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>
A copy of Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket" (1959) may be seen among the stacks of VHS tapes in Video Backpacker's television-littered room. Not unlike Bresson's main character, Video Backpacker uses theft as a means to fulfill his desires. See more »
Goofs
In the pap smear scene the street sign for 2nd Street is facing the wrong way. 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 »
Crazy Credits
At the end of the credits, the usual disclaimer is replaced with: "This story was based on fact. Any similiarity with fictional events or characters is entirely coincidental." See more »
Skokiaan
(uncredited^)
Written by August Msarurgwa, Tom Glazer
Under License from Shapiro, Bernstain & Co., Inc.
^Performed by Horst Wende & His Orchestra from the 1958 album "Africana"
Played at the end, as the camera is thrown from the edge of a cliff.
The track on the movie soundtrack has been speeded up, compared with the original's time of 3:12 it comes in at about 2:30, giving it greater punch and urgency. See more »
Even though I've immensely enjoyed many of Richard Linklater's films (especially "Waking Life" and "Dazed and Confused"), I never had much desire to sit through Slacker. The title and the era made me anticipate this would be a lazily-crafted, self-indulgent, aimless exploration of the oh-so-forgettable ennui of 20-somethings.
Boy, was I wrong.
"Slacker" is actually a true "art film", a highly conceptualized storytelling experiment in the manner of mid-60's Godard. In fact, in many ways it seems patterned after Godard's "Weekend" -- a bold ambition for a young low-budget filmmaker if ever there was one -- with its long, fluid takes that seamlessly drift from one story to another with chance passings on Austin's sidewalks.
In many ways I found Slacker more interesting and more enjoyable than Godard's movie, though. Weekend ultimately boils down to Godard satirizing his society, while maintaining a dry, utterly unsentimental and unemotional attitude towards his characters. When you watch Weekend, there is always the sense that Godard is looking down his nose at his characters (however justifiably). Slacker has a more complicated relationship between Linklater and his subject. While there is undoubtedly a strongly satirical feel to many of the scenes (for example, the two apparently stoned guys debating the meaning of Saturday morning cartoons while they chain smoke in a bar), at the same time, the movie feels made from the inside. It's, maybe, a satirical self-portrait. In fact, since Linklater plays the first of the Slacker characters that we meet -- the cab fare spinning yarns about parallel universes -- it is in some manner quite literally a self-portrait.
All of that is a very academic way of saying what's viscerally obvious when watching Slacker - - it's funny and real and naturalistic at the same time that it is abstract, constructed and very obviously written.
I'm not sure what it all adds up to or if it's supposed to add up to anything. After all, this is the story of people who, with a couple of notable exceptions, can't seem to put their plans into action ("You're not on the list"), so it makes perfect sense that the movie in the end feels like it just wanders off a cliff instead of coming to an end. It would be a mistake to say that the movie captures a generation -- these are caricatures, without doubt -- but it does capture the flavor of the times as they rolled by on some particularly lazy afternoons.
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Even though I've immensely enjoyed many of Richard Linklater's films (especially "Waking Life" and "Dazed and Confused"), I never had much desire to sit through Slacker. The title and the era made me anticipate this would be a lazily-crafted, self-indulgent, aimless exploration of the oh-so-forgettable ennui of 20-somethings.
Boy, was I wrong.
"Slacker" is actually a true "art film", a highly conceptualized storytelling experiment in the manner of mid-60's Godard. In fact, in many ways it seems patterned after Godard's "Weekend" -- a bold ambition for a young low-budget filmmaker if ever there was one -- with its long, fluid takes that seamlessly drift from one story to another with chance passings on Austin's sidewalks.
In many ways I found Slacker more interesting and more enjoyable than Godard's movie, though. Weekend ultimately boils down to Godard satirizing his society, while maintaining a dry, utterly unsentimental and unemotional attitude towards his characters. When you watch Weekend, there is always the sense that Godard is looking down his nose at his characters (however justifiably). Slacker has a more complicated relationship between Linklater and his subject. While there is undoubtedly a strongly satirical feel to many of the scenes (for example, the two apparently stoned guys debating the meaning of Saturday morning cartoons while they chain smoke in a bar), at the same time, the movie feels made from the inside. It's, maybe, a satirical self-portrait. In fact, since Linklater plays the first of the Slacker characters that we meet -- the cab fare spinning yarns about parallel universes -- it is in some manner quite literally a self-portrait.
All of that is a very academic way of saying what's viscerally obvious when watching Slacker - - it's funny and real and naturalistic at the same time that it is abstract, constructed and very obviously written.
I'm not sure what it all adds up to or if it's supposed to add up to anything. After all, this is the story of people who, with a couple of notable exceptions, can't seem to put their plans into action ("You're not on the list"), so it makes perfect sense that the movie in the end feels like it just wanders off a cliff instead of coming to an end. It would be a mistake to say that the movie captures a generation -- these are caricatures, without doubt -- but it does capture the flavor of the times as they rolled by on some particularly lazy afternoons.