I saw Richard Linklater’s film ’Slacker’ for my twenty-first birthday. That was the moment when it all seemed possible. This guy gave me hope.

In this recollection, Smith identifies a formative artistic “conversion” experience: encountering Richard Linklater’s low-budget, talk-driven indie film Slacker at a pivotal age. The quote frames the viewing as a sudden expansion of the imaginable—proof that a filmmaker outside the studio system could make a personal, unconventional movie and reach an audience. By saying Linklater “gave me hope,” Smith casts Slacker not merely as entertainment but as a model of possibility and permission, helping catalyze the do-it-yourself ethos that would later define Smith’s own early career and the broader 1990s American independent film movement.