Clerks III Is an Invitation Inside Kevin Smith’s Heart
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The post Clerks III Is an Invitation Inside Kevin Smith’s Heart appeared first on Consequence.
Kevin Smith’s best films have always been his smallest and most personal works; as a filmmaker, his legacy is a fascinating one, as his attempts at more mainstream Hollywood flicks have never been as creatively successful as the films he increasingly makes specifically for his loyal fanbase.
This comes out specifically in the Clerks series, which Smith seems to use as a way of processing big turning points in his life: The original Clerks, of course, was all about the malaise of being in your 20s and not being sure about what to do with your life (its success solving that latter problem for Smith, at least initially).
Clerks II, arriving during the middle portion of Smith’s career, focuses a lot on what it means to settle down, get married, start a family, and embrace what you love doing, even if it doesn’t match with the ambitions of others. And Clerks III would probably be a very different film if Smith hadn’t had a heart attack in 2018, coming face-to-face with his own mortality in a way that plays a major role in the return of Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randall (Jeff Anderson).
After decades of clerking, Dante and Randall are now nearing 50 and still working at the Quick Stop — which at least they now own. But when Randall has an actual heart attack — a sequence which benefits greatly from Smith’s lived experience, simultaneously raw, grounded, and funny, anchored by a wonderful appearance by Amy Sedaris — he decides that he needs to do something substantial with his life, and thus embarks upon making an independent movie about what it’s like to be a convenience store clerk, “based on” his real life.
For Smith fans, details about the original Clerks, from the original budget ($27,000) to the original title (Inconvenience) to the original ending (Dante gets shot by an armed robber), are just part of the filmmaker’s mythology, and get acknowledged accordingly as Randall pursues his new dream.
But in contrast to Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, which is basically just nonstop Kevin Smith in-jokes for 105 minutes, Clerks III ends up being a much more somber affair. Beyond an audition sequence featuring plenty of Smith’s friends (including newcomers to the View Askewniverse like Smith’s Masters of the Universe stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and Chris Wood), the meta aspects of the story actually serve a greater emphasis on mortality — what it means to lose people, what it means to face your own death, and how that makes you consider what you’ll end up leaving behind.
Clerks III (Lionsgate)
To watch Clerks for the first time in the 1990s (on VHS, most likely, maybe in your best friend Nicky’s living room after she promised that you were going to love it) was to have your mind blown by the idea that a movie didn’t have to be big and epic and profound to make an impact. That there was room within the art form for a guy from New Jersey with some credit cards to tell a story about what his life was like, and that there was value in him doing so.
Plenty of people before and since have attempted what Smith did then, to varying degrees of success. But what allowed Clerks to break out in the 1990s, and what still makes it special, is that while the original film has its clumsy moments, Smith’s lack of experience as a filmmaker doesn’t suppress his voice there — in fact, it amplifies it, the film’s flaws only adding to the immediacy and the intimacy of its storytelling.
Some of Smith’s weaker qualities as a filmmaker have not gone away with age and experience. But another element has also endured: His openness and honesty. “I finally had something personal to say,” Holden (Ben Affleck) says in 1997’s Chasing Amy, a movie in part about Smith coming to understand and embrace his voice as a writer, and 25 years later it’s still exciting when he truly flexes those muscles.
Smith has always made it very easy to connect with both his work as well as his status as a celebrity, embracing formats like podcasting and standup that allow him to speak directly to his audiences. But what movies like Clerks III offer is the intimacy of Smith inviting us into his memories, with a blunt directness that only enhances that intimacy — like reading someone’s diary, if said diary had a lot of famous people making cameos and a healthy love of Star Wars jokes.
It’s an invitation given as a thank you for decades of fandom; aptly, Clerks III originally premiered in theaters as a roadshow prior to its VOD release, with Smith touring the country to directly connect with fans, who understand the spirit of his self-deprecating jokes and understand every subtle reference and Easter egg.
Those fans might end up hoping for a Clerks IV — it’s hard to imagine what form it might take, given the events of Clerks III, but hell, whoever thought there’d even be a Clerks II? But if it does happen, it’ll be fascinating to see what form it takes.
While there are surely some intimate details he does manage to keep private, at this point in his career Smith’s life and his work are pretty much one and the same. There are more accomplished and talented filmmakers working today, but Smith remains the master of making a movie feel truly personal. For decades now, across so many mediums, it’s been a pleasure to hear Silent Bob speak.
Clerks III is available now on VOD platforms.
Clerks III Is an Invitation Inside Kevin Smith’s Heart
Liz Shannon Miller
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