Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Kevin Smith’s Clerks (1994).

It’s only fitting to follow yesterday’s post on Slacker with the Sundance story of Clerks, since Kevin Smith was directly influenced by Richard Linklater’s film. And like Linklater, Smith nearly didn’t go to Sundance with his breakthrough indie, although in his case it was initially a matter of choice rather than rejection. According to Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures, Smith says about the decision, “We never even thought about Sundance. That was not a festival that we were meant for.”
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