More 'Slack'

"Rick would often come by the Chronicle to bum ads for AFS screenings and to politic for editorial, often successfully."

On the occasion of Slacker's 20th anniversary year (profiled in this week's issue), we look back at 20 years' worth of Chronicle coverage.

That quote, by the way, comes from a 2003 feature – "The Austin Chronicle and Rick Linklater: A History" – written by Chronicle Editor in Chief Louis Black, who appeared in Slacker as "Paranoid Paper Reader." (The piece originally ran in ARTL!ES.)

Of course, the Chronicle was there from the beginning. In 1991, Chris Walters gave the film a four-star review, calling it "one of the first American movies ever to find a form so apropos to the themes of disconnectedness and cultural drift. No plot, no major characters, no suspense: just fleeting glimpses of bohemia in its twilight phase." Walters also interviewed some of the many players fleet-footing their way through the movie.

In a 1999 piece about Scott Dinger's legacy at the Dobie Theater in which filmmakers and film aficionados shared stories about Dinger, Linklater recalled how Slacker began its storied run:

"In the summer of 1990, [I asked Scott]: Could we show my film, sans distributor, and (still no money to rent the theatre) just split the box office? 'What the hell, let's give it a try,' said Scott. Slacker did great that summer, and its run at the Dobie helped us get national distribution and we were back there again in the summer of '91."

A couple of years later, in 2001, the Chronicle's Senior Film Editor Marjorie Baumgarten sat down with Linklater and producer's rep John Pierson (long before he resettled in Austin) for the feature "Slack Where We Started" to discuss the film's tenth anniversary...

Austin Chronicle: Plus, the past decade has seen so much navel-gazing cinema, the kind that's all about the filmmakers publicly working through childhood issues and whatnot.

Richard Linklater: You know what? I'm always miffed that anyone thinks Slacker spawned any of that. Slackeris so not about navel-gazing.

Austin Chronicle: That's kind of the point I'm getting to.

John Pierson: People always learn the wrong lessons from any successful low-budget independent film.

That same year, Marc Savlov and illustrator Jason Stout (now the Chronicle's Creative Director and Production Manager) collaborated on an annotated map of Slacker landmarks. First stop? The bus station at Highland Mall. Remember Highland Mall? You won't for much longer. Twenty years have substantially altered the face of Austin, but Slacker at least has kept its good looks.