“The thing you choose not to do fractions off and becomes its own reality, you know, and just goes on forever,” Linklater himself says in
Slacker’s opening scene. His character (credited only as “Should Have Stayed at Bus Station”) is monologuing to a taxi driver about an imaginary book he’s just read inside a particularly vivid dream. But really, he’s talking about Austin.
Slacker presents the city as a universe willed into existence by those who chose not to do anything. It’s a liminal way station floating between the places where you’re
supposed to be, which means you can just do whatever you want. Throughout the film, characters express an overarching philosophy of refusal, valorizing idleness as the only truly noble way of life. “Who’s ever written the great work about the immense effort required