10 Movie Scenes Changed At The Very Last Minute

6. The Ending Went From Downer To Upper - Clerks

Clerks may look like it's little more than a mumblecore reflection on the McJobs Generation, stumbling miserably through life, sustained by their friendships and the currency of human interaction but otherwise thoroughly pissed off. But it's a lot more complex than that because it's a love letter to cinema, in a way.

Kevin Smith has expressed subsequently that Clerks was his answer to Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing and he took that agenda to the extreme by having it not only play out across a single day but to also end in tragedy. Which is why in the original ending, which was still in place during the first public screening at the Independent Feature Film Market, it ended with a customer entering the store as Dante was about to close up, then shooting Dante dead and robbing the till. Cheerful and not the worst comment on the ennui of that type of existence.

But Brian O'Halloran hated the ending, naturally, and Smith's mentor - John Pierson - suggested cutting the scene and ending on the more positive note that preceded the horror. It was the right choice and if he hadn't, we wouldn't have had a sequel, so it counts doubly.