New film #23 and #24: How do some films get made?

On Friday night my friend Rachel and I watched Richard Linklater’s first film. He’s the director of the Before trilogy and recently Boyhood which are all great films. We wanted to see where his career began and so we watched his first film Slacker. Rachel’s view on it was she was half enthralled and half bored. I thought it was the most pointless, bizarre film ever made. How it even got on the screen is beyond me. For anyone interested, it’s about a day in Austin, Texas and the people in it. Some people are normal; others are oddballs and others you see for a fleeting moment.

Speaking of bad films, I continued that theme on Saturday night when I watched The Room with my friend Coops and his girlfriend Fran. Now this is a film that every knows that it’s bad. It’s so bad, it’s actually good. Coops had wanted me to see it for a while, because they show this film which is a cult classic at the Prince Charles Cinema, where seeing it there is like watching a pantomime.

                    Coops and Fran doing their best impersonation of Johnny in The Room.

The film is about a guy called Johnny and his fiancée Lisa is sleeping with his best friend Mark. The dialogue is clunky and terrible, making the performances wooden. Because it’s so bad and you know that before you watch it, turns out to be quite funny. We all had a good time watching it, and I wouldn't mind seeing it at the Prince Charles Cinema.