"Clerks" And "Waiting"

Byron at Subway asked "have you ever done any customer service in your life, like being a waiter, even when you were younger?" I answered no, except maybe now: as "My Fair Lady" Stage Manager, I prepare some finger cakes to be eaten on-stage, and wash dishes, as well as wash Eliza's marbles. Byron is slightly-familiar with Lauren Miller (who is playing Eliza Doolittle), having seen the DMTC "Titanic" video, where she played second-class striver Alice Beane, opposite my Edgar Beane, and he sometimes asks "How's your wife doing? Does she still like to dance with billionaires?" I generally answer something like "Yup. I can't control her worth beans."

Anyway, Byron said "You have GOT to watch these videos: they are classic!" So, I watched Kevin Smith's 1994 "Clerks" (the Miramax collector edition tenth anniversary 'X' reissue, with the kind of loving detail I usually associate with Humphrey Bogart classics, or "Gone With The Wind"):

Its just another day for Dante Hicks, until his boss calls him into work at the Quickstop on his day off. With a hockey game at 2, and his girlfriend still hacking him about going to back to school. Dante begins to get into a bigger frenzy when he learns his ex-girlfriend, Caitlin, is getting married. With his always late accomplice Randall strolling in to work at the video store, Dante is left with no choice but to bend the rules a little with work, customers, and most of all his love life. Can he get away with it all? (Plot summary by Bryanne Marks).

Plus, I also watched Waiting:

Young employees at Shenaniganz restaurant collectively stave off boredom and adulthood with their antics.

Well, I do have to say I found some of the crude humor somewhat off-putting: to my mind, the crude humor interferes with the real comic gold to be found in these particular settings. After all, millions of people have done customer service jobs and strongly empathize with the various situations one can find oneself in. "Clerks" ("the vulgar thinking-man's film") is better than "Waiting", but even "Clerks" suffers from amateurish acting. "Clerks" grunge motif works better than the slick suburban setting of "Waiting" for conveying the desperation that lies right at the surface, like a ravenous crocodile, or some kind of angst-ridden land shark. Nevertheless, some beg to differ:

I hated (HATED!) being a waitress, but this movie is so hilarious and so ballsy that it almost makes me want to go back to the summer of 1999 to work one more shift at TGI Fridays. Waiting is the best, most accurate, most honest, and most riotously funny movie ever made about the service industry. Here's how I see it – the world is divided into two groups of people: those who have waited tables and those who haven't. Those who have never worked a day of their lives in a restaurant may find this movie amusing, but they'll think it's too absurd to be real, and they'll probably never give a second thought to this movie ever again.

But those of you who have felt the pain, degradation, and humiliation of waiting tables will p**s your pants laughing at how PERFECT this movie is. First-time writer/director Rob McKittrick has created a dead-on depiction of 24 hours in the restaurant biz. The movie opens at a late-night party with lots of underage drinking, smoking, and sex. Then we see the wait staff hung-over at work the next day. The restaurant they all work at is called "Shenanigans," but it looks an awful lot like the TGI Fridays I worked at.

One thing that struck me, however, is how much "Clerks" lead character Dante Hicks reminds me of Byron at Subway. He looks like him - he even sounds like him. It's no surprise that Byron identifies with Dante, and that unprompted, Subway customers often tell Byron the stock line from "Clerks": "you're not even supposed to be here today!"

I liked the way QuickStop customers in "Clerks" often uttered exactly the same lines over and over again: "Are you open today?" then "I wanna buy some cigarettes." I liked the gum salesman masquerading as a tobacco prohibitionist:

You're spending what? Twenty, thirty dollars a week on cigarettes... Fifty-three dollars. Would you pay someone that much money every week to kill you? Because that's what you're doing now, by paying for the so-called privilege to smoke!... It's that kind of mentality that allows this cancer-producing industry to thrive. Of course we're all going to die someday, but do we have to pay for it? Do we actually have to throw hard-earned dollars on a counter and say, "Please, please, Mr. Merchant of Death, sir; please sell me something that will give me bad breath, stink up my clothes, and fry my lungs... Of course it's not that easy to quit; not when you have people like this mindless cretin so happy and willing to sell you nails for your coffin... Now he's going to launch into his rap about how he's just doing his job; following orders. Friends, let me tell you about another bunch of hate mongers that were just following orders; they were called Nazis, and they practically wiped a nation of people from the Earth... just like cigarettes are doing now! Cigarette smoking is the new Holocaust, and those that partake in the practice of smoking or selling the wares that promote it are the Nazis of the Nineties! He doesn't care how many people die from it! He smiles as you pay for your cancer sticks and says, "Have a nice day."

And I liked the inadvertent sale of cigarettes to a four-year-old girl. And video-store clerk, Randal, and his philosophizing to Dante:

You sound like an asshole! Jesus, nobody twisted your arm to be here. You're here of your own volition. You like to think the weight of the world rests on your shoulder. 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 just 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?

I especially liked the booklet enclosed with "Clerks" X edition, featuring Director Kevin Smith's reminiscences about youthful years working in, and getting trapped in a suffocating embrace by, a New Jersey QuickStop - the ultimate source of his career as a movie director.

Next, Byron will loan me "Clerks II" and a documentary featuring Kevin Smith.