Clerks (film)
[3] 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'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.Twelve minutes in, an irate customer arrives, demanding that Dante open the store and criticizing his playing, and ultimately sabotages the game.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.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.Drug dealers Jay and Silent Bob enter the Quick Stop to shoplift and unsuccessfully invite Dante to party with them after hours.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!".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.[7] 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.[10][2] The Quick Stop convenience store, located at 58 Leonard Avenue in Leonardo, New Jersey, where Smith worked, was the primary setting for the film.[7] The events of Julie Dwyer's wake were written by Smith but were not filmed due to the prohibitive cost of producing the scene.The sequence ends with Dante's dead face looking off past the camera; after the credits roll – the soundtrack over it being a cash register making noises – a customer (played by Smith with his beard shaved off) wearing glasses and in a ponytail and a baseball jersey comes into the store, sees no one around (as Dante is lying dead behind the counter), steals a pack of cigarettes, and runs off.The film's extended cut also implied that, because Randal disconnected the security camera earlier in the day during the roof hockey scene, the killer would never be caught.The website's critical consensus reads: "With its quirky characters and clever, quotable dialogue, Clerks is the ultimate clarion call for slackers everywhere to unite, and, uh, do something, we guess?[21] Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of a possible four, praising it for interestingly depicting a full day of "utterly authentic" middle-class life, adding: "Within the limitations of his bare-bones production, Smith shows great invention, a natural feel for human comedy, and a knack for writing weird, sometimes brilliant, dialogue."[22] Peter Travers gave the film four out of four stars, calling attention to Anderson's "deadpan comic brilliance" and writing that "Smith nails the obsessive verbal wrangling of smart, stalled twentysomethings who can't figure out how to get their ideas into motion.This release is the 1999 DVD with a new slipcover with a photo of a bikini-clad model,[40] made to resemble one of the porn videos[41] Randal mentions in the film.This three-disc set includes, among other things, the features from the initial 1999 DVD, the aforementioned Lost Scene, an unrestored First Cut featuring the deleted scenes and original ending intact, original cast auditions, a new making-of documentary entitled The Snowball Effect, a Tonight Show short film starring Dante and Randal entitled The Flying Car, Smith and Mosier's student film Mae Day, eight MTV spots with Jay and Silent Bob, deleted scenes from The Snowball Effect, still galleries, a 10 year anniversary Q&A with Smith, Mosier, Mewes, O'Halloran, Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, and cinematographer David Klein, and eight articles and reviews.All these features were carried over to the 15th Anniversary Blu-ray on November 17, 2009, along with a new documentary, Oh, What a Lovely Tea Party—originally made for Smith's 2001 film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.[43] The Soul Asylum song "Can't Even Tell", which was played over the film's end credits and featured on the soundtrack, peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1994.[44] The video featured Smith, Jason Mewes, Jeff Anderson and Brian O'Halloran reprising their roles from Clerks.Dante and Randal also reprised their roles in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which was originally promoted as the finale to the series, but an official sequel to Clerks was announced a few years later.The sequel features O'Halloran, Anderson, Mewes and Smith (in addition to returning as writer, director and editor) reprising their roles as Dante, Randal, Jay and Silent Bob.Smith also revealed that he would like to crowdsource Clerks III, either through Kickstarter or Indiegogo, with contributors receiving anything from DVDs, posters and even roles as extras in the film.[56][57] That same month, Smith revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that he was writing a new script for Clerks III and promised to make the film.[58] On October 1, 2019, Smith confirmed on Instagram that Clerks III was happening and that Jeff Anderson agreed to reprise his role as Randal.[64][65] Following Clerks, Smith set several more films in the same "world", which he calls the View Askewniverse of overlapping characters and stories.The pilot only referenced the character names and starred none of the cast from the original film, contained no foul language (except words suitable enough for a TV-PG rating) and did not feature Silent Bob.[67] O'Halloran and Anderson both auditioned to reprise their roles of Dante and Randal from the film but were replaced by Andrew Lowery and future Saturday Night Live performer Jim Breuer.In a trailer for (but not in) Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Randal, referencing the series, says to Dante: "If you were funnier than that, ABC would've never cancelled us."