Clerks

Clerks is a 1994 American black-and-white comedy buddy film written, produced and directed by Kevin Smith and starring Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson. It presents a day in the lives of store clerks Dante Hicks (O'Halloran) and Randal Graves (Anderson) and their acquaintances. It is the first of Smith's View Askewniverse films, and introduces several recurring characters, notably Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith).

Clerks was shot for $27,575 in the convenience and video stores where director Smith worked in real life. Upon its theatrical release, it received generally positive reviews and grossed over $3 million in theaters, launching Smith's career. It is considered a landmark in independent filmmaking and, in 2019, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot
Dante (Brian O'Halloran) is called in to cover a shift at his New Jersey convenience store on his day off. His friend Randal (Jeff Anderson) helps him pass the time, neglecting his video-store customers next door to hang out in the Quick Stop. The uneventful day is disrupted by news that one of Dante's ex-girlfriends has died. After attending her memorial service, Dante muses over staying with current girlfriend Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti) or reuniting with ex Caitlin (Lisa Spoonhauer).

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It's a landmark in the indie movie genre, and in a very good way.
 * 2) Fantastic direction and writing from Kevin Smith. The fact that this movie wasn't nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar is embarassing.
 * 3) Presents two of the greatest comedy duos of all time: Dante and Randall and, of course, Jay and Silent Bob.
 * 4) The way in which the film's scenes are divided in segments is very clever and effective.
 * 5) Plenty of funny moments.
 * 6) The black-and-white cinematography is beautiful.
 * 7) Clever references, particularly the Star Wars ones.
 * 8) Dante and Randall are very compelling characters:
 * 9) *Dante is very relatable as an everyday average guy. Especially because of the way he resists to change in order to improve his life.
 * 10) *While Randall serves as the slacker best friend cliché, he also proves to be very smart and clever. Especially in the scenes where he advises Dante and some of the scenes where he interacts with the costumers.
 * 11) Anytime Randall interacts with a customer is hilarious.
 * 12) It was shot entirely in the film's setting of New Jersey.
 * 13) It launched the View Askewniverse film series.
 * 14) The dialogue in nearly all of the scenes is very amusing and interesting; especially in scenes such as:
 * 15) *Dante, Randall and a costumer discussing The Empire Strikes Back.
 * 16) *Dante and Randall chatting on their way to the wake.
 * 17) *The "Title Doesn't Dictates Behavior" dialogue.
 * 18) *The "Cancer Merchant" speech.
 * 19) *Dante lamenting on his life.
 * 20) *Randall confronting Dante about his stubbornness.
 * 21) Lots of memorable quotes:
 * 22) *There's a million fine looking women in the world, dude. But they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you.
 * 23) *I'm not even supposed to be here today!
 * 24) *BERZERKER!
 * 25) *This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers.
 * 26) *37! My girlfriend sucked 37 dicks!
 * 27) **In a row?
 * 28) *Salsa shark!
 * 29) *Well, if we're so fucking advanced, what are we doing working here?
 * 30) *My mom's been fuckin' a dead guy for 30 years. I call him dad.
 * 31) *Hey, try not to suck any dick on the way through the parking lot!
 * 32) * I like to think I'm a master of my own destiny.
 * 33) *All "(Return of the) Jedi" had was a bunch of Muppets.
 * 34) *Melodrama coming from you seems about as natural as an oral bowel movement.
 * 35) *A little word of advice, my friend. Sometimes you gotta let those hard-to-reach chips go.
 * 36) *If you plan to shoplift, let us know. Thanks.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Dante is somewhat unlikeable throughout the movie:
 * 2) * He deliberately cheats on his girlfriend Veronica just because he wanted to get back together with his ex-girlfriend Caitlynn, whom he still loved, despite how wholesome Veronica was with him while Caitlynn treated him badly.
 * 3) * He constantly whines about his living situation, but is stubborn to change and keeps ignoring Randall and Veronica's advices.
 * 4) The scene in which Dante, Randall and Caitlynn realize that the latter, unawarely, made love to a corpse in the lights-off bathroom can be very sick to many people, as it's basically necrophilia.

Trivia

 * 1) Kevin Smith, a keen comic book fan, sold a large part of his collection to help fund this film. He has since been able to buy most of them back.
 * 2) Kevin Smith worked in the store where they shot the film. They shot for 21 straight nights. He would clock in at 6am and finish at 11pm. They would then shoot till 4am, after which he would try to grab an hour or two's sleep before getting ready to go back to work.
 * 3) Kevin Smith originally cast himself as Randal, which is why Randal gets some of the best lines.
 * 4) The scene where Dante confronts Caitlin about her engagement to an Asian design major in the video store is done in one shot, which lasts for over five minutes. It was shot on the first night of filming.
 * 5) The film's shoestring budget is part of the reason it was shot in black and white. A number of different types of lighting were used, and this would have required a lot of post production to resolve issues related to the varying color temperatures. With black and white, this isn't a problem.
 * 6) The offended customer in the "jizz mopper" scene is buying paper towels and glass cleaner. Get it?
 * 7) The word 'fuck' and its derivatives are said 91 times throughout the film, mostly between Dante and Jay.
 * 8) Clerks is loosely based on "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri hence the name of the protagonist, Dante Hicks. Also, there are nine breaks in the movie to represent the nine rings of hell.
 * 9) Kevin Smith has said on speaking tours that the reason he cast himself in the movie was that if the movie failed and he was in near-permanent debt for the rest of his life, he could at least point at his face in the movie as proof he did it.
 * 10) This is the first film in Kevin Smith's intricately interconnected View Askewniverse series. The others being Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks II and Jay & Silent Bob Reboot. These movies are all linked by characters, themes and events and each contains numerous references to the others.

Reception
Clerks was well received by critics and developed a cult following. On Rotten Tomatoes, it currently has an 89% "Certified Fresh" rating based on 57 reviews, with an average rating of 7.50/10. 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?" On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". In his 1994 review of Clerks, Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of a possible four. Ebert praised the film 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." 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."

Legacy
When released, the film was noted for its realism and memorable characters. Clerks won the "Award of the Youth" and the "Mercedes-Benz Award" at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, tied with Fresh for the "Filmmakers Trophy" at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards (Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay and Jeff Anderson for Best Debut Performance). In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Clerks the 16th-greatest comedy film of all time and in 2006, British film magazine Empire listed Clerks as the 4th greatest independent film. The film is also No. 33 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly ranked it 13th on "The Cult 25: The Essential Left-Field Movie Hits Since '83" and 21st on "The Comedy 25: The Funniest Movies of the Past 25 Years". Also in 2008, Empire named it one of their "500 Greatest Movies of All-Time", placing it 361st on the list. The film was also one of the 500 films nominated for a spot on AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs but failed to make the top 100. The film was also included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

In 2019, Clerks was among 25 films chosen to be added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.