Cult 101: Clerks (1995)

Opens on July 19

Director: Kevin Smith Run Time: 92 min. Rating: R Release Year: 1994

Starring: Brian O'Halloran, Jason Mewes, Jeff Anderson, Lisa Spoonauer, Marilyn Ghigliotti

Country: United States
Language: English

Cult 101 at Gateway Film Center

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About the film:

Award of the Youth and Mercedes-Benz Award Winner at Cannes Film Festival 1994.
Selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the National Film Preservation Board in 2019.

It’s one wild day in the life of a pair of overworked counter jockeys, whose razor-sharp wit and on-the-job antics give a whole new meaning to customer service. Even while braving a nonstop parade of unpredictable shoppers, the clerks manage to play hockey on the roof, visit a funeral home and straighten out their offbeat love lives. The boss is nowhere in sight, so you can bet anything can and will happen when these guys are left to run the store.

“[Clerks] has the attitude of a gas station attendant who tells you to check your own oil. It’s grungy and unkempt, and Dante and Randal look like they have been nourished from birth on beef jerky and Cheetos.”

—Roger Ebert

Images courtesy of Paramount

About the filmmaker:

Ever since his emergence onto the national stage, writer-director Kevin Smith became the idol of aspiring filmmakers everywhere when his independent feature Clerks (1994)—made for a startlingly low sum of $27,575—earned awards at both the Cannes and Sundance film festivals and went on to become a wild success in limited art house release.

Self-referential to a fault, Smith uses his films to expand his fictional universe populated with a regular cast of characters who eventually crossed over into other mediums, including comic books and an animated television series. Some of Smith’s most well-known films include Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999) and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). As a podcaster, Smith cohosts several shows on his SModcast Podcast Network, including SModcast, Fatman Beyond, and the live show Hollywood Babble-On.

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