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Prentiss calls Slacker "the essential Austin movie," and I've got to say that the film left quite an impression on me when I watched as a young teen. Just recently, I emailed a friend of mine at Chapel Hill some thoughts about the movie and my life. Here's the relevant passage:

Then I was thinking about how when I was in high school I saw Slacker and I wanted to be a slacker. I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but I knew it something to do with collecting records, hanging out, and diving a little too deeply into pop culture. Suddenly I realized that I had acheived one of my dreams. I had become a slacker, and a successful one at that! I can't imagine a more slackalicious place in life than a Ph.D. student in Radio-TV-Film in slacker mecca Austin, Texas.

As an addendum, I also remember going to a Need New Body show in Philadelphia and being blown away, thinking back to the scene in the film where some experimental performers are banging together large water bottles in front of a projection. I thought, "I always hoped I would go to shows like this."

Posted by McChris at May 31, 2004 01:48 PM
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Comments

I saw Slacker when I was in high school also, and it definitely made me want to move to Austin and become a slacker. And I guess I did, even though I don't know if I was/am a successful one yet.

Posted by: Claire at May 31, 2004 08:53 PM

I saw Slacker when I lived in Austin in the late 90's, at about the time that the Slacker culture was being crushed by the dot-com culture, which definitely helped me to search a little deeper to find the real Austin and to connect with it. (and in the end after college I ended up being a slacker for a year and half or so... the best days of that era were when I had only enough money to buy beer and sit on top of my roof in the afternoon , and also the few weeks that I had no place to live so I lived in the back of my car)

Today when I watch Slacker I mostly get nostalgic, especially for my old apartment building (Tower Manor - a real dump, but home none the less... 1 block N of MLK on University Avenue). You can see my old street in the scene when the old anarchist (played by Louis Mackey) takes the would-be burglar for a walk.

Posted by: J. M. Branum at May 31, 2004 10:04 PM

I came to Austin because my parents moved to Texas from Oklahoma during my senior year in high school and UT was the best school for which I qualified for (then cheap) in-state tuition. I remember stepping out of Jester on the first day of classes, seeing the densest crowds I'd ever experienced in my life and feeling like a yokel who had just arrived in New Yawk City.

But my preview of Austin was via a friend who spent a summer mowing lawns here when we were in Junior High. He reported on two unbelievable phenomena: a fellow named Willie Nelson who played country music and had long hair, and a sandwich called a Schlotsky that was as big as your head.

Posted by: Prentiss Riddle at June 1, 2004 08:28 AM