About The Films

Clerks

Dante Hicks is a clerk at the Quick Stop, a local convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey. On Dante's day off, his boss calls him in to cover a few hours for another employee who is sick. Arriving at the store, he finds that the security shutters are jammed closed with chewing gum, so he hangs a sheet over them with a message in shoe polish: “I ASSURE YOU; WE'RE OPEN.”

Dante’s day is spent in the purgatory of serving a succession of customers while bemoaning the fact that he's “not even supposed to be here today.” Interspersed with the demands of his job, Dante passes time in wide-ranging conversations with his slacker friend, Randal Graves. Randal ostensibly works at the neighboring video store, although he spends almost the entire day at the Quick Stop. They converse about many things to pass time, such as if the contractors working on the second Death Star when it was destroyed at the end of Return of the Jedi were innocent victims or not. Dante’s current girlfriend, Veronica, also stops in and the two talk about Dante's current disposition—in a rut with no motivation to change. Further contributing to Dante's misery is an announcement in the local newspaper that his unfaithful ex-girlfriend, Caitlin, is engaged to be married.

Clerks 2

Ten years after the events of the first film, Dante Hicks opens the Quick Stop convenience store to find that it is on fire. As a result of the Quick Stop's destruction, Dante and Randal begin working at a Mooby's fast food restaurant. Dante is planning to leave his minimum wage lifestyle in favor of a family life in Florida with his fiancée Emma Bunting, whose father will provide them with a home and a business to run. Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) have since followed Dante and Randal, and now loiter outside of Mooby's. Although they no longer do drugs, Jay and Bob continue to sell them.