Yes, That Was ‘Clerks’ Star Brian O’Halloran On ‘The Floor’ After The Super Bowl
30 years ago, the 1994 indie comedy Clerks was still making its way through its extended, small-scale theatrical run. (I know this because I saw it just about 30 years ago, when it finally arrived in my upstate New York hometown, playing the second-run theater at the older of two neighboring malls.) The movie accumulated fans throughout its run, while never playing more than 100 theaters at a time, and gathered an even bigger audience once it hit home video. (That was VHS, back in the day.) It propelled writer-director Kevin Smith to a decades-long career as a filmmaker, occasional actor, devoted podcaster, and in-demand public speaker; and inspired two sequels, in 2006 and 2022.
That’s a testament to Smith’s writing, by turns loquacious and profane, of drifting twentysomething slackers who eventually, in the sequels, became (somewhat) less drifting middle-aged dudes. But Clerks, famously shot for $27,000 (and subsequently cleaned up after a festival purchase), also popped through because of its central performances from the guys Smith hired to play his leads: Smith’s high school pal Jeff Anderson as the mischievous, work-avoidant video-store clerk Randal, and local New Jersey actor Brian O’Halloran, who auditioned and won the part of put-upon convenience-store clerk Dante (based on Smith himself).
O’Halloran and Anderson’s performances are often discussed in terms of the whole world that grew out of Smith’s first film; O’Halloran appears in many of Smith’s subsequent films, either reprising Dante or playing other, less prominent characters also with the surname Hicks, implied to be family of his most famous character. Anderson was more reticent about the relative fame the movie brought him, sometimes reluctant to reunite with Smith, though he did play Randal in both sequels, and appear in a few other Smith movies.
Anderson may have been an extreme example in his ambivalence, and O’Halloran particularly agreeable, but together, they convey the experience of the Clerks actors pretty well. Except for Smith and Jason Mewes, whose Jay and Silent Bob had substantial roles in several more Smith movies, most of the cast remained known for their Clerks characters, if at all. It was the movie that got famous, not the actors – which in turn probably further aided the movie’s mystique. Watching Clerks ten, twenty, thirty years after its release, and you’re still not catching a young superstar or a familiar That Guy character actor; just a younger Jay and Silent Bob, and leads who look and act grounded because that’s exactly what they are. Any actorly flourishes come, paradoxically, from Smith’s amusingly overwritten, sometimes stagy dialogue. Anderson and O’Halloran could not feel more like actual old friends (of yours, if not necessarily each other; one possible mistake of the sequels is how they retcon the pair into lifelong besties rather than genuinely testy friends). Smith’s camerawork is a little amateurish; the lead actors make the movie feel real.
So when O’Halloran appeared after the Super Bowl on Sunday night, visible but not introduced on the third-season premiere of Fox’s game show The Floor, it felt like recognizing an old high school buddy on TV unexpectedly. Part of the show’s gimmick is that it starts with 100 players from all walks of life, including, as host Rob Lowe noted, a Harlem Globetrotter and a couple from a Bachelor spinoff. (The guy who played Dante from Clerks seems more notable than those vocations to me, but then, I was a teenager when Clerks came out.) Though it will doubtless be mentioned on a future episode, when O’Halloran eventually competes in a head-to-head visual trivia match, the only hint of his past on the premiere was when a chyron noted his specialty trivia category: convenience store items.
Like many of the contestants’ supposed areas of expertise, this seems a little dubious. O’Halloran shot two movies that take place in a convenience store (remember, Clerks II is set primarily in a McDonald’s-like fast food restaurant); it was Smith who actually worked in one. But Smith has no reason to compete for the show’s $250,000 prize money; he probably received a not-dissimilar amount of money to appear in this year’s Dunkin Donuts ad alongside Mewes and the center of the campaign, Ben Affleck (who starred in multiple Smith movies post-Clerks, and supposedly received around $10 million for last year’s Super Bowl Dunkin ad). Playing Kevin Smith just isn’t as lucrative as actually being him. If O’Halloran does go the distance on The Floor, his $250,000 could pay for approximately nine productions of Clerks not accounting for inflation; or about four productions in today’s dollars; or, really, about two, after taxes. And if somewhere north of 10 million people watched the premiere of The Floor, as might be expected following the biggest TV broadcast of the year, it would be in the running for the most-seen thing he’s ever done. That’s kind of a bummer, given that he helped carry one of the most beloved indie movies of the ’90s, but it’s kind of cool, too – for viewers, if not necessarily O’Halloran’s bank account. He doesn’t get the Dunkin’ money, but he helped create an enduring character without being forced to live as him indefinitely.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
