The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Slacker
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How would you describe Slacker to someone who has never seen it?
Smith: It’s kind of a stream-of-consciousness journey through the Austin,
Texas, underachieving set.
You saw this film on your twenty-first birthday, right?
Smith: I did.
And how did you find out about it?
Smith: I had gone to a screening of a movie with Judd Nelson and Bill
Paxton called The Dark Backward the weekend or two prior to that, at the
Angelica Theater up in Manhattan. It was the first time I ever left New Jersey
or Monmouth County to go see a movie. It was Vincent Pereira and I.
So we trekked up into the city, and we went to this movie chiefly because
in the Village Voice an ad said Bill Paxton and Judd Nelson were going to
be at the midnight screening of The Dark Backward. And they were offering
something called Pig Newtons, which were props in the film, this bizarre
alternate-Earth-dimension food that they ate in the movie. So we were like,
“Holy shit, they give out Pig Newtons! Let’s take the trip.”
Bill Paxton and Judd Nelson introduced the movie, and these theaters,
they’re no more than 200- maybe 220-seaters, right below Houston Street,
and you can hear subways go past periodically. Before the movie began,
there were trailers, and one of them was for Slacker, and one of them was for
Hal Hartley’s Trust. They both kind of struck me because they didn’t look
like movies I had seen before.
A week or two weeks later, I’m at the Quick Stop reading that week’s
issue of the Village Voice, and there’s a review for Slacker. And I read it and
it just sounded cool; the Madonna Pap smear scene sounded pretty funny.
[In this scene, an Austin native attempts to sell a sample from Madonna’s
Pap smear.]
So Vincent and I decided to go see it, and it was my twenty-first birthday.
I had nothing else going on that night, so we headed back into the city
again for a midnight show, ’cause that’s when the Quick Stop closed, and
took in Slacker. It was a pretty full house, and I was enjoying it. And everybody
around me was really enjoying it, insanely much, a knee-slapping, gutbusting
humor. I didn’t quite see the same movie they did. I thought it was