“But then other people start tacking on so much meaning and it becomes that ‘definitive’ thing.”Unpicking what constitutes a generation-defining film is a tricky business. What counts? The Fifties teen deviance of Rebel Without a Cause? The Sixties pop cultural flickers of Blow Up? The perfectly realised Eighties high school archetypes of The Breakfast Club? All could be considered to have captured an underlying essence of their time.”It’s all about familiarity,” reckons Linklater. If you were looking to define “the now”, where a generation resists any definition of itself, this is perhaps a good point of entry. Whether you think this reflects a real undercurrent of “the now” is of course entirely arguable. But Linklater’s films tend to become marked as such.”It’s flattering to have something you did be seen to be tying in with anything in the world,” he says, recalling the hype that seized hold of Slacker. Nothing really changes in Dewey’s life but he becomes immensely happy.

And so are we: we don’t feel cheated that he doesn’t go on and become a rock star It’s a vision of success born out of slackerdom. Dewey is the embodiment of Slacker’s famous contention that “withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy” and he takes the creed to mainstream acceptance: you’re in a band and you teach kids how to rock? Fantastic What a great way to spend your time. It’s not like these people are lazy or not motivated, they are just passionate in a narrow range.”Dewey’s niche, it turns out, is to set up an after-school music club in his living room, contrary to our expectations that he’ll either get a load of cash (The Goonies) or be catapulted into the life of a music mogul with a fetish for aviator sunglasses and fine restaurants (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). “Dewey is under attack, his ideal world is not really working out. In a comic way I was hoping to show that everybody has something to offer and there’s still a place where your passion can be translated. As familiar as the formula may sound, School of Rock excels both in its mirthful deconstruction of rock posturing, and in the way it redefines the notion of success in the mirror image of the slacker generation.”It was interesting to play with the idea that a guy could find his niche in a crumby world that has all the wrong emphasis,” says Linklater.

The kids unite behind him, the headteacher softens to his charm and, well, you can probably guess the rest. Since then there have been a couple of blips (The Newton Boys and SubUrbia) but enough highs (Before Sunrise and Waking Life) to ensure that his indie-cinema pin-up status has flourished.School of Rock is most definitely a high. It follows the fortunes of slacker Dewey Finn (Jack Black), a die-hard rocker who stopped listening to new music in 1986 “He’s a bum,” says Linklater “He could have stepped out of any of my other movies. If you want to go back to Slacker, he’s seen by society as an unproductive citizen who has nothing to offer to anybody.” After being thrown out of his band for indulging in lengthy solos, Dewey needs to pay the rent, so impersonates his flat-mate and gets a job as a supply teacher at a prep school run by the stone-faced Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack). Initially, doing any teaching is too much of a chore, but discovering how little his 10-year-old pupils know about the ways of Led Zeppelin, Dewey decides the class project will be to form a high-voltage rock group and enter the local battle of the bands.