'Clerks,' but even more budget

Jeremy Stacy's, SY '02, play version of the movie Clerks (a 1994 Miramax film directed by Kevin Smith) inspired me to write an epic poem based on Catcher in the Rye. In fact, it might be easier if, instead of loosely basing my work on the novel, I just divide the text into stanzas and add line numbers. This is essentially what Stacy has done with his adaptation of Clerks from screen to stage.

A snack shelf and cashier's table set the scene for what might be just another day in just another guy's life; the chain of events, however, provokes the occasionally thoughtful Dante (Stacy) to announce, "I couldn't make this kind of hell up if I tried." The first bit of bad luck comes with a too-early-morning phone call that awakens Dante, telling him he has to work at the convenience store even though it's his day off. What he says when he arrives to find that one of the "savages in this town" has jammed the storefront's lock with gum becomes his mantra throughout the play: "I'm not even s'posed to be here today." Dante's friend Randall (Jonathan Wolf, SM '02), who serves/offends customers in RST Video next door, constantly tries to get Dante to change his life instead of complain about it. Their philosophical conflict ends in a fistfight and then a near-hug that Dante staves off just before closing up.

Theater

Clerks Directed by Jeremy Stacy Fri., Mar. 31, 7;30 and 10 p.m. Sat., Apr. 1, 2 and 8 p.m. Stiles Little Theater Free

Many of the lines in Clerks are made for the screen. To be effective, the actors must speak quickly, easily, and with near flawlessness. What you don't see in the film, and presumably don't even think about, are the several fumbled scenes that the actors eventually perfected. Obviously there's no room in the play for retakes that might smooth out the witty conversations. Stacy's voice almost hits exactly on the sarcasm of Dante in the movie, though his shout of "Don't suck any dick on the way through the parking lot!" is, like other lines, too nervously timed. And Wolf only teases the audience's humor with his all-too-famous accusation of the ignored customer trying to take revenge: "I don't appreciate your ruse...your cunning attempt to trick me." The "almost" quality of some scenes causes a lot of the jokes to sound like your friends quoting lines from the movie.

Which isn't to say they don't still make you laugh. Wolf's interminable recitation of the pornographic movie titles he's ordering from the distribution company right in front of a mother with her child had even the non-college-age audience members laughing out loud. And the Chewlee's representative, (Lucas Oppenheim, BK '00) who poses as an anti-smoking activist in order to sell more gum, incites a hilarious scene with his cigarette-throwing followers.

The problem in this innovative adaptation idea lies in trying to transform a low-budget, brilliant film into an even lower-budget basement play.

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