Clerks is a 1994 American independent black-and-white comedy film written, produced, co-edited and directed by Kevin Smith in his debut. The independent 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 (O'Halloran) and Randal Graves (Anderson) 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 (played by Mewes and Smith respectively).
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 stores 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 to cover another employee's morning shift. Dante arranges to finish at noon to play a hockey game with friends. Finding the locks to the security shutters jammed closed with gum, he drapes a sheet over the shutters with "I ASSURE YOU; WE'RE OPEN!" written in shoe polish; he repeatedly laments, "I'm not even supposed to be here today."
His first customer attempts to convince customers 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 hostile crowd blames Dante for spreading cancer because he sells cigarettes. Dante's girlfriend Veronica Loughran enters, calms the crowd with a fire extinguisher, and confronts the customer, actually a Chewlies representative. She evicts him with the crowd. Veronica converses behind the counter about Dante's current disposition then encounters an old boyfriend, a customer named Willam Black. She admits to Dante that she engaged in sex with Black and performed fellatio on 36 other guys before their current relationship. Dante reacts with jealousy, admitting to having sex with just twelve different women before her, and she storms out. Dante's best friend, wisecracking slacker Randal Graves, arrives late for his own workday at the RST Video rental store next door and reveals that Dante's unfaithful ex-girlfriend Caitlin Bree, with whom Dante still secretly communicates, is engaged. He spends his shift dealing with customers either angry and demanding, clueless and impolite, or unexpectedly wise.
At lunch, Dante and Veronica reconcile their respective sexual pasts and Dante learns 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 the store. An irate customer demands Dante open the store, criticizes his playing, and sabotages the game. When Dante discovers an ex-girlfriend, Julie Dwyer, has died, he and Randal depart for an unseen memorial service. Their conversation after fleeing the funeral home 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 else in their graduating class knew of Caitlin's infidelity and that Rick even had sexual intercourse with Caitlin. A health department representative arrives to question Dante and fines him $500 for selling cigarettes to a four-year-old, even though Randal actually sold them. Caitlin tells Dante she ended her engagement and he leaves to prepare for a date with her. She has sex in the store bathroom with someone she thinks is Dante. She is rendered catatonic on realizing it is an elderly customer who suffered a fatal heart attack while masturbating to a pornographic magazine and is carted away in an ambulance 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 reasons that he truly loves Veronica. When Randal reveals the previous events to her, she dumps Dante and Dante brawls with Randal, trashing the Quick Stop in the process.
Dante blames Randal for the day's events, repeating his mantra of "I'm not even supposed to be here today!". Randal reminds him he voluntarily left to slack off several times, and could've left at any point he wished. They reconcile after realizing neither are as "advanced" as they think, evidenced by their lowly jobs. After the two clean up the store, Dante plans to take the following day off to visit Caitlin in the hospital and attempt reconciliation with Veronica. 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. His writing was influenced by his experience working in a video store, where he consumed movies mostly by listening but not watching, because his eyes were on the customers.Klosterman, Chuck (2022). The Nineties. New York: Penguin Press. p. 110. .
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" (both of which he reprises in Clerks III), 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 (with two "pick-up" 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 (from 10:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.), 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.Clerks
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.
Lost scene The events of Julie Dwyer's wake were written by Smith but were not filmed due to the prohibitive cost of producing the scene. In 2004, the scene was produced in colored animation using the same style of Clerks: The Animated Series, featured O'Halloran and Anderson reprising their roles and Joey Lauren Adams in a cameo as her character Alyssa Jones, who'd later appear in further View Askewniverse films, for the tenth anniversary DVD release. The "lost scene" was also presented in comic-book form of the Clerks comic book series, with the title of "The Lost Scene".
Original ending The original ending for the film was meant to continue from when Randal throws the "I Assure You We're Open" sign to Dante. After Randal leaves, Dante proceeds to count out the register and does not notice another person entering the store. Dante at first thinks it's Randal but looks up and informs the person that the store is no longer open. The man then pulls out a gun and shoots Dante, killing him, before proceeding to rob the cash register and leave the store. 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 depressing ending was criticized by Bob Hawk and John Pierson after its first screening at the Independent Feature Film Market, and under Pierson's advice, Smith cut the ending short, ending with Randal's departure and deleting Dante's death. Fans have since analyzed the death of Dante as an homage to the ending of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), which is discussed earlier in the film as Dante's favorite Star Wars movie because "it ended on such a down note". 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.