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Slacker

Slacker (1992) was an independent film directed by Richard Linklater with a budget of $23,000. It followed various characters in Austin, Texas over a 24-hour period, exploring themes of social exclusion and politics. Unlike typical studio films, Slacker featured unstructured narratives and discussions of sensitive topics. It became a box office success, grossing over $1 million and becoming the highest earning independent film at the time. The film showcased a different vision of "slackers" outside of mainstream society.

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447 views2 pages

Slacker

Slacker (1992) was an independent film directed by Richard Linklater with a budget of $23,000. It followed various characters in Austin, Texas over a 24-hour period, exploring themes of social exclusion and politics. Unlike typical studio films, Slacker featured unstructured narratives and discussions of sensitive topics. It became a box office success, grossing over $1 million and becoming the highest earning independent film at the time. The film showcased a different vision of "slackers" outside of mainstream society.

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Slacker (1992) Richard Linklater

Slacker (1992) was directed by Richard Linklater and was released on the 4 th of December 1992.
“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 favour of nursing their
esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds 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.” The film had a budget of
$23,000. Due to the unique style in which this film is directed and edited it shows that the film is an
independent film as it does not follow the standard film editing styles/techniques as well as the on-
location shoots.

This film took on a unique viewpoint into different narratives that have no more significant meaning
than the one before however, each is important. It follows the lives of people that live in Austin,
Texas throughout a 24-hour period. In an interview, Linklater states that Slackers (1992) is about
“spending their whole lives in their own heads, paralysed by the problem of making any difference”
this shows how the film is independent due to the lenience with the subject matter, there is no real
outcome from the film. “Most of the characters grapple with feelings of social exclusion or political
marginalisation, which are recurring themes in their conversations. They discuss social class,
terrorism, joblessness, and government control of the media.” This would not be the topic of a
studio film, as it is it can be a very sensitive subjects for a lot of viewers, therefore this is an
independent production due to the range of subjects that they can converse about within the film so
freely. The film was given the budget of $23,000 and made $1,228,108 at the box office after it was
picked up by for distribution by Orion Classics (Orion Pictures) after opening weekend where it had
already made the budget back through sales. According to Orion Pictures, it is the highest grossing
independent film of all time.

The title of the film ‘Slacker’ is a negative term for someone that does not keep up to a certain
standard that society has set for us, Linklater wanted to challenge this term and show a different
meaning, “I was depicting people who were outside of the mainstream”. The views and ideas that
this film showcases are not typical of the bigger ‘mainstream’ films that are being made and remade,
instead this brought in a brand-new idea for the independent productions, with this freedom of
speech in films they tend to be more independent along with on-location shootings that took place
in Austin, Texas for this film.

References:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102943/quotes/?ref_=tt_trv_qu

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0102943/?ref_=bo_se_r_1

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