Yes, I am going from seven days in a row expounding about the virtues of Sunset Boulevard to quoting writer/director Kevin Smith. While he’s no stranger to controversy, raunchiness, and profanity, and you may not care for his films—but you have to at least give the guy credit for launching a career by making Clerks for $27,000. All filmed in a New Jersey convenience store where he actually worked (and edited in a video store where Smith also worked).
“I was awed by (Richard Linklater’s film) Slacker, that it existed. And Richard’s story was kind of compelling too. This guy from Austin, Texas—not from Hollywood, not from New York—had made a film that’s playing in New York and look at all these people here to see it! And he’d made it for such a low amount of money. But by the end of the film I was thinking, I could definitely do this! And oddly enough it was the reaction that Clerks would have a few years later…Anyway we’re driving back to New Jersey and I say, ‘You Know, Vincent, I think that’s what I want to do. I think I want to make a film.”
Kevin Smith
My First Movie
20 Directors Talk About Their First Film
Page 74
Edited by Stephen Lowenstein
