Full Title: Slacker
Director: Richard Linklater
Year: 1991
Fun Facts: “The average movie has 500-1,000 cuts in it. This movie only has 163. And almost a third of them come from the last five minutes during the super 8 film scene.” and “Was the movie that directly inspired Kevin Smith to become a filmmaker; inspired the movie Clerks. (1994).”- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102943/trivia
Comments:
I’m not one to jump on this or that marketing ruse, but in this rare instance, the so called “Generation X” phenomenon of the early 90s seems pretty damn accurate in Slacker, the 1991 debut of the gifted writer/director, Richard Linklater. From start to finish, this entire flick is simply scene after scene of random, anti-climatic, yet infinitely fascinating (at least to me) conversations from lazy, twenty-something layabouts in the city of Austin, Texas (Linklater’s hometown). To most folks this film is probably tedious or simply too boring. There are no sequences of action or really drama of any kind. The film basically offers the viewer a slice of everyay Austin life for these quirky, colorful characters. The scenes have no connection to one another (in the narrative sense) and no character appears more than once, at least to my memory. In many ways each scene is its own short film that one could view on its own or as a collective with the other scenes. All of these little stories are tied together under the overall theme of apathy and reluctance to get one’s shit straight, so to speak. Because this film is unorthodox in this manner, it will surely turn off most viewers. For dialouge based film junkies like me, I find it to be a unique and intriguing movie. Characters that stand out to me specifically include an aging, kind hearted anarchist that sports a framed phot of Leon Czolgosz on his wall, a enthusiastic Kennedy Assasination theorist, a fierce “anti-artist,” amongst other characters. Honestly, I can’t say much bad about this film; it is what it is and for me, I seriously do not find it even a tad bit boring, but then again, I suppose Linklater could have thrown in a thing or two to grab everyone’s attention. On the other hand, his laidback filmmaking (in this picture) and/or storytelling stands as an astonishing reflection of the lifestyles of the people he is depicting.

Grade: A-