About Slacker
A day in Austin, Texas, told as a relay race in which the camera follows one character until it bumps into another. Conspiracy theorists, anarchist book-stealers, a woman trying to sell a Madonna pap smear — Linklater’s second feature invented an entire register of American independent film and gave a generation its name.
Released in 1991 and running a tight 1h 37m, Slacker sits firmly in the comedy tradition that American art-house cinemas have spent the last two decades quietly defending. The film is rated R and presented in English. Read a contemporary review — useful before you book a ticket.
Director: Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater belongs to the cohort of directors whose work tends to land first at festivals — Sundance, Locarno, the New York Film Festival, SXSW — before opening on a small handful of screens in New York and Los Angeles and then rolling out, week by week, to the independent circuit elsewhere in the country. Slacker is part of that pipeline. If you have responded to this film, the director's other available titles in our catalog are listed in the sidebar; Richard Linklater's filmography rewards sustained attention.
Cast
The principal cast — Richard Linklater, Rudy Basquez, Jean Caffeine — is the kind of ensemble that art-house audiences will recognize from adjacent festival titles. Independent casting tends to favor performers who can carry a long take, hold a quiet scene, and trust a director's control of pace; this film is no exception. Cast notes and credits are useful for tracking through other adjacent indie work.
Where to watch Slacker
Currently playing in 12 US cities across our directory. The deepest scheduling is in:
- Seattle, WA — booked at 3 independent cinemas.
- Austin, TX — booked at 2 independent cinemas.
- Brooklyn, NY — booked at 2 independent cinemas.
- Washington, DC — booked at 2 independent cinemas.
- Columbus, OH — booked at 2 independent cinemas.
- New Orleans, LA — booked at 1 independent cinema.
- Arlington, MA — booked at 1 independent cinema.
- Santa Cruz, CA — booked at 1 independent cinema.
- Sioux Center, IA — booked at 1 independent cinema.
- Redwood City, CA — booked at 1 independent cinema.
- Ventura, CA — booked at 1 independent cinema.
- Shoreline, WA — booked at 1 independent cinema.
If your city isn't on the list, the film may still surface on a future repertory week or festival weekend; check our full cinema directory, or browse the next seven days of showtimes for last-minute additions.
Why it belongs on the indie circuit
The independent and art-house exhibition circuit exists to surface films like this one — work that doesn't fit the wide-release calendar, doesn't have the marketing budget of a studio tentpole, and depends instead on programmers, critics, and word-of-mouth to find an audience. Slacker is a clean fit for that model: a 1h 37m comedy work, made outside the studio system, that benefits from being seen on a real screen with a real audience rather than queued up on a streaming dashboard. The cinemas listed in the schedule above are the venues currently doing that work for this title.
Cross-references
If you are building a viewing schedule around this film, our Comedy genre hub indexes adjacent work in the same tradition. Programmer notes are sometimes the fastest way to triangulate which other films share a sensibility.