Spring Break
Retroview: 'Clerks' appeal to cult fans and masses
Phillip Kazanjian
Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment
I had a friend come up to me with last week's issue and actually thank me for shedding light on SLC Punk!; he apparently never heard of it and out of curiosity bought a copy from Borders, and it turns out that he enjoyed it quite a bit. So, I hope you do not mind, but we are going to take another trip back to the mid-90s with a movie titled Clerks.
The film itself was released back in 1994, and while perhaps not flying as low under the radar as SLC Punk!, it still lacks the actual attention it really deserves. Clerks was the debut film for writer and director Kevin Smith, whose later works include Mall Rats and Chasing Amy. The movie was filmed off a budget that could barely purchase a standard SUV. Clerks' cast was comprised entirely of no-name actors and the film was shot purely in black-and-white with only crude cuts to act as transition between scenes.
The main driving point to the film was the two characters it followed, Dante Hicks and Randal Graves, two loveable losers. Dante Hicks is a clerk at Quick Stop, a local convenience store in Leonardo, N.J., or "View Askewniverse," as Smith likes to call it. The story begins when Dante is called into work for a promised half-day on his glorious day off; Dante is then of course screwed over into working the full day and through his hours of torture, the audience is introduced to the daily grind that many young Americans go through.
As college students, it seems like it is safe to say that mostly every student attending this term has held down some type of joe-job like this. The tasks at hand were trivial and if you had to deal with the general public, you were confronted with some of the most ill-conceived questions ever spoken by a human being. You were being under-worked and under-paid. This movie thrived off of those experiences and dared to show two men who had what it took counter the cleric world of monotony.
What followed was everything from debates about Star Wars, politics, to discussions on oral sex. The dialogue was crude, truthful, humorous, and at times, featured words that are only rivaled by phonebooks in length. Clerks can now be picked up in its 10th anniversary form at just about any respectable movie distributor and I fully recommend this for anyone who looking for a good laugh or just a decent slacker to relate to. Honestly, try to watch this film and never repeat a single line from it afterwards. It is also near impossible not to fall in love with Salsa Shark.
The film itself was released back in 1994, and while perhaps not flying as low under the radar as SLC Punk!, it still lacks the actual attention it really deserves. Clerks was the debut film for writer and director Kevin Smith, whose later works include Mall Rats and Chasing Amy. The movie was filmed off a budget that could barely purchase a standard SUV. Clerks' cast was comprised entirely of no-name actors and the film was shot purely in black-and-white with only crude cuts to act as transition between scenes.
The main driving point to the film was the two characters it followed, Dante Hicks and Randal Graves, two loveable losers. Dante Hicks is a clerk at Quick Stop, a local convenience store in Leonardo, N.J., or "View Askewniverse," as Smith likes to call it. The story begins when Dante is called into work for a promised half-day on his glorious day off; Dante is then of course screwed over into working the full day and through his hours of torture, the audience is introduced to the daily grind that many young Americans go through.
As college students, it seems like it is safe to say that mostly every student attending this term has held down some type of joe-job like this. The tasks at hand were trivial and if you had to deal with the general public, you were confronted with some of the most ill-conceived questions ever spoken by a human being. You were being under-worked and under-paid. This movie thrived off of those experiences and dared to show two men who had what it took counter the cleric world of monotony.
What followed was everything from debates about Star Wars, politics, to discussions on oral sex. The dialogue was crude, truthful, humorous, and at times, featured words that are only rivaled by phonebooks in length. Clerks can now be picked up in its 10th anniversary form at just about any respectable movie distributor and I fully recommend this for anyone who looking for a good laugh or just a decent slacker to relate to. Honestly, try to watch this film and never repeat a single line from it afterwards. It is also near impossible not to fall in love with Salsa Shark.
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