CLERKS

Budget: $27,000 (before additional post production work)

A god amongst film geeks, beloved filmmaker and comic book writer Kevin Smith has amassed an arsenal of 6 movies to fit into his View Askewniverse, and that world begins and ends with Clerks. Though many people have an almost instinctive adverse reaction to black-and-white cinema nowadays, Clerks proves that when it comes to comedy, a strong focus on dialogue is almost always the primary route to success. And with the film taking place almost entirely within a convenience store where Kevin Smith worked at the time, the concentration staying on dialogue above anything else allowed for the young filmmaker to keep the budget as minimal as possible. That’s not to say paying for the movie was an easy task. According to Wikipedia, in order to acquire the funds for the film, Smith sold a large proportion of his extensive comic book collection, maxed out eight to ten credit cards with $2000 limits, dipped into a portion of funds set aside for his college education and spent insurance money awarded for a car he and Jason Mewes lost in a flood.

Since the film had to be shot at night when the store was closed, Smith needed to come up with a way to explain why the steel shutters were closed, and in turn led to a great scene in the film where Dante discovers somebody put gum in the locks and has to put up a big sign written in shoe polish that says, “I Assure You, We’re Open.” Situations like these just go to show how being forced to think outside the box can actually lead to much more rewarding outcomes.

The entire list is made up of what we’d call pretty much must-see movies, so we highly recommend you check it out and pick up some of the titles as your schedule allows. Our kudos to the authors of this piece for a fantastic list.

The site uses “Clerks” as an example and takes a color square to represent a characters speaking part, and symbols to indicate profane dialogue. We’re not sure we get the experiment, either, but it’s definitely the first time we’ve seen anything like it.

August 2, 1991. The day of my 21st birthday. Most folks elect to cut loose and enjoy the freedom that turning 21 affords. I, however — being a total loser — opted, instead, to take the 50-mile drive up the Jersey Turnpike with my friend Vincent Pereira so we could peep a film reviewed, quite favorably, by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. It was unheard of in my neck of the woods to drive that far to see a movie (let alone a movie with zero movie stars in it), but the promise of a scene centered on a Madonna pap smear of questionable authenticity was bait enough to lure us from the Jersey ‘burbs into the wilds of Manhattan-after-dark.

After overpaying for both parking and popcorn, we settled into what seats we could find together in the packed theater of a midnight screening. And once the trailer for Hal Hartley’s Trust concluded, the Orion Classics logo lit up the screen and introduced me to my future. For the next 100 minutes or so, I was agog. My jaw literally hung open as this shaggy paean to those who follow the road not taken unspooled, offering me a glimpse into a free-associative world of ideas instead of plot, people instead of characters, and Nowheresville, Texas, instead of the usual California or New York settings most movies elected to feature (that “Nowheresville” was really Austin speaks volumes on how culturally bereft I was at the time). That night, director Richard Linklater and his film not only captured my imagination, he (and it) captured my heart — not to mention kick-started my ambition. On the hour-long drive home from the theater that night, I realized what I wanted to do with my life: I wanted to be a filmmaker. That’s the power of Slacker: if you let it, it’ll change your life. It certainly changed mine.

So if you hate me and my films, blame Richard Linklater’s Slacker. And if you love me and my films, thank Richard Linklater for Slacker. Either way, do yourself a favor and watch Richard Linklater’s Slacker here on Hulu. Right now.

Check it out, and then, if you’re in a Hulu-approved region, check out the movie for free, right now. Long live Hulu!

If you wanna take your mind off it, “Quarantine” may be a good bet in theaters this weekend — If the film is anywhere near as scary as the Spanish original it’s based on (“[Rec]”, which we checked out and dug a couple months ago), it’ll be a creepy time in the dark while you wait just three shorts weeks for Zack And Miri!

13. CLERKS (1994)

Kevin Smith’s debut, about a day in the life of two service-industry suburbanites, was made for $27,575. It’s hard to tell where all that money went, but the cruddy lensing and muddy sound actually enhance the experience. This spitball of nonstop scatology and pop-cult obsessiveness — what are the ethical implications of killing independent contractors aboard the Death Star? — feels like a bootleg copy of an adolescent mind. SIGNATURE LINE ”I’m not even supposed to be here today.”

Release Date: October 31
Featured Apatow acolytes: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Craig Robinson.
Apatovian plot: Rogen and Banks star as lifelong friends down on their luck. After a fifteen-year high-school reunion underscores their lack of accomplishment, they decide to start their own amateur porn company. Then, inexplicably, they fall in love.
How Judd Apatow would’ve made it funnier: Jay Baruchel as a high-maintenance mustached porn actor with performance anxiety.

1. Clerks, film, available on DVD. Perhaps the most eloquent Star Wars geek on record, director Kevin Smith crafted dialogue about the issue of contract labor on the second Death Star in Star Wars: Episode VI–Return of the Jedi. Collateral damage or deserving collaborators? The debate rages on.

Q: Next you’re going to be seen in Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make A Porno, which is having problems getting an R-rating due to explicit sexuality.

A: Looking back on filming, it was sort of romantic. But there is definitely some sex, and I know it’s gotten a reputation as a filthy movie. We live in a world where you can disembowel someone in a youth hostel in Romania but you can’t show people having sex. I think it’s weird. I honestly don’t think it deserves an NC-17 rating. Maybe we should have taken ‘porno’ out of the title. That kind of freaks people out, even though it is like the number one industry in the universe.

Yeah, but we just don’t think “Zack & Miri Make a Movie” would have the same ring, ya know?

“I’ve always been a sucker for “daddy stories” and I think Affleck delivered a solid performance of a single dad trying his best to raise his daughter. It is Kevin Smith’s most sincere movie to date. George Carlin played Affleck’s dad and did a great job in the performance, weighing sincerity with exasperation at the actions of his son throughout the movie. He was great in the film, as should be expected. “

SModcast 55: Naked Butz –


In which our heroes get corny, analyze the father of American obesity, and get a shot of maturity.