Clerks (film)
Clerks is a 1994 American black-and-white comedy film written and directed by Kevin Smith. The film stars Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Jason Mewes, and Lisa Spoonauer, it presents a day in the lives of store clerks Dante Hicks and Randal Graves as well as their acquaintances. It is the first of Smith's View Askewniverse films, and introduces several recurring characters, notably Jay and Silent Bob.
The film was initially shot for $27,575 before its film rights were purchased by Miramax Films and $230,000 was spent on music licensing and editing. It was shot in the convenience and video stores where Smith worked in real life.
Clerks had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 1994, and was released in the United States on October 19. The film received positive reviews and grossed $4.4 million, launching Smith's career. Often regarded as a landmark in independent filmmaking, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2019 as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2006, a sequel was released, followed by a third installment in 2022.
Plot
On his day off, Dante Hicks, a retail clerk at the Quick Stop Groceries convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey, is instructed by his boss via phone call to cover another employee's morning shift. Dante asks to end early at noon to play a hockey game with friends later that day, with the boss coming in himself. Arriving to find the locks to the security shutters jammed closed with gum, he drapes a sheet over the shutters with "I ASSURE YOU; WE'RE OPEN!" in shoe polish; he repeatedly laments, "I'm not even supposed to be here today."The first customer of the day is a man who attempts to convince cigarette-buying customers that they should buy Chewlies brand gum instead of cigarettes, displaying a bag containing what he claims is a diseased human lung corroded by tar. A crowd soon gathers around Dante, hostilely blaming him for the ills of cancer because he sells cigarettes at the man's impassioned urging. Dante's girlfriend Veronica Loughran enters, quickly calms the crowd down with a fire extinguisher, and confronts the man, who is revealed to be a Chewlies representative wishing to sell more gum. She then orders him out along with the crowd, chiding them for wasting their lives. Shortly after, Dante and Veronica converse behind the counter regarding Dante's current disposition. She then encounters an old boyfriend of hers, a customer named Willam Black, and admits to Dante that she engaged in snowballing with Black and performed fellatio on 36 other guys before their current relationship. Dante jealously considers her past acts as more severe than his own, which include having sex with twelve different women before her. She then storms out, furious with Dante's insensitivity.
Dante's best friend, wisecracking slacker Randal Graves, soon arrives late for his own workday at the RST Video rental store next door, although he mostly keeps Dante company at the Quick Stop. Dante finds out from him that his unfaithful ex-girlfriend Caitlin Bree, with whom he still secretly communicates, is engaged. Some customers they encounter are angry and demanding, others are clueless and impolite, and still others prove unexpectedly wise. During lunch, Dante and Veronica reconcile their respective sexual pasts. Dante is notified that his boss is vacationing in Vermont, leaving him to run the store. Dante convinces his friends to have their hockey game on the roof, and temporarily closes it down. Twelve minutes in, an irate customer arrives, demanding that Dante open the store and criticizing his playing, and ultimately sabotages the game. After Dante discovers that an ex-girlfriend of his, Julie Dwyer, has died, he and Randal temporarily depart for the memorial service. The visit is disastrous, and the two flee the funeral home; their conversation when they return to the store reveals that Randal accidentally toppled Julie's casket.
Two of Dante's former high school classmates, Rick Derris and Heather Jones, inform him that everyone in their graduating class, except for him, knew of Caitlin's infidelity and that Rick even had sexual intercourse with Caitlin. A health department representative interrupts the conversation and questions Dante about his earlier whereabouts, then fines him $500 for selling cigarettes to a four-year-old, even though Randal actually sold them. Afterwards, Caitlin visits Dante, having ended her engagement. Torn between her and Veronica, he finally pursues a date with Caitlin, returning to his house to prepare. However, an incident in the store bathroom renders her catatonic; in the darkness, she had sex with who she thought was Dante but was really an elderly customer who suffered a fatal heart attack while masturbating to a pornographic magazine Dante provided him earlier. She is carted away in an ambulance along with the corpse.
Drug dealers Jay and Silent Bob enter the Quick Stop to shoplift and unsuccessfully invite Dante to party with them after hours. Aware of Dante's problems, Silent Bob tersely reasons that he truly loves Veronica. However, Randal reveals he has already confessed the previous events to her, and she furiously and dramatically dumps Dante. Upset and furious, Dante brawls with Randal, trashing the Quick Stop in the process.
After a brief crucial moment of clarity between them, Dante rants at Randal, blaming him for the day's events before repeating his relent of "I'm not even supposed to be here today!". Randal furiously blows up at Dante, reminding him that he abandoned his post to slack off several times of his own accord, but arrived at work nevertheless and could've left at any point but didn't, and furthermore neither of them are as "advanced" as they think they are, otherwise they wouldn't be stuck with such lowly jobs. The two reconcile and clean up, with Dante planning to take the next day off to visit Caitlin in the hospital and attempt reconciliation with Veronica. Before departing, Randal tosses Dante's shoe-polish sign in his face and declares, "You're closed!"
Cast
Production
Development
When writing the script, writer and director Kevin Smith based the character of Dante Hicks on himself, Randal Graves on his friend Bryan Johnson, who appeared in Smith's subsequent films as Steve-Dave Pulski, and Jay on Jason Mewes, who ended up playing him in the movie.Casting
Many of Smith's family and friends played roles due to budget constraints. One of them, Walt Flanagan, in addition to creating the character of Silent Bob's Russian metal-head cousin Olaf, plays four roles in this film: The "Woolen Cap Smoker" in the beginning, the famous "Egg Man", the "Offended Customer" during the "jizz mopper" scene, and the "Cat Admiring Bitter Customer", as well as the final RST Video customer in a deleted scene. Smith never intended for Flanagan to play so many roles, but had to as the actors he hired for the roles did not show up, and would often, in jest, refer to Flanagan as "the Lon Chaney of the '90s". Flanagan would also appear in Smith's subsequent films as Walt "The Fanboy" Grover opposite Johnson's Steve-Dave.Brian O'Halloran, a stage actor local to Kevin Smith, discovered an audition notice for the film that Smith gave to his community theatre. O'Halloran answered the notice and auditioned, unaware that he would be cast as the film's main character Dante; during auditioning, O'Halloran was informed by a friend of Smith's that all of the main characters were already cast.
Smith originally wrote the part of Randal for himself, dryly admitting in the DVD audio commentary to be the reason why he gave Randal his most-liked lines. However, Smith found that writing, directing, working at the store and playing a lead role all simultaneously was too difficult, and he constantly forgot his lines in the process. Consequently, he gave the role of Randal to his friend, Jeff Anderson, while Smith took on the less-demanding role of Silent Bob.
To acquire the funds for the film, Smith sold off a large portion of his extensive comic book collection in 1993, which he later bought back; borrowed $3,000 from his parents; maxed out eight to ten credit cards with $2,000 limits; and spent a portion of funds he got back from his college education, paychecks from working at Quick Stop and RST, and insurance money awarded for property of his lost and/or damaged in a storm-flood, thus adding up the total budget to $27,575.
Filming
Clerks was shot on an Arriflex SR-2 camera, utilizing black-and-white 16mm Kodak Plus X film stock, and roughly edited due to its small budget. The film was shot in 21 days.The Quick Stop convenience store, located at 58 Leonard Avenue in Leonardo, New Jersey, where Smith worked, was the primary setting for the film. He was only allowed to film in the store at night while it was closed, hence the plot point of the shutters being closed due to a vandal having jammed gum in the padlocks. Because Smith was working at Quick Stop during the day and shooting the film at night, he frequently slept no more than an hour a day. By the end of the 21-day shoot, Smith was unable to stay awake while Dante and Randal's fight was shot.
Jason Mewes, who plays Jay, is not in any of the photoshoots for Clerks. Miramax Films, who bought the film's distribution rights following its run at the Sundance Film Festival, believed Jay had no commercial appeal, and would scare audiences rather than entice them.
The MPAA originally gave the film an NC-17 rating based purely on the film's explicit dialogue. Despite the rating, the movie contains no violence aside from Dante and Randal's fight near the end, no sex and no clearly depicted nudity. This had serious financial implications, as very few cinemas in the United States screened NC-17 films. Miramax Films hired civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz to appeal the decision. However, the case was ultimately argued by a Miramax Films lawyer. The MPAA relented and re-rated the film with the more commercially viable "R" rating, without any alterations.