Script To Screen: “Clerks”

A scene from the 1994 movie Clerks., written by Kevin Smith.

IMDb plot summary: A day in the lives of two convenience clerks named Dante and Randal as they annoy customers, discuss movies, and play hockey on the store roof.

Here is Jay and Silent Bob at their dialogue best. Well… Jay at least.

Here is the scene in the movie:

A few changes, the main one being a cut away to the interior of the store, then back to Olaf singing, and substituting the word “cock” for “pot”. My guess is Smith did the first one to cover something in what they shot from the original scene and the second change probably through improv, the substitute funnier than “pot”.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.