How Slack­er cel­e­brates the crazy log­ic of con­spir­a­cy theories

Released in 1991, Richard Linklater’s low-key epic, Slack­er, traces a mean­der­ing route through the cafes and side­walks of Austin in the ear­ly ​’90s. Set over a sin­gle day, the film is full of scenes of the city’s ambigu­ous­ly employed youth talk­ing earnest­ly about any­thing oth­er than the rent. Every­one, it seems, has some­thing to say about what is real­ly going on out there.

The the­o­ries start from the open­ing scene, where Lin­klater him­self plays a trav­eller pon­der­ing alter­nate real­i­ties in the cab of a grim­ly uncom­mu­nica­tive dri­ver. But one of the most mem­o­rable and endear­ing of Slacker’s ram­bling con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists is John Slate’s JFK obses­sive, who gets so much hon­est, geeky enthu­si­asm into his per­for­mance that it’s hard not to relate to him.

The scene begins with a woman (Sarah Har­mon) leav­ing the dusty heat of the streets and enter­ing the dusty shade of a book­shop, unwit­ting­ly stray­ing into the ter­ri­to­ry of an old class­mate (Slate) who emerges from the shop’s shad­ows like he’s been wait­ing there all day. ​“You know me,” he says, ​“I’ve been keep­ing up with my JFK con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.” Sport­ing a full goa­tee and Hunter S Thomp­son glass­es, he seems like a car­i­ca­ture, a fig­ure lift­ed right out of a Doones­bury strip. But if it is a car­i­ca­ture then it’s an affec­tion­ate one. There’s even a hint of Lin­klater in the char­ac­ter: the slight­ly nerdy hip­ster point­ing you to what, in the mess of cul­ture around them, feels real­ly important.

The whole episode plays out in a sin­gle shot that cor­ners us between Slate’s char­ac­ter and the shelves of the true crime sec­tion – three breath­less min­utes of bul­let tra­jec­to­ries and pres­i­den­tial assas­si­na­tion triv­ia. There’s the same awk­ward­ness, the same dis­con­nect you feel when some­one just has to tell you all about this rev­e­la­to­ry dream they had, or gush­es about every new release from a band they have a deep con­nec­tion with. ​“You know, the wait­ress­es went on record in the War­ren Report as say­ing that ​‘Oswald didn’t like his eggs’,” he grins, as if to say, ​‘get it?’ Out­side of his pri­vate world, the details that are so evoca­tive and real for him seem ridicu­lous. But Slack­er pro­vides some answers to the ques­tion of what’s dri­ving this pri­vate obses­sion of a guy almost more inter­est­ed in the cul­tur­al ephemera sur­round­ing those sev­en sec­onds in Dal­las than the event itself.

Austin has long been con­sid­ered a lib­er­al oasis in the red desert sands of Texas. The film’s char­ac­ters spend their days in cof­fee shops and book­stores, and there’s always a feel­ing that the ​“real world” is some­where off in the dis­tance, with its assas­si­na­tions and celebri­ties and pol­i­tics. Vio­lence looms like a hazy mirage on the hori­zon of Linklater’s Austin. Infor­ma­tion reach­es the city scram­bled and exag­ger­at­ed. What is impor­tant and what is real aren’t always clear. If the anx­i­ety of the aver­age inter­net user is that there’s just way too much infor­ma­tion to process, in pre-dig­i­tal age Austin these char­ac­ters are left to piece togeth­er what­ev­er incom­plete frag­ments they can find.

The JFK con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist who pores over each frame of the Zaprud­er film is no dif­fer­ent to the cinephile who tracks down every rare director’s cut of their favourite movie, or the record col­lec­tor who mem­o­ris­es every piece of lin­er note triv­ia. ​“Lot of truth in the Late Late Show,” says one Austin drifter. ​“They slip it through there, fig­ure nobody’s watch­ing.” He’s vin­di­cat­ing every­one who’s stayed up into the ear­ly morn­ing in the glow of their tele­vi­sion screen, feel­ing like they’ve bro­ken through to a hid­den world.

Near the end of Slack­er we see some guys explain­ing how The Smurfs are prepar­ing the globe for the immi­nent return of the Hin­du god Krish­na. They sound so out-there – so out of it – and yet noth­ing about their idle con­ver­sa­tion feels alien­at­ing because we want to believe. The truth is, even the most fan­tas­tic ston­er con­spir­a­cy can car­ry you along with its excit­ed ener­gy. We’re right out there with them.