Recipe for a Low-Budget Success Story : Movies: Although high-budget films are common, features can be made on a shoestring. Just ask the creators of ‘Clerks.’

The average studio movie budget may be approaching $30 million, yet exceptional, successful features are being produced in a growing underground for less than $100,000. Call it Off Off Hollywood. It is populated by intrepid filmmakers with the creativity and stamina to make movies--like Kevin Smith’s “Clerks,” which he made for $27,000 and which so far has grossed more than $2 million in limited release--with no visible means of support.

Off Off Hollywood was dramatically opened in 1992 when three writer-directors successfully blazed a trail through cinema’s forbidding landscape. Robert Rodriguez (“El Mariachi”), Gregg Araki (“Three Bewildered People in the Night”) and Nick Gomez (“Laws of Gravity”) each made features for less than $40,000 that were shown widely at festivals, earned enthusiastic reviews and received national distribution. At the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, an unprecedented seven of the 16 features in the dramatic competition had been made on extremely low budgets. Four of them--”Clerks,” “What Happened Was . . . ,” “Go Fish” and “Grief”--were quickly picked up for distribution and only fueled enthusiasm for the guerrilla filmmaking process.

The story of “Clerks,” which is currently playing Friday and Saturday at midnight at the Sunset 5 in West Hollywood, provides a peek into this world of rank amateurs who struggle to overcome very long odds.

In fact, the film was born out of frustration. At 21, Smith dropped out of Vancouver Film School, and, despite the fact that his only experience was as the cameraman for his high school basketball team, he was determined to make a feature with his leftover tuition money.

He decided to make the world’s first “convenience store” movie. It was a subject he knew well, having worked at a New Jersey Quick Stop for several years. Equally important, it was a location he was sure he could use for free when the store was closed. With the exception of a few scenes, the entire film takes place at the convenience store. Since the film had to be shot at night even though much of it takes place during the day, the script has the main character complain that the store’s shutters can’t be opened because someone has jammed gum into the locks.

The script chronicles the comic encounters of two 20-something clerks with a motley assortment of customers, buddies and girlfriends. Its deadpan narrative included a series of hilarious episodes in which the characters grapple with work, romance and sex. Once the script was done, Smith recruited his production team. He sent it to his pal from film school, Scott Mosier, and asked him to come to New Jersey to make the film with him.

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During an interview with Smith and Mosier last summer at a film workshop, Mosier remembered how much the script made him laugh. “I’d never read anything like it.” Then Smith complained, “I hate comments like that. They make me worry that I can’t ever write anything that good again.” “We know you can’t,” was Mosier’s reply. Mosier was pleased that Smith “wanted to make a film with absolutely no message.”

In addition to Smith (writer, director, co-editor) and Mosier (producer, co-editor), there were two others in the core crew, David Klein (director of photography), whom they had met at school, and Ed Hapstack (camera assistant and “trouble-shooter”).

Credit Cards, Comics

To finance the film, Smith used the remnants of his tuition, and as many credit cards maxed to the $2,000 limit as possible. He also sold part of his comic book collection. Seeing “Slacker” on his 21st birthday had inspired Smith to become an independent filmmaker, and he was positive he could make “Clerks” for no more than “Slacker’s” $27,000 budget.

Smith and Mosier managed to get supplies for little or nothing. Smith obtained a student discount on Kodak stock by briefly enrolling in a cooking course: “Roast Suckling Pig.” The partners found a lab with ultra-low rates that looked like “a drop-off point for heroin.” Super 16 and 35mm were beyond their means, so they shot in 16mm black and white. They couldn’t afford dailies, so they had “weeklies.”

Smith also had to find talented actors who would work for free. He cast two people who had acted in community theater, an acting student and a friend who had never acted (Jeff Anderson, who gives a sensational performance as Randal). These principals were supplemented by other friends and crew members, who often played multiple parts. Smith then rehearsed for a solid month.

The film was shot in 21 days straight. The schedule was 10:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. every night when the convenience store was closed. This was grueling for the actors who also had to work day jobs, and worse for the crew. Mosier and Klein often slept on the floor of the adjacent video store. Smith worked full time at the convenience store during production. He rarely managed to get more than an hour’s sleep before he had to work the 6 a.m.-noon shift. He then usually had production chores to do before working the 4 to 10:30 p.m. shift. He was so exhausted toward the end of production that he asked Klein to direct the climactic fight so he could catch a little sleep.

Post-production was completed in a few months. Because Smith was “stone poor by the end,” Mosier’s parents put in $3,000 for the final print. The film was ultimately completed for $27,575.

The Buzz Begins

The next chapter took place at the 1993 Independent Feature Film Market in New York. Smith and Mosier arrived there with their films but no contacts. Few people, other than friends, attended their single screening.

“Clerks” might have vanished without a trace but Bob Hawk, an adviser to the Sundance Film Festival, was in the audience and loved the film. Within a few days, the word spread rapidly to Amy Taubin, who wrote about it in the Village Voice, and Geoff Gilmore, program director of Sundance.

Once “Clerks” was discovered, the search for a distributor began. Smith sent a cassette to John Pierson, who had been the producer’s rep on such indie hits as “She’s Gotta Have It” and “Roger and Me.” Pierson told Smith that he loved the film but that “I don’t know who to sell it to,” but Pierson was gradually won over. Discussing the film’s original ending, in which the main character, Dante, played by Brian O’Halloran, was killed by an unidentified robber, Pierson told Smith, “cut it and I’m in.” Smith was happy to oblige.

But even with Pierson’s experience, skills and contacts, the film was not an easy sell. The typical response of the major independent distributors who saw the film was, “We don’t know who the audience is,” recalls Smith. Mark Tusk at Miramax was particularly enthusiastic about the film, and organized a screening for chairman Harvey Weinstein. But Weinstein walked out after 15 minutes. “Clerks” appeared to be dead at Miramax, and only barely alive at other distributors.

The Dealing Begins

The film was resurrected at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, illustrating the vital role festivals play in validating films for distributors. Since none of the distributors who had seen the film before the festival had made offers, Smith thought “Clerks” would now travel the festival route “but never get bought and that would be it.” On his fifth day at Sundance, though, “everything turned around.” The word-of-mouth from the first two “Clerks” screenings was very strong, and positive reviews started appearing. Smith was surprised when “people started stopping us on the street and quoting lines from the movie.”

Smith cracked up audiences during Q&A; sessions after screenings, and charmed reporters. He demonstrated as much talent for dealing with the media as Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino. Smith’s outrageous wit, warmth, self-deprecation and singular dress (wool trench coat with shorts) give him a unique and winning presence.

Harvey Weinstein was convinced to give the film another chance. According to Tusk, at the crucial fourth screening of “Clerks,” Weinstein “began twitching at the same point we’d had trouble overcoming before. I told Harvey that the movie was about to kick into gear and that he should stick around.” Weinstein soon started laughing with the audience, then met with Smith. Within 40 minutes a deal memo was written out on a single piece of paper.

Barnstorming

After Sundance, where “Clerks” won the Filmmakers Trophy, Smith and Mosier barnstormed around the festival circuit, in Japan, Houston, Seattle, Munich, Montreal, Chicago and Toronto. Particularly significant was Cannes, where it won two prizes and chalked up very strong foreign sales.

Miramax waited to open the film in the United States until the soundtrack album featuring a song by Soul Asylum could be completed. An ad campaign was perfected, including the tagline, “Just because they serve you doesn’t mean they like you.” Smith and Mosier continued to work the festival circuit and give countless press interviews.

Then late last summer, the MPAA ratings board stunned everyone by rating “Clerks” NC-17, for its language. Smith was stunned. “It’s been seen in so many different festivals, and nobody ever said, ‘Oh my God, it’s groundbreaking in its vulgarity.’ ” The rating was applied at about the same time that Oliver Stone’s ultra-violent “Natural Born Killers” was awarded an R, and a small furor ensued. Miramax appealed the rating, and ultimately the NC-17 was made an R.

New Frontiers

Smith somehow managed to find the time to write three new scripts between April and October, including second and third parts of his planned “guys from Jersey” trilogy, “Mall Rats,” which is about kids hanging out in a mall, and “Busing,” about working as a busboy, which Smith also used to do. The third script, “Dogma,” is a satire on Catholicism. “Mall Rats” and “Busing” are in development at Universal and Hollywood Pictures, respectively; Miramax has a first look at “Dogma.”

Hollywood Lessons

Mosier’s primary warning to fellow would-be Hollywood players is about the script. “You should remove yourself from the project, and show the script to others to get feedback, so you can rewrite it. You don’t have to spend any money doing this, just time.” After seeing “True Lies,” Mosier said, he wondered about its script: “Didn’t anyone read it? Couldn’t they have spent another month and a half to make the script better?”

For Smith and Mosier, succeeding on an ultra-low budget requires keeping things simple during scripting and production. “It is important” Mosier says, “not to go overboard. ‘Clerks’ had one location and didn’t require a lot of setup time.” Smith also used a static camera, which he thinks is helpful “especially if you have no talent.”

The final lesson of “Clerks” is that at the center of every successful ultra-low-budget feature is a core of two or three committed people willing to go through hell and back to get the movie made. Mosier and Smith, it seems, were perfectly matched; while making “Clerks,” they developed a working rapport. Mosier explained that “I was the one who worried. I came in there, and was so prepared, but he broke my will.”

Smith noted that Mosier’s attitude was transformed from being “anally retentive in charge” to “comme ci, comme ca.” They also developed complementary roles. According to Smith “it was weird how Scott got to be the producer. We didn’t have one, so I asked him if he wanted to be one, and he said why not?” And Mosier, displaying just the kind of synergy that succeeds everywhere in Hollywood replies, “I do a lot of the crap work he doesn’t want to do.”