Clerks (1994) Movie Review

Clerks (1994) Movie Review

Once upon a time I actually tried to make a movie myself. It was a natural next step after spending over a year writing screenplays in my free time. In the beginning of seventh grade, when I really started to watch more R-rated movies and became fascinated with films such as Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, and Boyz N the Hood, I started writing random little scripts on my own. I hadn’t even seen many of those movies, but I tried my best to imitate those films’ gritty styles in my own writing. The subject matter of the screenplays I wrote back then ranged from things I knew literally nothing about, like mafia families and street gangs, to situations I was only a few years away from experiencing myself in high school. None of this writing was especially good, but those scripts were an essential first step toward getting me passionate about filmmaking. Eventually, about halfway through eighth grade I decided I would write a script and actually film it. I envisioned it originally as this large-scale and ambitious coming-of-age story that would deal with all sorts of topics that would resonate with today’s youth. It eventually devolved into a poorly made five-minute short film that, at the time, I thought became more trouble than what it was worth. The process of actually making a film was a whole lot more difficult than I had imagined, and eventually the large majority of the artistic ideas that I had envisioned for the film were swept away, because the main goal transitioned from making a movie I actually liked to just making a movie at all. I do look back on making that movie with overall fond memories, but the amount of stress that came out of making it scared me away from filmmaking for a decent amount of time. I finished putting the movie together sometime in nearly ninth grade, and I still haven’t written a serious and thought-out script since. However, the idea of making another movie has moved from the back of my mind to the middle-front of my mind. Do I see myself making another movie in the somewhat near future? Yes. I don’t know exactly what type of film it will be, what it will be about, or if it will even be about anything at all, but I’m becoming increasingly interested in making a sophomore film to accompany my “debut.” At the moment, I’m in the process of looking for inspiration. For said inspiration, I’ve turned to independent cinema. After reading the book Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, I realized that the low-budget cinema described in the book could help give me ideas about my next project. Thus, I shook hands with Clerks, Kevin Smith’s 1994 debut and cult classic filmed for $27,575. While that sounds like a ton of money to me, it pales in comparison to the budgets of many other iconic movies. Clerks has helped open my eyes to the fact that pretty much anything is possible when making a film.

Instead of being plot-driven and fast-paced, Clerks takes it easy, focusing more on character interaction, setting, and circumstances. The movie establishes a few characters, gives them a few problems, and then pretty much just sets them loose over the course of the day the film takes place. Dante (Brian O’Halloran) is your average 20-something convenience store clerk who, due to a coworker’s shift conflict, is forced to spend his day off behind the counter. His major dilemna is having to choose between his current girlfriend, Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti), and his ex-girlfriend who is back in town, Caitlin (Lisa Spoonauer). Working next door at the video store is Randal (Jeff Anderson), a lazy slacker who largely abandons his job to hang out with Dante and give him life advice. Throughout the course of one day Dante and Randal talk to each other, talk to the customers, and get themselves into random situations. That’s basically it as far as plot goes. 

There’s really not that much to understand about Clerks beyond what it offers on the surface. There is no deeper meaning to be found; the film’s main “point” is just showcasing a day in the life of someone who lives a mundane life and works a low-paying, altogether uninteresting job. While Clerks is not necessarily a movie that demands much thought-processing afterwards, it does bring some agreeable low-brow philosophy to the table. The main draw of the film for most people would be the consistently entertaining banter and general shenanigans of Dante and Randal. They crash a funeral, shut the store down to play hockey on the roof, and discuss the true meaning of Return of the Jedi. Writer/director Kevin Smith did a great job creating characters that could fill up a whole movie with pretty much only dialogue. There’s also the love triangle between Dante, Veronica, and Caitlin, which provides the majority of the film’s drama. Clerks is such a low-stakes movie but that’s part of what makes it unique. Smith, who worked as a clerk himself during the time he filmed the movie, knew that making a high-energy film about the occupation would be near-paradoxical. Instead, he took the classic advice of “write what you know,” resulting in a film that I imagine mirrors what it's like to work as a clerk pretty well. Clerks also sees Smith breaking some well-known “rules” of filmmaking, namely character introduction. Instead of letting viewers know who Dante is by someone calling him by his name or something, there is literally just a card that flashes “Dante” onto the screen. While this would typically be considered a lazy character introduction, the film makes up for it by laying the groundwork for Dante’s entire character in a single shot. The “Dante” card cuts to a shot of a closet in a messy bedroom, clearly sometime in the morning. The closet door opens and Dante falls out. I really liked how Dante was introduced, because it tells viewers everything they need to know about him. He’s disorganized, doesn’t have his life together, doesn’t care much about the little stuff, and generally isn’t excited about his day-to-day life. We learn all that just by watching him fall out of the closet he slept in onto his cluttered bedroom floor. Part of what I enjoyed about this movie were the little details like that, such as a cover of “Shooting Star” playing on the radio while Dante and Randal are driving to a funeral, or Randal walking through the video store, which is portrayed as a magical place, something Smith most likely truly believes. For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Clerks. I wouldn’t call it a perfect movie; the acting, while not consistently bad or anything, is at times clearly very amateur, in a way that sometimes reminded me of the time I tried to act for my own movie. Other than that, there’s not much “wrong” with the film. The only other thing I feel like is missing is some sort of payoff. Eventually Dante and Randal get in a physical fight and talk things through afterwards, but the fight itself is not much to behold and, while charming, nothing especially thought-provoking is said, at least in my opinion. Randal is the film’s “rogue spirit” character, and he’s the one who ultimately delivers its standout monologue when he tells Dante to get off his high horse about having “basically a monkey’s job.” He tells him he should stop complaining because nobody even forced him to come to work, and that he should only blame himself when starting something new with his ex-girlfriend inevitably causes problems with his current one. And there ya go. In terms of bigger-picture ideas that are to be found while watching Clerks, there are some questions raised about what it means to have such a low-end occupation: what kind of person does it make you to be a clerk? Is the fact that you willingly sell cigarettes to countless people every day a problem? These are the points raised by the movie; if this sounds interesting to you, maybe Clerks is something you should check out. If not, maybe this just isn’t the movie for you. 

Previously I said that the main draw of Clerks for a lot of people would be the conversations between the characters. While that is certainly one of the film’s most appealing aspects, what interests me the most about the movie is how much it accomplished with so little. Like I said earlier, this movie was filmed with a budget of $27,575 (its post-production budget was larger, but still), which is pretty impressive considering how well-renowned and celebrated it has become over the years. Needless to say, I wasn’t alive during the 1990s, so this is all coming from a very secondary source, but Clerks helped usher in a new era and style of filmmaking in the mid-90s that would change the art form forever. While American independent film had already seen varying degrees of success from the 1960s through the mid-1980s with key figures including David Lynch, John Waters, George Romero, and others, it was during the late 1980s and early 1990s that low-budget, non-mainstream cinema started to gain mainstream recognition. Kevin Smith, along with other writer/directors such as Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Gus Van Sant, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater, and Steven Soderbergh, led a new generation of talent that would go on to influence and inspire countless up-and-coming filmmakers. Part of this had to do with the high quality of their films, but another big part of it, at least as far as I’m concerned, was how relatively little money went into creating said films. Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It was filmed for $175,000, Linklater’s Slacker for $23,000, and Rodriguez’s El Mariachi for just $7,225. All of those numbers sound huge to me, but comparing them to the budgets of other movies of their times puts everything in perspective. Clerks was released on October 19, 1994. By the end of its opening week, Stargate was the number-one movie in America. I have nothing against that movie, but it was made for $55 million, grossed almost $200 million, and probably hasn’t influenced much at all since. Meanwhile Clerks wasn’t even close to a big hit at first; it made just over $3 million at the box office. But the fact that it wasn’t a commercial hit upon release just goes to show how movies like that can matter a lot more in the long-term than many big-budget blockbusters that come and go. Clerks is in the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” and I agree with that. As someone who is technically an aspiring filmmaker of sorts, it is movies like Clerks that continue to keep me interested in the art form, and show me how a lot of money and a lot of resources aren’t necessary when it comes to making something special or significant. Young people going out, taking risks, and making something from very little is always going to be vital when it comes to keeping the spirit of film alive, and that spirit is what a movie like Clerks helps to keep alive in someone like me. 

Clerks isn’t my new favorite movie or anything, but I’m definitely glad I watched it because it honestly helped to re-stimulate my interest in filmmaking. I think that this movie can show anyone out there, regardless of whether they’re making a movie or not, that as long as you have the personal drive, you don’t need much to make something great. When it comes to making a movie from scratch, as long as you have a camera and the motivation, pretty much anything can happen. Clerks may not have a deep message – or much “message” at all – but to me, the main takeaway is that simple filmmaking does not require a lot of expensive technology or complicated resources. I’m gonna give Clerks an A- as a grade. If you’re someone who is interested in writing or directing a movie of their own, I would strongly recommend this.