accessAtlanta

Kevin Smith has amassed a cult following with his films, creating an entire universe dubbed "The View Askewniverse."

Smith and his fans use the nickname, derived from Smith's production company, View Askew, to refer to the places and characters explored in his first five movies: "Clerks" (1994), "Mallrats" (1995), "Chasing Amy" (1997), "Dogma" (1999) and "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" (2001) — as well as the short-lived ABC cartoon version of "Clerks" that premiered in 2000.

Photos by POUYA DIANAT / Staff (ENLARGE)
Director Kevin Smith, in a suite at the Four Seasons in Atlanta, has amassed a cult following that originated with "Clerks," his 1994 film that depicted a day in the life of Dante Hicks and Randal Graves, 20-somethings stuck in dead-end jobs with little motivation for change.
(ENLARGE)
Smith says getting back into the "Clerks" mindset for the sequel wasn't difficult: "I'm at that place in my career right now where it's like, do I keep doing what I've been doing for years a la Dante and Randal, or do I change completely?"
(ENLARGE)
MOST POPULAR STORIES Police: Jeffrey Donovan arrested, suspected of DUI Report: Abdul's return to 'American Idol' doubtful Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has 'very treatable' cancer Fallon's '7th Floor West' is a silly, soapy treat Chris Brown apologizes for Rihanna beating
EMAIL THIS PRINT THIS MOST POPULAR
RELATED LINK • Read the full review

After releasing "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," a love letter to his fans, Smith vowed never again to make a film inside the Askewniverse. Smith's next film, "Jersey Girl" (2003), co-starred his buddy Ben Affleck and the actor's then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, and was his first true mainstream effort.

Smith's filmmaking contemporaries, such as Richard Linklater and John Favreau, have all achieved recent mainstream success with films vastly different than their independent breakthroughs, "Slackers" and "Swingers," respectively. "Jersey Girl" didn't fare as well as Linklater's "School of Rock" or Favreau's "Elf."

The PG-13 romantic comedy was a strong deviation from Smith's first films, which were populated by foul-mouthed slackers spouting monologues consisting of pop culture references and raunchy sexual acts, and didn't play well with Smith's fans or critics.

Rebounding from "Jersey Girl," Smith recently visited Atlanta to promote his latest film, "Clerks II," a sequel to the super low-budget film that put him on the map in 1994.

"Clerks" was a day in the life of two 20-somethings, Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson), stuck in dead-end jobs with little motivation for change. In the new movie, they're older and confronting some of the issues that come with being 30-something, much like the director himself.

Q: Do you worry about what doing a sequel says about your career at this point?

A: I'm just shocked that I've gotten as far as I've gotten, which on one hand is very far from where I began, but on the other hand it's not like I'm any closer to winning an Academy Award. Thankfully, that's not the goal. I just want to tell stories that interest me and throw something up on the screen that I can identify with. After years of going to the movies and watching other people's stories, you don't really get to go that often and see something where you're like, I totally identify with that person.

As much as I dig the "Die Hard" movies, I don't identify with John McClane. I would never shoot somebody. I would never jump off a building. I would never take my shirt off in public.

Q: You wouldn't walk barefoot through glass?

A: No, that's not me. But I look at the movies I've made and I recognize these characters. I identify with them, and that's what I wanted to do in the first place. There was that opportunity at one point to where I could do "The Green Hornet" movie or I could do "Clerks II." At first, I was like, "Wow, 'The Green Hornet' movie. Somebody's going to give me 70 million bucks to make a comic book movie?" I never imagined that would happen. I signed my deal [with Miramax] and when the dust settled there was a reason I never imagined that would happen, because I never really had the desire to do it.

[I] love watching those movies, but I can't get my head around making them. No. 1, [I'm] not talented enough. No. 2, it's not really why I got into it, to tell stories like that. ... That's not what I'm about and it's not what I'm good at, which is writing movies where people talk, and some people argue that I'm not even good at that, so going beyond that might be a huge boulder.

Q: When you were writing "Clerks," you were living in your parents' house in New Jersey and working at a convenience store. Did you find it difficult to get back into the mindset of the characters now that your life is so different?

A: Getting into that head space was easy. ... "Clerks" is not a movie about working at a convenience store, it's a movie about not working at a convenience store. "Clerks II" is about not working at a fast-food joint. So you remove the work element from it and the fact that I haven't been a five-buck-an-hour employee in like 12 years, the mindset is still the same and the characters reflect my current mindset about what it's like for me to be 35.

Q: Is it hard to go back?

A: Not really, because I'm at that place in my career right now where it's like, do I keep doing what I've been doing for years a la Dante and Randal, or do I change completely? Do I move to Florida, so to speak, like Dante, or do I find the new paradigm? ... That's the way I felt about making ["Clerks II"]. As thrilled as I was to be making it, I was like, yes, this is where I want to be in life, when it's all said and done, I still didn't really go that far, did I? I went from "Clerks" to "Clerks II" in 12 years.

Q: If you take an allegorical view of "Clerks II" as your career right now, does the possibility of Dante moving to Florida represent you making more movies like "Jersey Girl"?

A: Totally. It doesn't take psychoanalysis to look at "Clerks II" [or "Clerks"] and realize the Quick Stop represents more than the Quick Stop. It's very allegorical to where I am.

Q: Why do you think "Jersey Girl" wasn't as well received as your other films?

A: It's not like you can say the studio [expletive] us. In the top 10 moments of cinematic history of poor timing, I think we'd be No. 9. Having to follow "Gigli" [the critically savaged 2003 film that first paired Afleck and Lopez] was really, really tough. Because our marketing campaign, no matter what we did, seemed to say, "Remember that movie that you hated with those people you can't stand that just came out a few months ago? Here's even more." It was kind of a tough movie to follow, and yet you can't even point to "Gigli" and be like it was "Gigli's" fault, or Bennifer['s]. You can't even be like it was Ben and Jen that sank the movie.

I read all those reviews, man, and there were so many reviews that faulted me. You were getting judged against your own body of work. If that had been the first movie I made, I don't think it would've been reviewed nearly as harshly, but because I made "Clerks" or "Chasing Amy" or "Dogma," you're held to your own standard. Suddenly you get a bunch of reviews where people are going, "This is the movie that Dante and Randal would've made fun of." Even in the [Journal-]Constitution, Eleanor Ringel Gillespie said, "Who knew Kevin Smith had a movie this bad in him?" ... They weren't a bunch of people lighting off on Bennifer, they were a bunch of people citing me and going, "You [messed] up."

Meanwhile, I'm at the epicenter of it going, " I really love the movie."

I've been through it before, like on "Mallrats" [a comedy with Jason Lee and Jeremy London as slacker best friends dumped by their girlfriends on the same day who regroup at the mall], so the lesson I took from "Mallrats" was, at the moment, it sucked. It felt like, "Wow, we're utter failures," and then five to 10 years later, all you hear from people who come up to you in the street is, "Dude, 'Mallrats' is my favorite movie of all time."

Today's failure is tomorrow's cult favorite. I don't know if that will happen with "Jersey Girl," but I know time might be a little kinder to it than the moment that movie came out. Or I hope so.

Q: When "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" was coming out, you announced the retirement of the View Askewniverse. What is the reason now to bring it back?

A: [That was] the only thing that gave me a moment's pause about making "Clerks II." When I first started thinking about doing "Clerks II," it started as an idea of me wanting to tell a story about what it felt like to be in my 30s. "Clerks" is what I felt like it was like to be in my 20s, so why not use Dante and Randal as the proxies, as my stand-ins again.

The first person I talked to about it was [my producer] Scott Mosier. ... I was like, "I'm thinking of doing 'Clerks II.' "

He was like, "Well, do it."

"But I said I wouldn't do that anymore. I said I was finished with that kind of thing."

And he was like, "So what, you're worried now?"

I said, "Yeah, because I'm going to get torn to shreds on the Internet. People are going to be like, "You said you were done."

And he's like, "Is that a good enough reason to not make the movie? You're going to get torn to shreds no matter what movie you make. ... You changed your mind. That happens. When you said that, about closing the View Askewniverse, you meant it, and you shouldn't let that hold you back from telling the story you want to tell, otherwise you're going to hate yourself for not doing it."

I guess the lesson is never say never or maybe the best lesson is to never say anything, that way people can't hold it against you in the future, but I wouldn't know how to not say anything.

Q: The first time characters from the View Askewniverse resurfaced after their retirement was on the Canadian teenage TV melodrama "Degrassi: The Next Generation." What drew you to bring your characters to that show?

A: I was a huge "Degrassi Jr. High" and "Degrassi High" fan, and when we were working on "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," I got a call that there was going to be a "Degrassi: The Next Generation" and they wanted me to come do a cameo on the pilot. I would've done it, but we were in post production and I couldn't break away.

Then I said, "Are you guys sure you want to make the 'Next Generation'? That show was really cool, maybe you should leave it alone."

They didn't heed my advice at all. So, when I finally caught up with the show in Season 2, because it just fell off my periphery. ... You know, if you TiVo "Degrassi: The Next Generation" on Noggin, within three days you'll watch five seasons because they run it ad nauseam. Not only did they go back to the well, but they drew fresh water. That was so inspiring to me. You can revisit your old characters and do it in a fresh way. I was so worried that they would bring in kids from the old show as adults now and just kind of treat them in a real off-the-cuff, let's-make-fun-of-them fashion, but they didn't. They're an inherent part of that storyline.

Without "Degrassi: The Next Generation," I don't think I would've ever come to "Clerks II."

Q: How did the original "Clerks" actors, Jeff Anderson and Brian O'Halloran, react to the idea of a "Clerks" sequel?

A: You would imagine that they would both be like, yes, let's do it, but neither of them were all that thrilled about it.

I went to Brian first because I figured Brian would be the most supportive. He was just like, "You mean we're going to do the cartoon again?"

I was like, "No this is live action," and he was like, "I'd rather do the cartoon."

I eventually had to go to Jeff, but I was reluctant because Jeff I knew would be the holdout. Jeff would be the guy that was just like, "I have no interest in going back and being Randal." It haunted him for years. Jeff was not a dude who wanted to be an actor when he grew up. He was a guy I knew in high school, and I thought he would be cool for that role.

Five years after "Clerks" came out, people would run into him and recognize him or hear his voice, which is distinctive ... and it just starts to grate on you. At one point, I remember him saying to me, "Dude, I can't even wear a baseball cap anymore, you ruined it for me because people see me and they're like, 'Dude, you're Randal!' God forbid I spin it backwards."

When I talked to him about ["Clerks II"], he echoed the same trepidations I had at one point: What if it sucks and then people start going back and hating on the original? Why would you want to [expletive] with it? People seem to like that first movie for whatever reason. Why not just leave well enough alone?

I said, "Don't make a decision now." ... I gave him the script and waited to hear back from him. It took him a while and the whole time I'm thinking he hates it. He calls me back. He's like, "It's really funny, man, I'm shocked. You don't really retread the same jokes and [the characters] actually grow a bit ... but I still don't know if it's a good idea for you. I like it, but do you really want to be heading down this road? People are just going to feel like you're just retrenching."

I was like, "Dude, there's always going to be criticism. I can't avoid that. It's impossible. So, why not do what makes me happy? Go with the gut. I've got a big enough gut, I've been going with it for years, it's panned out. Right now the gut's telling me to do this."

Jeff didn't even really buy into the whole thing until Day 3 on the movie. The second day, he was driving to work and he almost drove past the set because he wasn't into the idea of doing it. He was just like, "This ain't a good idea."

Day 3, when we wrapped, I finally had enough footage to start cutting scenes together. ... I grabbed Brian, Jeff and Rosario [Dawson] and brought them upstairs. I was like, "Let me show you the stuff I've cut together so you can see where we are right now."

Jeff pulled me aside and Jeff was like, "Take this for what it is because it's coming from an honest place, but I think that's wonderful. That's like, to me, better than anything we did in the first movie." He's like, "If we keep it up, this could be a really cool flick so don't [expletive] it up."

So suddenly he was on board full throttle. He became my sounding board. ... He was as passionate about it as me and also as interested in keeping it pure and honest and not letting it become like a series of Dante running around going, "I'm still not even supposed to be here today."

Q: How was it integrating Rosario Dawson into the "Clerks" universe?

A: That chick deserves an Academy Award for this reason alone: She makes you believe that she would [have sex with] Brian O'Halloran. When we cast her, we were just like nobody's going to believe this. This is where the movie falls apart because they're going to look at her and look at him and be like, "No way." But her performance is so honest and so good that you actually buy it. You sit there going, like, yeah, maybe she would toss that dude a bone.

Q: Your longtime on-screen partner, Jason Mewes, who plays the drug-dealing Jay opposite your Silent Bob, has struggled with addiction in the past. What inspired you to write a detailed description of his long road to sobriety on your Internet blog?

A: It was very cathartic to write and very cool to write with Jason's blessing. I wrote the first two parts and, before I put them up, I showed it to him because it's not just my life, it's his life through my eyes. People seem to really get into that story and the weird thing is all the reactions to that story. The common consensus overwhelmingly was this should be your next movie. I don't want to make this a movie. I lived it and it was horrible. ... This is fine for you guys to read it, but [Jason] Mewes is alive. I don't think we need to eulogize him with a picture.

Q: Having written an early draft of the screenplay, are you looking forward to seeing "Superman Returns"?

A: [I'm] very excited to see it. If I had nothing to do with that movie 10 years ago, because it was back in '96 that I worked on it, I'd still be just as eager to see it like any "Superman" movie, short of "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace," so I'm just eager to see it for the fact that it's "Superman" again. ... I wanted to go last night but it's a 2 hour, 40 minute commitment, and I hadn't slept, so I wanted to get sleep instead.

Q: Does anything separate "Clerks II" from the sequel-oriented summer movies we're so used to getting every year?

A: [Summer sequels] seem to be a lot about commerce at the end of the day. Of course, the great irony is that I'm speaking about it while promoting "Clerks II," but it does seem to be like, "Oh, this worked so let's do it again."

I saw a quote recently that said every sequel is financial. The first movie you do for love, the second movie you do for money.

I speak from experience; it's not true. "Clerks II" wasn't a movie I made for money. If I wanted to make money, I would've done "Green Hornet." "Clerks II" was a movie that was made for love. So maybe we were the exception that proves the rule, but every movie I've seen, a big summer sequel really feels like if it worked before, it'll work again.

I don't know, that's the trick to doing a sequel isn't it? The idea of being familiar enough where people are comfortable with it and then kind of taking it further. But in the big movie world, their idea of taking it further is cramming even more eye candy into it.

Sometimes, it's just enough to have yet another story.