A closer look
Kevin Smith originally intended to conclude his legendary independent comedy Clerks by having his miserable retail protagonist Dante aggressively shot and completely murdered in a sudden, depressing convenience store robbery. After spending ninety straight minutes laughing at highly relatable slacker humor and crude pop culture debates about Star Wars contractors, early test audiences were suddenly forcefully subjected to a bleak, shockingly violent finale where the main character bleeds out horribly on the linoleum floor. Smith supposedly shot this horrific ending purely because he genuinely did not know how to wrap up a narrative script and figured that violently killing the hero was the only logical way to roll the credits. Thankfully, independent film mentors aggressively pressured the young director to cut the traumatic murder sequence before heading to Sundance, saving a generation of cynical retail workers from experiencing the most unearned cinematic mood whiplash of the entire nineties
