Movies - Clerks.

	Movies - Clerks.

Clerks. is a 1994 film written and directed by Kevin Smith and starring Brian O'Halloran as Dante Hicks and Jeff Anderson as Randal Graves. It presents a day in the lives of two shop clerks and their acquaintances.

History

Clerks was Smith's first in his New Jersey Trilogy. It introduces several characters, notably Jay and Silent Bob, who reappear in his later films. The film is in black-and-white and roughly edited due to a budget of less than $30,000 (mainly consisting of credit cards, the worth of director Smith's extensive comic book collection and insurance money); it became a surprising success after it was taken by Miramax Films and polished with additions to the soundtrack.

The MPAA originally gave Clerks an NC-17 rating, based purely on the film's explicit dialogue — it contains no real violence, and no clearly depicted nudity. This was a financial death sentence, as very few cinemas in the United States will screen NC-17 movies. Miramax hired civil-liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz to appeal the decision; the MPAA relented and re-rated the film with the more commercial 'R' rating, without altering any frame or word.

Clerks won the "Award of the Youth" and the "Mercedes-Benz Award" at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, tied with Fresh for the "Filmmakers Trophy" at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards (Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay and Jeff Anderson for Best Debut Performance).

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Clerks the 16th greatest comedy film of all time.

In 2006, British film magazine Empire listed Clerks as the 4th greatest independent film.

Cast

Brian O'Halloran
- Dante Hicks
Jeff Anderson
- Randal Graves
Marilyn Ghigliotti
- Veronica Loughran
Lisa Spoonhauer
- Caitlin Bree
Jason Mewes
- Jay
Kevin Smith
- Silent Bob
Scott Mosier - Willam Black/Angry Hockey Playing Customer/Angry Mourner

Related projects

Of all of Smith's films, Clerks. is the one with the most spin-off products.

In 1995, a pilot was made for a live action TV show. It was produced by Disney and Buena Vista Entertainment. The pilot only referenced the character names and starred none of the cast from the original film, contained no foul language, did not mention Jay and Silent Bob, and had nothing to do with Kevin Smith, as he was making his second film Mallrats at the time. Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson both auditioned for the role of Dante Hicks (as Anderson's part of Randal from the film had already been filled by former SNL performer Jim Breuer). After seeing the end result, Smith said that it was terrible, and O'Halloran and Anderson said they were both glad they didn't get the part of Dante.

Clerks: The Animated Series
was a short-lived six-episode animated television series of the same name, featuring the same characters and actors. Two episodes aired on the ABC network (a subsidiary of the Disney company, which also owns Miramax, the studio which released many of Smith's films, including Clerks. itself) in late May/early June 2000 before vanishing from the lineup altogether. The Comedy Central network eventually broadcast all six episodes of the series for a short time in 2004, as part of its late-night and weekend programming.

A feature animated film was planned, based on the series, to be titled Clerks: Sell Out. The plan was to release the movie straight-to-DVD, though as of September 2005, it appears to be on hold.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Clerks. ]

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