Twelve years ago, director Kevin Smith gave me the courage to give up.
Jessica Burgess
Clearly Unedited
I hadn't discovered the dubious phenomenon of self-medication – Diff'rent Strokes and Nancy Reagan had told me to Just Say No to Alcohol and Drugs, and by golly that's exactly what I did. And in those days it was harder to get a prescription for Prozac.
Eighteen years old, I wandered my college campus, pondering the futility of life, wondering whether humans were basically evil, and struggling with the conjugation of the verb être.
I was lost. Alone. Bad at French.
Then I saw the movie Clerks, and everything changed. Except for the French thing.
Oh, I was still so depressed that the idea of looking another human in the eye gave me physical pains. But what I learned from Clerks (a story ostensibly about a couple of cashiers, but really about the crappy, painful years between youth and adulthood) was that being directionless was OK. In fact, young people who weren't broody were jerks! Also, smoking and drinking were cool! Screw you, Nancy Reagan!
(Although I admit that some of the knowledge I took away from the movie may be a little dated. Kids – smoking and drinking are actually bad. And please don't swear at Nancy Reagan. She's a widow.)
In fact, seeing Clerks perked me up enough that I eventually managed to make some friends – mostly RTVF majors who called all movies "films," even The Santa Clause starring Tim Allen. But still – human friends!
That's why it pains me to report that I have hated almost everything Smith has made since. Although I do appreciate Chasing Amy for featuring Ben Affleck while his teeth were still kind of gross. Shortly afterward, he would sport the shiny veneered grill he used to suck Liv Tyler's stomach in Armageddon.
But despite my general antipathy toward Smith's later work, I am really looking forward to Clerks II, which comes out Friday.
The movie won't speak to a generation like its grainy black-and-white predecessor. We Gen-X-ers are different these days. Happier. More educated. Employed by big evil corporations instead of mom-and-pop convenience stores.
But I do look forward to catching up with Dante and Randal – and examining Jay (left) for signs of recent drug use.
And, hey, maybe I haven't changed all that much. I still don't know how to conjugate être.
Jessica encourages you to try not to [expletive] any [expletive] on your way to the parking lot. E-mail her at jburgess@quickdfw.com.
