While director Richard Linklater’s breakout hit might not be the most financially successful indie movie ever made, this iconic ‘90s dramedy is inarguably one of the most influential outings in the genre. The indie movie boom helped shape American pop culture in the ‘90s, as directors like Gus Van Sant, Wes Anderson, Harmony Korine, Kevin Smith, and Paul Thomas Anderson came to define an aesthetic that was at odds with the familiar narrative patterns and stylistic hallmarks of Hollywood filmmaking.
Although Quentin Tarantino’s movies might be the most iconic output from this era, plenty of other directors made their mark on the filmmaking landscape at the time. For example, future School of Rock director Richard Linklater’s breakout hit, 1991’s Slacker, was an era-defining dramedy that influenced countless indie movies in the years since its April 1990 release. Constructed without a traditional protagonist or narrative, Slacker follows a disparate group of Austin, Texas natives through a thoroughly unspectacular day in their lives.
Director Richard Linklater’s Slacker Was An Incredible Influential ‘90s Movie
Taking the slice of life subgenre to new extremes, Slacker not only has no main plot but also no main character. This doesn’t mean, however, that Linklater’s movie lacks momentum. From a UFO obsessive and a local conspiracy theorist to a young man trying to use unconventional therapeutic techniques to help his friend through a bad breakup, Slacker is packed with vivid, bizarre characters whose idiosyncrasies ensure that the movie’s 97-minute runtime breezes by.
While Linklater went on to make mainstream hits like School of Rock and 2023’s Glen Powell vehicle Hit Man, Slacker is closer in tone to Dazed and Confused, Everybody Wants Some!!, the Before trilogy, and 2001’s experimental animated effort Waking Life. Like those later Linklater movies, Slacker is less interested in quickly progressing its storyline and more invested in hanging out with its characters and allowing them to wax lyrical at length about whatever interests them in the moment.
While this might make Slacker sound like an achievement in aimless navel-gazing, this couldn’t be further from the truth. While Tarantino’s flashier, more explicit calling cards were revolutionising the multiplex’s approach to the crime and thriller genres, Slacker was one of the key movies in the rise of indie drama and comedy that went on to shape the cinema of the ‘90s. Without Slacker, Kevin Smith’s audacious lone-location low-budget debut Clerks would likely never have become a mainstream hit.
Slacker’s Storytelling Style Helped Shape Indie Cinema
With the success of Clerks came Kevin Smith’s entire Hollywood career, but he isn’t the only creative whose ‘90s output owes something to Linklater’s unassuming portrait of Texan suburbia. Mike Judge’s corporate satire Office Space, Harmony Korine’s more confronting ‘90s indie movie Gummo, Greta Gerwig’s early effort Frances Ha, and the dreamy, diffuse cinema of Sofia Coppola and Jim Jarmusch all borrow from Slacker’s stylistic approach.
To be fair, Jarmusch’s own earlier work also influenced Slacker, meaning there is something of an artistic feedback loop between the two icons of ‘90s indie cinema going on here. Still, from more pointedly artsy fare like Gus Van Sant’s divisive Gerry and Paranoid Park to playful, comparatively comedies like Reality Bites and Mallrats, ‘90s indie cinema would not have been the same if it weren’t for Richard Linklater’s quietly revolutionary 1991 dramedy Slacker.