Slacker

This movie has so many angles and layers to it, that its easy for anyone to get into it. At the same time the fact that there is no defined or traditional story arc may put people off. Give the movie time, and you will com to appreciate it. One of the things that I really enjoy about the movie is that it physically covers a lot of ground. There are no jump cuts between interiors and exteriors across town. You stay with the character until your "handed off" to another character. At the end of the movie, you almost feel like you've traveled that whole distance. Just another angle to this fab. film. -technical point (to someone who said this was "one continuous shot")- The movie is not one continuous shot. There are cuts, but they are not very apparent for the most part, and like I said, they don't dictate the pace of the film.

Fifteen years ago, during the hot summer of 1989, a brainy Texas movie buff named Richard Linklater scrounged up a bunch of cameras, credit cards and amateur actors and made "Slacker," a kitchen sink love letter to Austin, free time, pretentiousness, paranoia and about a million other things. I saw it when it was released and felt it could've been set in my own college town, halfway on the other side of the country from Texas. Since then, Linklater has gone on to make a lot of little movies that really strike a chord with audiences ("Dazed and Confused," "School of Rock") while rarely straying far from his cerebral independent roots ("Waking Life," "Before Sunset"). Meanwhile "Slacker" just got the ultimate cineast validation - it's been released as a ritzy Criterion Collection two-disc DVD. There's no real plot to the movie. A roving camera simply spends a day eavesdropping on more than 100 students, eccentrics, revolutionaries, thieves, artists, partygoers, nutjobs, et al. It drifts from one conversation to the next and all of them sound, well, like the musings of a brainy Texas movie buff. It's aged better than I thought it might -- I especially enjoyed the brief debate between two characters over the election results of then-Pres. George (H.W.) Bush. It's rough, a little contrived, sometimes monotonous, basically a love-it-or-hate-it affair; and while I understand why it drives some viewers nuts, I'm firmly in the other camp. This is a film crammed with ideas and inspiration and a sense of life - three elements that rarely bump into one another in the same movie. The double-disc set also includes a in-depth commentary by Linklater (plus tracks with cast and crew); Linklater's glacially-paced first feature; a rollicking super-8 short about the 1985 Woodshock music fest; a cast reunion and enough other extras to render viewers slack for days on end.

I am so happy Slacker is finally getting a dvd release, and the fact it's going to be released as a special two disc set, as part of the Criterion collection, is awesome. Dazed and Confused, and Waking Life were great, but Slacker is Richard Linklater's best film. Strange, funny, and sad, it is the most unique film I have ever seen. If you have seen it, then your probably just as stoked as I am. If you haven't seen it, holy cow, your in for a treat. One of the best films of the 90's. I still don't understand why Slacker has been under the radar for so many years, it's a classic. There is a free flowing structure that works perfectly for the characters, (there are about 80) and locations. The only way I can describe this movie, is that it takes place in Texas, bounces from character to character, getting to know a little about each one along the way. Like all Richard Linklater's movies, It has a very dream like quality. This is a great film.

Having recently seen a segment of this film on tv, I recalled my reaction years ago to the whole movie. It's just plain hilarious. Linklater has accurately captured a subculture of post-college self-preoccupied fringe people who rattle on, airing pretentious musings to anyone in earshot including the deaf. Somehow I know these turkeys: the guy in the second hand book store with the most complete collection of self-published books about the assassination of JFK, the juvenile philospher who regails his completely unreactive cabdriver with alternative scenarios had he, the passenger, not chosen to ride in the cab, the blankfaced driver who runs over a pedestrian but doesn't let it completely ruin his mental fog... This is just a brilliant and casual walk through the streets and minds in a late 20th century neighborhood in Austin, Texas-- Greenwich Village for onanists. Linklater revisits this human zoo in "Waking Life", which more cleverly put together than its older cousin. I have only one complaint about Slacker--it's not available on DVD. If it were, I could show it to my film society on my 8 foot wide DLP system. Does anyone know what the story is?

I love this flick. It was made in Austin, Texas when I was originally living there, and it not only has about seven people I used to see around town pretty often, but it showcases a lot of the landmarks there, such as the University of Texas and the downtown area. It's a truly weird little flick, made for less than a shoestring, with a really clever premise: the camera sets upon one person, follows him or her a distance, then branches off to showcase someone else for a bit---and never returns to anyone it's previously showcased. At first this really bugged me, till I figured out that it was saying that life, in all its many weird forms, is happening all at once, everywhere, to us all, and that we all truly connect in that six-degrees-of-separation way. The dialogue is often hilarious: a JFK-assassination "buff" remarks that he never knew about how much Jack Ruby loved his dogs (even taking one along when he went to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald); a girl tries to sell a bit of Madonna's, erm, medical material -- you'll just have to see it to find out what. Richard Linklater makes really great, brilliant, funny, bizarre, non-linear films, the kind we should be seeing a hell of a lot more of from our film industry, if only they could see past monstrous box-office takes or gi-normous egos. Check it out, for sure. I like to watch it just to remember what Austin, and some of the people I used to know there, looked like -- pretty damn good, as a matter of fact.