Slacker

Slacker (1990) is Richard Linklater's debut feature, shot on roughly $23,000 in Austin, Texas — watch it online on iFILM. There is no plot. There are no professional actors. There is only the camera, moving from one stranger to the next every three minutes, as if Austin itself were the main character.

A backseat philosopher harangues a cab driver. A young woman tries to sell what she claims is Madonna's Pap smear to anyone who will stand still long enough. A gentle old anarchist offers friendship to a burglar who just broke into his home. A conspiracy theorist explains the moon landing in a parking lot. Nobody is going anywhere. That is the whole point. Linklater made the film at twenty-nine and screened it at Sundance in 1991, where it became a defining document of Generation X slacker culture before that phrase had fully settled into the language.

Stream Slacker (1990) online on iFILM.