CLERKS.
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: One day in the life of two clerks. CLERKS. is a very funny and perceptive film debut for writer/director/editor/clerk Kevin Smith. This ultra- low budget film proves the most cost-effective ingredient to improve the quality of a film is the writing. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4)
The logo at the beginning of the film is a microcosm of the film itself. Technically it is a poor piece of animation. Under the title telling us this is a View Askew Production is a slightly off-color gag that is fairly funny. And CLERKS. is the first View Askew production, a comedy about clerks at the local Quick Stop. In fact, Kevin Smith, who wrote the film based on years of experience clerking, shot the film at night, then when the daylight came the actors cleared out and Smith worked behind the counter as (what else?) a clerk. He paid for the film on what little he could get from backers, even less that he could earn clerking, and money he could borrow with his credit cards. The film is shot in black and white with virtually no art direction. To prepare the store for shooting, Kevin Smith moved the lottery machine off the counter. Smith had only two professional actors. Second billing went to Jeff Anderson who has no acting experience (and happens to work in the mail room of the same company I work for). This goes beyond film minimalism; in only slightly less capable hands this would be considered an amateur film. Instead it won top prize in the Critics' Week section at Cannes, has been doing very well at other film festivals, and has been fought over by distributors. Miramax won the battle and will spend four times the cost of the film just promoting it. Why has it been so successful? Because Kevin Smith is a good writer with a great sense of humor. Good jokes and dialogue are cheap and are most of what this film has to offer.
Dante (Brian O'Halloran) didn't plan to work today. He wanted to take it easy and play a little hockey in the afternoon. But when you are a clerk you have to answer even the unexpected call of duty. The day starts badly with first some vandalism discovered and then an anti-smoking activist trying to scare off cigarette customers. Dante's girlfriend Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti) visits, and the two sit behind the counter and have an explicit sex discussion in which each is shocked by the other's experience. Dante's best friend Randal (Jeff Anderson) drops in from the video store next door where he clerks. And so the day goes with friends and weirdo customers coming in and leaving. Through the dialogue we get a story of a love triangle, and another of unfinished business between friends.
In fact, this is not a typical day at all in a Quick Stop. Like the flight in MEMPHIS BELLE, it is a distillation of the most dramatic parts of many days. Even with that, the plotting is pretty mundane stuff. What sets this film apart is the dialogue which is often hilarious. Not unlike PULP FICTION, the story is broken into titled substories. The one-word titles of those stories (e.g. "Syntax," "Juxtaposition") do not always make sense, but they do focus the audience in on the story.
Smith tells his story with no more violence than a poorly staged fist fight between two people who are really friends. There is no nudity or on-screen sex, yet the MPAA rated the film an NC-17 for extremely explicit sexual language. This seriously damaged the film's profit potential and Miramax hired Alan Dershowitz to appeal the rating. Without any cuts the MPAA changed the rating to an R. But for those who are bothered by such things, be warned that the language is very explicit. Still CLERKS. is one of the funnier comedies you are likely to see this year. I give it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
SPOILER SPOILER
CLERKS. qualifies as a genuinely experimental film if for no other reason than that it is the only film in recent memory to have scenes in a convenience store without having the store being robbed. Earlier cuts of the film had Dante murdered at the end in a robbery, but that ending has been excised.
Note: The film and Kevin Smith's cap list the title with a period. Every place else the period seems to be dropped. I assume that Smith, who titled the film, prefers the title with the punctuation.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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