Interview with Kevin Smith

[Everyone introduces themselves; including me, who was the only one who said "Lovely to meet you." Questions are paraphrased and came from six people.]

KS: Shoot.

Last time you use the View Askew characters. You gonna miss 'em?

KS: Um, yes and no. I mean, I'll always be able to kind of do them in comic books, so it's not like–I'll be saying goodbye to them for the larger audience, but if I ever really wanted to do a Stu and Walter Fanboy story, I'd just do it in comics, and the people who really wanted to read it or share that story would find it. But, uh, yeah, to some degree. It'll be nice to not put on the outfit anymore, though. Cause then I can really just kind of get Marlon Brando fat, and not worry about being on camera anymore, so that's kind of comforting to some degree.

ALM: Anything liberating about it? You feel like you can go father afield now that you've retired this cast of characters?

KS: I don't know if it's that liberating, cause in all honesty, none of the flicks has ever felt confining. But having the previous flicks that are kinda interconnected, even up to and including this one, you feel like you have a safety net, where if you ever get in trouble you can be like "Yo, remember 'Clerks'?" and the audience is like "Aw, yeah!" And they laugh. So you're not really earning your laughs that honestly when you refer back to the other stuff, cause you're kind of referring back to something you know that works. So, um, it'll be nice to try to do something without that, to work on stuff that doesn't have the safety net, cause then you're earning the laughs as honestly as you can.

Would you ever do a comic book movie?

KS. Yeah, no, not me, man. I mean, I'm just not that guy. That requires a real visual hand, and I don't have a very visual hand. And so much of comic book movies have to be origin stories, and that's where they always get into trouble - you always read about people not liking the movie because so much time is spent on telling the backstory. Working in comics is great, like writing "Green Arrow" is awesome, because anybody who's going to read the book has a working familiarity with the backstory, so I don't have to spend a lot of time going, "This is who he is, where he came from," blah blah blah. Doing that for a mainstream audience, you have to tell that origin story. So it tends to slow things down a bit. But that's not even the reason I would stay away from doing it. It's more the visual aspect.

Shooting action is boring as fuck. Like the lightsaber sequence on this movie, which isn't very action oriented, but it took like three or four days to shoot, and that's just, it's so boring. I'd much rather be moving forward with dialogue. So, I'm not a big comic book movie guy. I'll go watch 'em, but I can't make 'em.

Which are you going to focus more on, writing or directing?

KS: I mean, probably like I've done with the last five, both writing and directing. Just kind of focus on writing a script and then bringing it to life as best as I can. Cause I'm primarily a writer first. Directing is something I do primarily to make sure that nobody fucks the script up, until I fuck the script up, and then I got problems with myself.

What's happening next?

KS: There's a picture that I think we're gonna head into next that's tonally closer to "Chasing Amy," more dramatic and comedic than just flat-out comedic. Like this movie is the jokiest affair we've ever been involved with. Unlike some of the other ones, which had something on their mind, this one really has nothing on its mind except to make you laugh. That's its prime objective. So the next one, it's not going to have that. I mean, after making a movie like this, you feel like "Wow, I got that out of my system. And there's something probably weightier that I could be talking about." So I think that's where were gonna be headed next, something a little tonally closer to "Chasing Amy," but about fatherhood.

So what's the status on the [long-upcoming] Fletch movie?

KS: Fletch would come after that. Like initially we were going to do it next, but then I was like, "You know what, I just made a comedy, I don't immediately want to go back to another comedy. I'd like to do something else in between, and then we'll get to the Fletch thing." Because that's a daunting proposition, to some degree, because it's based on material from somebody else, and that's something I still have to get comfortable with, the notion of adapting.

Are you going to do a series of adaptations?

KS: Miramax optioned the whole series of books, but I would like to do one and that's it. I've already made my film series.

Would you use the original Fletch music?

KS: Bring back - what's his name - Harold Faltermeyer's stuff - how could you not? I mean, I know it's so dated at this point, but you have to include it. And then the dude who did the score for this movie, he did the score for like the Powerpuff Girls and like samurai cartoons, he works electronica so he could take the Faltermeyer stuff and make it work.

Making the Fletch thing is kinda weird cause everyone has the familiarity with the Chevy Chase movies, but I'm more of a student of the novels, the Gregory McDonald stuff. So you have to kind of reconcile both worlds to one another, and cop to the fact that even if you use Jason Lee as Fletch, there's gonna be more people than not going "Where the fuck is Chevy Chase? He is Fletch!" So we have to work Chevy Chase in there somewhere, and we've been toying with the notion of building a framing device that starts and kind of ends with him. Cause it's a Year 1 story, the story of how he first got the job with the paper. So that would be a nice way to work him into it.

Tone of "Mallrats" in new film? "Real fun"?

KS: Yes, yeah. And to some degree, ""Mallrats"" is that movie, although apparently not to you. [laughter all around] [genially] Is it like what "Mallrats" should have been?

[gossip about Universal bungling "Mallrats"]

KS: Well, there was definitely a bit of - there were too many cooks on that movie, to say the least. Too many people saying, "This is not how you make a movie." Cause we wanted to make a movie for like three million bucks and there was a whole different opening sequence to it, even different from the one that we shot that we wound up cutting. And it was a much quieter film, not nearly as bombastic, but still kind of slapsticky, but not very slapsticky. And then the studio kept telling us, and we were so naive that we kept listening to them, too. Cause we'd done it once before, and "If you're making it with a studio, you can't do it for three million. Minimum six." And I went, "Really? Wow." But that's cause the producers have big fees. Jim and Shawn, I think they got 750 apiece, and I was like, "No wonder they couldn't do it for three million." [laughter] That was a boatload of cash right there.

But yeah, I mean, definitely, making this movie was kind of going back and trying to rewrite history to some degree. Cause I always feel like if ""Mallrats"" had been released by anybody but Gramercy, like if Dimension was up and running and doing more than just sci-fi at the time that we made ""Mallrats"" - cause they were in existence, I think they had done a film by that point. But they hadn't broken into comedy, they were just doing sci-fi genre stuff. If they had been up and running and we had done it there, I think it would have done better. How much better? Not like it would have made a zillion bucks, but I think it definitely would have done better than it did under the Gramercy aegis. Gramercy just didn't know how to sell it, what to do with it.

They turned to us on how to design the poster, and that's the last thing you want to do, is ask the filmmaker what he wants. Cause he's not thinking about selling the movie, he's like, "This would look good on my wall. Like a comic book cover–that would be awesome, make that, make that." And it doesn't help to sell the movie one iota. So ever since that I've always stayed out of marketing, just kind of been like, "Well, if you guys think it works, go ahead."

Like "Chasing Amy": The poster for it didn't have the guys in it, just her, and I always thought that was so weak sauce. I was like, "What the fuck? The movie's not about her." And she was my girlfriend at the time. [laughter] But I was just like "It's not about her, it's about them!" Blah blah blah. And they were like, "No, we just need one striking image." And ultimately, it worked: People really liked the poster. So I was the last guy to ask.

But yeah, to many degrees "Mallrats" was kind of the one all-out comedy that we attempted to make in the past, and it didn't quite work. And I wish I could lay it all on the studio, but it probably had a lot to do with the fact that it was our first movie that we weren't doing it ourselves, we were working with someone else's cash, someone else's cash brings certain espectations, blah blah blah, I'm working with a crew - a very strange experience compared to what we had just gone through with "Clerks".

So it just kind of didn't work out for whatever reason. The movie found its audience on video, which I was more than happy to hear and learn about as the years went by, but it was always the one that stuck in my craw, like "Fuck, that would have worked." Cause it seemed like two years later, man, the business became lousy with teen pictures. And I was just like, "God! We were just two years early!"

eclipse.com: "They weren't funny anymore!" [The eclipse.com woman was totally flirting with me, which I realized like four hours after we had all left. Dumbass.]

KS: Yeah, I know, but they worked commercially. And there was enough sap in "Mallrats" that it would have went over. I mean, "Mallrats" really wears its heart on its sleeve, as much as it's kind of a dick-and-fart-joke picture. But it always kind of bugged me that that's the one that didn't work. And it's the one that people come up to me most and mention. Like, you've got the "Chasing Amy" people who talk about how much it meant to them, and people who love "Clerks" - and the thing you get on "Clerks" is people going "Wow, that's the movie that made me want to be a filmmaker," which is a nice way of saying "Your movie looks so fucking bad I figure I can do it too" - and then "Dogma", of course, had its folks coming up to me, but "Mallrats" is the one that most people bring up when they talk to me, when they come up to me in the mall or in public they're like "That movie's awesome, you should make another one like that." And it always kind of impacted me to a large degree, how we should try again. But again, I was so afraid to do an all-out comedy because of what happened with that, and then eventually I got over it and made this picture. So yeah, this movie was a way to kind of go back and rewrite history, so to speak, to be like, "See, it wasn't us." But, you know, I guess a part of it was us.

And it's a different beast too. It's like, this movie's got a lot of heart, but it doesn't have that intentional, sappy heart that "Mallrats" has. And this movie wears its heart on its sleeve too, but it's a sleeve that's just full of snot. So it's a weird amalgam. But yeah, watching this movie work the way it does makes me feel like, "I knew "Mallrats" could have worked if we'd just done it a little differently."

Any parodies that you couldn't do?

KS: I wanted to spoof Miramax a little more, and they weren't comfortable with it. There was one sequence where they got to the studio, they got to Miramax Studios, and Jay and Bob jumped on the tram and did the Miramax studio tour, kind of like the Universal tour. And they went through a couple sets, and there are some jokes there. And they got to this thing called the Hall of Precedents, and the voice-over's like, "Miramax is such a precedent-setting company." And there's animatronic figures inside, one of Jaye Davidson dropping his pants in The Crying Game, and one of Harvey Keitel dusting the piano naked in The Piano, and Jay turns to Silent Bob, he's like "These guys make movies with a lot of dicks in them."

They didn't like that, they were just like "Nobody's gonna get that." I was like, "How could you not get it? We're showing the scenes."

Will it be on DVD?

KS: No, we never shot it. It was out in the script stage. And Bob had me convinced, he said, "It's too inside." I was like, "I don't think it's too inside." But I don't think they didn't want us to do it because it was too inside, I think they didn't want to be tagged as the company that makes movies with a lot of dicks in them.

What about ABC (and the cancelled "Clerks" animated series)? There was a line in the trailer.

KS: That's such an inside joke. The audience that would get that joke is very, very small compared to the audience that will potentially see the movie. And it was just more confusing than anything else. It was a great line to shoot, because it was kind of cathartic, but leaving it in the movie, people would just be like "What are they talking about?" I mean, that's breaking the wall in a way that doesn't help the movie at all, because you're breaking the wall to kind of take a shot at somebody from your past that, like, at the end of the day, fuck 'em, doesn't matter. So it was a nice thing to kind of get out of my system but not a good thing to keep in the movie - it just would have slowed things down.

How come Jason Mewes gets to date Shannon Elizabeth and fight Mark Hamill?

KS: He said while we were making the movie, "This is awesome. I get to lightsaber-fight Luke Skywalker and I get to go down on Princess Leia." I was like, "I hadn't thought of that."

But I don't know, he's such a great character to write for. I will miss doing that, I will miss writing lines that I know Jay is going to say. I mean, I'll always use Jay in the movies but not, you know, as Jay. But he's such a great character to write for because you can say things that like you would never get away with having other people say - that you would never get away with saying in real life, and that you'd never get away with having other characters say. There's just some weird kind of sweetness at work with him and with the character that he gets away with saying very, very offending things. And the audience doesn't turn on him, like "Fuck you!" and leave. He's just this weird kind of creature, an id with no filter, and he just speaks, and I guess people like that.

Anything for Mewes in the future?

KS: No, I mean, nothing like a star vehicle, but he'll always pop up. Like I know there's a role in the next thing we're going to do as well. And it'll be nice to see him do stuff that's not Jay, but he's not one of those actors that's like, "I don't want to be pigeonholed, you know. I could do a lot more." He'd be content to play Jay until he was, like, sixty. He doesn't have a pretense about him like that.

Anything else he did?

KS: He did a movie for High Times called "Pot Luck," which I thought was a bit of typecasting. And then he did this other movie that he shot right before Jay and Bob, some indie flick that was kind of like an indie-film version of "Rope," the Alfred Hitchcock movie, is how he described it.

He goes, "It's like an indie version of Rope." I go, "You know what Rope is?" He goes, "No, but they told me it's like an indie version of Rope." So I explained it to him. He goes, "That is kinda like the movie." I go, "That's probably why they told you it was an indie version of Rope."

But I think after this movie it would be so fucking weird if that dude doesn't get hired by studios. I mean, they've never known what to do with him. Periodically, we get calls in our office about like "Is Jason Mewes available for the movie?" We're like, "Yeah, absolutely." And then he'll go in and audition, and he's terrible at auditioning, basically. He just wants somebody to give him a movie, to give him a role, and not make him audition, cause he's no good at the cold read. Like Penny Marshall had asked him to go in and read for this movie she was doing called "Riding in Cars with Boys," with Drew Barrymore, and he went in. And afterwards he was like, "My God, she wanted me to fucking cry." And I was like, "Well, yeah, I imagine it was part of the scene or whatever." He's like, "Yeah, but I can't cry. I don't know how to fucking cry. I barely cry in real life. How'm I supposed to cry for fucking Laverne?" And obviously he didn't end up getting the part.

But I think if somebody found a way to use him and gave him the benefit of the doubt, if he can play Jay the way he does, he could probably play something else. And they'd have somebody who could bring an audience with him into the theaters. People love that kid, they'll go see him in anything.

How come one of the Internet people is named MagnoliaFan? [which is a reference to some comments Smith made on his website, www.viewaskew.com, indicating that he was less than satisfied with "Magnolia"]

KS: That is so fucking insane, the reaction that gets. Because - I still can't figure it out. People I've seen it with - I've watched it in two test screenings, I've watched like three press screenings. And I watched the screening at the San Diego ComiCon, and that was made up of fans, so I get that. But that line getting the reaction it gets in screenings that's not fan-packed mystifies me. Because I know they're not laughing at it because of why I wrote it. They're just laughing at the notion that somebody is called "MagnoliaFan"? I don't know. It's very weird. Or to me it says that a lot of people thought "Magnolia" was a fucking joke. Which I think it kinda weird.

How come you didn't like "Magnolia"?

KS: I don't know, man, "Magnolia" rubbed me the wrong way. And I loved Boogie Nights, and he's a nice guy. I met him very briefly. I was getting my physical - basically, they give you a physical before you start the movies. It's weird.

Melissa the Kind Publicity Person: Couple more minutes. [In retrospect, this is pretty funny.]

KS: 'Kay. And I was sitting there filling out my paperwork, and somebody was like, "Kevin." And I looked up, and it's Paul. And I was like, "Hey man, how you doin'?" and he was like "Good." And I said, "Yeah, so what, are you starting soon?" And he said yeah. Very quick conversation, hi-bye, didn't mention the fact that there was this big "feud" or something. I mean, at the end of the day, I just made some comments on the website, which I didn't think people even read it, like I guess more people read the website than just the fans. I guess it was a slow newsday and they needed a story - you know, one filmmaker dissing on another.

And you know, I dunno, I just didn't dig on the movie. And more for the fact that he spent forty million dollars telling that story when he could have easily told the same story for far, far less. Cause it just felt like, if you're going to make that kind of open wound of a movie - cause "Chasing Amy" is kind of that open wound of a movie. It's a therapeutic movie. It's me working through some shit on film. And we did it for two-hundred-fifty grand.

You can't expect to make a movie like that for forty million and have that many people interested. Number one, it's three hours. Number two, you're talking about touchy-feely stuff that not everyone wants to escape to the movies to see. I mean, most people go to the movies cause they want to be fucking entertained, not because they want to see some guy work through his feelings about his dad, or something like that. And if you're going to make that movie, make it cheaply, so that the studio has a shot at making their money back. So that was my biggest gripe with it. It was just like, "Forty million to tell that story? Come on, man, be more responsible."

So it wasn't the film?

KS: No, it was. [laughter] But I mean, you know, who am I to talk? I put a big rubber poop monster in one of our movies, so, you know, I'm the last guy that should be attacking him for the fucking frogs. But, I mean, there are parts of that movie that I do like. I could watch a truncated hour-long version of that movie. Hacking out the other stuff. Like that Tom Cruise stuff is really kind of powerful. Not the whole like, "respect the cock, tame the pussy" kind of thing, but when he's talking about his father, that's really powerful. Like the interview, where he's just looking at her and he's like "You're quietly judging me." That's a really cool line. But so much of it just feels very fatty.

Which kind of Star Wars fan are you - one who likes everything or just "Empire"?

KS: If I had to categorize myself, I'd put myself in the "just like Empire" [category]. But I do love Star Wars, the whole series. I mean,I grew up on it, I had the toys. Still look forward to the movies. Big part of my mythology, you know. Big part of my youth. When I was a kid, it was my mythology. But at the end of the day, if somebody was like "You're going on a desert island and take one fucking Star Wars movie," I'd take "Empire."

You got to go to Skywalker Ranch?

KS: We were up there working on "Dogma", we were doing the sound mix, and my then-girlfriend, my present wife, was talking about how beautiful it is up there. And it is beautiful. It's not like a particular Skywalker Ranch, you know, it's just a big fucking farm. Like he's got acres and acres and acres of beautiful Marin County countryside, with nary a fucking Yoda or Storm Trooper in sight. You have to look very hard to find anything Star Wars. Like in the main mixing facility, it looks like a big winery but you get inside and it's all the mixing stages, tons of movie posters, none of which he's ever made. All old movies, like foreign posters for "The Wizard of Oz," "Lolita," "Gone with the Wind," not a single poster of a movie that was made in the last twenty years, and nothing having to do with him. And if you go into the main house, where they have like a restaurant and whatnot and I guess some of the LucasFilm offices, if you go into the library, there's a small kind of statue of - what was the character's name? Princess Leia came undressed with the bounty hunter bringing in Chewy?

Bosh. [sp? I am not a SW nerd]

KS: There's a small maquette of Bosh next to the idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark. And that is it. That's all I ever saw. Because you expect, like, "I'm gonna go in there and fucking see it all!"

[general agreement with last statement]

KS: Yeah, like you got the magic ticket. But they have the archives there, which I never went to. But Mandel, my friend, the guy that I did the "Clerks" film with, he went there within the last two months, and he said, you know, it's a mindfuck. You go in there with a camera, and it's just everything. They've got a table with enough Storm Trooper armaments to start your own army. There's Han Solo, there's the Ark of the Covenant, there's a speeder bike.

But he says it's not even set up like a museum, it's just a bunch of shit, it's like somebody's fucking garage. It's just like a bunch of shit, like "Here's some shit from the movies." Whereas, like, I would be like, "Oh, here it is, a little prop," do it like we did at the comic book store, really self-gratifying, glorifying oneself. But he said that's the only place that he's ever seen any stuff like that. Cause I was like, "Yeah," after that, "I had never seen anything."

So anyway. We were up there, and she's like, "It's beautiful up here! It's like God's country up here!" Which is a huge statement for her to make because she doesn't believe in God. And I was like, "Yeah, it really is." And she was like, "This is the kind of place where people should get married." And I was like, "Yeah, they should." And two days later we wound up getting married there. It was just like kind of on the quick, on the sly, no big ceremony, just like me and her, Scott Mosier and his girlfriend, and Jen's friend and her boyfriend at the time, and the Catholic monk who married us. So it was just real kind of quiet.

Did George come?

KS: No, I don't think he even knew. I think if he they knew they would have been like "You can't get married here." Cause I think there was only one party that had gotten married officially at Skywalker, and that was I think his niece or something like that had gotten married there earlier in the year. Cause I think you have to ask for that kind of thing, so I was just like, "Fuck it, we'll do it quiet without bringing anybody else." So we got married there.

Actually, I went up on Friday to listen to the sound mix, the final mix, and it was the first time we were there since we had gotten married there. So we went to the place, which was just a room in one of the boarding houses. They built these great houses which look like old houses, but they're not; they were built within the last ten years. And they've got these fantastic rooms that you stay in, and every room is a theme room, and it's like the Windsor McKay room, the John Boorman room, a bunch of director rooms. But it was just this big house where people stayed and we were the only people staying there. It was kind of nice to go back and see the place, but we didn't get very much done. She was like, "We have to bring the baby, it's the place where we got married," and I was like, "There's nothing for the baby to do!"

Melissa: Are you guys all set?

Intreipd gentleman from GMU acting like he didn't hear Melissa: Was that your kid playing you? [in the Jay and Silent Bob origin scene]

KS: The young me, the young Silent Bob was my kid. It was just the biggest pain in the ass in the world to shoot with. The most difficult actor I've ever worked with. I've never come so close to child abuse in my life - I just wanted to slap the shit out of it. Cause she was fine up until the moment we shot, and the first AD said, "Action!" All of a sudden she started screaming. And I'm so pissed off on so many different levels, like number one, you hate when somebody blows the take, even if it's a kid. And number two, it's like, "You're supposed to be playing Silent Bob. You don't scream, you don't talk, just be quiet, just sit there" - I mean, she's less than two at the time, so you can't really have this conversation with her. But that and just the fact that we had such a hassle-free shoot up until that point, and the crew was looking at me like "What's wrong with your fucking kid, man?" and I was just like, "I dunno, I dunno, but I want to replace her." And the kid who was playing Jay was so well-behaved and so quiet, just didn't care about the cameras, didn't care about all the people, was just kind of in its own little world. I was like, "Let's change their outfits!" But eventually we got enough footage of her not fucking crying that it kind of worked out. But if you look at the one shot where the Silent Bob mother is about to put the hat on her head, on Silent Bob's head, her eyes are very glassy. It's in that quiet moment between the screams, when the kid cries and then there's like this silence and the kid takes in the breath, like [breath] "Aaaah!" It was just this real quick two-second clip that we were able to make something out of.

But yeah, she was a pain in the ass. Hopefully she'll get better as time goes on. But I don't know if I want to make my daughter into an actress. Cause actresses are weird. It's a bad population. Don't want to introduce her to that.

GMU: Don't want her to be Sofia Coppola?

KS: No, I'd be happy if she directed. In some ways, I'd be happy if she acted too, if she got really good at it and then we could like live off her for the rest of our lives, and I could stop working and just keep her checks and shit.

hottips.com: Pull a Gary Coleman on her? [laughter]

KS: Take advantage of her, put her in therapy. Cause I'm sure she's therapy-bound anyway. Cause she's got, like, her father's Silent Bob. That's gotta do something to a kid growing up. I mean, "My father puts on a fucking long coat and acts like a stoner!"

ALM: Not anymore, right?

KS: Yeah, not anymore, but like sooner or later she's gotta come to grips with that. And she's becoming more and more aware of what we do - I mean, now she's very aware, but throughout the course of the production, you know, everything had pictures of Jay and Silent Bob on it, that little circle logo. And she would always point to it and be like "Jay, Da." And we're like, "Yeah, very good!" But then you forget to distinguish, like, "Well, not really Jay, Da, but kind of character Jay, Da?" But she didn't know.

But she's a big fan of "Peanuts," like recently she got into Snoopy in a big fucking way. And the woman who was the script supervisor on the movie, Hillary, she used to be the voice of Sally when she was a kid, for a lot of the specials except the Christmas one - I don't think she did the Christmas one. So as a wrap gift she gave me this picture, a drawing of Sally, you know, done in the Charles Schultz style, and the animated Jay and Bob, the cartoon version of Jay and Bob, standing together.

And it hung in the editing room, and I didn't really think about, didn't think about it while she was getting into Snoopy or anything like that. And one day she came into the editing room, and she looked up, and she saw the picture. And suddenly it's like, "That's Charlie Brown's sister, and she's standing with my father..." And she stared at it for a long time. You could just see the wheels moving. And you're like, "Who's that?" And she's like, "Da." And I'm like, "And?" And she's like, "Jay, Da." And I'm like, "Isn't that weird? We know Sally!" And she was very perplexed, very disturbed, and I know she's going to wind up on an analyst's couch talking about it. She's like "Dad knows Charlie Brown in some way? What?" That's gotta be difficult in some degree. Or will become difficult. Or maybe not.

[autograph signings and such; I say goodbye, very happy to have met Kevin Smith]

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