October 30, 1994
By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier
have just finished shooting their first rock music video for Soul Asylum.
The budget they were allotted was more than double the $27,000 they spent
to shoot their debut film, "Clerks" (opening Friday at the Music Box).
"It sounds like a small
amount of money for a film, but when you're selling off your comic book
collection to pay for a project, $27,000 is everything in the world," said
writer-director Smith, 24, chain-smoking the first of four cigarettes in
15 minutes. "The movie's been received well, so the investment seems
wise now. But if it bombed, we'd probably be running from the bill collectors."
Already a critics' favorite,
"Clerks" was awarded the Filmmakers Trophy Award at the Sundance Film Festival
as well as the International Critics Week prize and the Prix de la Jeunesse
at the Cannes Film Festival. Shot with one camera in black and white because
it was cheaper than springing for color film, "Clerks" chronicles a day
in the life of a couple of bored convenience store clerks who hate their
customers.
"We were experimenting a
lot throughout the film," said co-producer Scott Mosier, 23, who appears
briefly in the film as an angry customer. "Acting really isn't an interest
of mine, but we had trouble scrounging up enough people for all the roles,
especially since we weren't paying them. We didn't have enough money to
rent the better cameras so we made do with what we had, wrapping a jacket
over the camera at one point when it began to make too much noise."
The film was shot on location
at Quick Stop Groceries in Leonardo, N.J., where Smith worked since he
was 19. So they wouldn't disrupt the flow of customers, Smith and Mosier
shot most of the film between 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Soul Asylum's video for
"Can't Even Tell," the theme song for the film, was shot on the Quick Stop
rooftop.
"The band and some of the
actors are playing hockey on the rooftop, just like in the movie," Smith
said. "And (singer) Dave Pirner didn't want to be singing in the
video, so Jason Mewes (a drug dealer in the film) plays the lead singer."
The duo's next collaborations
will be "Mall Rats" for Universal and "Dogma" for Miramax.
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