Kevin Smith, John Pierson on Linklater's Influence

We're knee-deep in South By Southwest here in Austin. With the film festival in full swing, this week's blog features an excerpt from UT film professor John Pierson's classic book Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema — back in print this spring! Here, Pierson sits down with Kevin Smith to talk about one of his biggest influences as a filmmaker, Richard Linklater. Linklater screened his film Boyhood at this year's gamut of film festivals, including SXSW, was nominated for an Oscar for Before Midnight, and continues to nourish the Austin film scene through the Austin Film Society.

Read the truncated conversation below to get a sense of Linklater's cultural influence. Get the book to delve even deeper into a pivotal era in indie film.

John Pierson: So you saw Slacker on your twenty-first birthday at the Angelika. That theater opened in late 1989. Was that the first time you went there?

Kevin Smith: No, the first film I've ever seen outside of New Jersey, unless I'm on vacation with my parents somewhere and then it's still a mainstream film, the film I travel to New York to the Angelika to see is—let me back up a minute....

We're on the cutting edge, The Dark Backward, nobody knows about this and he'll be the one to make Planet of the Apes. At the bottom of the Village Voice ad, it said come to the midnight screening and receive free pig newtons-which of course were fig newtons with a sticker on them.

The Dark Backward, which was not good at all, was our first independent movie. That was the first thing we ever went to see outside New Jersey, at the Angelika. The first time we see the Angelika we're like "there's an escalator in this movie place. Look at this, it's hip man, you can get coffee," not that we're coffee drinkers, but we buy like a ham croissant sandwich at the cafe. The lobby's all different from the usual multiplex lobby we go to because they hang up these huge reviews of films and suddenly we feel, "Oh, my God there's a whole different subculture here." We're seeing people who're there. I mean this theater's packed....

The The Dark Backward is just a footnote because it gets me out of Jersey to New York. And then I have enough courage to see Slacker in New York at a midnight screening.

JP: What attracted you since there were no pig newtons?

KS: The Voice review and the image of the Madonna Pap smear girl; it just sounded great. I know it opened in July [1991]. I went on my birthday, August 2nd. And that's the movie that pushed me. It was like "Oh, my God," The whole ride home I'm like "look how simple it is. It's like there's nothing going on, it's dialogue, I can do this." This is the movie because this is approachable. I can do this.