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aired), which tells the touching story of how they got together. Here we learn
that Wally had once, back in the 1950s, been a promising young filmmaker,
tapped to make an ambitious and thoughtful science fiction film that was to
be an allegory about the Cold War arms race. Then Wally met Gus, who was
working as a teamster on the set. Instant love ensued, and Wally insisted on
making Gus the star of the film, which eventually spiraled downward into
The Man from Pluto, perhaps the worst film ever made, transforming what
was to have been The Day the Earth Stood Still into what was essentially Plan
9 from Outer Space. His career sacrificed for love, Wally was driven out of the
film business, so he left Hollywood for Mission Hill, where he and Gus have
lived together ever since.
Mission Hill is at its satirical best (even if it takes a conservative turn) in
the second installment of the two-part episode “Unemployment,” though, in
a telling commentary on the lack of support for the series by the WB, only
the first of the two parts was originally aired. In that part, Andy loses his job
at Waterbed World when his abusive boss Ron (Jameson) is sent away to
prison. The first episode of the two-parter focuses on Kevin’s misadventures
after he gains ownership of Ron’s expensive foreign sports car as part of Ron’s
attempts to hide his assets from the IRS. It is, however, in the second episode
when the results of Andy’s unemployment are really explored. Here, Andy
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113
becomes more and more of a lazy slob, content to live on unemployment and
thinking that he is making a sort of political statement about his generation’s
rejection of the rat race. Then he discovers to his amazement that Jim, seem-
ingly a slacker like himself, is actually a highly paid executive at an advertising
agency, where he provides crucial insights into the tastes and inclinations of
young adult males like himself. Indeed, once he looks around, Andy realizes
that others of his generation are beginning to get on with successful careers
as well. So Andy resigns himself to going back to work, getting a job at the
ad agency thanks to the good offices of Jim, who seems to have a tremendous
amount of clout there.
If Mission Hill thus ultimately rejects slackerdom, the animated series
Clerks, based on the 1994 Kevin Smith film of the same title, is a sort of
celebration of that lifestyle—which may account for the fact that it was can-
celed even more quickly than Mission Hill. Six episodes were made, but only
two aired on ABC in the spring of 2000 before the series was abruptly can-
celed. All six episodes are now available in a DVD set, which also restores
scenes cut by ABC censors from the two episodes that did air. This set has
sold well, presumably thanks to the cult following of the original Smith film.
The series built upon the same premise as the film, with the same major
characters, voiced by the same actors who played them in the film. These
include Quick Stop convenience store clerk Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran)
and RST Video Store clerk Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson). Also important
are the two slackers who hang around outside their stores, Jay and Silent
Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith)—who, by the time the series aired
(or didn’t), had appeared in several Smith-directed films, becoming minor
American cultural icons.
The series premiered on May 31, 2000, with a strong episode in which
Jay slips on some soda spilled on the floor of the Quick Stop by the clerks.
He then decides to sue Dante and the Quick Stop for big bucks, leading
to a ludicrous legal battle with actor Judge Reinhold (voiced by himself)
as the judge and Randal as Dante’s preposterously incompetent lawyer.
This episode was actually intended to be the fourth aired, but was substi-
tuted for the original pilot when that episode fared poorly with test audi-
ences. The second episode aired was a clip show of the kind that often
appears in long-running sitcoms—the joke being that this show, which
was meant to follow the pilot, was only the second of the entire series.
Unfortunately, the only episode thus available to flash back to was the
original pilot, but these flashbacks made little sense because the pilot had
never aired. After that, the series was canceled, never really having had
a chance to develop or find an audience.
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Drawn to Television
While the film version of Clerks presented scenes from the everyday lives
of these characters, the animated series adds a number of important new
elements, made possible by the resources of animation. For example, in the
would-be pilot episode (which was never aired), the evil Leonardo Leonardo
(voiced by Alec Baldwin) returns to the town of Leonardo, New Jersey,
where the series is set and which his family founded generations earlier.
Leonardo promptly builds a Quicker Stop convenience mall in the town,
which threatens to put Dante and Randal’s block of stores out of business.
Ultimately, Leonardo plans to enslave the town’s population, forcing them
to work underground while he converts the entire town itself into a pleasure
dome for the rich. He is foiled, however, when Jay and Silent Bob blow up
the Quicker Stop while playing with fireworks.
In another unaired episode, the block of stores is enclosed in a hermeti-
cally sealed dome after Leonardo Leonardo falls ill from eating bad burritos,
causing Randal (working under the influence of the film Outbreak) to con-
clude that he has been bitten by an infected monkey from the new pet store
that just opened in the block. The final two episodes indicated a potential
for self-referentiality and engagement with popular culture that the show [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]