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These local comedians tried to re-make Clerks…

10:58 AM EST on February 13, 2013

Kashif Mustafa and Josh Lathe as Randal and Dante

A few weeks ago, I received a weird email from local stand-up comic James Nghiem.  He and some comedy buddies attempted to make a shot-by-shot remake of Clerks and he wanted me to know about it.

My first response to James should have been why would you want to remake Clerks? Was there not a better overrated movie available? My 2nd grade play — Betsy Ross and the American Flag — had better acting than Clerks. Then again, maybe that's why he chose Clerks. The acting in that film is so bad he wouldn't have trouble duplicating it. Plus, he could finally use the black and white filter on his camera.

Anyway, I didn't ask those questions. Instead I asked home to summarize the project. This what he wrote:

Basically, I spent a year trying to film a shot-for-shot remake of the movie Clerks using local comedians as actors and local bands covering the original soundtrack in their own way. I used convenience stores in Oklahoma as set locations and I wanted to post it to YouTube as kind of a ridiculous project/joke that went too far. It was kind of a light project to involve as many people in the scene as I could. In the process of filming, a lot of actors had to quit, crew left, Slaughterville (where we were shooting) caught on fire. I had spent a ton of money (not a ton of money but a lot for a guy who doesn't make movies ever) already on the project and we still had half of the movie to go. And a lot of the actors would have to change, or we would have to reshoot a lot of the movie to finish the film, so we decided to make a movie about a guy remaking "Clerks." Kevin Smith found out and tweeted about it. He still hasn't seen the film, but I'm hoping we're still on his radar. We're screening it live one more time tonight in Norman and then it's hitting YouTube.

Since James is a nice guy and kind of reminds me of the Asian kid from Goonies, I decided to publish the movie on here. It also features cameos by TLO contributors Spencer and Marisa. I didn't know about this until I watched the thing. Thanks for keeping me informed, minions.

Dim the lights in the office and enjoy, Moles:

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