- CLERKS (ABC, TV-PG-V)
Kevin Smith’s 1994 movie and current comic book have become minimally animated cartoon series featuring New Jersey convenience-store drudge Dante, video-store drudge Randal, and freelance drudges Jay and Silent Bob, plus Smith’s trademark style of humor: endless cult-movie and not-gettin’-any sex jokes. Add a tired parody of The People’s Court, a disgusting Sally Ride astronaut joke, and an insidious strain of homophobia disguised as aren’t-we-cool-to-make-fun-of-gays jokes, and I say, after seeing five episodes, these creeps can’t disappear fast enough. D
- You knew Kevin Smith was going to make waves with his animated version of Clerks on ABC this summer: The first bootleg clip from a scene nixed by the network is already making the rounds on the Internet. The deleted scene, which can be downloaded from the Clerks web site and is also available on aint-it-cool-news, is a dig at Steven Spielberg, and not inconsequentially, at Holocaust movies.
In it, Dante, the convenience-store clerk, and Randal, the video-store clerk, discuss watching Flintsone’s List, the ”latest opus from Steven Spielberg, who combined his nose for commercial prospects with his integrity as a chronicler of the Holocaust.” The bit features Flinstone-like men being herded onto a train car, which, of course, is foot-powered. It may have been a laugh for some people, but it was too much for ABC. ”We didn’t think it would get on, but we animated it anyway,” says Smith, who has been critical of ABC for burying his show.
In fact, the scene was too much for NBC, too. Clerks co-writer Dave Mandel came up with the joke years ago when he worked as a writer at Saturday Night Live for the night John Goodman, Fred in the 1994 live-action film, was hosting. Not only couldn’t you make a Holocaust joke on TV, Mandel was told, but it was too expensive to build thetrain.
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