During the day, Dante and the crew deal with different, often whacky, situations. To start off, a man leads an anti-cigarette protest in the middle of the Quick Stop, and that’s within the first hour of being open. After that, Dante’s girlfriend Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti) visits and reveals something about her sexual past that causes a fight. Then Dante finds out in the paper that his high school sweetheart, and serial cheater, Caitlin Bree (Lisa Spoonauer) is getting married, which comes as a shocker because they have been talking for weeks on the phone. Add some hockey on the roof, a wake, discussions about the demands of building a new Death Star, and a perverted rabbi, sprinkle in stupid inane customers, and you’ve got one hell of a day on your hands.
The story behind Clerks has been talked to death, but here’s a very Cliff Notes (and Wikipedia researched eep) version: Kevin Smith saw the independent film Slacker in the early 90’s and decided he wanted to make movies. He spent a semester at a film school in Vancouver where he met future producing partner Scott Mosier, then decided to drop out of the second semester and use the money to fund his first movie. Smith proceeded to max out a bunch of credit cards and sell off pieces of his comic book collection to gather a budget for his first film, called Clerks (obviously), which amounted to around 28,000 dollars. He casted local theater actors in the leads and filled the rest of the cast with friends, many of whom play more than one character (Walt Flanagan plays around 5 different roles). He brought Mosier in to help him produce and they shot at the Quick Stop (where Smith used to work) while they were closed at night and shot in black and white to cut costs. After languishing for a little while, Clerks began to get some steam with the press and was sold at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival to Harvey Weinstein and his company Miramax, who put a mainstream soundtrack on it. Clerks eventually became a hit, spawning the Askewniverse mentioned earlier and turning Kevin Smith into a bonafide indie icon. Along with Tarantino and Richard Linklater, he is also credited for starting the new revolution in independent cinema of the 1990’s.
O’Halloran and Anderson’s chemistry as Dante and Randal is pitch perfect, and even though Randal is such an ass, you can actually understand how they could be friends. They both are excellent and perfect in their roles and created some of the most realistic characters in the history of cinema.
Other characters achieved cult status from the film, including Willem Black (Scott Mosier), a burned out bearded druggie who says "That's beautiful man" a lot, and any of Walt Flanagan's roles (I think of his brief stint as a crazed man who has to test each egg before buying the carton as his best). To give everyone their due is impossible in words, you have to see it in action.
Clerks benefits from the cheap production. It doesn’t try to do a lot with a little; instead it embraces the little and makes it work. The black and white, which was just a cost cutting measure, actually helps the storytelling in ways I can’t explain because I don’t have film school-level knowledge. Smith also uses simple camera shots (which amount to a stagnated camera with two or more people standing next to each other and talking) to great effect, allowing the dialogue to carry the movie.
And make no mistake, the dialogue carries Clerks. It’s dirty, raw, and filled with jokes that most would find tasteless, but it’s some of the most realistic and smart stuff that has ever been written. The way everyone talks in Clerks is how you expect and hear others talk. Unlike something like Juno, it isn’t overly stylized; it’s simple, and it helps the impact. Clerks has also proven to be one of the most quotable movies in history, with such lines as “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” and “buncha savages in this town” still quoted to this day (I admit, I do on very frequent occasions, utter both of these lines).
Clerks has also proven to be the inspiration for the films that came after it. It showed that you didn’t need to have a big budget to make a good movie; all you needed was the drive and the idea. The low budget presentation inspired a whole generation of indie filmmakers, who finally believed that they could write and direct something on a small budget that would actually be taken seriously. Films like Empire Records and Waiting also owe a debt to Smith and Clerks. As good as Empire Records is (and it will probably be inducted here at some point), let’s face it: it’s Clerks in a record store. Waiting is Clerks in a restaurant. Its impact on the film world can still be felt today, as well as culture itself. Kevin Smith has become an icon to people everywhere, and has hosted spots on The Tonight Show, as well as contributing to the comic book worlds of Batman and Daredevil. Dante and Randal have become icons in their own right, and Jay and Silent Bob show up everywhere from Scream 3 to I Love the 90’s.