by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn, and Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Website

Emily Maesar: It is entirely possible that many people might not be where they are, or that we wouldn’t be having the same conversations about popular culture, if Kevin Smith’s Clerks. hadn’t become the cult hit that it has. I know I wouldn’t be where I am, because I probably wouldn’t have seen film school as an option for my higher education without seeing the behind-the-scenes of the production. Made on a shoe-string production budget of a little less than $28,000, mostly made up in credit card debit that Smith took out, Clerks. would go on to need a budget of $230,000 in post costs. However, it would eventually end up making $3.2 million at the box office, and launch the career of the resident nerd king, Kevin Smith.

Clerks. was a film that premiered at Sundance in 1994, but had its screening on Sunday - a day notorious for being shit at the festival, at least at the time. It’s the Friday night air time of Sundance, as it were. After its screening, however, Miramax executive and absolutely one of the worst people in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein, offered to buy the film. Which, like Quentin Tarantino before him, began a long relationship between the filmmaker and the company.

As a film, Clerks. became a pretty instant cult classic with the audience it was ostensibly about. Shot on black-and-white film to save money, because this was the early nineties after all, Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) are two 20-somethings slackers who work at a convenience store and video rental store, respectively, who just talk about girls, Star Wars, and the shitty customers.

Ryan Silberstein: It would be hard to overstate the effect of Clerks on the culture at large. It premiered at Sundance the year after El Mariachi, and two years after Reservoir Dogs. While Star Wars has cemented a place near the center of pop culture, the early 90s was the nadir of the franchise. Outside of The Simpsons, Clerks was one of the few places that Star Wars was being discussed. This wave of independent films were films being made by people who had basically lived in comic book and video stores, and pop culture references to Jaws, Indiana Jones, “Like A Virgin,” The Lost Boys and more reflected the language of the culture for the first time in movies. From there, it became a feedback loop. When I was in high school (200-2004), half of what I said out loud was some sort of quote or pop culture reference. There was a viral impact from this era that still echoes forward.

Emily Maesar: Following the success of the film, Smith made three more films set in the ViewAskewniverse, since most of his flicks (especially the early ones) were in a shared universe. The three films after Clerks., however, were met with a wide mix of success and reviews. First was his direct follow up in 1995, Mallrats. The film was a financial failure, making only a third of its $6.1 million budget.

The failure of his sophomore effort meant that his budget for his third film, Chasing Amy, was significantly scaled down. But it also meant that Smith kept the story of his third film rather small in scale and deeply personal - basing it, in part, on his relationship with the lead of the film, played by Joey Lauren Adams. The film was a huge success, by both indie film standards and by Kevin Smith’s own personal track record. It was shot for $250,000 and made $12 million, with high ratings and praise from critics like Roger Ebert. It also attracted actors like Alan Rickman, who loved the film and reached out to Smith about being in his next feature.

That next film would be Dogma, in 1999. Despite Smith still being very Catholic at the time, the film was viewed as an affront to God - with lots of protesting from religious organizations at screenings. However, despite the pushback, Dogma ended up making $44 million at the box office on its $10 million budget, and received pretty favorable reviews. (Ebert liked this one too, if you’re counting.)

Which leads us to the series of Movie: The Series. Clerks: The Animated Series, that is. In a move as baffling as Nickelodeon asking Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, to make a kids cartoon for them, ABC ended up buying the pitch that Smith and his creative partner Scott Mosier made. Apparently, they had been wanting to make an animated series based on Clerks. since 1995, and shopped it around to all the major networks. Touchstone Television, a Disney-owned company, helped produce it - with Clerks: The Animated Series being one of the only adult animated shows Disney has ever produced. (The PJs is the other, if you have an interest in that knowledge.)

The series follows Dante and Randal, with O'Halloran and Anderson reviving their roles, as the founder of the town of Leonardo, an eccentric rich man named Leonardo Leonardo (Alec Baldwin), comes back to town. It’s a series of gags, situational comedy bits, and things that Smith and Mosier just couldn’t have done in live action. Oh, and Jay and Silent Bob sell fireworks instead of drugs.

Ryan Silberstein: Perhaps weirdly, Clerks: The Animated Series was my introduction to Kevin Smith. When it premiered on May 31, 2000, I was about to graduate from 8th grade, and had talked my parents into letting me keep my grandmother’s old television in my room. The only channels that came in clearly over the air were ABC, FOX, and UPN, so I watched a lot of Seinfeld and The Simpsons reruns. But seeing promos for Clerks, it seemed something that matched my burgeoning sensibilities. Tuning in to the only two episodes to air–ABC aired the fourth episode, where Dante is sued by Jay for $10 million after slipping in the store, first, followed by the second episode, which was a clip show gag flashing back to the unaired pilot–I was disappointed when there would be no more. When the DVD was released in 2001, I saved up money and bought it, and was immediately confused by the live action intro segments and references to movies, though that would get resolved later that year, as the release of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back pulled those threads together for me.

Clerks: The Animated Series may have been an unlikely entry point, but it hit me perfectly. That fourth episode, with Randall using Dante’s trial as an excuse to demand his Phantom Menace ticket price back from George Lucas and extended anime parody, was like a lightbulb going off for me. While The Simpsons felt like it was being made by adults and had a sort of nostalgic feeling to it already, Clerks: TAS felt like it was being made for me. As a know-it-all smart ass, I identified hard with Randal (though I am really more of a Dante), especially in his cleaned-up-for-TV-but-still-very-homophobic incarnation here. As the oldest kid in my family, I didn’t have older siblings to introduce me to stuff that my parents weren’t into, and Clerks: TAS was sort of that gateway to me, leading me to Smith’s films and Tarantino’s (the latter, thanks to The Simpsons’ “22 Short Films About Springfield” riffing on Pulp Fiction). Maybe all of this was inevitable, but Clerks: TAS felt special, and I watched those DVDs over and over, diligently fast forwarding over Jason Mews’ uncensored sexual references if my mom was home. Emily, how did you get introduced to the series?

Emily Maesar: My introduction to Kevin Smith was actually through Dogma. I was, and kind of remain, hopelessly obsessed with that film. (It’s so weird to me that the Weinsteins just own it personally, and that’s why it’s not available digitally.) I think I’ve seen that film more than anything else in the world (having watched it every single day on VHS for a full month in middle school), with the notable exception of the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Once More with Feeling.” Both of which are two things that really encapsulate my teenage sensibilities and who I kind of grew into, I think.

Chasing Amy is my favorite film of all time, but I didn’t really discover his other flicks until I went down a rabbit whole in high school of, “Oh, he’s got a whole backlist.” And I think that Clerks: The Animated Series ended up being the very last of his creations that I came to, since it remains very much not talked about. I bought the DVD then, and recently found a used copy of it because I have no idea where mine went, and was so fascinated by the short run and the absolute random bullshit they were doing. It’s interesting because I think it’s this time capsule of where adult animation ended up going - there’s a lot of Family Guy in here, but also some DNA of stuff like Bob’s Burgers. But I also think that the show’s sensibility ends up being where Smith’s whole career goes. Like, it makes sense that his next feature was Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, you know?

I know we both rewatched it, since it’s only three hours of content, so what were the things that surprised you the most, good and bad, upon a revisit? I was shocked by how casually racist, specifically toward East Asia, the series was - something I’d clearly blocked from my memory of the series. I also think that the casual homophobia was surprising, not because it wasn’t era accurate, but because of the entire existence of Chasing Amy and the conversations within the text of that film - things I still take great emotional value from as a queer person.

Ryan Silberstein: Adult animation was definitely just about to hit a new stride. The Simpsons, South Park, and King of the Hill were going strong. Futurama and Family Guy had recently debuted on Fox, with the latter only to be canceled a short time later and then revived thanks to its DVD performance (the team behind Clerks: TAS really hate Family Guy and take a shot at Seth MacFarlane in the series’ final episode, with additional vitriol on the commentary tracks). Clerks came out right before Cartoon Network would debut Adult Swim, and I wonder if the series would have been more successful if it had arrived later and found a home there. Robot Chicken and Rick & Morty also seem like descendants of Clerks: TAS, especially with the pop culture references and meta approach to the sitcom format.

Due to its short existence, Clerks: TAS was also a stopover of sorts. Brian Kelley, who has written on The Simpsons over the years, wrote the The Last Starfighter/Bad News Bears/Temple of Doom mashup episode, for example–the existence of which only seems possible because cable programming, VHS, and places like RST Video made these kinds of references possible. But along with Smith and his longtime collaborator Scott Mosier, the third creator of Clerks: TAS was David Mendel. A late season Seinfeld writer, Mendel went on to direct episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and was a showrunner on Veep. Also worth noting is character designer Stephen Silver, who used a similar “flat, with very heavy lines” art style on kids’ shows Kim Possible and Danny Phantom. I never watched those, but it’s fun looking back at something I thought was a trend and realizing that it’s just one guy.

It had been more than a few years since I revisited the series, and the casual racism stuck out even more to me on this watch, toward East Asian, South Asian, and Black stereotypes. Even more was the very casual use of “f****t”–a slur to mainstream it didn’t need to be censored on network television! I remembered the homophobia itself (and the slut-shaming), but the particular wording feels so grating now, even though it was thrown around constantly while I was in middle and high school. The show does try to have its cake and eat it too by making Randal–perhaps the show’s most problematic idiot–the mouthpiece for these, but that distinction certainly didn’t land with that kind of nuance for teenage Ryan. Also I still can’t believe that The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer was a real show.

Structurally, I think the series holds up well. The parodies are clever, the references mostly still work, and the self-awareness throughout feels like it’s been pushed forward by later show creators like Dan Harmon, Justin Roiland, Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls). In fact, Community maybe feels like the show that most captured the things I love in Clerks: TAS. For me, the series is something I can still return to, and even recommend people with a lot of caveats. While I feel like I’ve outgrown Smith’s directing work (we parted ways after Zack & Miri), I do think that the post-Mallrats through Clerks II (a movie I admit I am wary of revisiting) is definitely his strongest period of output, and the View Askew universe is a real, if unlikely, model for everything Marvel has been doing since Iron Man. I love that the Clerks: TAS style was used to animate the lost funeral scene from Clerks. and a cut joke from Jay & Bob Strike Back would have referenced the animated series cancellation. The late 90s and early 2000s strike me as a fundamentally weird time in the culture, and I don’t know if I would believe it if I haven’t lived through it myself.

Emily Maesar: I think the call out to Robot Chicken and Rick and Morty are super apt, given the type of shenanigans the six episodes get up to. Having a clipshow episode as the second one is completely batshit, in retrospect, but feels so completely modern and exactly the show that would be at home on Adult Swim. And it’s interesting to think about where this show might have gone, if it had gotten more than six episodes - not to mention if all of them had actually aired when they were meant to.

Especially given the fact that the development team for Clerks: TAS turned down a full thirteen episode order from UPN, in favor of both a bigger company and a network that would still exist the next year. (The rumor mill about UPN simply not existing as a broadcast network was popping off, despite it formally shutting down in 2006 to make way for the merger of UPN and The WB, which became The CW and dropped us down to five broadcast networks.) But I think the series could have found life on UPN, especially with a full-ish (certainly not for the time, but by modern standards) order. Because if Clerks: TAS had found its audience on DVD the way Family Guy had (and even they only had a seven episode first season), then who knows! We might be on season 20 of Dante and Randal fucking around Leonardo, and Kevin Smith might have had a very strong TV career.

But alas, that was not the universe we ended up in. I do think that the legacy of the Clerks: The Animated Series is one that does not exist in a vacuum, and it shares consideration with all the other adult animated shows that both failed and succeeded in equal measures in the very weird 20 year period of television when the Internet was making its presence known. Perhaps the revival that Smith teased at the start of the pandemic might be a good way to revitalize the series - since it’s got really good, and interesting bones. Just, leave the late 90s and early 2000s bigotry at the door, maybe?