Sightlines · reception
How Slacker was received
1990 · Richard Linklater · Slacker on Sightlines
The arc
It crept out of Austin in 1990 as a $23,000 curiosity, then became a founding text of the '90s American indie boom and a Gen X touchstone — by 2012 it was in the National Film Registry, its shagginess fully canonized.
What’s debated
The eternal split: is a film where 'nothing happens' and no character sticks around a hangout masterpiece, or two hours of insufferable people monologuing at you?
Its footprint
It put the word 'slacker' into the Gen X lexicon, and the Madonna pap smear scene — played by Butthole Surfers drummer Teresa Taylor — remains its endlessly-quoted calling card.
Where it stands
A Criterion-anointed cult object and the 'you must have seen this' entry point to the American indie '90s — beloved on Letterboxd as the ultimate hangout movie.
Did you know? Kevin Smith has said that seeing Slacker on his 21st birthday convinced him that he, too, could make a movie — the direct spark for Clerks.
Named by the director
- The Phantom of Liberty (1974) — Linklater has cited Buñuel's relay structure — the film drifting from one character to the next and never returning — as the model for Slacker's roaming form.
- Luis Buñuel — Linklater has named Buñuel as the presiding spirit behind Slacker's freewheeling, digressive narrative logic.