How Kevin Smith Parlayed $27,575 Into a Career Spanning Three Decades

Kevin Smith didn’t always want to be a filmmaker.

As a youngster in New Jersey, he was more enamored with the written word and had aspirations to work as a journalist or write for shows like Saturday Night Live.

But that would change in the summer of 1991 when, on his 21st birthday, he saw Richard Linklater’s Slacker.

Viewing the $23,000-budgeted film about a day in the life of misfits in Austin, Texas was a formidable experience for Smith.

Suddenly the notion of trying his own hand at filmmaking seemed accessible and appealing.

The result of such a revelation would be Clerks, a seminal, beloved example of 1990s independent cinema that also served as the launch pad for its writer and director’s decades-long filmmaking career.

Taking Clerks from conception to screen, however, had its share of challenges for Smith and his team, and the idea of it being seen by

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