Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
In the glory days of theater-going, movie fans would sit back, relax, and enjoy not one but two features at their favorite movie theater. While it’s more difficult to find in our multiplex era, the wide variety of movie titles on streaming services means movie lovers can have their own double feature in the comfort of their own homes — and we’re here to help you decide what to watch. In the inaugural edition of the Decider Double Feature, we pick two indie comedies that offer a look at the hilarity and the inanity of working stiffs: Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls.
Work, as most of us know, sucks. Let’s be real: You wake up every day and go to a place where that you most likely don’t enjoy, deal with people — coworkers and customers — who get on your last nerve, and make it through those eight or so hours just to go home, go to bed, and get up the next morning to start it all over again. It’s a means to an end (being able to pay your bills, eat food, and have the occasional fun with whatever money is left over), but it’s such a foundational part of our lives that most of us, day in and day out, wonder if it’s all worth it.
There are many terrible jobs, but the jobs on display in 1994’s Clerks and 2018’s Support the Girls are pretty sucky. But that’s not all these two comedies have in common. The former was born out of the ’90s indie boom and unquestionably made an impact on independent cinema by proving what a filmmaker can accomplish on a shoestring budget; the latter is from another indie auteur whose work has had a quieter influence on contemporary cinema. Together, Clerks and Support the Girls depict one day in the life of two beleaguered individuals who are going through their own existential crises all while trying to manage the absurdities of working class life complete with unruly customers, unmanageable colleagues, and the uncertain future of what comes after the job is done.
Written and directed by Kevin Smith (who also makes his first on-screen appearance of his movie alter ego Silent Bob alongside regular collaborator Jason Mewes’s potty-mouthed Jay), Clerks follows Dante Hicks, a 22-year-old Quick Stop employee in middle-of-nowhere New Jersey, throughout one nightmarish work day. Most of Dante’s problem are of the romantic variety; he’s still carrying a torch for his high school girlfriend who has recently become engaged, while his current girlfriend has just revealed her sexual history (specifically, the 36 guys on whom she’s performed oral sex). But there are also the tiny indignities that make his day more miserable miserable: he’s called into work on his day off; some kids shoved gum in the lock on the store shutters; he has to put up with an endless stream of meddling customers; his hyper-masculine and overly confident friend Randal, who (barely) works at the video store next door, manages to poke and prod at him until he nearly has an existential breakdown.
Despite the minor inconveniences of the job, however, Dante has plenty of down time — so much so that he finds time to host a hockey game, go to another ex-girlfriend’s wake, hang out with his girlfriend, and chat about Star Wars and make vulgar jokes with Randal throughout the day. Work, for Dante, is an inconvenience — his oft-repeated line “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” is a recurring joke, but also a phrase that speaks to his entitled personality. Dante feels like he’s better than his job, better than his customers, even better than his girlfriend and best friend. One starts to root for the day to continue breaking Dante down. It’s not that he’s a terrible person or unworthy of a better life, but he is certainly a whiner — a fact that Smith himself reiterates in the script when Randal tears him a new one in the movie’s climax: “You like to think the weight of the world rests on your shoulders. Like this place would fall apart if Dante wasn’t here. You overcompensate for having what’s basically a monkey’s job. You push fucking buttons. Anybody can waltz in here and do our jobs.”
Meanwhile, Regina Hall’s Lisa is the hero of Support the Girls — not simply by default, because she’s the protagonist, but because despite the many, many obstacles in her way and the bullshit she encounters all day long. Written and directed by Andrew Bujalski (who played a major role in the Mumblecore film movement of the mid-aughts), Support the Girls follows the staff of a Hooters-style roadside sports bar called Double Whammies where the entirely female wait staff (let by Haley Lu Richardson’s exuberant Maci and Shayna McHayle’s bored Danyelle) bounces from table to table slugging big-ass beers (the brand’s large-size glass) and burgers to the men who ogle them.
Like Dante in Clerks, Lisa seemingly works this low-paying and unfulfilling job out of necessity than interest. But unlike Dante, Lisa shows up because she wants to; she needs to, sure, but she also has a maternal investment in the young women who work under her. She still tries to make Double Whammies a slightly more pleasant for the women she works with (while recognizing the sexist culture in which they all must work within and to which they contribute), going so far as to raise money for a member of her staff who wants out of her shitty relationship. She may have a maternal instinct that draws her to the gig; she wants to nurture and care for these girls more than she wants to make sure the restaurant runs smoothly — or even to make herself happy and fulfilled. But the most impressive thing about Lisa is that she never once complains, despite having a lot of material to gripe about.
For Lisa and her colleagues, the work at Double Whammies is not about finding personal satisfaction. When Lisa asks Danyelle if she actually enjoys her job, she replies, “I like working with you.” And that’s the attitude most of us would do well to maintain at our own jobs, whether we like them or not. If you can’t make the best of it and enjoy the people you have to spend so much time around, then you might want to take some of Randal’s advice and move on. But if you’re stuck in a place and the one positive is the people you know, then it’s worth making the effort to enjoy what you can until the next thing comes along.
Clerks and Support The Girls are both currently available to stream on Hulu.
Tyler Coates is a writer who lives in Los Angeles.
