Ep.1 Clerks (1994)

[keyboard clacking] Hello, everybody.

It's, it's me.

It's-- My name is Christian Jose.

I'm your host for this first episode of Garden State Screenings, a podcast where we take a look at movies that I'll choose, or if anyone has any recommendations, I'll be happy to take them for any future episodes.

Um, we're gonna start the show with a movie that I'm gonna be descr- a little, I have a little description here actually of the movie that I wrote.

So, uh, I'll read it, and hopefully by the end of it you guess what movie it is, or before I say the title of it.

All right.

Oh, by the way, this is the first episode, so if things, if audio-wise doesn't sound great, well, I'm trying, so, but [chuckles] it's a work in progress.

Okay, so, um, let's start this.

All right.

Written and directed by New Jersey native Kevin Smith, a guy who maxed out his credit cards, sold his comic book collection, and dropped out of film school, and used the refunded tuition money to fund his $230,000 independent film, Clerks.

To a lot of people, it seemed like an idiotic thing to do, a, an easy way to be in debt the rest of your life.

But at a time when no one had 4K cameras in their pockets, Smith and producer Scott Mosier created a black and white comedy with no real camera work experience, or film experience in general, aside from a school short.

The two faced many challenges from filming all night long and working the next day, to trying to get a cat to take a shit on camera.

They faced all obstacles and pushed through without even knowing the legacy this film would have, and little did they know it'd be the start of something new.

And it takes us to now, 2026, when we're gonna be celebrating its thirty-third anniversary.

So before we start the episode and take a deep dive into this film, let's roll the trailer.