Monday, April 18, 2011

Slacker # 78 of 101 Great Films

Slacker             
Richard Linklater
               

Slacker is a true Independent film. And one of the first on the 90's indie movement.
Shot on 16mm, then blown up to 35mm for wider release, this gem was the mastermind of a College drop out who just loved movies, just like the great  Jean-Pierre  Melville  & the sometime great Quentin Tarantino.







Linklater  a resident of Austin, Texas, which  he still calls home and  helps run the Film society that he helped create, made this strange, superb, groovy
plotless film.  That's right totally with out plot and it is amazing!








Slacker is basically 24 hours in the life of the city of Austin.
What it does not have in plot it makes up for with a  hysterical script, with  brisk dialog that flies off the screen. Watching the film you would think it was almost all off the cuff but its not,
its all Linklater and it was all worked out in rehearsals, for a film some have called aimless, it has a tight structured form that Linklater never varied from.
.

The movie moves thru the streets and characters seamlessly, with close to 90 wired, weird beings moving in and out of focus.                                                            


Linklater, like me, is a  post baby boomer,


We get lumped into boomers-  but we ain’t
We are the vanguard of the Gen X,  a group that somewhat unfairly gets called slackers one reason for this tag, maybe  the several movies that were made with similar themes during the 90s; Clerks, Bottle rocket, Office space and the Coen Brother's The Big Lebowski   

But but the thing I love about this movie it may be about slackers, but it took a group of my brothers and sisters  who were anything but slackers to make this thing!




They had to work their ass off most of the time for nothing but the love of the idea and it paid off
And I’m as proud of this film as if I was a part of it,
and if you like real close I just might be!

Video exhibit for Slacker

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