“Clerks” (1994)

Directed by Kevin Smith

Back in 1994, Kevin Smith’s famously low-budget felt like a blast of irreverence, much in part to the first-time writer/director’s blisteringly funny dialogue and the fact that he brought a fresh perspective to filmmaking. But that inexperience came back to haunt Smith in the final act of the film where instead of leaving well enough alone with Dante and Randall, the two New Jersey counter jockeys whose repartee about subjects such as the feasibility of the Death Star construction powers the film along for 90 minutes. But in the form it originally premiered at Sundance, it was the final two that shocked audiences when out of nowhere, Dante is shot and robbed before the film cuts to black. If kept intact, the ending wouldn’t only have put a painful punctuation mark on one of the funniest comedies of the decade, but it would’ve cheated Smith out of a franchise that not only produced a sequel, but an animated series, countless toys and served as the basis for Smith’s entire View Askew universe.