Clerks (1994) on Netflix
Called in on his day off, Dante Hicks runs the Quick Stop in Leonardo, New Jersey, with its shutters jammed shut. Randal, the video store clerk next door, keeps him company.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.7/10241,802 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dante Hicks clerks at the Quick Stop Groceries convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey. On his day off, his boss orders him to cover a morning shift, and the locks on the outside shutters are jammed with gum, so he hangs a sheet outside declaring the store open. A man with a bag he claims holds a diseased human lung turns the customers against Dante for selling cigarettes, until his girlfriend Veronica quiets the crowd with a fire extinguisher and throws him out. She and Dante trade accounts of their pasts, and she walks out. Randal Graves, Dante's best friend, clerks at the video store next door, arrives late, and spends the shift bothering Dante's customers.
Cast
- Al Berkowitzas Old Man
- Ed Hapstakas Sanford / Angry Mourner
- Lee Bendickas #812 Wynarski
Show all 19 cast
- Pattijean Csikas Coroner
- Donna Jeanneas Indecisive Video Customer
- Virginia Smithas Caged Animal Masturbator
- Betsy Broussardas Dental School Video Customer
- Ernest O'Donnellas Trainer
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Clerks (1994)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Kevin Smith financed Clerks' $27,575 budget by selling off part of his comic book collection (later buying it back), borrowing $3,000 from his parents, maxing out eight to ten credit cards with $2,000 limits each, and using insurance money he received after property of his was damaged in a storm.
- The MPAA originally gave Clerks an NC-17 rating based purely on the film's explicit dialogue, though it contains no sex, no clearly depicted nudity and no violence beyond one fight; Miramax hired civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz to appeal the decision.
- Kevin Smith could only film in the store at night while it was closed, from 10:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., which is why the shutters are down in the film; working at Quick Stop by day, he frequently slept no more than an hour.
- Kevin Smith originally wrote the part of Randal for himself, but handed it to his friend Jeff Anderson because writing, directing, working at the store and playing a lead role all at once was too difficult; Smith took the less-demanding role of Silent Bob.
SPOILER
The film's original, depressing ending was criticized by Bob Hawk and John Pierson after its first screening at the Independent Feature Film Market; on Pierson's advice, Smith cut the ending short, ending with Randal's departure and deleting Dante's death.- Walt Flanagan ended up playing several roles in Clerks only because the actors Smith had hired for them did not show up; Smith would often, in jest, refer to Flanagan as "the Lon Chaney of the '90s".
- Jason Mewes, who plays Jay, is in none of the photo shoots for Clerks: Miramax Films, which bought the distribution rights after Sundance, believed Jay had no commercial appeal and would scare audiences rather than entice them.
- In 2019 the Library of Congress selected Clerks for preservation in the National Film Registry, judging it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
