Smith returns to the Quick Stop with Jeff Anderson, Brian O’Halloran, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, and Jason Mewes for a long-overdue comedy trilogy.
Writer, director, and actor Kevin Smith return to the Quick Stop convenience store for Clerks III (available on September 13). This sequel was motivated by the near-death experience he had in 2018.
The director said, “I wanted to express my heart attack tale through my characters.” “Thus, Randal, the video store employee (played by Jeff Anderson), suffers a severe heart attack.
He moans that he has wasted his life watching movies and has never considered producing his own as he heals. With the black-and-white film Inconvenience, Randal and Dante [Brian O’Halloran] effectively create their version of Clerks.
It is pretty meta. In Clerks III, the snake eats its tail, spits, and swallows. You can include that on the poster! ” The cast also includes Jason Mewes, Trevor Fehrman, and Rosario Dawson, who has been a part of the Star Wars universe since her role as Ahsoka Tana in 2006’s Clerks II.
Did Smith, a fan of George Lucas’s franchise, question the actress about playing the character while filming Clerks III?
“Even though we’re friends, she won’t spill, probably because she knows I’ve got a big mouth, and I’d be on FatMan Beyond [the pop culture podcast Smith hosts with former EW editor Marc Bernardin] going, ‘You know what Ahsoka herself told me?'” the director explains.
“But finding Rosario amid her insanely busy schedule was much more difficult on Clerks III than on Clerks II. On Clerks III, she was caught between several galaxies.” According to the film’s recent trailer, Smith’s longtime collaborator Ben Affleck will appear in Clerks III. So, does he use the Quick Stop?
“Yes and no,” Smith responds. “There was no real place to put a zillion cameos to keep the original universe’s integrity intact. However, Dante and Randal attempt to cast the film at one point, when I called up every famous person I knew and had them do a line.
In Clerks III, Ben Affleck appears
So, Ben Affleck appears in Clerks III, but not at the Quick Stop.” Smith shot Clerks III at the same real-life convenience store in New Jersey, where he shot Clerks in 1994 and once worked.
“We returned to Jersey for the first time since the first film to shoot the entire thing there,” the director explains. “Finally, I was mature enough to ask the owners if I could close the place down.
Every time we’ve shot there before, we’ve had to shoot while the store was still open. This time, because of COVID, I said, “We can’t do that. I’ll have to rent out the whole place and close it down. We can’t have the general public come in.”
I returned to work at Quick Stop, but this time in the best f—-ing way. When I worked at Quick Stop, I had to be there at certain times, ring people up, stock the sodas, mop the floor, and do other such duties.
Man, I’d walk into Quick Stop, pretend we were clerks, and then walk out this time. It was pure bliss, man.” Smith admits that his wife and daughter have mixed feelings about making a comedy out of his health crisis.
“My wife and child don’t enjoy the movie as much as I do, at least not for the first half hour,” the director says. “‘Look, what you think is funny now was the worst moment of our f—-ing lives,’ my wife says. ‘Well, don’t say that to the critics, for Christ’s sake!’ I said. It’s too simple a layup for them!'”
Clerks III will be released exclusively in theatres on September 13 and 15 by Lionsgate through Fathom Events.