Franchise Friday: Clerks (1994)
The snooch starts here.
The making-of story for Clerks is possibly more famous than the movie itself.
Writer-director Kevin Smith has talked at length about how he saw Richard Linklater’s Slacker back in 1990 and was so inspired by the low-budget, talkie indie that he thought, “I could do that.” Working with friend and producer Scott Mosier, Smith funded a 90-minute film using credit cards and insurance checks, shooting at night in the same convenience store where he worked by day.
The film debuted at Sundance during a transformational time for indies; that year’s festival crop also included Boaz Yakin’s Fresh, David O. Russell’s Spanking the Monkey, Kelly Reichardt’s River of Grass and Steve James’ Hoop Dreams. Clerks was purchased by Miramax and went on to make more than $3 million at the box office; quite a profit for a film that cost less than $300,000 to make.
Perhaps most surprisingly, its characters — particularly foul-mouthed pot dealer Jay (Jason Mewes) and his partner Silent Bob (Smith) — went on to fuel an interconnected series of cult comedies comprising the “View Askewniverse” (named after the film’s production company), including Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma (the franchise continues; Jay and Silent Bob Reboot was released in 2019 and Clerks 3 is due later this year).
I was in early high school when Clerks was released, and I don’t think I got around to it until my freshman year of college. As I’ve mentioned before, I came from a fairly sheltered background, and my first viewing of Clerks was not pleasant. Smith’s dialogue is explicit — and his early approaches to gender and sexuality have not aged well — and while I laughed at the audacity of some of the jokes, the majority offended me, to the point where I popped the VHS out of the player as soon as the film was over and drove it back to the video store so that my parents would never discover it had been in our house.
It wasn’t until my early 20s, when I sat down for a one-two punch of Chasing Amy and Dogma, that I began to respect Smith’s talent, and there was a time when I would’ve listed him among my favorite directors. I looked forward to every visit to the View Askewniverse, and enjoyed Smith’s writing, which could balance intelligence and puerility at the same time. I even drove down to Akron, Ohio, solo for a weekend to see Smith perform one of his famous Q&As.
Nearly 30 years since Clerks’ debut, my relationship with Smith’s work is more complicated. It’s been years since I’ve revisited the majority of his movies. He’s made some away from the View Askewniverse that I’ve enjoyed, others that I’ve flat-out detested and a series of horror movies that just aren’t my thing. I’ve evolved past my slacker comedy days, but I still have a great deal of affection for Smith as a personality, who genuinely seems to enjoy his work and has an enthusiasm that makes me root for him.
And so, with Clerks 3 on the horizon, it seemed like a good time to venture back to the Quick Stop and see whether my enjoyment of Smith’s work stemmed from his talent as a writer-director or just a product of my youth.
‘I’m not even supposed to be here today’
Smith’s career may have been inspired by Slacker, but Clerks is a very different film than Linklater’s meandering day around Austin. Slacker is thoughtful and philosophical, curious and engaging. While it’s a low-budget affair, Linklater’s improv exercise has several themes it returns to, a genuine sense of place and discovery, and a willingness to engage other perspectives. Visually, it might look crude, but Linklater has several creative handoffs between storytellers and switches aesthetics near the end, devolving the film into a black-and-white Pixelvision take.
Smith’s film might be more worthy of the name Slacker. Set in a scuzzy New Jersey strip mall, it follows a day in the life of a beleaguered convenience store cashier named Dante (Brian O’ Halloran) who’s called in on his day off. It’s crude in every sense of the word, filmed in black and white that makes the cramped store look even dingier and more depressing, with dialogue that is a constant stream of f-bombs and graphic sexual descriptions. Its perspective is firmly in the Gen X mentality, casting an ironic eye at every customer that walks in, and engaging in navel-gazing that seeks profundity in even the most menial moments, but walks away with a shrug and a “whatever.”
These things, it should be known, are features, not bugs. Juvenile as Clerks may be, it very quickly and clearly announced Smith’s voice, mingling sharp dialogue with immature gags in a way that at once feels gritty and lived-in while also part of some weed-drenched cartoon universe.
From the start, Smith’s writing showcases an ambition that exceeds his directorial grasp. Its protagonist is not accidentally named; like Inferno, the story is made up of several movements, all of which find Dante navigating his own hell (New Jersey). When he arrives at the Quick Stop, he finds the locks to the awning jammed with gum and hastily scribbles together an open sign. It’s the first of many indignities suffered by Dante throughout the day, as he goes on to be insulted by customers, frustrated by his current girlfriend and his ex, and annoyed by Jay and Silent Bob, who peddle marijuana outside the shop. Dante’s companion is the clerk who runs the adjoining video store, Randal (Jeff Anderson), who seems to exist only to make Dante’s life more complicated and piss off every customer who walks into either store.
Clerks is assembled as a series of episodes that unfold over the course of the day. There’s a loose narrative: Dante is called in on his day off, and he has to endure some hard truths about his girlfriend’s past while also learning that his ex is getting married. There’s a hockey game and a wake (which we don’t see). The rest is a loose collection of sketches featuring either the idiosyncratic and annoying Quick Stop customers, Randal harassing the video store’s patrons, or Dante’s continually fraught love life.
Smith received flack over the course of his career for his seeming lack of care over his films’ visual qualities. But while Clerks is not a high water mark for cinematography, the grungy black and white fits its setting. The film’s side characters and a few of the situations — including a customer obsessed with finding a perfect cartoon of eggs, and another character’s unaware dalliance with a corpse — brush against the cartoonish, but the bare bones visual aesthetic creates a humorous juxtaposition, grounding the outlandish while allowing the circumstances to have a fun comedic charge against the dour cinematography. And Smith creatively makes the most of his confined quarters, finding innovative ways to place his characters in every nook and cranny of the Quick Stop and the video store. It’s not a visual masterpiece, but for a first film made on a shoestring budget, Smith does what he can.
But Smith’s skill has always been as a writer, and his intelligence and wit help elevate the film from just another low-rent hangout flick. It’s not that his characters talk naturally; at times, the sex talk feels forced and calculated to shock, and the moments of satirical banter feel ported in from a bad college thesis. But Smith’s knack for comic rhythms and his verbal dexterity are already on display, and even some of the most eye-rolling dialogue is quickly followed up by a sharp punchline or witty retort. The film’s structure makes it feel like these are observations and sketches Smith had at the ready that he grafted onto the film’s stories, but the actual content of the dialogue is smart and funny enough to belie Smith’s lack of a formal screenwriting education.
“There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?”
Clerks is a solid debut, highlighting Smith’s skill as a writer and hinting at promise as a director. But here’s the thing: I don’t know if I like it.
Part of that is just a function of hindsight. What seemed fresh and promising in 1994 looks different today, not just because of the work that came in its wake and did the same thing better, but because of an understanding of where Kevin Smith’s career eventually took him. Clerks gained notoriety for being cheap, ugly and crude; it was forgivable given the film’s ultra-low budget and because it was Smith’s debut. But twelve years later, when Smith returned for Clerks 2, the visual aesthetics were in color but not overly improved, and he still trafficked in dick and fart jokes. Where Linklater moved beyond Slacker to explore the concept of time and also experiment as a director, the majority of Smith’s career has been firmly rooted in doing the same thing over and over again (it doesn’t help that the two exceptions — Jersey Girl and his odd trilogy of horror films — were roundly critical and commercial failures that sent him running back to the View Askewniverse).
And yet it’s not fair to criticize Clerks for the filmmaker’s later faults (and, indeed, there’s enough of a question about the quality of Smith’s later work that has me returning for this series). This debut was very much Smith writing what he knew and making the best he could under some nearly impossible budgetary constraints. And again, for a debut, Clerks is solid. Nearly 30 years later, it’s easy to forget that the film came about at a time when people weren’t walking around with video cameras in their pocket, and you couldn’t turn to a free platform like YouTube to be discovered. The fact that Smith funded and made a movie on his own is still remarkable; the fact that it holds together and is watchable is even more so.
But it’s always been a film that I admire without really liking, even if certain lines of dialogue make me chuckle. There’s a joyful silliness that Smith tapped into later in his career that powered through some of his films’ shortcomings. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back might not be art, but it moves like a cartoon and I recall it fondly (again, it’s been two decades since I last watched it). And Clerks 2 might be the safe sequel Smith retreated to after Jersey Girl, but it’s earnest and sweet in places that feel like a welcome evolution from the first film’s ironic posing.
Clerks is abrasive by design, and not just because of its low-rent visual vibe. It must have been cathartic for Smith to direct an entire comedy centered around his disdain for the customers at his store. But the eyes rolled at picky, preachy patrons sometimes comes across a bit too acerbic and mean-spirited. If Dante and Randal’s harshest barbs were leveled at inept management or their bosses, it might feel less so. But Randal reading a litany of porn titles in front of a woman and her young daughter, or portraying every customer as a clueless, angry jerk gets old fast, and feels unfair. It’s not exactly punching down, but it feels at times like picking on the innocent, and there’s not a sense of sweetness anywhere else to compensate.
The film’s treatment of its female characters is two-dimensional at best, misogynistic at worst. Marilyn Ghigliotti’s Veronica, Dante’s girlfriend, is supportive, but the film’s famous running joke about her sexual background is embarrassing, and trying to salvage it as “she’s okay because she brings Dante lasagna” isn’t exactly empowering. Dante’s ex, Caitlyn, comes across as nice, but it’s hinted she can play around with his heart; the film decides to resolve this by having her accidentally sleep with a dead man, which is gross. It’s worth noting the film is also not great when it comes to talking about men and women from other ethnicities, with a running gag being that Cailtyn is dating an Asian design major, and a lecherous customer supports a pretty bad Jewish stereotype.
Judd Apatow would later make an entire career out of people talking about sex in a way that revealed how pathetic and silly their obsession was. But Smith seems to want people to engage in X-rated dialogue because he knows it will cause audience members to clutch their pearls. The first time there’s a sex gag, it feels edgy and funny; by the fifth joke about bodily fluids and orifices, it feels desperate.
Smith would eventually grow as a writer, and his female characters would become a little more dimensional (although his approach to race has always been a little problematic). And the sex talk is still a staple of his work, but with age he seems to have come around to Apatow’s perspective of using it to make his horny male characters the butt of the jokes. And maybe it’s this knowledge that makes the crudity of Clerks a bit of a relic better left in the past. It’s the gunky stuff Smith needed to get out of his system; but then again, as I said earlier, it also doesn’t work because hindsight reveals how little maturing he actually did as an artist.
“It’s important to have a job that makes a difference, boys”
So, I find myself at a weird impasse with Clerks. I can’t deny that it was a promising debut and that what Smith did within his limitations is noteworthy. And yet, I find the movie abrasive and off-putting. But I also can’t say I flat-out dislike the movie; there are elements that work, even if there’s a lot that keeps me from embracing it (I gave it 3/5 stars on Letterboxd, which feels about right).
For instance, even if Dante and Randal aren’t the most likable characters, I like the performances by O’Halloran and Anderson. As Dante, there’s a weary, Charlie Brown-esque energy that O’ Halloran brings, going just beyond the amount of self-loathing that would be annoying to bring it right back around to funny. And Anderson’s performance is one of my favorites in a Smith movie; the instant Randal slinks onto the screen, the energy shoots up. Anderson plays the character like a foul-mouthed Bugs Bunny, and as offensive as Randal often gets, there’s a twinkle in his eye that almost gets him off the hook. His off-handed comment to Caitlyn that he’ll kill her if she breaks Dante’s heart again is the film’s rare moment of earnestness, and Anderson sells the line in a way that doesn’t seem makwish or aggressive; it’s a genuinely sweet moment.
Jay and Silent Bob would go on to become Smith’s most famous creations, fronting two of their own movies and showing up in every View Askewniverse film (they also notoriously popped up in a Scream movie). Smith famously gives Bob one line in the movie and, as usual, it’s the one moment that aims for profundity (but it can’t forgive the movie’s constant jokes at Veronica’s expense). And Mewes is all raw, weird energy as Jay, aggressive and crude but with a charisma that makes him strangely compelling. It feels like Smith found this weird, loud, funny kid and decided to point the camera at him, and Mewes walks away with several of the film’s best lines (“about the biggest pair you’ve ever seen, dingleberry!” got a giant laugh from me).
And Smith’s a witty enough writer to ensure that the film has several standout stretches of dialogue. Most famous is, of course, Randal’s musings on the Death Star and the contractors who worked on it. But I also like the scene early in the film where a customer begins to chide people for purchasing cigarettes, only to be revealed as a representative for a chewing gum company trying to goose sales. And although the juvenile jokes get old fast, Smith’s hit ratio isn’t bad; I chuckled in spite of myself several times.
Is Clerks an important moment in the history of independent film? Absolutely, and Smith is a director of note not only because of it but for the way he’s become an important cult figure. I’m curious to revisit some of these films and, I’ll be honest, dreading some of the others (next up is Mallrats, a film I don’t have a great deal of affection for). But what’s most interesting is seeing how what made made such a fervent follower in my youth now often feels like a relic, something I’ve left behind. I’m getting older; Smith’s maturity level stays the same age. Ashes to ashes, snooch to the nooch.