Kevin Smith, the writer/director/co-star of the cult favorite View Askewniverse movies, revealed what his favorite scene to shoot was across his 27-year career.
As part of the documentary film Clerk., which chronicles the filmmaker’s life and journey, Smith singled out one moment on film that was “kind of the most telling and the one the means the most to me.” It comes near the end of Clerks II, when coworkers and longtime friends Dante Hicks and Randall Graves are in jail after a long day of shenanigans and misadventures. The two lash out at each other over the situation, an argument that builds until Dante asks Randall point-blank what he would do if he truly were the master of his own destiny. Randall answers with all the conviction he can muster, “I’d buy the Quick Stop and reopen it myself!”
“And he in that moment is laid naked and bare,” Smith explained with tears in his eyes. “The character who has worn on his sleeve this entire journey his cynicism, his disappointment with the world, for one magic moment shows you his fucking heart and shows it to the guy least likely. [It] changes everything.”
“That scene is a fucking metaphor,” he continued. “It tells the story of my life. The day I realized that you could just buy the Quick Stop and reopen it yourself; that’s how you be happiest. That was me going like, ‘I’m never going to be who other cats would like me to be. The only reason that you like me in the first place is because I was me. So I’m gonna go and be me for the rest of my life now.'”
Smith is currently hard at work on a third Clerks movie. According to him, the new film will focus on Randall as the main character rather than Dante and draw heavily from Smith’s own experiences. After Randall survives a near-fatal heart attack (as Smith himself did in 2018), he believes he’s wasted his life and decides to create a legacy in the form of a documentary about him and his cohorts working at the Quick Stop, titled Inconvenience.
When it was first announced, Smith described Clerks III as “an ode to both the enduring allure of cinema and the resourcefulness and lunacy of its storytellers. Years ago, Dante and Randal made me a filmmaker – so now it’s time I return the favor.”
Clerk. releases on VOD on Nov. 23. Clerks III is expected to hit theaters in July 2022.
Source: YouTube
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