Balling on a Budget!

Good morning Consumers. This is Please Consume, film newsletter that double butters your popcorn.

This is what we’ve got for today 👇️

• Tyler talks about a film that made him a movie buff.

• It’s that time of the week! We have 3 new trailers for you.

• All the news and notes from the last few days.

Let’s get rolling…

This week we want to talk to you about a very simple concept. The 24hr movie. Movies that all take place in a 24-hour period. This concept has led to some of the most entertaining and beloved films in history, and here are just a few in that grand tradition.

Clerks (1994)

Written by Tyler Clark

As we said in our intro for the week, some of the greatest films ever made take place in 24 hours, movies like Die Hard, Dog Day Afternoon, and 12 Angry Men,and I’m picking none of them!

Today we talking about a film that kind of has a strange reputation, It’s seen for many as a sloppy regressive mess, for some it’s an indie classic that is a bastion of hard work and perseverance taking you far but for me it’s one of the films that made me want to work in the world of film.

Today we’re talking about Clerks.

The Origin Story

Today we kind of think of Kevin Smith as the guy in the baseball cap who smokes pot, cries about superheroes and records 18 podcasts a week, but for a long time Kevin Smith was seen within the public consciousness as cool.

He was crass, yet intelligent, and spoke eloquently about lowbrow art like comic books. This was the 90s, we were in a pre-Nolan Batman/MCU world. But before that let’s get some context.

Growing up Smith loved movies, for many years that’s how he connected with his father, but the idea of making movies seemed so far away for Smith as he was a kid from New Jersey, son of a mailman and a housewife. Then after a screening of Richard Linklater’s Slacker he realized maybe those aspirations were more attainable than he thought.

That was the moment he knew cinema didn’t have to just be high paid actors on a massive set, it could be smaller and more intimate. So after a semester at film school Smith connected with producer Scott Mosier and they made a pact that they would both write a screenplay and whoever finished theirs first the other would produce it. And this is the fruits of their labor.

Balling on a Budget

Clerks is about as practical as movies get. Made for a mere $27,000 that Smith paid for by maxing out every credit card he could get his hands on.

It was shot in a convenience store because Smith worked in a convenience store, the doors were jammed shut in the movie because they could only film after hours, it was shot in black and white because they couldn’t afford color. Everybody besides our four leads are just friends of Smith.

Smith himself plays Silent Bob because he couldn’t deliver a line well. It was all very circumstantial, but that’s where its charm lies.

Why This Film Works

The film's charm lies in its small scale. It's a movie made with a sense of desperation, Smith had something to lose when making this. It came from his heart, it is hyper-specific in its interests, from its love of pop culture to the sense of humor it operates at, to playing hockey on the roof. It feels lived in because it is lived in.

This was Smith’s life, and the reason Dante resonates so much with the audience is because he within the film is where Smith is at in his life at that point. It’s not making grand statements about the world, it just observes. It falls into a category with works like The Matrix, Fight Club, and Office Space. Angsty Gen X films about how the world is boring and shallow and we have nothing to lose other than our sanity and agency.

And just like those films, it claws to reclaim that agency, in Office Space it’s stealing from the establishment and building a better life for yourself, Fight Club it’s by leaning into horrible instincts within yourself and raging against the system and your own self, with the Matrix it’s breaking free from reality you stuck in and reclaiming it for the sake of existence and for Clerks it’s telling a customer to go fuck themselves, ya it’s no grand moral stance but it disrupts the hellish cycle we all find ourselves in.

It’s a perfect time capsule of a bygone era where in it’s kind of exciting t hear people name drop Lando Calrissian and Bruce from Jaws, where garage bands score your less than lush fluorescents and it’s cool for someone to make a movie through sheer will power even though they don’t know exactly how cameras work. Snoochie Boochies!

Today’s Scene

Let’s take a look at this week’s new trailers…

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

Godzilla Minus One

Foe

Here are a few things that we found interesting over the last few days…