Director
1
Biography
October 18-20, 2017 Bow Tie Theatre Red Bank, New Jersey
A KEVIN SMITH FILM FESTIVAL
Reframing a Mundane Life to Find Fulfillment in Suburbia
Clerks Mallrats Chasing Amy Dogma Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back Clerks II
“Controversial, as we all know, is often a euphemism for interesting and intelligent.”
—KEVIN SMITH
TITLE DICTATES BEHAVIOR The Festival 04 Director 06 Venue 10 Clerks 14 Mallrats 20 Chasing Amy 26 Dogma 32 Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back 38 Clerks II 44
CHECK TO THE HEAD
4
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
Director
A cult favorite, director and writer Kevin Smith has a festival-worthy filmography, with notable projects such as Clerks and Chasing Amy. What ties all of his films together is the theme of ordinary suburbanites reevaluating their lives and having an epiphany that happiness is subjective and was there all along. This film festival commemorates the 25th anniversary of the release of Clerks, a true passion project that launched Smith’s career. Just as it is a perfect snapshot in time of middle-class America in the 90s, we hope that this festival will transport you to a time that is long gone, but also seems like just yesterday.
Biography
A VULGARTHON REBOOT
5
CHECK TO THE HEAD
6
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
Kevin Smith Born August 2, 1970 Red Bank, New Jersey
Kevin Smith is an American director, actor, producer, comedian and public speaker as well as a comic book writer, author, and podcaster.
Smith came to prominence with Clerks (1994), which he wrote, directed, co-produced, and acted in. Inspired by the success of Richard Linklater’s low-budget film Slackers, Smith left the Vancouver Film School after only four months. He maxed out his credit cards, sold his treasured comic book collection, moved back to New Jersey, and recruited friends and acquaintances to act in the film. Clerks, a social commentary on consumerism in America based on Smith’s own experiences working at a convenience store, was the breakout hit of the 1994 Sundance Festival and would launch Smith’s career. He has since gone on to make films that, while not strictly sequential, feature crossover plot elements, character references, and a shared canon described by fans as the “View Askewniverse”, named after his production company View Askew Productions. Smith’s films are known for their raunchy, yet stylized dialogue, geeky references, colorful characterizations, keen cultural perceptiveness, and complete disregard for political correctness. His influences and contemporaries include Richard Linklater, Scott Mosier, David Klein, and Harvey Weinstein.
7 Biography
A proud New Jerseyan, Smith was greatly influenced by his Catholic, middle-class upbringing. His father, a postal worker who abhorred his job, inspired Smith’s decision to follow his passions: film, comedy, and all things geeky. An overweight teen, he developed into a comedic observer of life in order to successfully socialize with friends and girls.
Director
A FAT, LAZY SLOB WHO DID GOOD
CHECK TO THE HEAD
A LIST OF SH*T HE’S MADE Clerks (1994) Mallrats (1995) Chasing Amy (1997) Dogma (1999)
8
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) Jersey Girl (2004)
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
Clerks II (2006) Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) Cop Out (2010) Red State (2011) Tusk (2014) Yoga Hosers (2016)
Director
9
Filmography
CHECK TO THE HEAD
10
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
Bow Tie Theater 36 White Street Red Bank, New Jersey
Venue
HELL WAS FULL, SO WE WENT TO JERSEY Asbury Park can claim Bruce Springsteen, and let Hackensack and Jersey City duke it out over Frank Sinatra. But Red Bank, New Jersey, is all about Count Basie for music— and Kevin Smith for all the rest.
11
Though raised in nearby Highlands and now settled in Los Angeles, Smith spent 10 years living in the close quarters of Red Bank, a speck less than 15 miles from the central Jersey coast and about 3.5 hours by car from D.C. He also owns a comic book store on the main drag, named after his tight-lipped alter ego, Silent Bob (full shop name: Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash). His production company, View Askew, is stationed here. And the movie-shooting locales, plus memories of his early films, are as embedded in the landscape as the slow-moving Navesink River and the power-washed brick buildings of downtown.
About
“Most people’s view of New Jersey is what they see when they fly into Newark—the oil refineries, the turnpike, the factories. But when they come here, they say, ‘My God, this doesn’t look like New Jersey. It’s so cute,’ ” says Smith. “There’s a reason we call it the Garden State, and this town is fully representational of that.” Bow Tie Theater, formerly known as Clearview Cinema, is known for showcasing independent films. Having served as the location for previous film festivals (inlcuding Smith’s Vulgarthon), Bow Tie Theater is the perfect locale for a festival celebrating the 25th anniversary of the premiere of the independent classic, Clerks.
CHECK TO THE HEAD
12
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE STAGGERING DRAWING POWER OF THE GARDEN STATE Molly Pitcher Inn 88 Riverside Avenue Red Bank, NJ 07701 (732) 747-2500 The Oyster Point Hotel 146 Bodman Place Red Bank, NJ 07701 (732) 530-8200
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
Extended Stay America 329 Newman Springs Road Red Bank, NJ 07701 (732) 450-8688 Courtyard by Marriott 245 Half Mile Road Red Bank, NJ 07701 (732) 530-5552 Comfort Inn 750 State Route 35 South Middletown, NJ 07748 (732) 671-3400 La Quinta Inn & Suites 109 Route 36 West Long Branch, NJ 07764 (732) 403-8700 Residence Inn by Marriott 90 Park Road Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 (732) 389-8100 Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites 294 Highway 36 East West Long Branch, NJ 07764 (732) 542-1234
Quality Suites 3 Centre Plaza Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 (732) 391-4299
13 Accomodations
Blue Bay Inn 51 First Avenue Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716 (732) 708-9600
Venue
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel 700 Hope Road Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 (732) 544-9300
CHECK TO THE HEAD
14
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
“I’m not even supposed to be here today!” — Dante Hicks
Clerks
15
October 19, 1994 Comedy Starring Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson Won the Filmmaker’s Award at Sundance
A day in the lives of two convenience clerks, Dante and Randal, as they annoy customers, discuss movies, and even close the store to play hockey on the roof.
Production Details
CL ERKS
CHECK TO THE HEAD
16 Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
It can’t happen here, not in the land of the free. But it has. Clerks—a movie with no sex, no violence and no harm done to animals—has been rated NC-17 because of talk. That’s all it is, hilariously profane chatter between two 22-year-old New Jersey clerks. Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) mans Quick Stop Groceries; his buddy Randal (Jeff Anderson) hassles customers at the pornheavy video dump next door. Clerks was shot in black and white over 21 days with an all-amateur cast. O’Halloran and Anderson deserve to be stars for the mad-dog humor and unexpected compassion they bring to their roles. The writer and director is Kevin Smith, 23, a first timer who’s been dissing the customers as a Quick Stop clerk in Leonardo, N.J., since he was 19. Smith had to squeeze his credit cards and sell his comic-book collection to raise the pitiful $27,575 it took to honor the wit and wisdom of cash-register jockeys everywhere. It was worth it. Clerks is a pisser, the comedy event of the year for the slacker in all of us. Savvy, smartass and screamingly funny, Clerks won praise at Cannes, a prize at Sundance and a pickup from Miramax. For all its raucous sex talk, Clerks hardly qualifies as a dangerous influence. Smith is an astute social chronicler. His focus is on Dante, the conscientious clerk that O’Halloran plays with such whining and winning exactitude. Dante turns to Randal, the video clerk from hell as played with deadpan comic brilliance by Anderson. They compare the Star Wars trilogy with Randal finding Dante’s preference for The Empire Strikes Back over Return of the Jedi artistic “blasphemy.” Not much happens. The guys organize a game of roof hockey, attend a friend’s funeral (Randal tips the casket) and mess up the store in a knockdown fight over the future. But in the course of this day in the life of two clerks, Smith nails the obsessive verbal wrangling of smart, stalled twentysomethings who can’t figure out how to get their ideas into motion. Smith credits Richard Linklater’s Slacker as inspiration. But Clerks supplies its own subversively witty take on Generation Next. There is nothing dumb about Smith’s articulate underachievers. It’s the ratings board, out to silence these rudely insightful voices, that isn’t thinking.
ZO N K ! Clerks
17
Film Review
“I’ve always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I’m feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that’s really it. In anything I’ve ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don’t think is a bad thing.” —KEVIN SMITH
CHECK TO THE HEAD
20
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
“Eateries that operate within the designated square downstairs qualify as food court. Anything outside, of said designated square, is considered an autonomous unit for mid-mall snacking.” —Brodie Bruce
Mallrats
21
October 20, 1995 Comedy Starring Shannen Doherty, Jeremy London, Jason Lee, Claire Forlani, Priscilla Barnes, and Michael Rooker Two suburban high-school friends spend the day wandering around a local mall and causing trouble in order to win their ex-girlfriends back.
Production Details
M A L L R AT S
CHECK TO THE HEAD
22
Steeped in comics, television shows, theme park rides and junk food, the slackers in Kevin Smith’s Mallrats have found the ideal place to while away their time. They roam a New Jersey shopping center with the same jokey contentiousness that animated Smith’s Clerks and turned the director into a convenience-store Cinderella.
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
T. S. (Jeremy London) and Brodie (Jason Lee) have just been ditched by their respective girlfriends (Claire Forlani and Shannen Doherty) and go to the mall to drown their sorrows. Once there, they bump into old friends—Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith himself), the amusing, Star Wars-obsessed crackpots from Clerks—and decide to sabotage the television game show that will be staged there later the same day. Compared to Smith’s first film, Mallrats is looser and more ordinary. Smith’s way of offsetting this conventional side is to throw in wild cards, like the boys’ visit to a topless psychic (“It makes the news easier to take”). The film also features a Stan Lee cameo that amounts, in this context, to a divine visitation, along with witty main titles that cast the film’s characters as comic book art. It also involves the kind of deadpan conversational explicitness that almost saddled Clerks with an NC-17 rating though, in this case, Smith is more careful to pull his punches. Whenever anyone here speaks of “having sex in a very uncomfortable place”—and this gag recurs often— somebody else always counters, “What, like the back of a Volkswagen?” There’s a lot more where that came from. The big find in Mallrats is Jason Lee, whose Brodie has the grunge and surliness to give him credibility, but who also has a sweet, funny indignation over life’s little outrages, which are actually this film’s most heartfelt concerns. When Brodie gets his say as a game show contestant, he rescues an overlong sequence with the cheerful rowdiness that remains the hallmark of Smith’s promising style. Lee builds upon a character model begun by Jeff Anderson in Clerks—the nerd who holds himself above all else...the cretin who laughs at cretins.
He tells bizarre stories about his cousin Walt that he swears are true. He treats superheroes so seriously he gets into lively discussions about their sexual lives. He would rather finish a SEGA hockey game than connect with his girlfriend. Though we would like to think we wouldn’t like this guy in real life, there is something endearing about this loser that reminds us that you, or somebody who is close to you, is just like him! So, ignore the so-called plot about London and Lee attempting to get back their respective girls on an average day at the mall, and focus on the verbal hijinks that Lee plays. In Mallrats, Smith touches the heart of each person who feels that they are their own life’s running commentary.
Mallrats
23
Film Review
“Mallrats is lousy with comic references (lousy meaning lots, not meaning unskilled use of) and, whether you’re a collector or not, the film will come off as more engaging than alienating.” —KEVIN SMITH
CHECK TO THE HEAD
26
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
“If this is a crush, I don’t think I could take it if the real thing ever happened.” — Holden McNeil
Chasing Amy
27
April 4, 1997 Comedy-drama Starring Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and Jason Lee Golden Globe Nomination—Best Actress Holden and Banky are comic book artists. Everything’s going well for them until they meet Alyssa, who is also a comic book artist. Holden falls for her, but his hopes are crushed when he finds out she’s gay.
Production Details
CH A SING A M Y
CHECK TO THE HEAD
28
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
Chasing Amy is a romantic comedy about people who write comic books for a living, and whose most passionate conversations can center on the sex lives of Archie and Jughead.
The movie’s sneaky in the way it draws us in. We expect the characters to exist at a certain comic level, and they do, but then important things happen to them (love, friendship and happiness are all threatened—along with all the adjustments of self-image that are necessary if romance is going to be able to leap across the straight/gay divide). Like the clerks in Smith’s first film, these characters are verbal, passionate and poetic. As Chasing Amy redefines the boy-meets-girl formula for a culture where anything goes, including perhaps another boy or girl, it thrives on Smith’s dry, deadpan direction. His knowing humor and unruffled style make a good antidote to gender chaos. His willingness to follow his characters into the subjects that obsess them, even if they stray from the plot (Racism and white imperialism of Star Wars, for example), work in his favor and is quickly becoming his hallmark. Smith retrieves some of the spare look of his celebrated first feature. Still showing his touch for garrulous, hair-splitting conversation, Smith engages his characters in a bright, spirited demonstration of just how difficult modern love can be.
29 Film Review
This could be the setup for an empty-headed sexcom, but Smith is more ambitious and subtle. While the surface of his film sparkles with sharp,
Holden’s discovery that Alyssa is gay, and his even more inconvenient discovery that he loves her, anyway—loves her, and her wit and personality and throaty, chuckling voice with an intensity that reveals to him the vacuity of all his previous loves. He is desperate. Holden and Alyssa are off and running in a set of conversations that artfully challenge their basic assumptions about sex and love. Banky, who makes anti-gay jokes and seems to want Holden to himself, is furious about this and complains helplessly from the sidelines.
Chasing Amy
We meet his Gen X heroes at a comic book convention. Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) have been best friends for years, live together, and take their art so seriously that when an obnoxious fan says “an inker is only a tracer,” there’s a fight. Then Holden meets Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), another comic book artist, and they immediately hit it off, but what Holden doesn’t realize is that Alyssa is a lesbian.
ironic dialogue, deeper issues are forming, and Chasing Amy develops into a film of touching insights. For Kevin Smith, Chasing Amy represents a big step ahead into the ranks of today’s most interesting new directors. Total candor, shifting sexual orientations and an atmosphere of teasing, freewheeling argument make Chasing Amy a spiky comedy with engaging honesty at its core. In his own roundabout way, Smith identifies sexual conundrums that movies haven’t often dealt with before.
“[Make] a science fiction movie? I don’t know. I think I’ve made one already— Chasing Amy. Because you go ask any lesbian: that’ll never happen.” —KEVIN SMITH
A B NG !
CHECK TO THE HEAD
32
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
“Tell a person that you’re the Metatron and they stare at you blankly. Mention something out of a Charlton Heston movie and suddenly everybody is a theology scholar.” —Metatron
Dogma
33
November 12, 1999 Comedy Starring Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Salma Hayek, Jason Lee, Alan Rickman, and Chris Rock An abortion clinic worker with a special heritage is called upon to save the existence of humanity from being negated by two renegade angels trying to exploit a loop-hole and reenter Heaven.
Production Details
DOGM A
CHECK TO THE HEAD
34
Smith’s Dogma grows out of an irreverent modern Catholic sensibility, a byproduct of parochial schools, where the underlying faith is taken seriously but the visible church is fair game for kidding. For those reared in such traditions, it’s no reach at all to imagine two fallen angels finding a loophole to get back into heaven.
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
As someone who values his parochial school education and still gets into interminable debates about church teachings, I enjoyed the Dogma approach, which takes church teaching jokingly and very seriously indeed—both at the same time. It reflects a mentality I’m familiar with. (For example, it’s a sin to harbor an impure thought, but how many seconds counts as harboring?) I am also familiar with the Catholic League, which is protesting this film as blasphemous. Every church has that crowd—the holier-thanthous who want to be your moral traffic cop. It’s interesting that no official church spokesman has seconded them. You’d think the church might tell the league to stop embarrassing it, but no, that would be no better than the league attacking Smith. We are actually free in this country to disagree about religion, and blasphemy is still not a crime, as of yet. What’s more, I think a Catholic God might plausibly enjoy a movie like Dogma, or at least understand the human impulses that made it, as he made them. (“He’s lonely—but he’s funny,“ an angel says in the movie.) After all, it takes Catholic theology absolutely literally, and in such detail that non-Catholics may need to be issued Catechisms on their way into the theater (not everybody knows what a plenary indulgence is). Sure, it contains a lot of four-letter words, because it has characters who use them as punctuation. But, hey, they’re vulgarities, not blasphemies. Venial, not mortal. Sure, it has a flawed prophet who never gives up trying to get into the heroine’s pants, but even St. Augustine has been there, done that. The story: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play Loki and Bartleby, two angels cast out of heaven and exiled for all eternity to Wisconsin. They hear about a trendy bishop (George Carlin) who wants
to give the church an upbeat new image. He’s rededicating a cathedral in New Jersey in the image of Buddy Jesus, a Christ who blesses his followers with the A-OK sign. Anyone entering the cathedral will get a plenary indulgence (which means that if you are in a state of grace, all temporal punishment for sin is remitted, and you can enter directly into heaven). Bartleby and Loki see the loophole: Walk through the church’s doors, and they qualify again for heaven. There is a problem with this plan (apart from the obvious one, which is that church rules govern men, not angels). The problem is explained by Metatron (Alan Rickman), an angel who appears inside a pillar of fire in the bedroom of Bethany (Linda Fiorentino). After she douses him with a fire extinguisher, he explains that if the angels re-enter heaven, God will be proven fallible—and all existence will therefore end. He tells Bethany that she is the last surviving relative of Jesus on Earth, that two prophets will appear to her, and that she must follow them in order to stop the angels and save the universe. Smith loves to involve his characters in long witty conversations about matters of religion, sexuality and politics. He is a gifted comic writer who loves paradox, rhetoric and unexpected zingers from the blind side. Smith has made a movie that reflects the spirit in which many Catholics regard their church. He has positioned his comedy on the balance line between theological rigidity and secular reality, which is where so many Catholics find themselves. He deals with eternal questions in terms of flawed characters who live now, today, in an imperfect world. Those whose approach to religion is spiritual will have little trouble with Dogma, because they will understand the characters as imperfect, sincere, clumsy seekers trying to do the right thing. Those who see religion more as a team, a club, a hobby or a pressure group are going to be upset. This movie takes theological matters out of the hands of “spokesmen” and entrusts them to, well, the unwashed. And goes so far as to suggest that God loves them. And is a Canadian.
Dogma
35
Film Review
BO
OM
“I just wanted to make a flick that celebrated my faith...kind of like a psalm, if you will. David so loved God that he used to write psalms to the guy all the time. This is kind of like a 2-hour psalm, with a lot of d*ck and fart jokes in it.” —KEVIN SMITH
CHECK TO THE HEAD
38
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
“What? You don’t know f*ckin’ Jay and Silent Bob? The f*ckin’ mack daddies of f*ckin’ Jersey?" — Jay
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
August 24, 2001 Comedy Starring Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, Shannon Elizabeth, Will Ferrell, Jason Lee, and Chris Rock The comic Bluntman and Chronic is based on real-life stoners Jay and Silent Bob, so when they get no profit from a big-screen adaptation they set out to wreck the movie.
Production Details
JAY A ND SIL EN T BOB S T RIK E BACK
39
CHECK TO THE HEAD
40
What’s sad is that Smith has to keep justifying his right to parody prejudice and skewer male adolescents of all ages. Smith needs no defense, and neither does Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a blast of comic irreverence that serves as a starring vehicle for two stoner characters who had previously been relegated to the sidelines. Smith intends to retire Jay and Silent Bob and grow up. God and Alanis Morissette forbid.
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
The plot, such as it is, involves the boys’ journey from Jersey to the evil empire of Hollywood to stop Miramax from making a film about their lives starring James Van Der Beek as Jay and Jason Biggs as Silent Bob. “I know you,“ says Jay on seeing Biggs. “You’re the guy that f*cked the pie.” Budgeted at $20 million, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back contains many remarkable things for a Smith movie. Nothing resembling a linear story, of course, and there are the usual fart, weed and d*ck jokes, not to mention the references to Star Wars and the musical stylings of Morris Day and the Time, but in this film the camera actually moves. For sex appeal, Pie girl Shannon Elizabeth suits up in leather to play Justice, the leader of Charlie’s Angels-like diamond thieves named Sissy (Eliza Dushku), Chrissy (Ali Larter) and Missy (Jennifer Schwalbach). Jay is smitten with Justice. As he tells Silent Bob, whom he refers to by such terms of endearment as Lunch Box, Fat F*ck and Tubby B*tch, “She’s the first woman I ever loved enough not to stick my hand down her pants.” So much for sentiment. Actors from other Smith films show up, including George Carlin, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams and Chris Rock. Then there’s the monkey, a smelly surprise to savor. Is there a point to all this? Not really. It’s just an excuse for Smith to fire comic darts at everything from Hollywood—the scene in which Affleck and Damon rag on each other’s queer choices in roles while shooting a sequel to Good Will Hunting is a howl—to the Internet, which has allowed everyone in America to b*tch about movies. In the film, one such troll disses our boys for spouting “babytalk catchphrases like a third-rate Cheech and Chong or Bill and Ted. F*ck Jay and Silent Bob.”
As ever, Mewes is a god of verbal incontinence. “There’s a bunch of motherf*ckers we don’t even know calling us *ssholes on the Internet to a bunch of teenagers and guys who don’t get laid,” says Jay, before posting this threat on a chat board: “We’re gonna f*ck your mothers while you watch and cry like little b*tches.” What they actually do is less traumatic, but a whole lot funnier. A few critics, online and off, will no doubt castigate Smith for reveling in lowbrow antics that are beneath the newfound feeling he showed in Chasing Amy. They won’t be wrong, but they’d also be missing the point. With Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Smith is saying goodbye to much of his gloriously misspent youth. He won’t be the only one to miss it.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
41
Film Review
“We err on the side of intelligence. There’s really low-brow humor in the movie, but it’s mixed in with smarter, more intelligent humor. Having said that, I know we’re not doing Beckett...and at the end of the day, funny is funny.” —KEVIN SMITH
CHECK TO THE HEAD
44
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
“I got to watch movies, f*ck with *ssholes and hang out with my best friend all day. Can you think of a better way to make a living? Yeah, maybe it wasn't what everyone does, but it was pretty f*cking good." —Randal Graves
Clerks II
45
July 21, 2006 Comedy Starring Jeff Anderson, Brian O'Halloran, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Jennifer Schwalbach, Jason Mewes, and Kevin Smith Eleven years after we last left them, clerks Dante and Randal look for new horizons after their shops burn down, but ultimately settle at fast food empire Mooby's.
Production Details
CL ERKS II
CHECK TO THE HEAD
46
The 1990s, you may recall, were a golden age of cheaply made movies about white guys in their 20s sitting around doing nothing. This is not a genre that has spawned very many sequels. The guys who made those movies either faded away, went on to bigger things, or kept making variations on the same picture again and again.
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
Viewed alongside his peers, Kevin Smith, the director of Clerks and now, 12 years later, of Clerks II, seems both typical and exceptional. After the success of Clerks, he did go on to bigger things, but he also kept coming back to the themes and attitudes (and some of the same characters) that made his first film an especially durable example of its type. So, Clerks II can be taken either as Smith’s sentimental homecoming or as evidence of arrested development. His filmmaking technique, charmingly rudimentary when he started out, has not developed very far but, then again, aesthetic polish has never been among his priorities. What makes Clerks II both winning and (somewhat unexpectedly) moving is its fidelity to the original Clerks ethic of hanging out, talking trash and refusing all worldly ambition. If anything, the sequel is more defiant in its disdain for the rat race, elevating the guy-doing-nothing prerogative from a lifestyle choice to a moral principle. In terms of characterization, Smith’s fondness for jokes about excrement, bestiality and related topics is so evidently childish that it is hard to be offended, or even especially provoked, when he tries to test the limits of taste. The characters talk dirty as a way of passing the time, dispelling boredom and expressing their squeamish fascination with the messy weirdness of being human. In conclusion, Smith’s sincerity is disarming, and his love for his characters, even at their weakest or meanest, is hard not to share. Clerks II has a dirty mind, but its heart is pure.
Clerks II
47
Film Review
“Storytelling is my currency. It’s my only worth. The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story...That’s why I’m always hoping society never collapses because the first ones to go will be entertainers.” —KEVIN SMITH
CHECK TO THE HEAD
50 Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia
F OR MOR E INF OR M AT ION , V I S I T:
CheckToTheHead.com
BowTieCinemas.com
CHECK TO THE HEAD
54
Reframing a mundane life to find fulfillment in suburbia