[Scroll to bottom of article for some Kevin Smith extras.]
From surly convenience-store clerks to love-struck lesbians, filmmaker Kevin Smith has been making movies about Generation X for 10 years. According to Smith, it's time to grow up. The calls of sellout have been mustering in the midst of his core fan base, which consists mostly of potty-mouthed adolescent males who read comic books and can't get laid.
Since his film debut, "Clerks," in 1994, Smith has created a mythology all his own with many recurring characters, most notably Jay and Silent Bob, who have carved their own niche in pop culture. With 2001's "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," Smith said farewell to his characters in appropriate fashion, one blowjob joke following another.
Opening tomorrow is Smith's sixth film, "Jersey Girl," centering around the relationship between a father and his 7-year-old daughter. For a filmmaker with some of the most notoriously foul-mouthed films of the 90s, releasing a PG-13 romantic comedy is a risk.
"The moment I started writing I figured I was going to lose some of the hardcore 13-, 14-year-old boys who are big Jay and Silent Bob fans," Smith admitted. "[But] some of the hardcore fans actually grew up with this and you don't even have to be [a kid] who's all about Jay and Bob only. Sometimes those cats are forward thinkers and they can appreciate more. I went to see 'World According to Garp' when I was 12. Loved the movie, and it's clearly not a movie that's directed at me. They really don't give our audience enough credit, which is kind of a shame."
"Jersey Girl" was originally written for Bill Murray, but once Smith showed an unfinished version of the script to his longtime friend and collaborator Ben Affleck, Affleck urged Smith to finish writing it.
Smith said he feels that "Jersey Girl" is his most personal film.
"It's my feelings and thoughts about being a father," he said. "And how you start to appreciate your own father once you become a father and how important my wife is to me and how much I lean on her in real life."
Smith isn't the only filmmaker of his generation to make a more family-friendly departure. John Favreau and Richard Linklater are two independent filmmakers from the mid-'90s who have had recent mainstream hits like "Elf" and "School of Rock," respectively.
"I guess if you look at [John Favreau] and Richard [Linklater] and myself, we all have kids," Smith explained. "Whereas those guys, I guess, felt like making a movie for kids, I just felt like making a movie about a kid."
To come up with his material, Smith said he borrows from his own life.
"Each movie acts as a snapshot for what's going on in my life or what's going on in my head at any given point when I make the flick," Smith said. "I got married and I had a kid, so obviously that was kind of on my mind at the time."
Smith's next project is an even bigger departure from the dick-and-fart antics of Jay and Silent Bob: a big-budget adaptation of the comic book "The Green Hornet," one of the first superhero comics.
"It's a bigger movie than I've ever done before," Smith explained. "It's certainly more expensive. It's not a case of just me having to please my audience."
Smith is no stranger to comic books, being a highly successful writer for superhero comic books such as "Daredevil" and "The Green Arrow."
"I can certainly see the logical progression from the comic book stuff I've done, up to the movies I've done, up to this," Smith said.
Smith also wrote a script for Warner Bros. for the ill-fated "Superman Lives" movie of the late '90s that never materialized. The ordeal taught Smith the kind of comic-book film he didn't want to make.
"There were just a bunch of people that were all trying to put their stamp on it, all trying to make their version of the Superman movie," Smith said. "That's filmmaking by committee, and I don't really dig that. Also, you're dealing with a character that's an icon, that everybody knows. Everybody knows almost every aspect of the Superman story, so you run the risk of pissing off the fan base, pissing off the comics group, part of which I am. I am a comics guy. It's kind of intimidating, dealing with all that shit."
After "The Green Hornet," Smith is helming another adaptation, this time of the novel "Fletch Won." He wrote the title role for long-time collaborator Jason Lee, but Miramax has since insisted on a bigger name to helm the project. Smith hopes that success on "The Green Hornet" will lend him more influence when casting that film.
"Hopefully 'Green Hornet' is a big enough hit where I can just march in and be like, look, it's Lee or nothing, but right now they're giving us a hard time," he said.
Throughout his career Smith has come under scrutiny for his lack of directing style, but he is quick to beat anyone else to the punch to criticize. Smith is aware that many are skeptical of his ability to shoot an action movie.
"Obviously, I can't just plant the camera down and let stuff happen in front of it," Smith admitted. "I'm sure there are people who are thinking, well, his version is gonna be like Green Hornet and Kato sitting in a two shot discussing crime that's happening off camera, and they come back after having fought the crime and discuss it and, you know, sex. With a movie like that you actually have to be visually interesting. It has to be a real experience for the audience. So with something like that, I'd be more apt to move the camera around."
Smith said he feels that "Jersey Girl" was a nice mixture of his signature style of monologue conversations with some camera movement.
"Sometimes the camera moved around, and sometimes it didn't," Smith said. "Sometimes we did just kind of plop it down and let people sit there and talk in front of it. So, I think it really just depends on the material ... I've always [thought] it doesn't matter what anyone looks like, it's really about what's being said. Film is a visual medium. I guess it's a combination of both."
If the initial reactions to "Jersey Girl" are any implication, the combination has been very effective.
"It seems to kinda move people and people find it very sweet," Smith said. "I guess they're connecting with it, kind of along the lines of the reactions we had on 'Chasing Amy,' which is nice."
General audiences as well as hardcore Smith fans alike will be reacting to "Jersey Girl" tomorrow, but Smith isn't out to please anyone. He just lets his art speak for itself.
"The way I kind of went about making 'Clerks' was I wanted to make a movie that I identified with and would make my friends laugh," Smith concluded. "And thankfully there were people of the same mind I guess. We wound up with an audience even though that wasn't the aim. Don't go looking for the audience, the audience will find you."
Kevin-Smith-ography
1994: "Clerks" - Smith's debut film transforms the mundane life of two clerks into exquisite art with his vulgar but hilarious script.
1995: "Mallrats" - The follow-up to "Clerks" (it takes place a day before). The campier "Mallrats" tanked in theaters, but found a cult audience on video and DVD thanks to the charisma of its breakout star Jason Lee as the comic-book fanboy Brodie Bruce.
1997: "Chasing Amy" - Smith's best film to date. He examines love and relationships through his protagonist's insecurity and his film, both technically and artistically, comment on love with razor-sharp immediacy.
1999: "Dogma" - Smith's take in faith is his most controversial film, despite the fact it features a giant rubber poop monster. While "Dogma" continues its exposition far into the third act at the expense of the action, the highlight is the performances by the excellent ensemble cast, including Alan Rickman and Matt Damon.
2001: "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back" - The farewell to Smith's characters Jay and Silent Bob works as one big inside joke to his hardcore fans and is relentlessly hilarious with cameos galore.
Upcoming Movies
2005: "The Green Hornet" - Big-budget adaptation of the superhero comic book. No cast announced at this time, but Smith has said he wants Jet Li for the role of Kato and is looking to hire Master Yuen Wo Ping, who choreographed fights for multiple Chinese kung-fu films, as well as U.S. blockbusters like "The Matrix" and Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films.
"Fletch Won" - Adaptation of Gregory McDonald's novel, not a remake of the Chevy Chase movie. Smith is a big fan of the "Fletch" books and will begin work on this film after "Green Hornet."
"Clerks Cartoon Movie" - A film version based on the failed ABC television series based on the original film. Powerhouse Animation has done several tests for the film, and its status is in the very early stages.
Need-to-Know Cameos:
1996: Smith appears as Silent Bob in friends Matthew Gissing's and Malcolm Ingram's "Drawing Flies," which was released by Smith's production company View Askew.
2000: Smith shows up along with Jason Mewes as the notorious Jay and Silent Bob randomly in "Scream 3." Jay confuses Courtney Cox's character for Connie Chung and asks, "How's Maury? Bitch!"
2003: In "Daredevil," Smith plays forensic assistant Jack Kirby, a reference joke to comic-book insiders. Jack Kirby was one of the most renowned comic book artists in history and drew for "Daredevil." Smith wrote for the "Daredevil" comic in the 90s.
2004: Smith appears as himself in Mark Hamill's mockumentary film "Comic Book: The Movie," which concerns the adaptation of superhero comic books into films.
Did You Know?
Smith did rewrite work on the scripts of such films as "Coyote Ugly" and "Scary Movie 3."
During Smith's script work on "Superman Lives," Warner Bros. executives told him to cut a romantic scene between Superman and Lois Lane. Smith complained and said, "This has the best dialogue in the script." Executives responded, "This is a toy movie. People don't care how good the dialogue is." Also, producer Jon Peters demanded a giant spider be written into the third act. Despite the fact "Superman Lives" was never made, Peters went on to produce "Wild Wild West." A giant spider appeared during the third act.
Smith's daughter is named Harley Quinn Smith, after the character Harley Quinn from the "Batman" comics. She also appears as the infant version of Silent Bob in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back."
Smith originally wrote the role of Randal in "Clerks" for himself but quickly discovered he couldn't memorize lines, so he gave himself the role with the least dialogue.
Smith participated in a protest of his film "Dogma" on its opening day with a sign reading "Dogma is Dog Shit" and was interviewed by local reporters under an alias.
Smith shot a documentary for eccentric musician Prince in 2000, but it remains in Prince's private vault, most likely never to be released.
The original ending to "Clerks" has main character Dante gunned down and killed in an attempted robbery and can be seen on the DVD.
[Source = imdb.com, "Evening with Kevin Smith" DVD]
