Kevin Smith has revealed a first look at Clerks III, which is currently in production, showcasing Trevor Fehrman, Brian O’Halloran, Rosario Dawson and Jeff Anderson as they reprise their roles from the 1994 cult classic and its 2006 sequel.
Smith also revealed the plot around Clerks III as something both meta tongue-in-cheek and autobiographical. Smith suffered a severe heart attack a few years ago and the third Clerks will see Anderson’s Randal survive a similar heart attack, using that as a catalyst to change his life and make a movie.
“The film is predicated on the idea that Randal survives a heart attack, a massive heart attack, quite like I did, and then winds up, you know, deciding that he’s wasted his life,” Smith said. “But before he dies he wants to memorialize himself. He wants to make a movie. So our boys essentially wind up making Clerks.”
The original Clerks was filmed in black and white, but Clerks II was filmed in colour. Clerks III will also be filmed in colour, but the movie-within-a-movie Randal is making, titled ‘Inconvenience’, will see the character shoot in black and white as a homage to the original. “That allows us to reshoot so many of the key moments from Clerks in their movie,” Smith explained.
Clerks was Smith’s breakout film, premiering at Sundance in 1994 and launching his career. Since then, he has directed several other successful films like Dogma, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Zack and Miri Make a Porno and the two Jay and Silent Bob films.
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