Clerks

what the film does

dante hicks (brian o’halloran), a convenience store clerk in leonardo, new jersey, gets called in on his day off. his friend randal graves (jeff anderson) works next door at the video store and spends the entire shift in dante’s store instead. the film follows a single day: customers come and go, dante’s girlfriend reveals a sexual history, randal argues about the independent contractors who built the death star, and a dead body turns up in the bathroom. jay and silent bob (jason mewes and kevin smith) loiter outside selling weed. the whole thing is in black and white and looks like it cost exactly what it cost.

why this one

clerks is the film that proved you do not need a budget. smith shot it at night in the quick stop where he worked, using borrowed film stock and friends as cast. the dialogue carries the whole picture. randal’s rants about star wars, hermaphroditic porn, and the moral obligation of video store employees to warn customers about bad movies are the platonic ideal of the pop-culture argument as art form. miramax bought it at sundance, spent $230,000 on music rights and editing, and released it to $4.4 million in theaters. the library of congress added it to the national film registry in 2019. smith built an entire cinematic universe around the two guys in front of the store, but the first one is the one where the ratio of money to voice is the highest it has ever been in american independent film.