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Clerks starts the 9 to 5 triple.  Cory and John discuss the movie that started the Jay and Silent Bob movies.  The movie looks into the ordinary lives of folks stuck in hard jobs and how they seek to drag themselves from boredom.

Clerks:

Kevin Smith takes a look at ordinary folks in dead end 9 to 5 jobs with Clerks.  Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) gets called in to work on his day off and everything goes bad. His buddy Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) works next door at a non-chain video store.  Dante is just trying to make it through the day.  He wants to stay in his comfortable and convenient life so he goes along to get along.  Randal disrespects customers and rags Dante.  Randal knows he is in a crappy job but is not ready to leave.  Dante’s girlfriend Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti) is trying her best to get Dante out of his dead end job and make a better life for himself.  But they fight over sex and their past relationships.  Really Dante is talking to his ex Caitlin Bree (Lisa Spoonauer) behind Veronica’s back.  He wants Caitlin back.  But she is engaged. Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes & Kevin Smith) are out front selling weed.  Jay shoplifts, insults customers and more.

Throughout the course of the day, Dante lets the customers walk all over him.  He gets in trouble with the law when Randal sells cigarettes to a minor.  He gets beaten in hockey by a mad customer and lets a chewing gum rep rile up an angry mob against him because he sells cigarettes.  Veronica makes up to him by bringing lunch and promising supper later.  But Dante is surprised when Caitlin comes in.  She says she is not engaged and came to town to tell her mother.  She and Dante set up for a date later.  She shows up when Dante is out getting ready.  She has sex in the bathroom thinking it is with Dante.  Turns out it was a customer who was dead.  She’s in shock.  Jay tells Dante he would not give up a girl like Veronica.  Bob speaks for the first time telling Dante not to loose a good thing with Veronica.

Randal tells Veronica that Dante is still in love with Caitlin.  She and Dante have a blow up break up and she leaves.  Dante and Randal fight it out and then end the day as friends.  Dante is going to try to patch things up and make things better with both women.

Summary:

According to IMDB:
Clerks is loosely based on “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri hence the name of the protagonist, Dante Hicks. Also, there are nine breaks in the movie to represent the nine rings of hell.

Well Dante’s day was hell and so is his life.  He is stuck and wants to get out but is too comfortable and afraid to make a change.  Randal and Veronica both call him out on it.  But after this day as bad as it was will he ever change?  I don’t know.

While this movie looks at ordinary lives, Kevin Smith brings in heavy dialogue and looks at real life.  A good section of dialogue uses the debate over Empire Strikes Back vs Return of the Jedi to look at civilians in the midst of war.  Yes there is smartness and depth among the shallowness and filth and Kevin shows that in Clerks.  But for me (Geoff) it is hard to get past all the crude talk, sex talk and other things.  I guess that Kevin uses those as a medium to get people talking about deep things.  But for me it is not appealing.

Music:

The soundtrack combines music written for the movie and songs from different artists. The following is one of those, it “Clerks” by Love Among Freaks.

You can buy the soundtrack here.

Next Up:

Next week the 9 To 5 triple continues with “Empire Records.”

Name That Movie:

The clue this week was: Looking to next week we’ll be discussing “Empire Records,” which includes a very young Liv Tyler. Liv also stars in this retro film alongside Tom Hanks…
Which lead us to the following movie: The movie is “That Thing You Do.”

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