Trivia / Clerks III

• Acting for Two:
  • Walt Flanagan appears as one of the hockey players and reprises his role from Clerks as the egg-obsessed guidance councelor.
  • Ernie O'Donnell appears as one of the hockey players as well (the one who buys two pre-rolls from Jay and Silent Bob), and reprises his role as Rick Derris later. While the movie doesn't flat-out state they are two different characters, the end credits do list them as two different parts and credit O'Donnell twice.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Elias' over-the-top goth outfits were a last-minute addition inspired by Trevor Fehrman's idea that Elias should have a cape and a cane in one particular scene (Dante's funeral) and Kevin decided to add the other outfits as a way to build up to it. The original script merely had him wearing heavy metal band T-shirts.
• Box Office Bomb: The movie only made $4.7 million at the box office against its $7 million production costs. However, as has become the norm with Smith's films, he separately went on a cross-country tour with the film, which along with the purchase of streaming rights from Starz, helped make up the rest of the costs.
• Channel Hop: While the first film was released by Miramax, the second with The Weinstein Company and MGM, this was released by Lionsgate, which was Smith's first film with them theatrically since Dogma (which was one of the first titles Lionsgate ever released).
• Development Gag: The production of Randal's film naturally contains a number of these for Clerks, including but not limited to:
  • Most famously, the original cut of the film did indeed end with Dante getting shot by a man played by John Willyung Jr. In this version, Dante protests during the filming and the scene is cut short.
  • Basically everything involving Jay's character really happened with Jason Mewes: not recognizing his own catchphrases while reading the script^note according to Smith, the conversation between him and Mewes after he read the script for the first time went like this: "I don't know if I can do it... why do you make me say stuff like 'Neh'?" - "I don't know, why do you say stuff like 'Neh!'?" - "I do?", making fun of the roofer for fucking up his scene, forgetting his last line and needing Kevin Smith to deliver it for him, and forcing the entire crew into the RST so he could perform his dance number without performance anxiety.
  • Randal and Dante's big blowup involves the disproportionate amount of work Dante's doing as the producer, which mirrors an incident during the production of Clerks where producer Scott Mosier got angry at Smith for blowing off his editing work to get laid. (That argument, obviously, had far less cataclysmic results.)
  • The auditions happen the same place the Clerks auditions happened, the First Avenue Playhouse. A couple of the actors auditioning for Dante mention having theater experience, which Brian O'Halloran had in real life.
  • Dante explains that the whole thing with the gum on the locks is so that they can shoot in the store after closing without it obviously being nighttime outside, which is the same reason that plot point exists in Clerks.
  • The original film was indeed shot in black and white to compensate for the Quick Stop's terrible lighting.
  • Numerous people involved did, indeed, ask Smith if he was shooting a porno during production. Dante, during one such conversation, remarks that it'll take "twenty-one nights for the director to cinematically suck himself off," the same amount of time it took to shoot Clerks.
  • The Clerks crew did indeed use a hockey stick as a boom microphone pole.
  • Donna Jeanne Bagnole, who played the indecisive RST Video customer in the original film, reenacts the scene in Randal's film, only to redo the scene at her request using a Lucille Ball impression. Bagnole had asked about using her Lucille Ball impression during filming of the original movie, which Smith turned down. When the time came for Clerks III, however, he offered to let her do her impression, which she was happy to oblige.
• Easter Egg: Probably unintentional, but if Randal's been lying about his dick size to Dante since they were 12, and they're now 49, that means that they've known each other at this point for 37 years, in a row.
• In Memoriam: The credits ends with a dedication to Lisa Spoonauer, the actress who played Caitlin in the original, and who passed away in 2017.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Smith's wife Jennifer Schwalbach reprises her role as Emma from Clerks II. His mother Grace Smith appears as one of the auditioners. His sister Virginia Sheridan reprises her role from the original film, and his cousin John Willyung Jr. reprises his role from Chasing Amy playing his Deleted Role from the original film in-universe. His daughter Harley Quinn Smith appears as Milly Faulken towards the end of the movie. Harley Quinn's boyfriend Austin Zajur stars as Elias' silent sidekick Blockchain.
  • Jason Mewes' wife Jordan Monsanto and their daughter Logan Mewes cameo as the first customer offended by Randal's discussion with Elias and, well, her daughter.
• Refitted for Sequel: The plot of Dante and Randal filming a movie based on their lives was originally for the scrapped DTV animated movie, Clerks: Sell Out.
• Role Reprise:
  • Marilyn Ghigliotti returns as Veronica after a 28-year gap.
  • Almost all of the bit actors from the original Clerks came back to reenact their scenes for the in-universe movie.
• Sequel Gap: The film came out 16 years after the previous installment.
• Technology Marches On: By the time of the movie's release, the NFT speculator bubble had largely popped.
• What Could Have Been:
  • On his 2010 Q&A DVD Too Fat for 40, Smith already expressed the intent of making a Clerks III, but with one notable difference: barring maybe a reference or two to their whereabouts, Jay and Silent Bob would be completely absent. Having just turned forty, Smith thought that seeing these characters deal drugs and not do much more at age forty would be more sad than anything, and that their final scene in Clerks II was the perfect swan song for the duo. Come 2022, with the legalization of cannabis and Smith's change of heart, not to mention the return of the pair in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, they now own their own weed store.
  • The first version of the script was so wildly different and so much darker than the end result, that Jeff Anderson refused to shoot it. Smith noted that the old version of the movie was about dealing with grief, but also felt it was too far from the original ''Clerks'' film, he also called it a movie obsessed with death written by a guy who hadn't tasted it yet. To elaborate on what the movie could've been:
    • Dante and Randal, along with Jay and Silent Bob, get arrested and sent to jail on the eve of Hurricane Sandy, which destroys the Quick Stop. Randal, trying to stave off a nervous breakdown, goes to a local multiplex to watch a screening of Ranger Danger which isn't set to open for another year, explaining his gesture as "I have nothing better to do". While waiting in line, a crowd of geeks and slackers forms around Randal, which eventually leads to the creation of a small village within the parking lot of the mutiplex, making Randal the unofficial mayor of this makeshift village. Randal meanwhile builds himself a lean-to version of the Quick Stop. Becky died since Clerks II, leaving Dante a single father to a deaf girl named Lia, but now Dante himself is missing in action and Lia is raised by her honorary uncle Randal, who trains her to be a goalie. Randal is convinced Dante became a drug addict. Elias is also present in the picture, and he is just as much of a kite enthusiast as he is in the final version, only without the "NFT" angle.
    • The main bulk of the movie takes place on the day Ranger Danger premieres and a carnival opens on the parking lot. After a day filled with random events (among which a charity hockey shootout in which Lia excels and a running gag of Jay and Silent Bob wanting to go on rides, only to get constantly mocked by two thirteen-year-old girls), the movie starts playing and everybody goes inside. Meanwhile an emaciated Dante finally shows up. In the heat of their usual once-per-movie fight with Randal, Dante reveals that he is not an addict, he is dying from cancer. Meanwhile, in the movie theater where Elias and Lia watch the movie, a mass shooter dressed like a villain from the movie shows up with an AK-47 and opens fire. Dante and Randal rush inside to get Lia who, unable to hear and focused on the movie, has no idea what is going on. Dante ends up taking a bullet for his daughter and dies. The shooter is then impaled from behind with a kite, courtesy of Elias.
    • After a series of "where are they now" shots notably featuring Rosario Dawson as adult Lia, the movie backs up to before Ranger Danger opened. Jay and Silent Bob have been arrested and are now sitting in the back of a police car, watching people go inside the muliplex to watch the movie. They notice the mass shooter going in and a previously unseen accomplice remaining outside, waiting to mow down the survivors. They kick their way out of the police car, tackle the accomplice to the ground and curb-stomp him to death. Realizing what they just did and the trouble they're in, Jay suggests they run off to Canada and the duo does just that, setting up their now-cancelled appearance and Silent Bob's demise in Moose Jaws, the finale of the True North Trilogy.
    • The elements from that version of the script that made it to the final movie are mentions of Dak from Star Wars (in a completely different context), Elias' obsession with kites, Randal's future in the movie business (although as a producer and not as a director) and Becky and later Dante's deaths. The movie's opening has been repurposed for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot almost as-is (only with Randal written out), and Smith admitted that the idea to include Sopapilla, a deaf girl, in Reboot was him recycling the character of Lia.
• Write What You Know: The plot is kicked off by Randal surviving a widowmaker heart attack, which Kevin Smith also experienced in 2018. Those who saw his various interviews on the matter will recognize the symptoms, the dismissive self-diagnosis at first (only instead of "I had too much Mooby's", Kevin's was "I smoked too much weed"), Dr Ladenheim's name, her question and following comment about Randal's pain level, his question to the nurse "What/where is the groin to you?", Dr Ladenheim's reaction on seeing Randal still in his underwear and unshaved, and her explanation of what a widowmaker heart attack is. Here's an example, see for yourself and compare.