National Film RegistryLibrary of Congress · Inducted 2019
“A hilarious, in-your-face, bawdy-yet-provocative look at two sardonic young slackers (Dante and Randal). One toils as a New Jersey convenience store clerk while his alter-ego video store friend works when the mood strikes him.”
Selected for preservation as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
Directed by
Kevin Smith
Studio
Miramax · View Askew Productions · 92 min
Box office
$3.2M worldwide on a $28K budget
Honors
Sundance Filmmaker Trophy Dramatic — 1 winAll 1 wins · 0 nominations on record
Sources: Wikidata · Library of Congress · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Clerks arrived in 1994 as a low budget black and white feature shot largely at the New Jersey convenience store where its writer director Kevin Smith actually worked. Picked up by Miramax after a strong festival reception, it became a touchstone of American independent cinema in the 1990s, prized for its dialogue driven comedy and its portrait of dead end retail life. The film helped define a generation of scrappy indie filmmaking and launched Smith's View Askewniverse, a loosely connected series of movies that would follow.
This cell preserves the title card, the frame that opens the film and announces its name before any character appears. Title cards mark the formal beginning of a picture, the handoff from studio branding to story, and collectors seek them out as the cleanest possible artifact of a film's identity on 35mm stock. For a movie built on plain surroundings and unglamorous work, the title card carries extra weight, standing in for the whole enterprise before a single line of the now famous dialogue is spoken.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm colour release print of Clerks (1994).
Gauge
35mm, confirmed by four perforations per frame on both edges; the strip holds three frames.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced; punched edges appear clean with no visible tearing or deformation.
Soundtrack
Not visible in this capture; the area beside the picture frames is obscured by the curl and dark surround.
Edge print
Edge print reads '149 5708·' visible along the top edge; text appears mirrored, indicating emulsion-up orientation.
Base & colour
Base appears with a slight cyan-green tint typical of colour print stock; dye image shows saturated, neutral-balanced colour with no visible fading or red shift.
Projection history
No scratches, splice marks, or cue marks are visible in this capture.
Picture
Positive colour image; all three frames show the same title card logo, consistent with a title sequence held on consecutive frames matching the film on record.
Era check
The colour print stock with cyan-base tint and key number format is consistent with a mid-1990s release print, matching the 1994 production date of the film on record.
Read from the original intake capture shown below. Observations only — film is authenticated, not graded.
This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading in partnership with National Film Vault, and encapsulated for archival preservation.
Why so little survivesRelease prints were leased to theaters, not sold. When the run ended they went back to the distributor to be destroyed, and most were. What collectors hold today came from the prints that escaped that order, and no new 35mm prints of these films are being struck.
CROWN SERIAL 000063081
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
