Studying the Auteur Theory: Kevin Smith.
As a young teen growing up in Redbank, New Jersey, Kevin Smith worshipped such movies as Porkys's, The Last American Virgin, as well as, John Landis and John Hughes films. These movies are the basis of his films that he has made as a director/writer. His directorial debut in 1994 was a low budget film, Clerks. This film collected the Filmmakers Trophy Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and the International Critics Week Award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival that same year. Working with friend Scott Mosier and their production company, named View Askew, Smith wrote and directed the independent films Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma.
Through his writing and directing Smith is known for his auteurism, or the Auteur Theory which is the philosophy that the director is the central intelligence behind a film and deserves authorial status and possessory credit, putting his or her personal imprint on the film. At times, the director may put his or her sense of camera work or themes and ideologies into the film. This is what Kevin Smith is known for respectively (http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/biography.asp?ctr=650148). .
In all of Kevin Smith's movies, he uses certain motifs, but one in particular is through continuity. Continuity in this sense is meant to be through the characters. As presented after, the characters of Jay and Silent Bob have a continuity from them going from each film playing the same role.
An example of the continuity is in the three movies that Smith wrote/directed and starred in, Clerks, Mallrats and Dogma. Starting with Clerks, and throughout the films Smith has written and directed, the audience sees two characters Jay and Silent Bob, played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith himself. Jay and Silent Bob are in every movie Smith wrote playing the same character. .
To summarize Smiths first film, Clerks is about a clerk named Dante who has had a crummy job at a small convenience store since graduating from high school three years ago.
