video Interviewer; Sharon Roos - Devoted Follower; Kyle Rosenblad - Going to Catch a Show; Luke Savisky - Video Cameraman; Jennifer Schaudies - Walking to Coffee Shop; Lucinda Scott - Dairy Queen Photographer; Susannah Simone - Working on Same Painting; Kendal Smith - Post-Modern Paul Revere; Annick Souhami - Has Conquered Fear of Rejection; John Spath - Co-op Guy; Kalman Spellitich; Maris Strautmanis - Giant Cappuccino; Don Stroud - Recluse in Bathrobe; Patrice Sullivan - Day Tripper; Teresa Taylor - Papsmear Pusher; Scott Van Horn; Gus Vayas - Cranky Cook; Mimi Vitetta - Teacup Sculpter; Clark Lee Walker - Cadillac Crook; Wammo - Anti-Artist; Greg Ward - Tosses Camera Off Cliff; Heather West; Kevin Whitley - Jilted Boyfriend; Greg Wilson - Anti-Traveller; Lee Daniel - GTO; Scott Rhodes; Robert Jacks - Club Owner [uncredited]; Kevin Thompson; Mark Harris - T-Shirt Terrorist; Steve Anderson
Credit
Debbie Pastor - Art Director, Richard Linklater - Director, Scott Rhodes - Editor, Deborah Pastor - Production Designer, Lee Daniel - Cinematographer, Richard Linklater - Producer, Richard Linklater - Screenwriter
Slacker is a uniquely-structured and seemingly plotless film, following a single day in the life of an ensemble of mostly twenty-something bohemians and misfits in Austin, Texas. The film follows various characters and scenes, never staying with one character or conversation for more than a few minutes before picking up someone else in the scene and following them. The characters include Linklater as a miscreant who just steps off a bus, a UFObuff who insists the U.S. has been on the moon since the 1950s, a JFK conspiracy theorist, an elderly anarchist who befriends a man trying to burglarize his house, a serial television set collector and a woman trying to sell a Madonnapap smear. The woman selling the pap smear appears on the movie poster, and was played by Butthole Surfers drummer Teresa Taylor.[1]
Production
The film was shot on location in Austin, Texas with a budget of $23,000, and premiered at Austin's Dobie Theater in July 1990.[2][3]Orion Classics acquired Slacker for nationwide distribution, and released a slightly modified 35mm version on July 5, 1991.[3][4] It did not receive a wide release but went on to become a cult film bringing in a domestic gross of over $1,000,000. The cast includes many notable Austinites, including Louis Black, Abra Moore and members of several of the big local bands of the era.
Reaction
Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Slacker is a movie with an appeal almost impossible to describe, although the method of the director, Richard Linklater, is as clear as day. He wants to show us a certain strata of campus life at the present time".[5] In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "Slacker is a 14-course meal composed entirely of desserts or, more accurately, a conventional film whose narrative has been thrown out and replaced by enough bits of local color to stock five years' worth of ordinary movies".[6]Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A-" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Slacker has a marvelously low-key observational cool ... the movie never loses its affectionate, shaggy-dog sense of America as a place in which people, by now, have almost too much freedom on their hands".[7] In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, "This is a work of scatterbrained originality, funny, unexpected and ceaselessly engaging".[8]Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers wrote, "What Linklater has captured is a generation of bristling minds unable to turn their thoughts into action. Linklater has the gift of a true satirist: He can make laughter catch in the throat".[9] In his review for the Austin Chronicle, Chris Walters wrote, "Few of the many films shot in Austin over the past 10 or 15 years even attempt to make something of the way its citizens live. Slacker is the only one I know of that claims this city's version of life on the margins of the working world as its whole subject, and it is one of the first American movies ever to find a form so apropos to the themes of disconnectedness and cultural drift".[10]Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "Though set in the '90s, Slacker has a spirit that is pure '60s, and in this loping, loopy, sidewise, delightful comedy, Austin is Haight-Ashbury".[11]
Home video
The movie was released to DVD worldwide on January 13, 2003. A two-disc Criterion Collection boxed-set edition was released on August 31, 2004 in the USA and Canada only. The set has many "extras", including a book on the film and Linklater's first feature film, It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books, on DVD for the first time. A different book (also titled Slacker) containing the screenplay, interviews, and writing about the film was published by St Martin's Press in 1992. Entertainment Weekly gave this edition an "A-" rating.[12]
Impact
The release of the film is often taken as a starting point (along with the earlier sex, lies, and videotape) for the independent film movement of the 1990s. Many of the independent filmmakers of that period credit the film with inspiring or opening doors for them, perhaps most famously Kevin Smith, who has said on numerous occasions that the film was the inspiration for Clerks. The movie also popularized the use of "slacker" to describe "a person regarded as one of a large group or generation of young people (especially in the early to mid 1990s) characterized by apathy, aimlessness, and lack of ambition".[13] Linklater, however, has said that he wanted the word to have positive connotations.
