Kevin Smith Eyes Bringing Clerks to Broadway

It’s been 18 years since Kevin Smith’s first film, the ultra low-budget slacker comedy Clerks, became a sleeper hit on the Film Festival circuit and a fan favorite. A sequel, Clerks II followed in 2006, and at a recent Los Angeles Barnes & Noble Q&A session, Smith revealed the only way he’d do a third installment: as a play.

“That would make me excited, to do a live show,” said Smith, who was inspired by a recent trip to “a wonderful fuckin’ show” on Broadway, Seminar, starring Alan Rickman.

“I’m sitting here watching [Seminar], and all those nights we would sit in Quick Stop and rehearse Clerks, this is exactly what it was like,” he said of filming the 1994 film. “That’s the only way I know how to direct. I’d never made a movie before but I’d been in high school plays so we kind of put it up like a play. So for Clerks 3 to be a play, to me, would make more sense.

Clerks tells the story of a day in the life of convenience story clerk Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson), a clerk in the video rental store next door. Smith made an appearance as Silent Bob, half of the duo Jay and Silent Bob that would become a fixture in his movies.

Anderson, Smith said, would be the hardest to convince to do the project. “If he says yes then that’s what we’ll do, “ he said. “We’ll do it as a Broadway play. Which I think would be fuckin’ so fun for all of us.”

In addition to the Clerks films, Smith’s directorial credits include Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Jersey Girl, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Dogma and Mallrats. A short-lived Clerks animated series aired on ABC in 2000, and Smith is also considered making new episodes of the show.