A nameless young person (played by writer/director Richard Linklater) travels about the country meeting various friends and strangers who he has pedestrian conversations with when he isn't performing such mundane tasks as doing his laundry or watching old movies on television.
Shot on grainy Super 8 film stock for a mere $3,000 dollars, with a meandering narrative that unfolds at a deliberate pace, very little dialogue, long unbroken takes, a firm grounding in a plausibly drab workaday reality, and lots of neat travelogue footage as seen through the windows of trains, cars, and buses, Linklater's debut full-length feature astutely captures the blah banality and grinding repetition of basic day-to-day human existence. Granted, not much happens story wise, but the strong sense of wanderlust and vivid depiction of commonplace Americana make this picture an oddly engaging and sometimes even affecting affair just the same.
Shot on grainy Super 8 film stock for a mere $3,000 dollars, with a meandering narrative that unfolds at a deliberate pace, very little dialogue, long unbroken takes, a firm grounding in a plausibly drab workaday reality, and lots of neat travelogue footage as seen through the windows of trains, cars, and buses, Linklater's debut full-length feature astutely captures the blah banality and grinding repetition of basic day-to-day human existence. Granted, not much happens story wise, but the strong sense of wanderlust and vivid depiction of commonplace Americana make this picture an oddly engaging and sometimes even affecting affair just the same.