Filmmaker Kevin Smith plans second 'Clerks' movie

LOS ANGELES -- Ten years ago, Kevin Smith became the patron saint of the slothful.\nThe aspiring New Jersey filmmaker proved that if a guy worked hard enough, he could still make his dreams come true while spending a lot of time collecting comic books, debating the merits of peculiar sex, and selling cigarettes and candy to dead-eyed consumers.\n"Clerks," a $27,000 black-and-white film he shot mainly with friends in their spare time, became an icon of independent cinema by inspiring a generation of homegrown filmmakers.\n"It's the kind of movie where you go, 'If that counts, I can make a movie, too,'" said Smith, who makes self-depreciation a kind of second career. "It's flattering on one level, but it's also a backhanded compliment because it's like, 'Dude, your movie looks so bad, that even a chimp can make a movie at this point.'"\nTuesday's new three-disc DVD titled "Clerks X" commemorates the 10-year anniversary, documenting the movie's entire history, from Smith's birth to the audition tapes to the day Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein purchased the flick at the Sundance Film Festival.\nWorking on the DVD, inspired Smith to write a sequel, "The Passion of the Clerks," which he plans to begin filming in January.\nAfter creating a cult-fanbase with his later films -- "Mallrats," "Chasing Amy," "Dogma," "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and "Jersey Girl" -- Smith said he wanted to go back to his super-low-budget roots and revisit his fictional cash-register dwellers.\nSmith's original movie centered on two 20-something guys -- one from a convenience store, the other from a video store -- and their disintegrating morale over the course of a day as they endure customers from hell.\nIt's no coincidence that the main character's name was Dante.\n"I just wanted to make a movie that I thought was representative of me and my friends," Smith said. "A lot of movies I went to see were fun to watch and totally entertaining and escapist. But what -- I'm going to identify with John McClane in 'Die Hard'? I would never jump off a building, I would never shoot a terrorist, I would never take my shirt off in public."\nHe wanted to make a movie about what wanders into the mind of a guy who feels like he's going nowhere: "Star Wars," ex-girlfriends, hockey, porn movies.\nThe humor in Smith's movie was the kind of shameless joking guys do around a poker game, or in the back of a classroom, wherever they think no one else is listening.\nBefore the gross-out comedy craze of "There's Something About Mary," "American Pie" and MTV's "Jackass," "Clerks" opened the door.\nAlthough it featured no violence, no nudity and no on-screen sex, the coarse dialogue earned it an NC-17 rating and Miramax hired attorney Alan Dershowitz to successfully argue the ratings board down to an R.