National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Clerks arrived in 1994 through Miramax Films after its celebrated debut at Sundance, where Kevin Smith's black-and-white debut feature announced a new voice in American independent cinema. Shot on a shoestring budget in the actual New Jersey convenience store where Smith worked, the film captured a generation's ambivalence about work, ambition, and adulthood with sharp, digressive dialogue that felt genuinely new.

This cell, titled Dante Hicks and Randal Graves, preserves three frames from a continuous shot inside the Quick Stop and RST Video space. Brian O'Halloran as Dante and Jeff Anderson as Randal are both present at the counter, store shelves filling the background and signage visible in the foreground — a faithful slice of the film's signature setting and its central friendship.