Quick Stop
| Clerks | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Kevin Smith |
| Produced by |
Scott Mosier Kevin Smith |
| Written by | Kevin Smith |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | David Klein |
| Edited by | Scott Mosier Kevin Smith |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Miramax Films |
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Release date
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October 19, 1994 |
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Running time
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92 minutes (Theatrical release) 104 minutes (The First Cut) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $27,575 $230,000 (post) |
| Box office | $3.2 million |
Clerks is a 1994 American black comedy film written and directed by Kevin Smith. Starring Brian O'Halloran as Dante Hicks and Jeff Anderson as Randal Graves, it presents a day in the lives of two store clerks and their acquaintances. Shot entirely in black-and-white, Clerks is the first of Smith's View Askewniverse films, and introduces several recurring characters, notably Jay and Silent Bob, the latter played by Smith himself. The structure of the movie contains nine scene breaks, signifying the nine rings of hell as in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, from which the main character, Dante, gets his name.
Clerks was shot for $27,575 in the convenience and video stores where director Kevin Smith worked in real life. Upon its theatrical release, the film grossed over $3 million in theaters, launching Smith's career.
Dante Hicks, a 22-year-old retail clerk at the Quick Stop convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey, is called into work on his day off by his boss to cover a few hours for another employee who is sick. Arriving at the store, he finds that the locks to the security shutters are jammed closed with chewing gum, so he hangs a sheet over them with a message written in shoe polish: "I ASSURE YOU; WE'RE OPEN."
Dante's day is spent in the purgatory of serving a succession of customers while repeating the fact that he is "not even supposed to be here today". Stressed with the demands of his job, Dante passes time in wide-ranging conversations with his best friend, Randal Graves. Randal is an irresponsible slacker who works in the next-door video store, RST Video, although he spends most of the day at the Quick Stop, neglecting the video store's customers. They converse about many things to pass time, such as whether or not the contractors working on the second Death Star when it was destroyed at the end of Return of the Jedi were innocent victims. Other events of the day include the discovery that Dante's high school girlfriend, Caitlin Bree, whom he has been having early morning phone conversations with, is engaged to be married. Dante's current girlfriend, Veronica Loughran, also stops in to bring him homemade lasagne. The two talk about Dante's stuck-in-a-rut lifestyle with no motivation to change before having an argument about her past sexual partners.
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Wikipedia