Check out Clerks

By Jeremy Goodman

On paper, Clerks, amateur writer and director Kevin Smith's 1994 comic masterpiece, is just another generic Hollywood teen movie, except without any budget, celebrities or graphic sexuality. But once you scratch the surface, other problematic aspects of the film begin to present themselves: the acting has the sincerity of a politician, the cinematography might as well consist of a camcorder on a tripod, and the entire film seems to be the work of a couple of convenience store clerks who decided to blow off a day of work, round up their buddies and make a movie.

Yet, when film historians look back at 1994, they say, "Ah, Clerks, that loathsome but lovable indie classic." Smith crafts an intricate plot, complex dialogue and oddball characters that are as entertaining as they are memorable. The film is guaranteed to offend you, make you laugh till you cry and make you feel disgusted for doing so.

Clerks is a day in the life of 22-year-old Quick Stop Grocery clerk Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) and the many characters who harass, obsess and exploit him. The movie begins with a phone call. Dante falls out of the closet, where he had been sleeping, into a sea of dirty laundry and gropes for the phone. It's Dante's boss, telling him that he has to come into work on his day off.

But Dante is the master of adapting to adverse situations, from using two halves of a piggy bank as a bowl and a glass, to making an "I Assure You, We're Open" sign out of shoe polish and a sheet, to stealing newspapers from a vending machine. His resourceful behavior characterizes him as gritty, grungy and gross and sets the stage for the entrance of Dante's friend and clerk of the adjacent video store, Randal (Jeff Anderson), the worst employee in the world.

Randal repeatedly deserts his post, argues with the customers and barrages them with insults, spittle and pornography; he even sells cigarettes to a four-year-old. When he's not working, he's either convincing Dante to close the store so that they can play hockey on the roof, getting him to go to a wake (where Randal knocks over the corpse), or borrowing Dante's car to go rent a movie (he works in a video store, mind you).

Over the course of the day, Dante also tries to patch things up with his ex-girlfriend Caitlin Bree (Lisa Spoonhauer), who is engaged to an Asian design major. Meanwhile, he attempts to smooth things over with his present girlfriend Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti), with whom he fights about college, her personal oral sex resume and Caitlin.

He also has to deal with a series of strange, irritating and utterly bizarre customers, from a guidance counselor looking for the perfect dozen of eggs, to a customer with his hand stuck in a Pringles can, to a representative of Chewlies Gum (a tobacco substitute) who incites a mob to pelt Dante with cigarettes at six in the morning.

There are plenty of events that are foul and obscene (including, but by no means limited to, hermaphroditic porn, necrophilia and animal masturbation), but none are shown graphically. Clerks is not a gross-out movie. It is, rather, a commentary on authority. Dante is the complaining and depressed slave to society, who comes in on his day off, works for slave wages, and keeps whining, "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" Randal is Dante's polar opposite, an anarchist with no respect for authority. He closes the video store to go next door and talk to Dante, spits in one customer's face and shoves pornography in another's. He then claims that he is trying to convince Dante that "title does not dictate behavior."

The key to Clerks' effectiveness is its ability to portray monotony accurately without becoming monotonous itself. The camera is held in place, the film is in black and white, and the low quality of the acting mimics the awkward speech of a man with no direction in his life, creating a sense of dismal, droning drudgery. Kevin Smith, once a convenience store employee himself, vividly captures the life that is minimum-wage America.

The mouthpieces for Smith and the most memorable characters in Clerks are the now-classic Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith himself, respectively). The two drug dealers have their own comedic series of events as they deal outside the convenience store. Jay is a ranting, sexist pig with a mouth that couldn't be cleaned by an entire warehouse of Dial soap. Silent Bob, who only speaks once in the film, is the wise force that makes Dante realize that he loves Veronica after all.

Don't be fooled: Clerks is five percent romantic, 10 percent political, 85 percent obscene and 100 percent hilarious. In one scene, Dante, Randal and a customer argue over whether or not it was a tragedy when all the independent contractors on the second Death Star were blown up in Return of the Jedi while the thrash metal song "Chewbacca" drones in the background.

Don't bring your grandmother, but go see this movie.

Clerks is rated R for profanity, adult humor and adult situations. Not for children. Clerks plays at the AFI through Thursday, March 25 at 9:40 every night.