Earlier this month, Kevin Smith teased that his long-in-the-works third Clerks movie was back on, with original stars Jeff Anderson and Brian O’Halloran on board and the script being completely rewritten from Smith’s original plan. Now, thanks to The Wrap, we know what the new plan is: After having a heart attack, Randal (from Clerks!) realizes that his life has been meaningless and that there will be nobody left to remember him when he does die, so he decides to make a movie about his life and his buddy Dante… and the weird stoner guys who always seem to hang around them. In other words, Clerks 3 is going to be about the characters from Clerks making the movie Clerks, which is kind of a great idea. No snarky reaction here!
Obviously, this has some pretty overt connections to Smith’s real life, since he’s following up his actual heart attack with the similarly meta Jay And Silent Bob Reboot, and it sounds like he’s completely delighted by the chance to go back and more or less tell the story of making the movie that made him famous. “They’re figuring it out the same way I figured it out,” Smith told The Wrap, “but I have the benefit of being able to cherry pick all my favorite stories and moments.” He also said that the fictional movie within Clerks 3 will have to be filmed in black and white, with Smith noting that he gets to do “the same fucking movie and scene in the movie,” but it’s all told from the perspectives of these two characters he created all those years ago. “So it’s funny and poignant,” he explains, “but it’s more funny than anything else.”
The Wrap interview also touches on the original concept for Clerks 3, which didn’t include Anderson and was apparently very grim and bleak. Now, if he wanted to get really meta, the scrapped Clerks 3 should be some kind of plot point in the fake Clerks movie from within Clerks 3… or maybe the camera pulls back at one point and Clerks 3 becomes a movie about Kevin Smith remaking Clerks inside Clerks 3, but actually it’s Clerks 4 and also it’s the Clerks cartoon.