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Clerks Proves Ignorance is Bliss
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MM: What was your budget?
KS: We just took all our credit cards and maxed them out throughout shooting. It wound up being 10 grand.
MM: Where did the $17,000 balance come from?
KS: My parents kicked in $3,000 for the camera package, and Scott’s parents kicked in $3,000 for the answer print. The rest came from credit cards. There was also a comic book collection sold in the process, and there was flood money. My hometown, Highlands, was flooded and the government gave me $3,000 for two cars that cost about $450 total. That right there shows you how stupid the government is, and how willing they are to just throw money away.
MM: Any support from the local film community?
BOTH: We are the local film community.
MM: How’d you keep the budget so low?
SM: Ignorance. Not knowing anything meant that you say, ‘Okay, we need a camera, and something to record sound with.’ And so we just got those and made a movie. Film people are like, “You have to slate with a time code slate—it’s absolutely necessary,” and we went down to fuckin’ Suncoast Motion Picture Company and bought one of their toy slates and used that.
KS: Dave gave us this wish list of all the things he needed at the start of production. You know, a camera, lights, lenses, filters, gels, whatever. We looked it over and said, ‘Uh, ahhhh…you can have the camera.’
MM: I noticed you had a credit for “Sync Fix.”
KS: After Miramax bought us, we hired this chick to do our sync fix and we are in there one day with her, and she’s sayin’, “It was my birthday last night, but I still came in to do some sync fixing. I took some ‘shrooms beforehand, but I still came in.” And we were like, ‘WHAT?!’ So we actually had to get our sync fixed again after she had “fixed” it.
MM: Hundreds of homemade independent features are made every year that don’t even make it into festivals much less get sold to Miramax Pictures for $400,000. What did you guys do right? How are you different?
KS: It was a matter of people going for the story and its universality. If they never worked behind a register, they’ve been on the other side of the counter. People could say, “I know someone like Randal,” or, “I’ve had a conversation like that with my girlfriend or boyfriend.” That’s real important.
SM: The biggest thing at the festivals, I think, is that you’re inundated with films about guns and AIDS or heavy artsy things and people could just go into Clerks and have a good time. That’s what everyone tells us.
MM: Clerks to me is a very American movie. The whole icon of a convenience store and the way people relate to each other is very specific to the Tri-State area. How did people react to it at Cannes?
KS: We were worried because the French either love American culture or they totally hate it. We thought we were gonna go over there, and be like EuroDisney II, and amazingly, they were with every joke. So either it translated well, or the guy who did the subtitles wrote a much funnier movie than we did.
MM: Tips for those embarking on their own feature film projects?
KS: Get credit cards, lotsa credit cards. Lie if you have to. I did.
MM: What are you all gonna do for a follow up?
KS: I have a script called Dogma, which is a satire on Catholicism. It’s kind of a road movie and a big step away from Clerks in theme, but the humor is still there, only a more direct plot this time. There’s also Mall Rats with Universal. They asked me what project I wanted to do and I said, “Mall Rats,” just outta nowhere—just two words—and they went with it; “Oh yeah, that’s funny!” Amazing.
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This story was published in the November 1994 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Clerks Proves Ignorance is Bliss/With no budget and a toy slate, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier show all you really need are guts.
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