Working-Class Hero: ‘Clerks’ at (Almost) 30

Clerks (1994)

2024 will mark the 30th anniversary of the release of Clerks, Kevin Smith’s black-and-white, made-on-a-shoestring debut about a pair of sharp-tongued, underpaid store clerks struggling to find their way through the trials of young adulthood.

That impending three-decade milestone seems almost unthinkable for a movie that once felt so modern. Clerks was the Easy Rider for Generation X — it…