Slacker(s)
Many of you don't know this but the Drivler is a bit of film buff. It's true. He's always reccommending to me film noir from Brazil or some shit like that. Most of it is, as they say in South Park, gay cowboys eating pudding, but there is also a huge potential for payoff when the Drivler suggests a movie. Let us not forget that the man is an avid zombie film freak. You really just can't go wrong there.
Well, many many moons ago, Drivler suggested that I watch the movie Slacker. So, forgetting for amoment that video stores don't traditionally carry the kinds of movies that the Drivler suggests, I went down to All the Best back in Chico and picked up the movie Slackers. Note the difference in the title.
I found the movie to be...well....not really up to Drivler standards, though it was still funny in parts. The scene where the three shiftless layabouts fake a birthday to get a free meal from...let's say Chilis, is absolutely hillarious. But don't trust me. Seriously. I liked Deuce Bigalow. It cracked my shit up.
The point of Slackers, with an s at the end, is that a group of three partners in crime are making their way through college through the most ingenious cheating ploys one can imagine, and now it all comes down to one last ploy--they must steal the official scantrons for their exam which are kept in sequential order or something like that.
Okay, here's where the movie really gets a bit high brow. First of all, it is not hard to cheat at college. You don't have to be a ninja or Tom Cruise or anything like that. You just fucking cheat. With picture cell phones and text messaging, I mean seriously, come on. Second, colleges do not have sequentially numbered extra special scantrons. They sell them at the student store for .15 a piece, and you are expected to provide your own. But what does all this mean?
It means that the writers of Slacker(s) with an -s, never went to college. They've written a movie about beating a system that they had to make up, and as it turns out, their version of the "system" is far more draconian than the real system. Watch Slackers, with an -s, for this reason. It is a study of what people who never went to college think that college is like. It's wonderful.
I told the Drivler as such and he corrected me. No. He did not endorse Slackers, with an -s. He was recommending Slacker, sans s. Until recently I have never had access to this movie. However, I have discovered that in downtown NoHo, we have a video store that arranges their videos by director. You can imagine what the place is like. The first time we were in there, the two guys behind the counter were commenting on The Shining, which they were playing on their TV, during the FULL FRONTAL NUDITY SCENE. Try that at Blockbuster!
Anyways, I rented Slacker. I watched Slacker. I have now experienced Slacker.
I miss the -s. What a load of self-indulgant crap. Look, one day I will produce my novel and the world will revel in the chapter that is Ward D. And yes, Ward D, is essentially the same as Slacker. The difference is this. The people in Ward D, they know that the other people are off. No one in Slacker seems to have a clue that anyone else is talking jibberish. It's basically what would happen if you kept people high on methamphetamine for a week and then helped them come down with XTC. What would that interaction look like? Watch Slacker.
Furthermore, in my own version of this rant--my book, that chapter--the people are talking like that because they are locked up. They have nothing better to do. In Slacker, on the other hand, we get to see what would happen if a whole fucking city went annoyingly insane. Moral of this story: don't go to Austen.
So to you Drivler, I say this. Quit recommending Slacker. Recommend Slackers. That way people will just assume that you have bad taste and not that you are trying to play some kind of maliscious prank. You know what's a good movie? No seriously you'll love it. Have you ever seen Zardoz. Sean Connery. Great flick.
Well, many many moons ago, Drivler suggested that I watch the movie Slacker. So, forgetting for amoment that video stores don't traditionally carry the kinds of movies that the Drivler suggests, I went down to All the Best back in Chico and picked up the movie Slackers. Note the difference in the title.
I found the movie to be...well....not really up to Drivler standards, though it was still funny in parts. The scene where the three shiftless layabouts fake a birthday to get a free meal from...let's say Chilis, is absolutely hillarious. But don't trust me. Seriously. I liked Deuce Bigalow. It cracked my shit up.
The point of Slackers, with an s at the end, is that a group of three partners in crime are making their way through college through the most ingenious cheating ploys one can imagine, and now it all comes down to one last ploy--they must steal the official scantrons for their exam which are kept in sequential order or something like that.
Okay, here's where the movie really gets a bit high brow. First of all, it is not hard to cheat at college. You don't have to be a ninja or Tom Cruise or anything like that. You just fucking cheat. With picture cell phones and text messaging, I mean seriously, come on. Second, colleges do not have sequentially numbered extra special scantrons. They sell them at the student store for .15 a piece, and you are expected to provide your own. But what does all this mean?
It means that the writers of Slacker(s) with an -s, never went to college. They've written a movie about beating a system that they had to make up, and as it turns out, their version of the "system" is far more draconian than the real system. Watch Slackers, with an -s, for this reason. It is a study of what people who never went to college think that college is like. It's wonderful.
I told the Drivler as such and he corrected me. No. He did not endorse Slackers, with an -s. He was recommending Slacker, sans s. Until recently I have never had access to this movie. However, I have discovered that in downtown NoHo, we have a video store that arranges their videos by director. You can imagine what the place is like. The first time we were in there, the two guys behind the counter were commenting on The Shining, which they were playing on their TV, during the FULL FRONTAL NUDITY SCENE. Try that at Blockbuster!
Anyways, I rented Slacker. I watched Slacker. I have now experienced Slacker.
I miss the -s. What a load of self-indulgant crap. Look, one day I will produce my novel and the world will revel in the chapter that is Ward D. And yes, Ward D, is essentially the same as Slacker. The difference is this. The people in Ward D, they know that the other people are off. No one in Slacker seems to have a clue that anyone else is talking jibberish. It's basically what would happen if you kept people high on methamphetamine for a week and then helped them come down with XTC. What would that interaction look like? Watch Slacker.
Furthermore, in my own version of this rant--my book, that chapter--the people are talking like that because they are locked up. They have nothing better to do. In Slacker, on the other hand, we get to see what would happen if a whole fucking city went annoyingly insane. Moral of this story: don't go to Austen.
So to you Drivler, I say this. Quit recommending Slacker. Recommend Slackers. That way people will just assume that you have bad taste and not that you are trying to play some kind of maliscious prank. You know what's a good movie? No seriously you'll love it. Have you ever seen Zardoz. Sean Connery. Great flick.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
11:10 AM
1 Comments:
I’ll admit that I was more impressed by the form of Slacker than the plot or even the characters. At best, the movie is an American filmic version of Marquez. At worst, it’s a neophyte director’s attempt at taking the braided narrative to an experimental level. The problem, as you’ve pointed out, is that the success or failure of a complex, braided narrative form is contingent not only upon creative transitions and inventive use of ellipses, but on the strength of its constituent stories. One might say that Linklater is attempting to capture the aesthetic of the early nineties overeducated twentysomething layabout, but maybe questions of how and why are a waste of breath here or anywhere—the nineties Slacker passed away without much of a memorial.
In the tradition of not giving a shit that no one likes my movie suggestions, I must recommend a wonderful Brazilian film. It’s not noir, but it is gritty and dark. Walter Salles’ 1998 “O Primeiro Dia” (sometimes marketed in the U.S. as “Midnight”) uses the turn of the millennium as a fulcrum balancing horror (and bleakness) and hope. Like the priest in “La Belle Epoque” after reading Miguel de Unamuno’s Tragic Sense of Life, you might have to seriously contemplate hanging yourself after seeing the movie, but if you refrain from sticking your head in the noose, you’ll be emboldened with a profound sense of hope. You’ll have some difficulty finding the movie, but as Salles’ recent work (last year’s “Motorcycle Diaries”) pushes him into the mainstream (this year’s “Dark Water”), his older work might start to surface in video stores.
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