The Rick-trospective: subUrbia
A salute to Richard Linklater's body of work, one film at a time
In honor of the November 7 release of Paste Movies Editor Michael Dunaway’s documentary 21 Years: Richard Linklater (in which Paste is the media partner), we’re going through the indie master’s entire oeuvre in order, film by amazing film.
Richard Linklater’s always been something of a modern day documentarian, dredging that banal everyday which is formed by technology and culture, and unearthing the explorative, self-reflecting fossils of the individual adrift in the societal sea. Linklater’s first few movies, Slacker and Dazed and Confused, were tales of youth and the young muddling about—full of ennui, little forward motion and unpromising future prospects. Granted, Before Sunrise hit theaters in 1995, but it’s subUrbia, released a year later, that’s the apt conclusion to what one might call Linklater’s Austin slacker trilogy.
subUrbia, however, was not penned by Linklater, but playwright, social satirist and Law & Order regular, Eric Bogosian. Linklater’s transposition from Bogosian’s Woburn, Mass., roots and New Jersey set, to sleepy Burnfield, Texas, a neighborhood of Austin where five young people occupy the limbo after high school by loitering outside a convenience store, drinking and grousing about the ruts they’ve become stuck in, aligns seamlessly with where Dazed and Confused left off. As any of the five would have it, the American Dream that evades them has been hijacked by the Pakistani couple who own and operate the store as a stepping stone to higher education and a happy white-collar existence.
The fusion of Linklater’s Austin and Bogosian’s biting social commentary remains potent and relevant two decades later. For those unfamiliar with Bogosian’s staged works like Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll and Talk Radio, they’re in-your-face satirical plumbings that shame, deprecate and provoke. The adaptation of subUrbia couldn’t be more of a natural fit for Linklater, who relishes contemplative dissections of the mainstream and those disenfranchised by it. While the convenience store owners labor to realize the American Dream, that ideal for the five inerts has morphed into a nightmare—dreams with dead ends and zero gumption to do anything more than wallow in the tantalizing misery of what could be. Tim (well-employed character actor Nicky Katt) becomes the epitome of failed future promise as a former star quarterback who joined the Air Force only to get an honorable discharge for lopping off the tip of his finger while on salad duty and now bides his time on the corner drinking away his severed severance checks. Most telling however, is when the cops arrive to pinch him for creating a public disturbance and the officer in charge is a former teammate who Tim belittles as having been “lousy lineman, too.”
The force driving the slackerly in subUrbia is the anticipated arrival of Pony (Jayce Bartok), a nerd in high school who’s made it big on MTV and is back in town for an arena gig. It’s an effective Waiting for Godot-esque device, though eventually Pony does swing by the convenience store to “keep it real” with his former pose. Tensions of envy and rue quickly rise, especially from Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi), a stalled want-to-be writer at a crossroads with his girlfriend, Sooze (Annie Carey), who wants to move to New York to go to art school. “I don’t need a limo to know who I am,” he snarls at Pony, while others like the party-hardy Buff (Steve Zahn) and Sooze, less angry at the world, giddily embrace Pony’s success and generosity with hopes of some of it rubbing off on them.