Good luck to you, my friend, you won the lottery."
“I wanted to tell my heart attack story with my characters,“the filmmaker recently told EW.
“So Randal, the video-store guy, has a massive heart attack.
Trevor Fehrman, Brian O’Halloran, Rosario Dawson, and Jeff Anderson in ‘Clerks III’.JOHN BAER/Lionsgate
Randal and Dante essentially make their own version ofClerks, a black-and-white movie calledInconvenience.
It’s incredibly meta.
it’s possible for you to put that on the poster!”
Here are their recollections.
I still marvel at him.
He’s a little astronaut who shot us into space.
The nearest I could point to was Richard Linklater.
Brian [O’Halloran] was the one with the most experience.
He’d worked in community theater and done plays.
It was just enough performance level that everyone needed to get to where we had to go.
JEFF ANDERSON: Immediately, when I think of the first movie, I just think of nerves.
JASON MEWES: I agree with Jeff.
I had the same nerves.
So much so that I would ask people to leave the store.
I would be like, “Hey, can everyone wait outside while I shoot this scene?”
Or if I was outside, ask people to go in.
SMITH: I had very little directing experience, so we were all in the s— together.
I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on multiple takes.
But always with the first film, I immediately think of how nervous I was the entire time.
SMITH: Jason Mewes, he’s grown as an actor.
Now he actually knows how to play Jay.
I thought it was like a bunch of friends making a little fun thing and that was that.
ROSARIO DAWSON: I love Kevin.
Kevin was one of them.
That was like, Ah, she’s one of us.
After she said goodbye, Kevin went to us and was like, “What was that about?”
She just brought this energy and fun, because she, as a person, is just genuinely cool.
That was when he was still chain-smoking cigarettes.
He’d be cutting it together at night and then filming during the day.
And we’d all just kind of hang out, and run around the hallways and wild out.
And we had the donkey out there.
[Laughs] It was just such a funny, fun experience.
We were in our own little world there for a while.
We had a script that I wanted to do back in 2013.
O’HALLORAN: I kind of got emotional just reading the script.
DAWSON: I was thinking about how Kevin’s really taking us along on the journey with him.
ANDERSON: My initial reaction [to theClerks IIIscript] is, man, this Randal chats a lot.
It’s become very hard to remember these dialogues in my ancient age.
Here it’s: Yeah, I own the business, what am I doing with my life?
I got to go work at Quick Stop again, but in the best f—ing way possible.
O’HALLORAN: I always enjoy working on a Kevin Smith set because it’s always fun.
It’s always a gathering of friends.
It’s that kind of thing.
I mean, we didn’t make macrame on set, but we had a great time.
We’ll always have these memories that we’ll cherish.
It was great to be with everyone, but it was sad.
But they seemed to go on the ride with us.
Clerks IIIwill play in select cinemas Sept. 13-18.
Smith will tour with the filmin select markets in September and October.
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