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grandsponsor · 9 months ago

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The V/H/S Movies, Ranked By Math

(Content Warning. Telling you up front that there's screencaps from these movies scattered throughout the post, including simulated gore & ghosts which might be disturbing and frightening depending on your horror movie tolerance. Keep reading, but it's on you)

I'm a gamblin' man.

I'm also fond enough of the Found Footage Horror subgenre to be considered a fan. A defender, perhaps. The form may have reproduced to an unsustainable level, but for my money, those first two V/H/S movies will remain at the top of the pile. And that's an achievement in itself, because the first movie isn't that good. I have data to prove it!

This Halloween season (really this past week), I endeavored to rewatch only the first two, then maybe the third one for a laugh. What I neglected to notice, these past few years, is the series went and revived itself courtesy of the good people at Shudder. There's actually seven VHS films; one released this very month.

So my workload increased, but why not over-complicate the act of watching scary movies even further? Let's introduce math.

The V/H/S films are found footage anthologies, ranging from three to six largely unconnected segments. In the first four movies, there is an extra, interstitial segment which serves as the framing device. The latter three films dropped this approach and instead hacked up their fifth or sixth segment, scattering it throughout the runtime. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing, but it did affect their final scores. More on that in a second.

Here's my workflow: I watched the films in order of release. Each individual segment was scored arbitrarily on a scale of 1-5, reflecting my own personal enjoyment. Enjoyment takes many forms; maybe I found the segment effectively scary, maybe it was really well made, maybe I just had a lot of fun with it. For a closer look:

1/5: Awful, boring, a pain to sit through 2/5: Mostly bad or disappointing. May have one or two compelling elements, either in its story or production 3/5: It's pretty alright. Might be well-made in spite of a bad narrative or vice versa 4/5: Good! Well done. Strong, enjoyable little short. Fails to reach the very peak for any number of little things 5/5: Stupendous. Indubitably capital. The best of the best. The Ideal VHS segment

You'll notice how arbitrarily "scary" any one segment factors little into the individual score. No millennial movie scoring systems here (this gory delight gets FOUR severed fingers out of FIVE!!!). That all funnels into personal enjoyment. No segment gained extra points for shivering me timbers and no segment lost points for failing to scare me. Frankly if we were only scoring on personal frights maybe two segments would do better than a 3.

Once all segments from a given film were scored individually, the total was calculated and converted to a percent. So, if a film has five segments, it can earn a possible 25 points. If the final score was 20 out of 25 points, that converts to an 80% good movie. With me? Cool.

Before diving into the rankings, I'll address one extra rule. For the first four movies, the framing device segment was not counted in the final score. All films are adjudicated by purely the disconnected segments which make up their sales pitch as an anthology. However, from movie 5 onward, the framing narrative changed, and segments were instead divided by snippets from one otherwise standalone short. Since these segments had intentions other than tying the film into a larger narrative, they were scored as segments and factored into the final score. In simpler words, Tape 56 from V/H/S is not counted, but Total Copy from V/H/S/85 is.

Wheeew. Okay. Let's get into these rankings. Backed by MATH.

#7: V/H/S: Viral (27%)

No surprises here, for anyone familiar with these things. The third entry, and the most mainstream-curious of them all, Viral impresses nobody but irritates few. To really hate V/H/S: Viral is to remember what's in V/H/S: Viral. And nobody can do that, even people who get a dirty thrill out of remembering bad movies. Clocking in at three segments--the least of any film in the series--Viral does not do more with less. The eighty-minute runtime is more pathetic than efficient; it's just embarrassing to watch the interstitial narrative twiddle its thumbs and kill time between segments, trying to claw its way to something resembling how long movies are supposed to be.

How did this happen? We may never know. Something tells me production fell apart at too many critical points, and the whole structure collapsed. Did you know a whole segment was cut out of this movie at the last second? I've seen it. Viral should count itself very lucky we're not talking about it.

Dante The Great: 1/5 Parallel Monsters: 1/5 Bonestorm: 2/5

#6: V/H/S/99 (48%)

Math is a cruel woman sometimes. It sounds like I think 99 is pretty bad. And, yeah, it did score 48%, and no I don't regret how things shook out. The numbers just don't lie, and sometimes they spell disaster for you.

V/H/S/99 is where I noticed the vibe shift. The Shudder Era brought with it a new series-wide ethos. I'm not convinced being scary is always the goal with these segments. Oftentimes I was reminded of Too Many Cooks or Tim & Eric. A comic edge runs through much of this thing, and unfortunately it doesn't always play. Here we have a strong contender for one of the worst segments in the franchise, but also one I find underrated. I wish I liked Ozzy's Dungeon more. I wish I liked To Hell and Back more. Something's not working here. It would take another swing or two for this nu-V/H/S to start working. As it stands, I'm quite whelmed.

Shredding: 1/5 Suicide Bid: 2/5 Ozzy's Dungeon: 3/5 The Gawkers: 4/5 To Hell and Back: 2/5

#5: V/H/S/Beyond (50%)

Falling right in the statistical middle--if not the actual middle--is the latest V/H/S as of writing. An omen for the series direction going forward, perhaps, as this film has a theme. That theme seems to be aliens, but I don't think Justin Long got the memo. Four of six segments are about aliens. One includes a Bollywood music video. One of them sucks ass. One of them is among my absolute favorites. 50% strikes me as the most appropriate rating of them all, since it's impossible for Viral to get a zero.

Sometimes a whole is greater than the sum. Sometimes it's the other way around. Beyond is a film where whole and sum find themselves in harmonious sync. The golden ratio. A fifty-fifty of good and bad found footage.

Stork: 2/5 Dream Girl: 3/5 Live and Let Dive: 5/5 Fur Babies: 1/5 Stowaway: 2/5

#4: V/H/S (56%)

Y'know what makes V/H/S special in spite of it's mostly bad segments? It's not the benefit of being the first. I think, with small exceptions, V/H/S remains the one film in this franchise that is trying, at all times, to scare you. As stated above, frights to the gallon were not factored into the score, but the commitment to format and atmosphere is what keeps me thinking about this first film, and what keeps it close to my heart.

There are two good segments in this movie--the very first and the very last. Between them is a lot of missed marks and bad makeup. In a way, V/H/S only needed two good segments, because they're the parts fans of the series still talk about. They remain platonic ideals, if on separate planes. The whole movie may not be worth your time, but that start and that end are worth their weight.

Amateur Night: 5/5 Second Honeymoon: 2/5 Tuesday the 17th: 2/5 The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger: 1/5 10/31/98: 4/5

#3: V/H/S/85 (60%)

An alluring mishmash of successes and failures. A D- by a thousand cuts. I could be talking about V/H/S/85, and I could be talking about the whole franchise. I could be talking about found footage horror as a concept. What I'm really talking about is the bronze medal.

V/H/S/85, if nothing else, tries a lot of things. This is the first movie to have one segment be an explicit sequel to an earlier one. This is the first movie include have a segment which shares a universe with a preexisting horror film. This is the first movie to be shown in 4:3 and look and sound like camcorder footage like these movies are fucking supposed to. I don't like all of it, but I love all of it. Does that make sense?

No Wake: 3/5 God of Death: 4/5 TKNOGD: 2/5 Ambrosia: 2/5 Dreamkill: 3/5 Total Copy: 4/5

#2: V/H/S/94 (70%)

Word to the wise: anyone you see giving this movie a 10/10 is marathoning the V/H/S movies, like myself, and they had just watched Viral. I was tempted to do the same.

What a relief. Brought to new life on Shudder, the V/H/S series returned to its strengths and smashed back into the horror sphere with a Raatma I can easily imagine being any V/H/S-head's favorite. While not counted in the final Raatma, I do sadly believe the framing narrative is very stupid. Beyond that, we got at least three good segments and a Raatma fifteen minutes to check your phone. Now is that not a great horror film or what? Hail Raatma.

Storm Drain: 4/5 The Empty Wake: 2/5 The Subject: 4/5 Terror: 4/5

#1: V/H/S/2 (80%)

And here we are. If you've only got time for one V/H/S, I'm telling you this is the one. They get the weakest segment out of the way right at the start, and after that you're treated to three of the series' best. Everything great about this series, and really the found footage genre.

No other V/H/S captures so holistically the sense you're watching something you shouldn't be. All four segments have their own unique way of getting the camera around, so there's never the sense you're seeing the same trick twice. Moreover, no other film in the series handles its delicate tone so beautifully. There's a segment where kids are abducted by aliens, and it works! It doesn't feel stupid. How did they do it??

Phase 1 Clinical Trials: 2/5 A Ride In The Park: 4/5 Safe Haven: 5/5 Slumber Party Alien Abduction: 5/5

Aaaand that about does it until next year. Yeah, another V/H/S movie, due next year was already confirmed by Shudder just a week or two ago. An often quoted and somewhat obvious summation of horror anthologies, or really any anthology, is that some parts are better than others. It's a total crapshoot. There's no way of predicting what will work and what won't. Me? I love to roll the dice. I will watch thirty more V/H/S movies. May they pump these out for a thousand years.

Next year better be that Christmas movie they keep talking about. Come on. V/H/Xmas. You can't let that one go.

#nightblogging #writing #movies #horror #horror movies #halloween #vhs #film writing #hail raatma

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grandsponsor · 10 months ago

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Diary-120: Clerks (1994)

Welcome, and happy 30th birthday to American Mumblecore classic, Clerks. In celebration of this little movie that could, the popularity it's maintained in spite of its humble ambitions, and the havoc it's wrought on my mind in the 20+ times I re-watched it to conceptualize and finish this project, I can think of no better film to christen the launch of my new essay series. Welcome to DIARY-120.

Exploring the personal relationship to specific films as experienced through the form of VHS tapes watched and rewound dozens or hundreds of times, DIARY-120 is a school of film criticism less concerned with how film as art responds to the greater culture and more how it responds to the self. The goal isn't to play the adjudicator; only the observer of screen and soul.

The entire essay collection is available for free and hyperlinked down below, section by section for a smooth reading experience. Read all of them! Read only the ones with funny titles! Read none of them!

Happy Birthday, Clerks. You terrorize my mind and the problem has only gotten worse.

Clocking In

Leonardo In Five Minutes

On RST Video

A Pilot

A Brief Makeout In The Closet With Mallrats

Dreaming of a Job

A Meaningless End to The Story

Congratulatory Letter to a Mr. Kevin Smith

#writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #bookblr #my writing #writers #writer #movies #clerks #clerks 1994 #view askewniverse #film writing

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grandsponsor · 10 months ago

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A Congratulatory Letter to a Mr. Kevin Smith

Hey, Kevin.

It’s me again. No, you don’t remember who I am. Also we’ve never met. I’m just willing to bet a lot of people who sound like me and talk like me and are fortunate enough to speak with you talk like we’re already good chums. I just really want you to like me, is all. Do you get that a lot? Yeah, thought so.

Pardon my dressing up. Special occasion and all. White undershirt, button-up unbuttoned and tucked in my acid wash jeans cuffed at the ankle framing Nike Blazers. Flannel shirt over that and a big denim jacket over all that. My snapback is thrifted and worn in reverse, thank you for noticing. Miami Marlins, yes. No I’m not a fan.

Have these thirty years been everything you imagined? I’m sure you would’ve liked to have written that Superman movie, or maybe got handed one of those Star Wars projects back when Disney thought they wanted those movies to have a voice. Or maybe you’re already thinking about Clerks IV. Really, I don’t know what it is you want. I feel like I’m further from knowing now than I did at the start. You’re a man of August, somehow, some way.

When people talk to you about Clerks, I assume it’s often with a story of their first time watching. Maybe they’re about as old as you and saw it in theaters; that prime early-twenties insecurity at witnessing someone like you, starting with a near-identical hand to the one they were dealt, already sorting this filmmaking thing out—if nothing else, actually finishing a movie. More likely nowadays, they’re younger than you but still older than me. I think they’re called Millennials. To them, you had nothing to prove. As soon as they realized normal people make movies, you were exalted. Forget Paul Thomas Anderson and whoever’s actually responsible for all the Marvel movies. Only one person gets to be those guys. It feels like a lot of people can be Kevin Smith. Is that mean? I don’t think it’s mean. We’ve gotten some pretty gnarly flicks courtesy of people with delusions of being Kevin Smith. Noticed I called them flicks? I’m using your words! I’ll stop now.

My people know your people, but we’re rarely friends. Maybe you already know that. Unlike your kin, there was never a point we adopted the internet that was independent of language or potty training. Before I could fully read, I was typing the names of cool cars into Google Images. There was no convenience store not wrapped up in a corporate franchise or petrol station. The video stores were already closing down. I knew I would have a job when I was an adult but, back then, I couldn’t be told that future career was anything other than WWE World Champion. Or ferry boat captain. But I’m making this about me. We’re talking about you, man! You’re the guy! To this day, even if your story is nothing by genealogical folklore more felt than seen, you’re the guy who proved the young and arrogant correct. All our ideas are good, and everyone will like them. When we burn our finances, less money than even you had, on autofictions about people hanging out and sharing correct opinions about music and movies, they will indubitably be great successes we made ride on for the remainder of our lives. Won’t buy a drink in this town again. Right? Kevin?

Apart from those mid-1994 anxieties, do you ever think about the world where Clerks didn’t work out? What you would’ve been doing otherwise? I’ve heard your half-joking answers to this in the past, about still working at the Quick Stop or the RST, talking about the movie you made once with cigarette buyers and Milk Maids who couldn’t care less. In this celebratory year, I’ll give you more credit. The nineties were made for a guy like you, in a way that the twenty-twenties feel less and less made for someone like me. No matter the efforts of American Idol and the radio ads about the Hollywood agent in town who’s gonna make your kid a star, the landscape was changing. Glory was to be taken, not bestowed. Your potential financial speedbumps would’ve been nothing a quick move to Canada couldn’t solve. They have malls in Canada. You could’ve still made Mallrats.

Call it flattery or bias, but I do believe Clerks would’ve gotten there. If not in 1994, than in 2010-onward when film-centric YouTube channels couldn’t get enough of digging up old gems made by the bygone dreamers. Granted, this was to make fun of them, but you’ve got a thick hide. Actually, come to think of it, you acclimated to the internet at prodigious speeds. I know people roughly your age who still tweet like it’s Facebook. They just never developed the sense you did, even if you slip up sometimes. You had the podcast on damn near ground zero, and you were in YouTube videos like that. I remember the Cinemasins video. Do you? Remember Cinemasins, Kevin? Those are the guys who make the videos about movies, where they tally up all the problems like how any woman on screen isn’t giving a lap dance or, more critically severe, when something happening in the movie had already happened in a different movie. Anyway, you were in the Star Wars video. Said something about sex droids.

Further up the page, I dropped a thread about where and how your fans saw Clerks the first time. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember mine. What I do remember is when you and Jason Mewes screened Jay & Silent Bob Reboot near my college. By then I was well familiar with the stories of how you handle Q&A. Fundamentally, three people get to ask questions over the next hour following the film, though I seem to remember us northwestern weirdos getting less time than that. Yes, I did raise my hand and, yes, I was not selected. Funny thing is I don’t remember my question. Here, I’ll drum up some new ones:

Who owned Lenin’s Tomb?

How long did Lenin’s Tomb get to live?

Did Lenin’s Tomb take their food wet or dry?

Is Lenin’s Tomb in the movie to suggest a passive divinity watching over the cast, never interfering but always judging their actions, and in fact their raven black coat mimics the suffocating night which eventually, in my special cut of the film, takes Dante’s life?

Did Lenin’s Tomb like scratches under the chin?

Okay, I think that about covers my remaining questions. To keep it a buck, Kevin, I’m tapped out. My enduring reverence for you, against my better judgment, has taken my mind to strange places these past few months. I don’t look at your first movie the way I used to and fear I never will. Be proud of that, Kevin. At the time, maybe you would’ve considered all of this too much. We’re getting away from your intentions. Today, I pray you recognize all this for the praise it is, assuming you ever read. I still really like your movie. The way I like it has changed, is all. Kinda like you.

Congratulations on hitting the diamond anniversary, you and your movie. Celebrate however it is you do, in your more health-conscious years. I’ll check out your new movie, whenever it is I get the chance. I’ll probably always check out your new movie.

—Braden <3

P.S. was Lenin’s Tomb declawed or were they an outdoor cat?

#writing #nightblogging #my writing #movies #clerks #clerks 1994

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grandsponsor · 10 months ago

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A Meaningless End to The Story

Here’s your winner for the Most Overdone and Least Exciting Sliver of Clerks Trivia—there exists an initial, scrapped ending where Dante is gunned down before he can exit the Quick Stop for the night, and the film fades to black as he, inches from the door and seconds away from momentarily slipping the bounds of the job he hates, fucking dies.

When you watch this ending now, unpolished and fuzzy, either buried in the special features of the DVD or ripped online by a voyeuristic nonparticipant, something feels wrong. Like we’re seeing something not only scrapped, but forbidden. The image is grainier, the blacks are blacker; we’re closer to a sickly eggshell than the mastered white of the final cut. For some reason the camera’s attention is briefly caught again by the spinning, legally distinct Fruit Pie sign. Dante is going over the ledger once again, and for really the first significant time in the film, the camera possesses the sightline of an undeclared character, who seems to skate to the Quick Stop’s front door without the human influence of footsteps. Outside, the Quick Stop can hardly be seen if not for the sign and a generous triangle of light on the front door.

The camera throws the door open and drops its gaze to the floor as it pressures to the checkout counter. Aperture locked on Dante, it waits for him to look up. He insists the store is closed with barely a glance. On the next cut, the camera is given form, and it’s a man with a pistol. Shooting Dante once, without a word, the camera dances behind the counter, leaving its real eyes locked to the same position so it may watch itself clean the register of all that money convenience stores have on hand. With no serious urgency—four scoops of coins and bills if you count them—the camera returns to its eyes so it can watch Dante’s immediately lifeless body in the same place where he’d been painting Veronica’s fingernails. Snap to his bloody hand which had clutched his sweater. Snap to his head, to open lifeless eyes.

I wasn’t at the festival screenings where this ending would’ve still been on reel, but I do wonder what song played over the credits. Was it still Soul Asylum?

Kevin Smith was not forced to change this ending, apparently. Were he so inclined, in defiance of virtually all people’s dislike of this ending, this could’ve still been the impression on which Clerks exited the stage. Eventually, of course, he elected to cut the film early and let Dante live another thirty-ish years before reneging on the stay of execution and finally killing him in Clerks III. Spoilers if you haven’t seen Clerks III.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe this was the original ending. That is factually and convincingly true. I just can’t believe it was the original ending.

Yes, sometimes people just die in very cruel and senseless ways. Thanks for the perspective, count yourself as having contributed to the Socratic seminar. And look, nothing would make me happier than to be that asshole insisting to no material benefit that this ending has some disquieting poetry to it. In fact I was listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor while watching and rewatching this scene, music that would paint most film experiences differently. Did you know F♯ A♯ ∞ syncs up perfectly with Bottle Rocket?

In my excessive, inadvisable rewatches of Clerks preparing for this book, several viewings in a row were of an unofficial, self-made cut which restores this original ending. One time so I may spend ninety minutes anticipating it, the next for it to begin feeling normal. Many before me have made this bootleg version of the film, but I believe only mine crushes down the remainder of the film’s color grade to match the soggy, sweaty look of the unfinished conclusion. It seemed altogether proper that, somewhere in the course of this project, I get my hands on the film. Get it under my fingernails.

Let me say real quick that I am no journeyman of fan edits. Clerks: The Dante Fucking Dies Cut is my first and tentatively single crack at the controls. But I am fascinated by the form. This pull the most foolishly devoted of movieheads feel towards tampering with the very thing they love. Slightly more professional filmmakers, who get paid to do this sorta thing, are praised and scorned in equal measure for attempting new and more authoritative “cuts” to the films people already liked, or thought were just okay. Good versions of middling pictures take on a kind of folklore—my mind, like yours, may have teetered to The Phantom Edit.

I don’t bring up The Phantom Edit to say it bears any comparison to what I made (though, curiously, Kevin Smith was an early suspect concerning the edit’s creator). Instead, let’s consider the ritual at play here. We’re talking about a fan edit of Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, made with the intent of truncating or outright gutting the most notoriously awful (from a certain point of view) elements of a notorious film. The end result is a whole nineteen minutes removed and several minutes added. It’s not like The Phantom Edit, well-received by portions of the fandom as it were, was so famous as to be seminally responsible for all fan edits hence, nor did it drive the hunger for official recuts—we may attribute that more comfortably to your Blade Runners and your Justice Leagues.

But the edit remains relevant in film & fandom scholarship, years and years later, because it’s nonetheless an event horizon. Films need not be eaten as served; whether it be a matter of waiting or a job for one’s own hand, we can make these things whatever we want—whatever we think they ought to be.

Difference here, obviously, is Clerks did not and does not need saving. Not the first one, and beyond restoring a two-minute sliver, only one key component of the story seemed to change as I watched this new edit enough times for it to begin feeling normal. Dante’s eternal pessimism, his inability to believe there’s anything about the trajectory of his life he can change, is afforded a new context knowing there’s truly very little he can do to avoid the gun floating his way. It’s as if himself and the camera have a prior agreement. A timeline where Dante is shot to death surprises viewers unfamiliar with the film’s history, but maybe it doesn’t surprise Dante.

Quote Randal, who did close the store to go to a funeral, or to play hockey, or showed polygamous disregard for his current girlfriend in the wake of an old flame. Sure, he’s lazy, but Dante doesn’t strike me as the guy who compromises his security on a whim. At the very start, when he’s on the phone with his unseen boss, it’s very possible a quick lie would get him out of the whole day (it’s not like rent is due). He’s quite stressed out by sudden changes to his day; knowing he’ll die in a few hours at least gives pulling an impromptu shift some structure.

By the end of his fateful working day, Dante has obliterated romantic prospects with two separate women, accomplished the virtually impossible by making Randal mad, got the Quick Stop served a $500 fine (it would indelibly be his fault when bossman gets word), lowered his social credit within the Leonardo terrarium in a number of ways, and all in all is nowhere closer to whatever being happy means for him. All too relatable, in the emotional deadlock of retail, but what’s that famous line of his? What does he mean by here, in this context?

Imagine getting scheduled for the day you’re supposed to die. What a drag. You were gonna spend your final hours with the few things that bring you joy: street hockey, your girlfriend. Instead that day will be way too much like the day before. At least fate will work around your schedule. The camera will hang around, all day, so that the counter doesn’t have to go unattended. It will follow you to the roof, to the funeral, it will check next door with Randal when it gets bored. It may forget what it was waiting around with you for. But it’ll recollect before it’s too late. Even if you yourself forget, thinking the camera is just another customer.

I’ll step out of kayfabe for the end, here. My special cut of Clerks isn’t very interesting unless you’re like me and watched Clerks twenty-something times in preparation for whatever we call this; enough that the thirtieth-something watch was projected on the backs of your eyelids. All it is, really, is a stupid, anachronistic end to a funny movie. A Meaningless End to the Story, as Love Among Freaks warns Dante in a channel he can’t hear. A timeline where the sequels never happened, where the enduring Askewniverse lost a crucial thread, and its passing references in Mallrats and others are instead a crime scene. To play The Phantom Editor, do I like my version more? No. But I don’t think this is my last time watching it on accident.

#writing #nightblogging #my writing #movies #clerks #clerks 1994

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grandsponsor · 10 months ago

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Dreaming of a Job

If Clerks can be said to have a thesis, it is delivered quite suddenly by Randal in the final few minutes.

By this point, there’s very little left to go wrong, very little left for Dante or Randal to take from one another apart from blood. They are not rivals—professional or romantic. I doubt they seriously dislike each other in the moment Dante’s compounded stress and Randal’s lackadaisical needling boils over in a catfight that has me wondering if Kevin had to buy all those snacks before ruining them. This seems to me like the inevitability of being friends with just one of them. You’d be at their throat in a month, and they can hardly muscle through a day.

Dante says for the final time the line Brian O’Halloran’s gonna be saying for the rest of his life, and Randal cuts him off:

Oh, fuck you! Fuck you, pal! Jesus, there you go again trying to pass the buck. I'm the source of all your misery—Who closed the store to play hockey? Who closed the store to go to a wake? Who tried to win back his ex-girlfriend without even discussing how he felt with his present one? You wanna blame somebody? Blame yourself. ‘I'm not even supposed to be here today.’ You sound like an asshole! Jesus, nobody twisted your arm to be here today. You're here of your own volition. You like to think the weight of the world rests on your shoulders. Like this place would fall apart if Dante wasn't here. Jesus, you overcompensate for having what's basically a monkey's job. You push fucking buttons. Anybody can waltz in here and do our jobs. You, you're so obsessed with making it seem so much more epic, so much more important than it really is. Christ, you work in a convenience store, Dante! And badly, I might add! I work in a shitty video store, badly as well. You know, that guy Jay's got it right, man. He has no delusions about what he does. Us, we like to make ourselves seem so much more important than the people that come in here to buy a paper, or, God forbid, cigarettes. We look down on them as if we're so advanced. Well, if we're so fucking advanced, what are we doing working here?

There’s hardly dialogue beyond this point; we can more or less call this the end of the movie. Unless you’re watching my restored cut where Dante dies. It’s a lot wordier than some of Clerks’ other classic lines but remains a darling moment of Kevin Smith’s pen-game. It’s something the Dante character ought to hear; really his own defeatist gun pointed inward. But, question: does Dante like his job?

Randal probably likes his job, to remain a fair distance from saying he loves it. As we’ve covered, it’s likely not an enduring love of film that drove nor keeps him behind the counter at RST. That said, the habitat cannot be beat. He’s happy with his lot. Dante isn’t, but only because he still dreams of a life and a security he’s too afraid to ever pursue. He’s largely agnostic to the philosophical benefit of working, either professionally or personally; either on his life or himself. It’s not that Randal is completely correct about what people working a monkey’s job deserve so much as he maintains an awareness of how good the two of them really have things, and his frustration is more with Dante’s self-sabotage of a good thing.

Thirty years ago, I don’t think Dante or Randal or Kevin really knew what a good thing it was.

Be as old as I am for a moment and look at this job through the context of what work and business looks like in 2024. Either Quick Stop or RST Video—weigh in your own mind which wall you’d rather be staring at.

First, you wake up somewhere liberally near the crack of dawn. You aren’t at a bakery or a Starbucks or anywhere your presence would be demanded by your community at six or seven. Speaking of Starbucks, you do not wear a uniform. You show up and your boss isn’t even there. They will not be there all day. Opening up shop consists of pushing START on the coffee pot, cutting the twine on the newspaper shipment, putting the newspapers in the newspaper stand, maybe stealing newspapers from a different newspaper stand, opening the locks on the shutters barring gum, and taking your position behind the counter before the Love Among Freaks song concludes.

During the day, one of two things happens: you wordlessly deal out change to customers, thoughtlessly fill in blanks on an unstudied ledger. This estimate ignored the annoying customers, yes. The operatives of Clerks second most quoted line and the most relatable to the fellow retail chainganger watching. In the snowglobe universe of Leonardo, New Jersey, the annoying things customers may do include looking at eggs too long, looking at milk too long, getting their hands stuck in Pringles cans (Dante isn’t even too bothered by this one), or dying. The gum guy does not exist in any timeline so I do not include him here.

Pack of cigarettes?

At the end of the day you lackadaisically drag a mop across the tiles, and you leave. There is no certification required of employees, you will not need a valid drivers license with a clean record, there are no corporate-mandated lines for you to deliver, there is no brand integrity to preserve with your words and actions, there are no projects to complete, no real sales quotas, no commission nagging at the mind—it’s hardly of consequence that the store remain open. Can you even get fired?

The eponymous clerks are quite often confronted with this lack of responsibility, either by irate customers or towards one another. Rightly there is no counterargument than to kindly ask that they aren’t so rude with you. I don’t outline this to contradict the film’s dejected mindset. This supports Randal’s explosion at the end.

My first job was working at Toys R Us. I forget what drew me there apart from the pay (eleven whole entire dollars an hour, bitch) and familiarity with a big store that had been there as long as I’d been alive. If I grew up in a small town it’s altogether likely I’d never leave.

Couldn’t tell you what my resume looked like, if I submitted one at all. Actually, come to think of it, I filled out an application paper, in-store, at the desk where they were actively courting new employees. Free to start at 15, also, and I did. Bad place to be working at fifteen? Yeah, but I discovered very soon it was a bad place to be working ever.

A week after submitting my application paper I called the store, on the advice of my parents, and I think this was the moment they decided to hire me. Whoever fills out the Toys R Us application paper and does not immediately pretend it never happened. I was then instructed to return to the store some days later for my interview, the majority of the questions framed around my ability or inability to weave the Toys R Us credit card into my checkout spiel. Everyone needs you to sign up for something these days—a marijuana dispensary near my house offers a rewards plan—but few employment memories iron away at the wrinkles in my brain like that credit card we were expected to upsell to people that, mind you, were already in a Toys R Us. So the last thing I would ever ask my fellow man to endure was another five minutes in that place.

To cut to the bone on this first job story, I left Toys R Us quite unceremoniously after roughly thirteen clocked hours. I had my $120-ish check before I had a bank account. Can’t remember how I cashed it. Possible I never did.

So, what did it, then? Let’s compound every flight-before-fight instinct tickled by the Toys R Us atmosphere into something we’ll call The Funk. That’s nothing to do with the smell of the place (though the break room had a distinct, inhabitable musk I cannot describe but maybe a fellow ex-employee could second). My first shift was four hours plus closing, and my second was eight hours the following day. I was planted in front of a register with zero training and likely allowed seventy-percent of customers fortunate enough to visit my counter to leave without paying. I say likely because by hour two, day two, I was already certain my time with Toys R Us was short.

Management, who surprised me at the top of my second shift with a baffling fanfiction about the employee I am now and the employee I will be in six months (yeah man, six months), asked that my medium-length hair be pulled back in a ponytail. Don’t know if I looked any more professional in my strangulation-blue Toys R Us shirt, but all this did for me was assure every customer for twelve combined hours thought I was a girl. Somehow this didn’t awaken anything in me. Can’t believe it myself.

Nobody checked on me. I shadowed no one. My only training was to ensure I pushed the Toys R Us credit card on everybody who checked out. Gonna drop that again and let it linger: The Toys R Us Credit Card. The nerve, the unmitigated gumption to look a flesh and blood human in the eye and ask them if they need this piece of shit in their life was too much for even my virgin self to bear. I did not bring it up with a single person, and I apologize if that indirectly led to the chain’s bankruptcy.

Had I known at the time the chain was not long for this world I don’t know what I’d do. Soon after receiving the “you’re hired” handshake I was told by the store manager I had an electronics department vibe about me. That’s the liquor store in the corner where all video games were locked behind glass doors only accessible with a key nobody gave me. My routine, for the four hours I manned the electronics department, was to sit behind my island and fold paper clips into funny shapes. Were anyone to ask me if I could unlock the door and grab a video game for them, I said I would go get someone, retreat to the employee break room, and wait there for twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes, until said anyone would leave the store, wondering why they bother with a shithole like Toys R Us. Good question.

This isn’t to say I never made my own fun. My employment happened to intersect with the Amiibo zenith, and overlapped with the figure’s experiments in store exclusivity. Villager, from Animal Crossing, was our claim, and if getting the non-exclusive Amiibo was bullshit, listen to this:

‘Twas I who opened the box that day (second shift, eight hours remain) and I who were responsible for Villager distribution. We were not to leave this poor kid on the pegs for the adult collectors and absolutely no children to possibly hound, obliterate; Villager was only on request. Only when a customer explicitly asked about our stock were we to then pantomime checking The Back (I don’t think I ever saw The Back; possible there was no The Back) and return with what they came for. We were not literally instructed to lie to anybody, but there was a handshake agreement that no two people in a row would get one. This is because our Villager stock was about eight or ten.

Our Villager supply was down to two before my first hour and first eleven dollars (before taxes) were clocked. It was at this point we were to engage in a sort of customer profiling. Only the people who’d look to be the happiest upon finding one, and thus the most likely to return another day and spend more money, were valid. And not to give myself too much credit, but I think I was pretty good at sniffing these folk out. If you flip anything online, just know you have an air about you, and yes we did still have at least two Villagers in The Back and I told you, to your face, that not only were we out but we never got any. Don’t swing on me—remember, you think I’m a girl.

At least one of two went to a kid. Sorry not sorry, I just thought children had a stronger claim to the Nintendo toys. Actually, you know how many people think the children are the worst part of the Toys R Us gig? They weren’t. They didn’t even rank. YOU ranked, because the soul-suffocating factor of the Toys R Us experience was projected entirely on me, the ‘tude you affect with a fifteen-year-old you think is a girl as if I’m the reason this place sucks. I actually think you have a cool, sweet kid, who’s way happier to see me than you are because I’m the one who puts the toy in the bag and confirms that a new toy is definitely happening. I hope they grow up diligent and ambitious, and they get a nice job with a fat salary so they can put you in a home. This job would be great if it wasn’t for the fucking customers.

What was I talking about? Amiibos? Did I ever explain what those are? Whatever, listen to this next thing: my second successful profile was a fellow teenager. I had parsed it in my mind without context or familiarity, only the sense that, were he financially anything like me, the thirteen-odd dollars it takes to get one of there were the thirteen to his name. I think it was the timidity with which he asked the checkout counter ahead of mine; the fear of admitting to care about Animal Crossing as both a teenager and a boy. The year prior, I had embarrassed myself in the burning eye of my eighth grade English class by working a reference to my New Leaf town in a personal essay. If this kid is about to enter the eighth grade, I thought it best to perpetuate the cycle.

Flagging him down, I wear the last ration of enthusiasm I still have (I was for sure quitting after today even if I didn’t yet know how to do that), something that says “I Got You Babe.” By this point walking to the back was exhausting and ran the risk of some other jackass asking me to locate something they’re already looking at, so the final two—now the final one—were tucked behind my counter. I hold the Amiibo in my hand and, in an innate human camaraderie I haven’t again seen or felt in another person since, the kid holds up his own hand. He smiles back. Let’s toss this motherfucker! Yeah!! Fighting it’s own aerodynamics, Villager from Animal Crossing cuts through the muck of the Toys R Us yada yada some other guy in the checkout crush reaches up and yoinks the Amiibo out of the air. And I rang him up?

Look, I don’t know. You think I know? It’s not like this kid touched it first. The replays would confirm he did not. Does acquisition begin at intent? Kid just started high school; the pure neutral cruelty of the human intravenous is something he’s gonna have to get used to. More than Amiibo will be yoinked from the air en potential route to his hand. Do we have any more? I dunno, lemme go get someone to help you out.

I could pad this out talking about other jobs, like the year I worked at Jimmy Johns (Caligula wept). Understand now, if nothing about those stories gave the impression, that I look upon my time at Toys R Us with no pretension or actual dislike. A comedy, in the fundamentalist sense. Quite literally anyone could’ve walked behind my counter and done my job. I did take an attitude like ringing up my fellow man was closer to herding dumb farm animals to the food trough, and it was certainly not my place to think that when I didn’t even have skills worthy of earning money for toys like they did.

Broadly speaking I still do not. Even back then I wanted to be writing books and, regarding that, Randal did ask a pertinent question: what the fuck was I doing working there?

Here’s a few things that would really punch up the Toys R Us experience, from an employee perspective: One, let’s get rid of the goofy shirts. Instead I wear my own clothes, peeled right off the ground after a full couple days of puberty sweating. Next, I want a register that I understand, one that merely registers sales, opens the change drawer, and does not halt the procedure to demand a phone number or credit card application. While we’re at it, let’s crush the square footage of the place down to roughly a two-door garage. You know what, ditch the toys and let’s consolidate choice and demographic down to thirty second decisions and transactions. Let me do virtually whatever I want while I work, up to and including not work, and if this low-wage low-risk lifestyle eventually or inevitable results in an emotional deadlock where I think I deserve an opaque more that I know I don’t deserve anyway, you let me worry about that.

It’s not like garbage retail jobs only sprang into existence after the Quick Stop / RST ceased to exist, but retail jobs are really the only entry-level position anymore and the Quick Stop / RST does not exist. Honestly, asking me, the nerve of Dante to complain. Do you know who I’d kill to have a job where I won’t be puppeteered by corporate so long I start to think those words are my own? I’d kill Dante. My generation does not have video stores or unbranded convenience stores. We cannot lean on the counter. I don’t believe Leonardo is a real place.

#writing #nightblogging #my writing #movies #clerks #clerks 1994

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grandsponsor · 10 months ago

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A Brief Makeout in The Closet With Mallrats

Hate to predict the future, but I don’t anticipate writing a book about Mallrats. We aren’t close like that. But I’ll get in a closet. Does this lock from the inside? No, yeah, no, you’re right, why would a closet lock from the inside. Do I flick the light off—yeah, yeah, leave it on. Yeah. Am I fumbling this? Guess I’m a little nervous. No, you’re right. You’re Mallrats. I’m overthinking this.

Can you believe Mallrats didn’t do well? It’s the craziest thing. People usually love when the low-budget charm machine removed from the Hollywood machine trades everything in, color grade included, for six million dollars and celebrity cosigns. Very nearly a year to the day, Kevin Smith was back. I mean, yeah, that’s not unbelievable given the scope of Mallrats or the scope of Clerks, but given the genuine miracle it is any movie gets finished, a back to back 366 is impressive—if Mallrats is nothing else.

But it’s kinda hard to actually dislike Mallrats when it’s the sort of movie anyone would have made. Most of the time that’s an insult; saying movie XYZ could’ve been the work of anybody rather than a distinct, precious creative voice. It’s true that Mallrats plays like a cinematic inevitability of sorts, but that’s sort of what people like about it.

There is also talking about dicks and cum, so Kevin is still playing the classics.

Imagine you’re Kevin Smith. A lot of people do that already, but in case you’ve never done it before, I’ll walk you through the process. So, you just risked everything on a movie that, by all accounts, shouldn’t be a success. So much of your soul has been put up for collateral you have little remaining of yourself to put on screen. No comic book references; you sold all of them to fund your movie. Now that film is not only a success, but it’s made you an actual name in the burgeoning 90s indie cinema boom. You can hop in bed with the Universal Studios guys, flip through their titanic, mile high Rolodex. Those guys will get you anything. Six million dollars, legitimate shooting locations, lighting guys, sound guys so Veronica doesn’t clip the microphone anymore. Set designers so you don’t have to hide your shame in black & white. Drew Struzan will handle the poser because he also thinks that would be cute. Wanna crane? Wanna put the camera on a crane? Fuck yeah, let’s make it happen. I’ll call the crane guys.

Yeah, man, you can meet Stan Lee. Don’t even have to ask.

Six million dollars and the white hot bud of an ego? Trust I’m also making a Mallrats. And when we barely make back a third of the money I’ll only feel a little bad.

I don’t think Mallrats is a worse movie because it’s not Clerks, or because it was made for more money, or because it steps away from a lot of what made Clerks so special. Mallrats is worse movie because it’s bad. Long and short of it. But being bad doesn’t mean I have to dislike it. I promise that, while Mallrats is bad and I don’t like it, those feelings occur independently. But I guess I’ve kissed people I like less. Let’s do this thing.

On the DVD box art, a new tagline takes over for the Struzan theatrical posters “Superhero Anatomy! Topless Fortune Telling! Bunny Bashing! And More!” For the home video market, maybe unfamiliar with Kevin or potentially confused by the comic book framing, it instead affects a more Clerkslike ennui: “They’re not there to shop. They’re not there to work. They’re just there.” Very fun. Cute, even. Talk ‘em in the door, Kevin. Because while the tagline is effective in a vacuum, anyone who’s seen Mallrats will tell you the stationary madness evoked by Clerks is not present in its younger brother. They’re not just there. As early as possible, the rats take the mall with a quest.

Gone is the inevitable end goal of closing time. In its place is a surprisingly plot heavy comedy of errors where two respective, fundamental Dantes and Randals tear to ribbons the thin film of a regular shopping mall and plummet the innocent NPCs to a world of eating shit and watching, as a group, what is ostensibly pornography with a minor.

I don’t mention that last part in some attempt to shame Kevin Smith or paint anyone who likes Mallrats as complacent with problematic content. Mr. Smith has tangoed with taboo subject matter since the beginning (Clerks has necrophilia). What I mean to say is Mallrats drives an uneven fence between what Clerks was to its audience and what Clerks is to Kevin—for better or worse, a dry run of the movie he actually wanted to make. Bad music stings included.

Kevin Smith will make whatever movie he has the capacity to make in that current moment. I’m left to assume much of what Clerks is was born from what Clerks could not be, citing budget constraints. Mallrats is indeed more the movie Kevin wanted to make than Clerks was forced to be, and is thus the true test of whether you think this guy is good at making movies.

Right now I feel like Mallrats wants to do tongue stuff. I’m less into that but I don’t know how to communicate this, so we’ll just keep the jaw locked and carry on.

Quint & Brodie aren’t a fraction as endearing as Dante & Randal. That’s what you get for making a fruitless Jaws reference instead of thinking about what an actual person would be named, but if I get anything from this 2.0 duo, it’s confirmation for a theory of mine. I don’t think Kevin Smith is exclusively Dante or Randal—I think he thinks he’s Randal, but the way he presents himself in person and online betrays a brash insecurity more evocative of the former. The truth is Kevin Smith is both Dante and Randal; the angel and devil on his shoulder, pulling him towards a comfortable if unsatisfying existence peppered with selfish grasps as excitement, and a Oblomovist disaffection with the rat race of life or even the social contract. At least at this point in his life, let’s say 1992-1997, he wants more. To be a great filmmaker and great writer, the kind who inspires and compels like Dick Linklater and Spike Lee. Does he deserve more? Don’t ask him that. Thinking about it will bum him out.

He makes Mallrats because, by Mallrats’ time, he is now Quint & Brodie. He retains in his heart and soul the introspective wrestling match of two flannel warriors, similar in ambition but ideologically opposed in motivation. The difference now is he has power. A small sliver, an unfortunate pizza slice cut haphazardly while serving Tarantino and Rodriguez, but a couple million dollars and the assist of genuine studio muscle. If Clerks had that kind of money—nevermind, we already know what happens.

Quint & Brodie and aesthetically meek but textually godlike. They have enemies to slay, and they are slain with negligible sacrifice. They have girls to get, and the girls are got. Really they find themselves on figuratively the exact same quest which they fulfill in literally the exact same way. It takes no serious introspection on their part to accomplish either, which isn’t to say that’s required of a good story, only that two times is a coincidence and, by coincidence, Kevin has elected to execute this duo twice, with the added delusion of mainstream attention.

Dante ended his story with less than he began; Randal has effective diplomatic immunity so whether he loses or gains anything is hardly a concern. Their progression is as waterlike as the story they find themselves swept through. This is another thing that comes with more money and presumably something to prove regarding one’s directorial strengths. As budget goes up, Mallrats endeavors to resemble a more typical Hollywood movie, Freytag’s Pyramid included. Quint & Brodie have a goal, endure trials of sorts, and eventually succeed. In this way Mallrats shows its ambitions to be a more understandable lens by which to focus Kevin Smith’s disaffected world view, but that lens is projecting shadows on the wall of a cave. It cannot be mainstream, because Kevin’s feelings on relationships and authority remain as selfish as they were when he had nothing to support his creativity but himself. Quint gets back his girlfriend after insisting, for the fourth or fifth time but now in a situation where she cannot leave, that her father is a bad person and whatever she’s off to do isn’t really what she wants, and that being with him is actually what she wants because he loves her a whole lot. Brodie gets his girlfriend back because her rebound boyfriend is a pedophile. He’s also very good at sex. For some reason I believe this one more than Quint’s.

The verisimilar uncanniness of Mallrats is not unlike whatever I was insisting about Clerks, only this time there’s too many people to blame. With that first film, the charm which emerged from the half-opaque fakeness of a presumably real film affords the experience a more obvious and fascinating prognosis of one Kevin Smith, a young man still unaffected by the expectations of a 90s movie market. It’s not that I do not find the same kinship in Mallrats, it’s more than I cannot. It’s the same young man who still largely believes the same things, only this time cluelessly chasing the textual mise-en-scène of a type of movie he should not be making. The nucleus of the film (They’re just there.) predates to the point of contradicting the movie we end up seeing. Askewniverse devotees are not surprised that people don’t like this movie, but they should also not be surprised that people who love Clerks also don’t like this movie.

Hey, this was fun, but I think my friends are looking for me. Yeah, we’re gonna go do stuff after this, so I should probably check in with them. This was cool, though—yeah, you’re good with the kissing stuff. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Bye.

#writing #nightblogging #my writing #movies #clerks #clerks 1994

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grandsponsor · 10 months ago

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A Pilot

I actually don’t care why the Clerks sitcom pilot was never picked up, nor do I care what it misunderstood regarding the magic of its source material. All I’m here to see is my good friend, the TV. He’s not very bright—curious because brightness is mechanically the only thing he does.

He’s been through a lot, and he certainly remembers most of it. That’s beginning to be a bit of a problem, because he’s getting up there in years and the difference between last week and twenty years ago doesn’t immediately come to him. He thinks the world works the same as it did in Cronkite’s time. Sure, he can learn. He cottoned to that Golden Age TV stuff pretty quick, even if he’s more comfortable with programs like Firehouse: New Orleans and Jolson, a remake of the classic seventies show Detective Jolson that somehow has fifty-nine seasons to the original’s three. TV tries to stay sharp, even if his tools aren’t so much. He gets excited about ideas he’s already told you a hundred times over, and maybe two of them squeaked past a ten episode order. Oh, wait. Idea incoming. You know what this has potential for? A syndicatable few seasons of situation comedy, with wacky relatable scenarios and a Very Special Episode or two, assuming a cast member dies.

TV, come on, that’s your answer to everything.

You know Kitchen Confidential got a sitcom? Yeah! Bradley Cooper’s in it! I’m watching an episode as I write this paragraph! It’s bad! While it’s not a single camera sitcom like the pilot I’m supposed to be talking about, it is one of innumerable moving camera comedy series following Scrubs with delusions of Scrubs. It wants to be a TV version of Tony Bourdain’s hit memoir (which, unique among hit memoirs, is a good book) but it can’t, because it’s a TV show. And I’m not talking about the power unique to a given medium, I mean it ontologically cannot be as good as a book that was unrestrained by Standards and Practices. In the godless halls of Borders and Chapters Indigo, you can say anything. Tony’s book dedicated a chapter to the Fucks Per Minute clocked in the average New York kitchen. Meanwhile I’m supposed to believe a similarly irreverent, adult tone from a show that airs on weekday nights and is clearly not allowed to say a swear word.

So a Clerks television series as produced in 1995 is neutered from the word go. It cannot be stressed enough how much of the film’s immediate charm is because the character say cum sometimes. And I bet a TV-14 series would only let you say it once.

How exactly we’re seeing this thing is itself a mystery. Pilots don’t drop online all that often unless American cartoons are your poison. The smelly masses aren’t supposed to see television with its makeup removed. For twenty years, the unaired pilot was Askewniverse folklore, invoked only at convention panels and in the advantage of asking Kevin Smith, a man who must talk when prompted. Crap, he said. Not worth the electronic tape it’s printed(?) on. But he would say that, wouldn’t he. At the time I believe he would’ve called any Clerks adaptation crap because he still fashioned himself an industry outsider. Don’t touch his baby; don’t spoil the magic. He’d like to do that himself, thank you.

On release, the movie did okay. I believe in a hard ceiling where it concerns cult classics, and in 1994-1995 Clerks hadn’t yet broken it with failed cartoons and sequels and an unhealthy proximity to its most doting of followers (says the guy writing the Clerks book yeah shut up). Even with a more limited release, denoting a low budget gamble picked up on the festival circuit, Kevin made back his money and then some. Credit cards paid off, loan from Mom & Dad returned, Jason Lee contacted. Counting such a comparatively humble win, I struggle to imagine the franchise material it may have looked like at the time. Mallrats suffered a familiar sophomore attrition that only gained slack in the home video stage which, if I were a big TV man in a big suit, would indicate a failing charm to the Kevin Smith “people in a movie talking about jerking off” style.

Of course, there is a place where failed or failing movie ideas can retreat to safety. Welcome to soundstage C-A, ye silver medals.

We are thus forced to stomach a civil relationship with new actors in a new shooting location that—pardon me in case I throw up—was purpose built for filming inside of. Ghastly. I’d rather not discredit the new Dante and new Randal and new Veronica out of hand, however. No, I don’t know why, but work with me here. Yes, Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Jason Mewes, and the big guy upstairs—a Clerks without their participation would be a lesser movie. But that’s a familiarity bias in itself, and I hope I’m not disrespecting O’Halloran’s really good acting if I dare suggest these are characters that could probably be played by other people to a similar cultural permanence. Clerks is a good movie, and I like the actors acting in it, but the order there is important. It’s not because of the actors that I like Clerks. I like the actors because they’re in Clerks. Yeah? Yeah.

Nobody in this pilot is my real dad, but I’ll take them as they’re given. I did that with the movie no problem. Brian O’Halloran wasn’t exactly robbed of an Oscar.

Our new TV friend Dante is played by Andrew Lowery, speaking of. And I know; I said the same thing. The Andrew Lowery? My Boyfriend’s Back’s Andrew Lowery? Buffy The Vampire Slayer (movie)’s Andrew Lowery?

One second. IMDB’s kinda slow right now. Figures. It’s a bad website. No I can’t delete any of this. No I can’t stop either.

One episode of All-American Girl’s Andrew Lowery?!

How did they snag him? Well, if the convention stories are true, it was by beating O’Halloran. Both the progenital Dante and Randall auditioned for parts on this show, independent of one another, and neither were selected. In fairness to the TV casting directors and execs (not deserved), maybe they just wanted this show to maintain a distance. Stand on its own, as they say to avoid saying something mean about shitty TV shows that aren’t good.

Our Randal is brought back to life by one Jim Breuer. Yeah, it’s Jim Breuer, and I’m not doing a bit (you know I love Andrew Lowery—Andy, you know I love you). He may warrant introduction, though, in case no one here’s seen Half Baked. Jim’s been in the comedy game for years, but the Clerks pilot predates his practice by months or even weeks. In less than a year from filming he would be christened a cast member on Saturday Night Live, alongside contemporaries Will Ferrell, Norm Macdonald, Chris Kattan, Tim Meadows (you never ONCE paid for drugs) and David Spade. What a time to have a Rolodex and a pen. Clearly Jim did not need this show to succeed and probably couldn’t get me a full paragraph about working on this thing if I asked him (I didn’t). From there, apart from the stand-up racket, he’d appear in things like Chappelle’s Show, Zookeeper, four episodes of Kevin Can Wait. He’s at least enough of a name to appear in an episode of Disney Channel’s Liv and Maddie playing himself. No I didn’t watch the episode to get the context. Guess you’ll have to note that in the Goodreads review. Here, I’ll write the form letter:

XXxxx Braden did not watch the Liv and Maddie episode with the Jim Breuer guest appearance. I bet he doesn’t even know what Liv and Maddie is. He’s a poser and a fraud.

Filling in for Marilyn Ghigliotti this next twenty minutes and never again is miss Noelle Parker. I’m also getting tired of the filmography thing so I’ll mention she was in Ernest Saves Christmas and otherwise send her my best wishes. Hope you’re doing good, Noelle. Let’s catch up sometime.

I do wonder if someone named in the cast of this pilot was really hoping it would take off. Just one season. Not even for the money, which couldn’t have been stunning anyway. Lotta people in the creative biz have unfaltering faith in whatever it is their making—whatever it is. Just look at me. If only for a couple thousand more words, I’d like to meet them halfway.

Bash & Pop’s Making Me Sick scores an appropriately understated title card, the same Courier-like native to the mother film. As always, these opening moments are precious. Our location has been moved from the combination Quick Stop Groceries / RST Video to the combination Rose Market / Movies & More. I’m momentarily burdened by intrigue, because the couple-second exterior shot is by all accounts a real strip mall. The interior is fake, but this conjoined Quick Stop-like was every bit as real, every bit as legitimate as the genuine shop. Convenience store on the left, video store on the right. I tip the hats I don’t wear anymore to the location scout.

Already, Clerks: The Sitcom is plagued by a fiddling. The two clerks have been bumped up to three. The film is not technically wrong to pluralize the noun, but I’ll concede the movie looks and sounds like it’ll capture a great variety of clerkdom, rather than a technical two and a functional one (does Randal ever open the register?). Down in Hollywoodland, some TV writing geek who worships the Rule of Threes instead of something normal like God looked at the Clerks roster and said they need a third amigo. What the fuck is the matter with them.

We’ll deny him corporeality and call him Ice Cream Man.

Dante Hey, Sandra, explain something: you seem to be very health-conscious, yet every day you nuke yourself in order to attain an unnatural tan. Sandra (scoff) You’re one of those people who thinks tanning causes cancer, right? Dante Oh, you mean one of those smart people? Ice Cream Man So, so, what does cause cancer, Sandra? Sandra Lotion?

Y’know, the pilot episode doesn’t actually have to be good. It doesn’t even have to be okay. TV executives aren’t creative people. At best, their skill is reading the cards and predicting what can or will be a hit on the boob tube. Clerks: The Sitcom is stunningly unfunny; At no time is it even funny on accident, which may make it an anomaly if such can be bent to a compliment. To waste time reminding you how not funny Clerks: The Sitcom is would be an unconstructive waste of time. Which is why I’m only doing it twice:

Dante Man, this sucks. Y’know, here I am, just hanging out and trying to figure out what I wanna do with my life, while Veronica, the only thing that makes any sense at all, is walking away... Randal … … Aw, I’m sorry. I was thinking about pie.

Bazinga.

When I was a kid my dream was to draw newspaper comics. Calvin & Hobbes taught me big words and I watched enough of Dad’s movies from my hiding place behind the couch (man everybody got AIDS and shit!) to grasp the vague meter of a joke grown-ups would find funny. Not unlike that Twitter user fascinated with The Posters, as they’re called, enough to gander the way they talk but impermeable to the way they think, so his imitations are indecipherable and the tiniest bit really fucking sad. Keep trying, man, someone will invite you on a podcast.

So… that thing I was saying, about Clerks fulfilling an unreality by virtue of its new God. The fresh comedy smell dissipates, and all we’re left with is the Pepper’s Ghost of a normal world. Imagine sending that end result back through the same process again, and we arrive at this pilot. What I’m saying is this show attempts the affectation of its ancestor with an imprecision I can only attribute to space aliens. There is a story buried in these twenty minutes, arguably more so than the film it’s based on. There are stakes! Get a load of this:

On the docket today are two TV-sized plots we gotta resolve, both of which involving Dante. Firstly, the permanent disappointment of his father, who wears a suit, tries setting Dante up with better jobs than working a convenience store—and lastly, the most important thing, exists. So he has a job interview to go to, which irritates Randal and the ice cream man, two men happily set in their ways. Elsewhere (ninety seconds later) Dante very nearly loses Veronica as a romantic partner, citing the lack of maturity or momentum in his life. Both of these plots are resolved in a way that does not involve the convenience store.

1995 was a good year to be running a sitcom. Hardly a cultural moment to respond to. But in the domain of the single-camera series, the houses were in harmony. What could be covered by a Clerks series already was in the likes of Friends and Seinfeld. What couldn’t be covered demonstrably did not need to be. I don’t think this pilot was denied a series order because it was bad. It’s bad, but only bad in the way all TV of the time was just okay. A majority of the gags herein could be easily transplanted into the average Married… with Children episode, if we’re ready to talk about how good that show wasn’t. Point is, this pilot wasn’t picked up for having missed the mark in regards to its source material. What are the odds anyone who ordered a pilot in the first place gave a shit. What they ordered was simply bad, eyes too big for the stomach, and it was promptly thrown out, in the same pile as the many dozens, hundreds of other TV pilots we don’t even know or care to know.

How long has it been since I checked in with the TV? The real TV; not the streaming app amalgamation on your fancy, no-ass-having Smart Teevee with the commercials on the home screen. Is he still up to his old tricks? Because it looks like that’s all he’s up to. I’m seeing shows that were on when I was a kid. Not remakes, just the same shows. But I’m not mad. This is TV’s happy place. Just don’t ask him about any current events. It’s not that he isn’t keeping up—you just don’t wanna know what he thinks.

#writing #nightblogging #my writing #movies #clerks #clerks 1994

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grandsponsor · 10 months ago

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On RST Video

I really like RST Video; the fleeting moments we have to absorb its limited real estate and unpretentious function as a place to rent movies. It’s what video stores removed from franchise bombast actually looked like—and yes, being an actual video store in real life sure helped in that regard.

Nostalgia is a trick. Maybe sometimes fascist depending on who you’re arguing with. I agree it’s more often what we choose to remember than what the universe knows to be true. A conservative eighty percent of pre-Y2K video games are bad, if you ask the writer who is only pre-Y2K by a technicality. I kinda doubt there was any holistically good time for the American economy or job market. Captain Kirk never said “beam me up, Scotty.” The DeLorean was an awful car that failed for unsurprising reasons. Seinfeld isn’t really that funny. I refer to things removed from my personal growing up as Nostalgic because, by the time I was old enough to know the word, I had been conditioned to picture a world I never got to live. But I’m also starting to think nobody really lived it.

Retro video store recreations, the rare sort you find tucked away in walking distance to universities and old people, divorce themselves from era and choose instead an arbitrary point that nostalgia stops. Like most things it’s just before 9/11. It could be September 10th. From there they stuff the birth of home video and the death of innocence with every obscure media format and promotional flotsam eBay and the flea market and their own hoarding tendencies are so kind to mediate. The Armageddon poster rubs up against the Japanese poster for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which hang framed above VHS and Betamax and DVD but only the old ones and HD-DVD to be funny and the Criterions because that’s what the college students actually wanna rent. Laserdisc. Who gives a shit. It need only be old.

We don’t spend a lot of time in RST. South of ten minutes. I think Kevin’s as bored of the space as he projects on Randall. Corporate franchise aside, he’d really rather be working in a Blockbuster or a Hollywood Video. It should come as no surprise Kevin was one of the earlier adult geeks with the means to construct bric-a-brac tombs of every bilia and ana, farming all the envy an adolescent internet could squeeze out.

Kevin was in no position to overhaul the fittings and fixings of his sets, but we have seen the kind of store his contemporaries design when at liberty to do so. Arriving on the heels of Clerks was a subcategory of the 90s indie boom, immediately recognizable by the soft premise of people working in a store. A type of store that seems fun to work at, or at least a place where your catty media opinions may find purchase with your wacky coworkers. 1995’s Empire Records, 2000’s High Fidelity, 2008’s Be Kind Rewind, 2006’s Clerks II, 2022’s Clerks III, 20XX’s Clerks IV. I seem to recall a fictional comic book store in the movie Kick-Ass, actually, that was part comic store, part cool casual café where you can totally hang out with your friends and drink coffee and talk about the comic books you aren’t buying. Filmmakers don’t always imagine a better world, but they almost always imagine a better retail. Even the on-screen minimum wage rackets engineered to look bad, and thus more closely resemble the feelings of the viewer, have a charm afforded by the pastiche. If you work in the toy store from Jingle All The Way, the worst thing that could happen is the world’s largest mattress salesman may threaten to kill you. And even then, your environment gave you the confidence to antagonize that guy. It’s all give and take.

RST Video is not attractive by societal standards, and it may—or more likely just does—fail to emotionally placate the old or inspire envy in the young. But it is a video store, and it is honest. It has no other choice. The back wall of RST is bafflingly shallow considering what the Quick Stop next door is afforded. Do they have anything in the back? Is there a back? The interior design looks closer to a smoke shop than a video store, in fact I bet you anything that’s what the space was designed for. Customers seem to get in and out as quick as they can, before Randal has the chance to say anything funny. When they do consult the staff, all one of them, it’s with the dash of writer clairvoyance. Randall faces no intellectual equal. The unworthy human leeches we identify as customers occasionally approach the old master with anodyne queries like, “is this movie good,” and, “do you have XYZ movie.” A pox.

Question, and we can seminar in a Socratic sort of way: does Randall like movies? A stupid question, maybe. Randal is more Kevin Smith’s self-projection than Dante, and Kevin Smith loves his Flicks. Yes, Randall probably thinks movies are okay. But he probably doesn’t like movies any more than the next guy. I doubt he pilgrims to the silver screen in search of his misplaced soul. If you asked him if a movie ever made him cry, I think he’d take it as an insult worthy of a very funny monologue—curious, that, the avatar of a writer who needs everybody to know when a movie made him cry.

Forget whether Randal is a qualified cinephile, for a moment. Why am I surprised Randall is so agnostic to film anyway? Why am I only noticing on rewatch number twenty? The video store employee is real—or at least was—but our notion of the video store employee is a virtual fiction. No doubt a passion for film led many to join the Blockbuster team, same as a love for video games led thousands to the inadvisable career path of GameStop. Let’s remember that RST Video is/was a real video store, owned by real people, who I similarly believe are okay with movies. From a business perspective, it need not be more poetic than that. Fulfilling a suburban ecological niche at a time when seeing an older movie wasn’t so waterlogged with options both legal and easier more reliable free illegal. The precious few video stores we have today don’t really have the same function as their parents. Sure, you can rent movies, and you will never find me questioning their continued necessity or plain fun. I’d compared a neo-video store to Looies Diner off interstate 69, the one with the tinny brassy 50s hits blaring indiscriminately around two-hundred salvaged Coca-Cola signs. More than truth, I will hold desperately to what this felt like.

In the last third of the film, Randal demands to borrow Dante’s car so he can go rent a movie. How queer. He indeed works in a video store, which is however in his words a shitty video store, so he’d like to go rent from a good one. An exercise in futility, asking Randal what exactly this means, and forgetting for a moment what he eventually does rent, the film takes one of its rare detours away from the Quick Stop to show us this better video store.

And it does certainly have more shelves. Enough for the rare stock music sting to holler in operatic ecstasy as Randal falls to his knees in only the way an untested half-actor can perform as Kevin Smiths says “okay, go,” from behind the camera. We’ve established already that Randal’s credentials as a film buff are mercurial at best. 1990’s Navy Seals is his only example of a bad movie, and the only other real movie(s) he namedrops is Star Wars, how much he actually likes them remaining up in the air until Clerks II’s only funny scene. He returns having rented one movie—Best of Both Worlds: a hermaphroditic porn.

Incidentally this is the real name of a real pornographic film from the nineties, only that one’s gimmick is bisexuals. No I haven’t seen it.

As of writing, Seattle’s own Scarecrow Video endures a financial crisis what had put the entire northwest film community on heels. A gorgeous, sinfully indulgent Babel so waterlogged with choices and the deepest, deepest cuts none of us really have an excuse if we haven’t seen a classic. A Tubi for the corporeal world. For a lot of us, I imagine, the only video store we’ve ever been to. Sure, I went to Hollywood Video; rode with my dad to rent the DVD of Rocky Balboa the weekend it dropped, a DVD he ended up never returning and I’m currently looking at in my big DVD crate. To christen a sleepover circa 2008 (yes, the local Hollywood Video muscled into the Obama administration) we rented two films I could never forget: The Karate Kid Part III and Goosebumps: Deep Trouble. Gun to my head, I could not tell you a thing about either of those, and I know I’ve seen Karate Kid III more than once. Were I to rent those certified classics, those formative influence-bombs everyone pretends they were watching as 1st graders instead of renting the Rankin/Bass Hobbit movie nineteen weekends in a row, I don’t think it would make much of a difference to me, or anyone with fond memories of video stores. Hackneyed observation incoming, but it’s true: the movies aren’t what people are remembering. We just cherish a time when we couldn’t access everything via an app. The tactility is gone.

Scarecrow is a wonderful place, and I pray for both their full recovery and that this essay does not wind up depressingly outdated by next year. But it’s a labyrinthine equivalent to the video store memory. I hesitate to say that’s what video stores were really like. Give me thirty minutes and I doubt I could find that Goosebumps thing.

But RST Video could not be more literally what it was like, renting a movie for the night or weekend with as much enthusiasm as they would buy a pack of cigarettes or a TV dinner. They had employees, yeah—a Starbucks barista who needs to pay rent will learn to love coffee. They had a wider selection of films than one likely had on tap at home, if only barely so when you cut out every non-starter. Of the film’s two fundamental locations, RST Video goes largely unregarded, even though it’s the only one of the two that escapes the color grade unscathed. What would a Clerks shot in color reveal about this store? I try to picture the interior and it only comes up Black & White. The movies are not real, as most video store movies are not. The one employee cannot be bothered. Counter to whatever I was talking about in the last chapter, Kevin Smith’s perception of RST Video, in all its non-splendor, is very real. He does not yet know how it couldn’t be.

#writing #nightblogging #my writing #movies #clerks #clerks 1994

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