Clerks
By Kit Macdonald
"Just because they serve you, doesn't mean they like you."
Made for just $27,575, Clerks is a masterclass in making good on the most threadbare resources. Kevin Smith's career as a director, not to mention his long-running Silent Bob character and the View Askewniverse in which many of Smith's later movies take place, were launched by this simple but brilliant buddy comedy. It found success at the Sundance Film Festival, leading to a distribution deal with Miramax and a vaunted position in the pantheon of indie cinema.
Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson play Dante Hicks and Randal Graves, hilariously mismatched friends and clerks working at neighbouring convenience and video stores in New Jersey where Smith worked in real life. Its profanity-laden wit and fractured takes on working-class existence resonated irresistibly with audiences and that $27,575 turned into $4.4 million at the box office, setting Smith and his characters firmly on the road to stardom.