How the Clerks Movies Make Change Inevitable | A PROPER MOVIE TRILOGY

[@readus201]

Let me know which trilogy you want me to cover now that season 2 of "A Proper Movie Trilogy" is in full swing, Readers!

[@katherinealvarez9216]

Fear Street? Spider-Man?

[@Lycandros]

Back to the Future El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico Trilogy of the Dead (Night of, Dawn of, Day of) The Girl (With the Dragon Tattoo, Who Played With Fire, Who Kicked the Hornets Nest) Jurassic Park The Matrix or something else if any of these spark another idea for you

[@HikariHellion]

The Star Trek reboot movies

[@fatcoyote2]

I'm not going to lie. Clerks 3 hit me hard. I lost a lifelong friend to seemingly petty bullshit two years ago, and my friends, all of which I have known since high school if not earlier, are all officially "old guys" now...as am I. There are children, step-children, adopted children, failed marriages, hospital visits, mortgages, etc. between all of us now. I myself had a very mild and exotic stroke only a month ago, but when I watched this movie, I bawled like a child for the first time in a long time. I grew up expounding the virtues of Clerks, which I felt was my personal statement of existence as I moved from one petty cornerstore job to another. I watched Clerks II when I was deployed to Iraq more than a decade ago, and found myself disappointed with it. Then I watched it again about a year ago and not only found myself laughing, but understanding a lot of what was actually going on. Now, after having seen friends get killed, or pass on through conventional means, and having to come to grips that not only am I middle-aged, but that I have been for a while, I'm not going to lie: this movie hurt me. Thank you for your analysis. It actually brought me a great deal of comfort. Thank you.

[@readus201]

I really appreciate you sharing this, and I'm truly happy to hear that something I was able to make was able to give you this amount of comfort. Sending you all my love and support. ❤

[@kid-ava]

I had no idea you were gonna make a video about clerks, nice surprise

[@aarondeemer4914]

I haven't seen Clerks 3 yet. Now I want to.

[@Lycandros]

So happy you made this channel for APMT and the others, I missed these. I actually teared up with this one.

[@katherinealvarez9216]

Am I going to watch a video essay on a trilogy I haven't watched and no interest in seeing? Yes.

[@twistysunshine]

This was a really well done look at the trilogy!

[@askgeminiandfriendshooray5612]

This essay really made me cry at several parts talking about *Clerks 3.* I’m a Millennial, but I have an older sibling who is a Gen Xer and he’s the reason I got into the View Askew universe, starting with *Mallrats* before anything else and eventually working my way towards *Clerks,* *Clerks 2,* *Dogma,* and his other movies. I didn’t realize how much of my life had been influenced by my older brother’s favorite media. He shared a lot of it with me, including his love of indie comics (some of which even showed me queer characters who actually loved each other, important for my future development), his fascination with *Magic: The Gathering,* and of course his love of movies. Despite the fact that I was much younger than him, many of his friends were my friends too who’d play video games with me on the Nintendo 64 or *Magic: The Gathering* or talked about movies and comics with me too (or at least with my brother and included me in the conversation). This was such a big deal to me; a young trans girl who didn’t know she was trans till over a decade later but still got to see the “guy experience” of growing up by living vicariously through my older brother until he went his own separate way. I saw *Clerks* when I had barely hit double digits in age and let me tell you, that is a weird movie for a middle schooler to see. But I saw how Randall and Dante added to each other’s lives and how both of them really served as this endearing duo. It reminded me of my brother’s friend group and that despite how different they were, they really needed each other, especially growing up with almost no on else to spend time with. The 1990s was a time when proximity determined friendship more than anything, and unlike my experience moving into the digital age, my brother got to stay in contact with his friends well after high school. *Clerks 2* didn’t land with me. Not entirely. I liked some of it, but maybe it wasn’t matching up with my life experience anymore. Maybe it was because I didn’t associate the later movie with people important in my life. I moved on past it. But when you talked about *Clerks 3,* a movie that I didn’t even know existed because of the ongoing pandemic and life now accelerating beyond what I’m used to, I couldn’t help but cry. For the past several years I’ve been thinking a lot about my own mortality much more than ever before. And the discussion of *Clerks 3* with Dante and Randall dealing with the fact that they’ll have to face death one day (until one of them finally does) hit me so hard that I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I sympathize with both of them in that they experienced these formative events in their early 20s that were once-reliable methods of living life, even if those lives were somewhat disappointing. I recognize how tempting it is not to move on, to want to settle for the mildly satisfying life they first discovered in *Clerks* and then to see them well into their 30s try to reclaim those happier times and revisit that yet again 15 years later in *Clerks 3.* And I see the meta-reason for that, with Kevin Smith reliving his own happier times working at Quick Stop by making movies there, revisiting the store which meant so much to him, where now he gets to keep making new memories echoing the old ones. Clearly, the fans see *Clerks* as his best film. Even in middle school I saw that authenticity in the movie. It felt like a time capsule of the 1990s, and if you lived through that era like I did, it’s nice to travel back there every once and a while. At least the good parts. If we could ask you to cover any other movies, we’d ask for you to focus on other directors who’ve turned their life experiences into fictional film versions, similar to how Kevin Smith did. Bonus points if they use filming locations that are places which were important to them, like the Quick Stop Convenience Store in Leonardo, New Jersey was for Kevin Smith. Thank you for reading this

[@MR.FREEDMAN]

As a black dude from NJ, who loved Clerks and Kevin Smith's work growing up, I thank you for sharing this.

[@LikeTheBuffalo]

"Someone put gum in the locks!"

[@JayGatz4]

Way to get me to actually finally sit down and watch the first Clerks movie. I'm buckling in with some vodka and a joint and hoping that I don't have to close my window due to some poorly timed and badly aged -isms daslkfjadslk;fjasd