Hacker Cinema
Slacker
1990 · Film · 97 min
Directed by Richard Linklater
Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.
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12 comments on Hacker News
Office Space, Demolition Man, Fight Club, City of Ghosts (2004), The Big Short, Ghost Dog, Slacker, most Tarantinos, various 60s italo-westerns, BTTF 1 & 2.
But there's a lot more movies coming to mind that deserve a 2nd watching imo, just haven't done so yet. Eg. most Coen Bros ones come to mind.
The lyrics in this song:
"Richard said withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy"
were why I found out about the movie "Slacker", an interesting little gem.
While I wouldn't go that far myself, as a fellow GenXer I remember it was us in the early 1990s who were viewed as the generation that was uninspired by work or the prospect of a career. Like Linklater's 1990 film "Slacker". Or Smith's 1994 film "Clerks". I think a lot of things that are assigned to "generations" are really just due to age. Younger people aren't that into work, often because the intro-level jobs they have aren't that exciting or lucrative. But that's fine because they don't have much in the way of expenses or dependents. As people get older they get more into work both because the work is more engaging and that they actually have expenses and responsibilities.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
Slacker is one of my favorite movies. Is the Austin of today still anything like that?
'Course not! I'm Gen X. We are the slackers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker_(film) .
> In the early 1990s, Slacker was widely considered an accurate depiction of Generation X because the film's young adult characters are more interested in quasi-intellectual pastimes and socializing than career advancement.
Millennials and later were brought up in the brainwashing "No Kids Left Behind" era[1] where they were told they had to excel in order to meet artificial standards, and were told they had to go into debt through college education in order to have a decent career, while the old people jacked up college tuition and refused to keep minimum wage up to where it effectively was when they were young.
Of course Millennials are more focused then we were - we had it easy by comparison.
([1] This is an Australian publication, while I speak from the US experience. Thatcherism, Reaganism, "economic rationalism", Rogernomics, whatever - it's all part of the neo-liberalism philosophy that benefits old and rich people and cuts the legs off young people while laughing at them.)
But since I'm Gen X, I'm used to people ignoring us so, like, whatever.
No, GenX didn't get the "best of all worlds". If you were too young to remember the period, the famous documentary "Slacker" (1990), describes the period well. We had the same frustrations that Millennials and now GenZ have in terms of lack of opportunity.
The trilogy Before Sunrise / Before Sunset / Before Midnight is essentially two people walking and talking the whole duration.
EDIT: And now I see it's written and directed by the same guy as Slacker :)
I love the kinds of stories where nothing happens, I don't even know what they're technically called but I mentally refer to them as people walking around and doing stuff movies. I dont know why they're so appealing to me - maybe for the same reason that people find slow tv good. But I would be totally happy to go and watch Slacker for the sixth time right now.
Oblique strategies made a brief appearance in Richard Linklater's Slacker film.[1] Linklater is more well known for films like Dazed and Confused, Waking Life, and A Scanner Darkly, but in my opinion Slacker is by far his best.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker_%28film%29
Michael, I feel your pain. I just want to warn you about Austin, it's not as cheap as it used to be. I was living in Boulder, had been reading the Austin hype on HN and then watched the movie Slacker (set in Austin) and a month later I was on a plane to Texas.
But I was deceived by craigslist apartment ads. The apartment locators in the city were posting beautiful downtown apartments for ridiculously low rents, it seemed amazing. When I got there I found that occupancy at the mega rental complexes was running over 99% and it was incredibly difficult to find a place to live. I also found that most of those postings were fake. The MO is to post a nice place for low money and when a prospect calls say that one is gone but they can show you others.
I eventually took over a lease from someone at a nice complex right next to the Google office. I had heard Austin was easy to get around without a car, but that wasn't really true. I was an hour ride from downtown on the bus and felt stranded up in NW Austin. The bus stopped running around midnight, and if you missed that the closest bus dropped you off an hour walk from your home on a desolate and dark highway.
The buses are ok if you are going north/south, but east/west involves a lot of transfers. I wouldn't want to live in Austin again without a car, as the summers get so hot (100+ for 60 days in a row) you can't show up for a meeting with a client without being a sweaty mess by the time you get there.
My rent was raised almost 20% when I renewed my lease, and I am sure the rents are even higher now. I moved to NYC and am only paying $150 more a month to live in great studio in Astoria. It's a little smaller, and I miss the outdoor pool and hot tub I had in Austin but other than that everything else is better here.
Austin can definitely be cheap if you buy a single family home, but beware the insane rental market as the city is growing rapidly.
Here's my idea for making crowdsourced movies that might actually be good:
How about doing movies with a Richard Linklater's "Slacker" like script? In the movie, characters are followed for a few minutes and then someone in the last scene of that segment will continue that movie interacting with a completely separate set of people and so on and so forth. Rent it on Netflix to see what I mean. This kind of movie could be crowdsourced. Someone writes the script. Many want to be actors shoot segments. The winning entrants film short scenes where they call each other on the phone to move the movie along. It's like Redditt the movie. Would somebody please do this idea? Please :).