A day in the life of Austin, Texas as the camera roams from place to place and provides a brief look at the overeducated, the social misfits, the outcasts and the oddballs.
A nameless young character goes into travels to the country, meeting some acquaintances and strangers as well, having banal conversations, dedicating his existence into daily mundane ... See full summary »
Director:
Richard Linklater
Stars:
Richard Linklater,
James Goodwin,
Dan Kratochvil
In small-town Texas, an affable mortician strikes up a friendship with a wealthy widow, though when she starts to become controlling, he goes to great lengths to separate himself from her grasp.
Director:
Richard Linklater
Stars:
Jack Black,
Shirley MacLaine,
Matthew McConaughey
Presents a day in the life in Austin, Texas among its social outcasts and misfits, predominantly the twenty-something set, using a series of linear vignettes. These characters, who in some manner just don't fit into the establishment norms, move seamlessly from one scene to the next, randomly coming and going into one another's lives. Highlights include a UFO buff who adamantly insists that the U.S. has been on the moon since the 1950s, a woman who produces a glass slide purportedly of Madonna's pap smear, and an old anarchist who sympathetically shares his philosophy of life with a robber.Written by
Rick Gregory <rag.apa@email.apa.org>
The Happy-Go-Lucky Guy that gets ripped off by the newspaper machine is lead vocalist, musician and founding member of Poi Dog Pondering. The tune that he whistles after he passes the Sidewalk Psychic is "Postcard From a Dream (Toast and Jelly)" from their first studio album, recorded in Austin. The woman that claims to have change but doesn't give it to him is Abra Moore, though she had left Poi Dog by then. See more »
Goofs
When the GTO guy arrives he places a few aluminum drink cans on the ground and they clearly sound empty. When he and Nova pick up the Hitchhiker Awaiting 'True Call', they give him one of the cans which is now full. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Should Have Stayed at Bus Station:
[babbling to silent cab driver]
Man, I just had the weirdest dream - back on the bus there? Did you ever have one of those dreams that are completely real. I mean they're so vivid. It's just like completely real. It's like, there's always something bizarre going on, though. I have one about every 2 years or something. I always remember 'em real good. Like there's always someone getting run over, or something really weird. Um, one time I had lunch with Tolstoy. Another time I was a ...
See more »
The title of Richard Linklater's deadpan debut feature describes a new generation of young, educated, aimless social misfits, part of a young neo-bohemian subculture of drifters, dreamers, and losers with no money, no ambitions, and no worries outside the occasional paranoid conspiracy theory. Their marginal lifestyle revolves around the concept of (in slacker vernacular) 'hanging out': eating, sleeping, watching TV, drinking coffee, and listening to the latest, local garage bands. But what they do best is simply talk, and the viewer is invited to eavesdrop on an extended series of hilarious soliloquies, anecdotes, and observations about politics, history, art, Smurfs, and UFOs, from a cast of nearly 100 genuine slackers pulled off the streets of Austin, Texas, apparently a hub of slackerdom. The film (not a documentary) is structured entirely around random encounters, methodically following one character after another, with no plot to interrupt all the verbal detours and digressions. It looks (and sounds) entirely improvised, but believe it or not was all carefully scripted and choreographed, and the result is one of the more unique and original American features of its time.
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The title of Richard Linklater's deadpan debut feature describes a new generation of young, educated, aimless social misfits, part of a young neo-bohemian subculture of drifters, dreamers, and losers with no money, no ambitions, and no worries outside the occasional paranoid conspiracy theory. Their marginal lifestyle revolves around the concept of (in slacker vernacular) 'hanging out': eating, sleeping, watching TV, drinking coffee, and listening to the latest, local garage bands. But what they do best is simply talk, and the viewer is invited to eavesdrop on an extended series of hilarious soliloquies, anecdotes, and observations about politics, history, art, Smurfs, and UFOs, from a cast of nearly 100 genuine slackers pulled off the streets of Austin, Texas, apparently a hub of slackerdom. The film (not a documentary) is structured entirely around random encounters, methodically following one character after another, with no plot to interrupt all the verbal detours and digressions. It looks (and sounds) entirely improvised, but believe it or not was all carefully scripted and choreographed, and the result is one of the more unique and original American features of its time.