Earlier today, Lionsgate released the official theatrical trailer for Clerks III, giving fans a look at the production of the movie…within the movie. As Smith has previously teased, Clerks III centers on Randal having a near-death experience and deciding that he needs to make a movie, following his bliss and closing the gap between Randal Graves — originally conceived as Smith’s self-insert character — and Smith himself, who has ultimately proven to be much more successful than Randal. The film is, therefore, kind of a big, meta Easter egg, with characters, actors, setups, and concepts that have appeared in other Kevin Smith movies since 1994.
We won’t break down every single thing — the cast, the settings, the shots, they’re all very Kevin Smith — but we wanted to take some time to look at some of the Easter eggs and references in the Clerks III trailer.
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The movie, which is set to be distributed by Lionsgate, is Smith’s first new feature film since Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, in which Brian O’Halloran’s Dante Hicks, the point-of-view character in the original Clerks and its 2006 sequel, Clerks II. That movie was the last time fans got a look at Jeff Anderson’s Randal Graves, who appears to be the lead in Clerks III.
Randal, who has always been something of a wish-fulfillment character for Smith himself, is set to suffer a life-threatening heart attack in the movie, as Smith did in real life. It will spur the lifelong slacker to find the one thing he likes better than working retail and making fun of his customers: he’s going to make a movie.
A movie about working retail and making fun of his customers, naturally.
There have been a few different ideas for Clerks 3 over the years, with one getting so far that there was a live script reading in 2020. Smith has suggested in the past that the holdout was Jeff Anderson, who is more reluctant to return to the world of Clerks than the rest of the cast. Randal is irreplaceable, though, and without all of the leads on board, Smith has said that it’s a non-starter. This time, Smith brings back Marilyn Ghigliotti, who played Dante’s girlfriend Veronica in Clerks. She is the rare View Askew lead who has not been seen in another of Smith’s movies since, making her return especially significant.
The first Clerks centered on one very bad day in the life of Dante Hicks, a convenience store worker who got called into work on his day off and spent the whole shift dealing with belligerent customers, freak occurrences, a sex-obsessed ex-girlfriend, and his obnoxious best friend, Randal. Clerks II saw Dante ready to settle down and get married — but secretly in love with someone else, and dealing with the reality that he has one day to decide where his heart lies.
Clerks 3 will be released this in September. You can see our breakdown of some of the Easter eggs and references below.
The first shot
The first shot of the trailer, before characters even walk into frame, there are a few references to the larger View Askewniverse for fans. Aside from the Quick Stop itself, there are some familiar brands in the frame right away.
Chewlie’s Gum: In the first movie, most customers just bought a coffee or cigarettes, unless their purchase was somehow relevant to their narrative. One such example was Chewlie’s gum. When one customer started hassling anyone who wanted to get cigarettes about the health risks associated with doing so, one of his suggestions was to buy some Chewlie’s gum instead. Later in the scene, it would be revealed that the customer was in fact a Chewlie’s gum sales representative, who used scare tactics about the dangers of smoking to get customers to buy his candy.
Nails cigarettes: Nail is an in-universe brand of cigarettes, first directly seen in Dogma (1999). The name is a reference to “coffin nails,” a colloquialism for cigarettes.
RST THC: RST Video is. back…kind of. The video store, which was replaced by a Redbox prior to the events of Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, has its sign back up on the side of the building…although with “Video” not replaced by “THC.” It seems that Jay and Bob’s marijuana dispensary (formerly called “Cock Smokers”) is up and running again, under a familiar old brand name.
Bluntman, Chronic, and Iron Bob: Illustrations in the RST window are evocative of old-school comic book corner boxes, featuring art of Bluntman, Chronic, and Iron Bob. First referenced in Chasing Amy, Bluntman and Chronic are comedic superheroes whose look and personality are based on Jay and Silent Bob. Iron Bob is more or less exactly what it sounds like: An Iron Man-like costume that fits and resembles Silent Bob, and was first seen in Reboot.
Jay and Bob’s entrance
As in the first Clerks, Jay and Bob enter, with Jay dancing and Bob carrying something. Here, instead of a boombox, it’s a briefcase chained to his wrist like he’s in a spy movie…although his body language may suggest he’s still using it to provide the beats as the pair do a very familiar head-tilt dance that you might recognize from Dogma (or A Night at the Roxbury).
That’s how we did it in the ’90s, son.
Jay’s “That’s how we did it in the ’90s, son” is hardly an Easter egg, since it’s a direct and overt reference to the time when Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma were made. Still, having it punctuate a montage of Dante and Randal playing street hockey on the Quick Stop roof (with an orange ball!), it feels especially true.
(Randal wearing a jersey whose number is 69 is a nice nod to Kevin Smith’s penchant for wearing jerseys numbered 37, which is in itself an oral sex joke referencing the first Clerks.)
Jay’s t-shirt is a rarity in a Smith movie, in that it’s a t-shirt worn by a main character that isn’t a fake shirt just for the movie. Here, he’s sporting a King Diamond t-shirt. Not sure whether this is intentional or not, but the Danish rocker could be a nod to Silent Bob’s cousin Olaf, an Eastern European metalhead from the first movie.
Inside the Quick Stop
Mingled with the real brands in the Quick Stop, you have boxes of a hockey-themed cereal called Pucky Charms as well as a box of Mooby’s cereal, based on the mascot first seen in Dogma (more on him later).
On the wall, there’s an ad for Dave’s fruit pies — a fake brand that appeared briefly in Clerks as a way of hiding the branding on a Hostess fruit pies display at the store.
Also, tucked away between the signs for Nails and Chewlie’s, is a poster advertising payment services via Ride Me Now, the Uber-like ride service that was intorduced in Jay & Silent Bob Reboot.
The Eternity Blocker
Cutting away from the front end of the Quick Stop, Dante emerges from a back room where the door is covered with an “Eternity Blocker” poster. Seen at Brodie’s Secret Stash in Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, the ad is a clear parody of Marvel’s Infinity Gauntlet comic, with another hockey-inspired twist.
The Storefront (again)
After Randal is rushed to the hospital, customers hang “I assure you he’s alive” outside the store’s front windows, in a nod to Dante’s “I assure you we’re open” sign from Clerks. In doing so, they have to cover up an ad for Hater Totz, a potato snack created by Todd, Jay and Silent Bob’s Ride Me Now driver from Jay & Silent Bob Reboot.
Ranger Danger
Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers, one of the movies that Randal likes to watch, is seen briefly onscreen. In addition to being a t-shirt Randal wore in Clerks II, the property is one that Kevin Smith briefly wanted to actually make a real movie about.
Big Choice Video
At one point in the trailer, Randal can be seen wearing a Big Choice Video t-shirt. That’s the name of the Blockbuster-inspired big-box rental store referenced (and even see, very briefly) in Clerks.
In that same scene, you can see Elias (seemingly having taken a 180 from his hardcore Christian upbringing in Clerks II) wearing a t-shirt for the fictional band Forked Tongue. That band was on one of Jay’s shirts in Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, as well.
Production
When Randal is putting together production materials and looking at old photos, they’re all production materials and old photos from previous Kevin Smith movies, primarily Clerks and Clerks II.
The actors who read for Dante’s part in the in-universe movie based on Clerks are Fred Armisen (who worked with Kevin Smith on Jay & Silent Bob Reboot), Sarah Michelle Gellar (who worked with him on Masters of the Universe: Revelation), and Ben Affleck (Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Clerks II, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, Jersey Girl).
Jay & Silent Bob
When it’s suggested that maybe Jay and Silent Bob should be characters in the movie, Randal responds by comparing Jay and Bob to C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars. This is a comparison that Smith himself has made in interviews, although unlike Randal Smith doesn’t have any disdain for the Droids and does not use the comparison to diminish Jay and Silent Bob.
Jay, right after this, says “Snoochie Bootchies, a catchphrase he used in Mallrats which became so synonymous with the character that it has been made fun of in later Smith films.
The slate
The camera slate for Randal’s movie reveals that the film will be titled In Convenience, which was the original working title for Clerks. At the same time, a number of the scenes seem to suggest the movie will be shot in black and white, although if it is, it will be for different reasons than Smith’s own.
When Smith shot Clerks, production was still being done on film, and black and white stock was significantly cheaper. Now that everything is shot on digital, what few movies are still made in black and white, are generally done as a style choice.
In that shot, there are some other fun gags: Cheeri-ehs, a Canadian variant of Cheerios, appears. There’s also Quick Stop-branded “I assure you it’s coffee” on the shelf behind Randal, and he’s sitting on the cooler, ready to do the “Salsa Shark” joke from Clerks.
Back in the store
Late in the trailer, a shot of Jay and Silent Bob high-fiving one another features a display of Mooby’s (soda? Energy drinks? something) in the background. In that shot, Jay’s t-shirt features a dancing bear that looks just like the “Big American Party” bear from Clerks: The Animated Series, made famous by the “Who is driving? Oh my God, bear is driving, how can that be?” moment in the episode. In the background is a display sign that says “Toys Toys Toys,” a likely reference to Gerbils, Gerbils, Gerbils, the pet store run by Patrick Swayze in that cartoon.
Death Star Contractors
The “Death Star contractors” joke that Dante mentions is a classic moment in the original Clerks in which Dante and Randal discuss whether any independent contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star in Return of the Jedi were victims of terrorism when the rebels blew up the superweapon.
The scene was famous enough to warrant the attention of George Lucas, whose comments on it you can see in the video above.
The Alternate Ending
After a quick montage of scenes featuring Smith friends and regulars including Marc Bernardin and Justin Long, the trailer heads to a dark scene in which a man is pointing a gun straight at the camera. When confronted about the scene, Randal tells Dante that he has written a scene into the movie where Dante is killed.
Dante objects, asking what would happen if Randal wanted to do a sequel, to which Randal asked if Dante thought he was a hack, prompting Silent Bob (played by Kevin Smith) to agree with Randal.
Sequel joke aside, hardcore fans likely know that this is a real thing. In Clerks, the plan was originally to kill off Dante in a final scene where the convenience store is robbed at the end of the night and he’s shot to death. Smith was talked out of the scene’s inclusion, and has later gone on to say he’s glad that he was, since otherwise he would have been forced to leave O’Halloran out of future Clerks movies.
