- Lollipop Magazine. The interview is a little old, but if you missed it, now’s your chance to read it in a nice format.
Chasing Smith
An Interview with Kevin Smith
Vulgarthon ’98
by Michael McCarthy
On January 5th I had the pleasure of attending Vulgarthon ’98, a one-day film festival hosted by filmmaker Kevin Smith in his hometown of Red Bank, New Jersey. 450 fanatics from Miami to Montreal invaded the town’s sold out, two-screen Sony Theatre to see Smith’s “New Jersey Trilogy” -Clerks,Mallrats, and Chasing Amy – and two films which he had a hand in producing,A Better Place and Drawing Flies. The former is a tense, haunting drama about a young man and the lunatic he befriends upon arriving at a new school, while the latter is a quirky comedy of Lynchian proportions in which Jason Lee leads his friends through the woods of Canada in search of, um, Sasquatch.
After each screening, a Q? session was held. Among the special guests were Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee, Jason Mewes, Brian O’Halloran, Vincent Pereria, Carmen Lee, Bob Hawk, and Scott Mosier. All were in good spirits, signing hundreds of T-shirts, posters, laserdiscs, et cetera – and posing for almost as many photos – by the time midnight rolled around and the shindig was over. Interestingly enough, most of the “meet and greet” activity actually took place outside the theatre as the weather was nothing short of beautiful (well, for January anyway). Good thing, too, since the theatre lobby was small and definitely would not have been conducive.
Many questions asked throughout the day were ridiculed by the audience. “Read the FAQ!,” was often shouted, in reference to the Frequently Asked Questions section of Smith’s website. Still, most questions gave birth to insightful commentary. Asked why a motion picture soundtrack for Chasing Amy was never released, Smith blamed Jon Bon Jovi. Turns out Jon invited Smith and producer Scott Mosier to his house and played them a great song he’d written for the film, telling them they could use it if they wanted it. Jon later changed his mind for fear of competing with himself, since his Destination Anywhere album was about to be released. At that point, label interest vanished. Of course, Jon’s album barely made a whimper while two songs featured in Chasing Amy, “The Impression That I Get” by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and “Have You Seen Mary” by Sponge, were among radio’s most played tunes for 1997.
Another noteworthy revelation made at Vulgarthon: despite previous reports, Jason Lee will be staring in Smith’s upcoming film Dogma. The role he was originally going to play was given to Matt Damon late last year, when the film was first slated to shoot, because Lee had a schedule conflict rendering him unavailable. However, since shooting was delayed until late winter, Lee is back in, though in a different role. Still good news nonetheless. The following is a conversation I had with the Smith about Vulgarthon,Dogma, and whatever else came up.
How fast did Vulgarthon sell out? I was hitting redial for an hour and a half before I finally got through.
Well, originally, we were going to sell only one theatre. That was 270 seats. But it sold out pretty quickly. Within two hours. We thought, shit, let’s see if we can get the other theatre and get a bunch more people going. So, we got the other theatre and then that sold out by the next morning.
Was the event promoted anywhere outside of your website?
Just the website.
At the hotel [Courtyard by Marriott], there were quite a few people saying how they just had to be in theatre one. Really hellbent on it. Was there really a most demanded theatre?
No, I wasn’t aware. Did people want to be in theatre one?
Yeah. A lot of people were rambling about that.
What was the difference?
Maybe they wanted to see your films first or thought the Q? would be better. But it’s probably like when a band plays two shows in the same city and everyone wants to go the first night.
Right. Right. No, I hadn’t heard. I think the Q? were really good in both theatres. The Q? for Mallrats in theatre one with me and Jason Lee and Jason Mewes and Ethan Suplee was really great. But the Q? for Chasing Amy in theatre two was really, really great. Better than the Q? for Chasing Amy in theatre one. It was the final Q? of the night. And Vincent’s Q?, I heard, in theatre two was great.
You were videotaping in theatre one. Were you also taping in theatre two?
Yeah. We videotaped both theatres.
How’s the video coming along? Will you be editing it yourself?
It was something that I was hip on doing, but I pretty much left it in Bill’s hands. So, I imagine Bill Woods and Brian Lynch will be putting it together.
Most of the people in attendance were young, white males. Any surprise there?
Surprises? There was a woman who introduced herself as being 45. I thought that was really nice because it bent the age curve. But, I mean, Gramp, he’s a guy who’s on the board all the time – a guy named John Launder – he’s in his late 50s/early 60s, and he was there, too. But no real surprises.
At the hotel the night before, it was all guys until around 1 a.m., then I started noticing some females arriving.
If you came to Vulgarthon to get laid, you really came to the wrong place. (Laughs)
When was the last time you actually sat down and watched any of your own films from beginning to end?
From beginning to end? Let me see… The last time I watched Chasing Amy was when we recorded the commentary for the Criterion laserdisc. That had to be about two, three months ago. And even then I was in and out of it because I was concentrating more on everyone else, doing the commentary.Clerks I haven’t watched from beginning to end in a long time. Mallrats is the one I’ll periodically pop in and watch. I think it’s the easiest one for me to watch.
I was mingling during the first 15 minutes of Mallrats, but then I went back in the theatre and it turned out to be the film I enjoyed most all day, because I hadn’t seen it in a while. And where it’s a straightforward comedy, I think it’s more enjoyed watching it with a group of people than watching at home alone.
Exactly. I think with Clerks, so many people have seen it so many times that it becomes a little dry, whereas Mallrats is the one you can’t really accuse people of seeing too many times. More often than not, they haven’t. And I know with me that was the case. I spent almost two years with Clerks in terms of making it and then touring with it. And the same with Chasing Amy. With Mallrats, we made it, it went out, a week later they pulled it, and that was it. And we spent the next year trying not to think about it. So, I wasn’t as used to seeing it as I was the other ones.
It’s also interesting to see it now because at the time it came out, Shannen Doherty was the only person people knew apart from Brian, yourself, and Jay from Clerks.
Right. [Jason] Lee has his own following now. And, of course, Joey and Ben you know from both the Golden Globe thing and Good Will Hunting. So, it is kind of weird to see the reaction.
The T-shirts given out as tickets said “Vulgarathon” on the back, as opposed to “Vulgarthon” like everything else. Was this an inside joke or an error of some sort?
Um, for me, I believe that was an error. I always spelled the thing “Vulgarthon” and the shirts came out as “Vulgarathon.” And they came in the day before, so… We chalked it up to some people pronouncing it the way it pretty much sounded to them and writing it down as that.
What was with the Clerks 2 rumors that I kept hearing everywhere?
I don’t know. I guess it came out of a Q? in one of the theatres.
Actually, there were people talking about it at the hotel the night before. One guy said it was going to be directed by somebody else, like how Miramax is doing the From Dusk Till Dawn prequel and sequel.
Well, Mike, if there was gonna be a Clerks 2, it would most surely not be directed by somebody else.
There was talk of a TV show from time to time in the past. They actually went forward and made a pilot at one point. While we were making Mallrats, when we came back from Minnesota, they were making a pilot for the Clerks sitcom. It was really bad. That guy Jim Breuer from Saturday Night Live was in it. He played Randal. But it was quite terrible and it never got beyond the pilot stage. I only got the pilot because somebody sent me a bootleg. So, that pretty much died in the water. And then Harvey [Weinstein] would say, “What about a Clerks sitcom?” because periodically they try to start a Miramax channel. Sooner or later, they will. They all try very hard and start negotiating and then I guess things just don’t happen. But when Harvey starts his Miramax channel, I think he wants Clerks.
You wanted to do it animated, correct?
Yeah. That’s the one I always push for. Sitcom-wise, I don’t think it would be very interesting. At least with an animated series you could be really funny and push the edge of the envelope. Tell stories that are a little more outrageous than what you can do within the confines of a film. Kind of like The Simpsons.
I spoke to a few Red Bank natives over 30. A woman working at the Marriott said her son used to hang around with you and two others. Her quote about you was, “He was strange. He was always different.” A woman working at a sub shop said she didn’t know your films but thought she might’ve seen Mallrats when I recited the titles. What’s the overall perception of the older people in the community?
Periodically, you get stopped by the older people in the street. I don’t know if they necessarily know the films, or have seen the films, but they like the attention that it brings to Red Bank. They’re always saying, like, “Hey man, that’s really nice. You made these movies around here?” They ask you very basic questions. Things like that. And then you have hardcore people who are just like, “I love what you’re doing” and stuff. I’ve never had anyone stop me and go like, “You, you’re that guy – stop. Leave Red Bank. Get out of here.” Generally, it’s all positive. But I’d say more often than not they haven’t seen the flicks.
What’s the perception of the teenagers? In Boston, there’s a tendency to hate local heroes. If a band breaks like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, nobody likes them anymore.
(Laughs) Right. I don’t know. I mean, this is a town where you see a lot of teenagers hanging out and I walk around a lot. I walk from home to the office and the comic book store. Every once in a while someone’s like, “Silent Bob!” And you turn around and they’re smiling. But, generally, they keep to themselves. They never comment to you. We’ve never gotten a brick through either the windows of the comic book store or the office, so I take that as a good sign. But I’m sure there has to be a group that’s like, “Fuck that guy and his movies, man. He thinks he’s so famous.”
I couldn’t believe how many people have ventured to Red Bank previously, some just to visit Quick Stop Convenience before you’d opened your store [Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash]. Does that blow you away?
That does. I think that’s really cool. When I first started hearing about people making the Quick Stop trek, I thought that was really interesting. When people [at Vulgarthon] were saying that they’ve been here before – that they’d been to the comic book store – I was like, Jesus, you knew you were coming, why didn’t you just wait until now?
You mentioned your “steal the thunder” philosophy, by which you say something bad about yourself before the audience has the opportunity. Is that something you devised yourself or is there a mentor behind that approach?
I think just from growing up chubby, you kind of build that mindset around you. Because you always want to take the attention off where you think people are going to focus the attention. And be in control of that. Take the reins, so to speak. I think it just came from there.
You mentioned that Tarantino was on your good side this week. Was that because he proclaimed Chasing Amy his favorite film of 1997 on Charlie Rose?
Yeah. That pretty much, you know, put him on my good side. But it’s not important who’s on my good or bad side. Most of the time, you just don’t think about other people. Because they’re not thinking about you. For the longest time, I never really thought about Robert Rodriguez or Robert’s stuff. And then one day he called me out of the blue. He was up for the Superman script. So we got to talking and stuff. I was like, I like this cat, I’m a fan of this guy. It’s one of those unspoken things where you can like a guy’s work but until they weigh in on you, you’re always kind of wary of them, just as people. And, contrary to popular belief, I don’t think this is a very close knit community. I wouldn’t feel comfortable just calling up a filmmaker and saying, hey, I like your stuff. It’s just kind of weird like that. I always feel like I’m perceived – like the stuff I do – by other filmmakers like, yeah, he does those movies, you know, the cult things, or the dick and fart movies. Chasing Amy may have opened that up a bit, but I just don’t think people feel that I do movie movies or filmmaker movies or whatever. So it never occurs to me to think about other filmmakers beyond the label of filmmaker, like what makes them tick underneath or do they like my stuff.
At Vulgarthon, you mentioned calling up Rodriguez a few weeks back in regards to a panic you had over directing Dogma. What’s your biggest fear: directing proven talents like Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, dealing with the special effects, or playing Silent Bob in your biggest acting role yet? Or is there even one particular thing that has you most concerned?
I’m most concerned, Mike, that when all is said and done, it’s just going to look flat. It’s going to look like Clerks and Mallrats and Chasing Amy. And for this film, that would be an injustice because the script is not written like those three movies. And those movies were kind of easy stories to tell. I feel justified in not swinging the camera around or getting very cinematic because I don’t think they’re very cinematic tales. They’re small, personal, intimate stories. This movie is not. While it is a personal film, it’s not small, and it’s not intimate, and it can’t feel that way. And it can’t feel like it was shot for zero bucks. It needs to open up. And I just know me, man. I know I’m lazy and I’ll always choose the lazy route. Like, we don’t have to move the camera, we’ll just do a three shot or something. I’ve got to be a little more rigorous this time around. Whatever my first instinct is, I have to ignore it and go with the next one.
Are you doing storyboards this time?
Sure. I’ve already got a lot of them in my head, but we’ve got a storyboard guy up.
Last year there was a quote from you – I believe it was in Variety – where you said that it’s back to register jockeying for you if Dogma flops. How serious was that? Do you think you could withstand a series of box office duds like Wes Craven or somebody else who just continues on?
Some days yes and some days no. I mean, there are days when I look around and I’m like, wow, Kathryn Bigelow continues to work in this business even though her movies haven’t really done all that great. I guess anyone can continue to work in the business then, because it seems like people that lose money can continue to work. Once you’re in, it seems like you’re in. But sometimes that doesn’t affect me, and I just think, well, what story do I have to tell after this? And is it worthy of telling? There are some days you get up and you’re like, oh, this will be the last one and then I’ll go do something else in life. With the comic book store, periodically you’re in there and you’re like, I can do this and enjoy this quite well for probably the rest of my days. So, I don’t know. I think I was probably kidding, but there’s a half-serious tone to it. Whether the film flops or not, there’s always the question of do you really, really want to do the next one, or do you just want to continue working in this business. The answer should always be yes, but to the former, not the latter.
An Interview with Kevin Smith
Vulgarthon ’98
by Michael McCarthy
On January 5th I had the pleasure of attending Vulgarthon ’98, a one-day film festival hosted by filmmaker Kevin Smith in his hometown of Red Bank, New Jersey. 450 fanatics from Miami to Montreal invaded the town’s sold out, two-screen Sony Theatre to see Smith’s “New Jersey Trilogy” -Clerks,Mallrats, and Chasing Amy – and two films which he had a hand in producing,A Better Place and Drawing Flies. The former is a tense, haunting drama about a young man and the lunatic he befriends upon arriving at a new school, while the latter is a quirky comedy of Lynchian proportions in which Jason Lee leads his friends through the woods of Canada in search of, um, Sasquatch.
After each screening, a Q? session was held. Among the special guests were Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee, Jason Mewes, Brian O’Halloran, Vincent Pereria, Carmen Lee, Bob Hawk, and Scott Mosier. All were in good spirits, signing hundreds of T-shirts, posters, laserdiscs, et cetera – and posing for almost as many photos – by the time midnight rolled around and the shindig was over. Interestingly enough, most of the “meet and greet” activity actually took place outside the theatre as the weather was nothing short of beautiful (well, for January anyway). Good thing, too, since the theatre lobby was small and definitely would not have been conducive.
Many questions asked throughout the day were ridiculed by the audience. “Read the FAQ!,” was often shouted, in reference to the Frequently Asked Questions section of Smith’s website. Still, most questions gave birth to insightful commentary. Asked why a motion picture soundtrack for Chasing Amy was never released, Smith blamed Jon Bon Jovi. Turns out Jon invited Smith and producer Scott Mosier to his house and played them a great song he’d written for the film, telling them they could use it if they wanted it. Jon later changed his mind for fear of competing with himself, since his Destination Anywhere album was about to be released. At that point, label interest vanished. Of course, Jon’s album barely made a whimper while two songs featured in Chasing Amy, “The Impression That I Get” by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and “Have You Seen Mary” by Sponge, were among radio’s most played tunes for 1997.
Another noteworthy revelation made at Vulgarthon: despite previous reports, Jason Lee will be staring in Smith’s upcoming film Dogma. The role he was originally going to play was given to Matt Damon late last year, when the film was first slated to shoot, because Lee had a schedule conflict rendering him unavailable. However, since shooting was delayed until late winter, Lee is back in, though in a different role. Still good news nonetheless. The following is a conversation I had with the Smith about Vulgarthon,Dogma, and whatever else came up.
How fast did Vulgarthon sell out? I was hitting redial for an hour and a half before I finally got through.
Well, originally, we were going to sell only one theatre. That was 270 seats. But it sold out pretty quickly. Within two hours. We thought, shit, let’s see if we can get the other theatre and get a bunch more people going. So, we got the other theatre and then that sold out by the next morning.
Was the event promoted anywhere outside of your website?
Just the website.
At the hotel [Courtyard by Marriott], there were quite a few people saying how they just had to be in theatre one. Really hellbent on it. Was there really a most demanded theatre?
No, I wasn’t aware. Did people want to be in theatre one?
Yeah. A lot of people were rambling about that.
What was the difference?
Maybe they wanted to see your films first or thought the Q? would be better. But it’s probably like when a band plays two shows in the same city and everyone wants to go the first night.
Right. Right. No, I hadn’t heard. I think the Q? were really good in both theatres. The Q? for Mallrats in theatre one with me and Jason Lee and Jason Mewes and Ethan Suplee was really great. But the Q? for Chasing Amy in theatre two was really, really great. Better than the Q? for Chasing Amy in theatre one. It was the final Q? of the night. And Vincent’s Q?, I heard, in theatre two was great.
You were videotaping in theatre one. Were you also taping in theatre two?
Yeah. We videotaped both theatres.
How’s the video coming along? Will you be editing it yourself?
It was something that I was hip on doing, but I pretty much left it in Bill’s hands. So, I imagine Bill Woods and Brian Lynch will be putting it together.
Most of the people in attendance were young, white males. Any surprise there?
Surprises? There was a woman who introduced herself as being 45. I thought that was really nice because it bent the age curve. But, I mean, Gramp, he’s a guy who’s on the board all the time – a guy named John Launder – he’s in his late 50s/early 60s, and he was there, too. But no real surprises.
At the hotel the night before, it was all guys until around 1 a.m., then I started noticing some females arriving.
If you came to Vulgarthon to get laid, you really came to the wrong place. (Laughs)
When was the last time you actually sat down and watched any of your own films from beginning to end?
From beginning to end? Let me see… The last time I watched Chasing Amy was when we recorded the commentary for the Criterion laserdisc. That had to be about two, three months ago. And even then I was in and out of it because I was concentrating more on everyone else, doing the commentary.Clerks I haven’t watched from beginning to end in a long time. Mallrats is the one I’ll periodically pop in and watch. I think it’s the easiest one for me to watch.
I was mingling during the first 15 minutes of Mallrats, but then I went back in the theatre and it turned out to be the film I enjoyed most all day, because I hadn’t seen it in a while. And where it’s a straightforward comedy, I think it’s more enjoyed watching it with a group of people than watching at home alone.
Exactly. I think with Clerks, so many people have seen it so many times that it becomes a little dry, whereas Mallrats is the one you can’t really accuse people of seeing too many times. More often than not, they haven’t. And I know with me that was the case. I spent almost two years with Clerks in terms of making it and then touring with it. And the same with Chasing Amy. With Mallrats, we made it, it went out, a week later they pulled it, and that was it. And we spent the next year trying not to think about it. So, I wasn’t as used to seeing it as I was the other ones.
It’s also interesting to see it now because at the time it came out, Shannen Doherty was the only person people knew apart from Brian, yourself, and Jay from Clerks.
Right. [Jason] Lee has his own following now. And, of course, Joey and Ben you know from both the Golden Globe thing and Good Will Hunting. So, it is kind of weird to see the reaction.
The T-shirts given out as tickets said “Vulgarathon” on the back, as opposed to “Vulgarthon” like everything else. Was this an inside joke or an error of some sort?
Um, for me, I believe that was an error. I always spelled the thing “Vulgarthon” and the shirts came out as “Vulgarathon.” And they came in the day before, so… We chalked it up to some people pronouncing it the way it pretty much sounded to them and writing it down as that.
What was with the Clerks 2 rumors that I kept hearing everywhere?
I don’t know. I guess it came out of a Q? in one of the theatres.
Actually, there were people talking about it at the hotel the night before. One guy said it was going to be directed by somebody else, like how Miramax is doing the From Dusk Till Dawn prequel and sequel.
Well, Mike, if there was gonna be a Clerks 2, it would most surely not be directed by somebody else.
There was talk of a TV show from time to time in the past. They actually went forward and made a pilot at one point. While we were making Mallrats, when we came back from Minnesota, they were making a pilot for the Clerks sitcom. It was really bad. That guy Jim Breuer from Saturday Night Live was in it. He played Randal. But it was quite terrible and it never got beyond the pilot stage. I only got the pilot because somebody sent me a bootleg. So, that pretty much died in the water. And then Harvey [Weinstein] would say, “What about a Clerks sitcom?” because periodically they try to start a Miramax channel. Sooner or later, they will. They all try very hard and start negotiating and then I guess things just don’t happen. But when Harvey starts his Miramax channel, I think he wants Clerks.
You wanted to do it animated, correct?
Yeah. That’s the one I always push for. Sitcom-wise, I don’t think it would be very interesting. At least with an animated series you could be really funny and push the edge of the envelope. Tell stories that are a little more outrageous than what you can do within the confines of a film. Kind of like The Simpsons.
I spoke to a few Red Bank natives over 30. A woman working at the Marriott said her son used to hang around with you and two others. Her quote about you was, “He was strange. He was always different.” A woman working at a sub shop said she didn’t know your films but thought she might’ve seen Mallrats when I recited the titles. What’s the overall perception of the older people in the community?
Periodically, you get stopped by the older people in the street. I don’t know if they necessarily know the films, or have seen the films, but they like the attention that it brings to Red Bank. They’re always saying, like, “Hey man, that’s really nice. You made these movies around here?” They ask you very basic questions. Things like that. And then you have hardcore people who are just like, “I love what you’re doing” and stuff. I’ve never had anyone stop me and go like, “You, you’re that guy – stop. Leave Red Bank. Get out of here.” Generally, it’s all positive. But I’d say more often than not they haven’t seen the flicks.
What’s the perception of the teenagers? In Boston, there’s a tendency to hate local heroes. If a band breaks like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, nobody likes them anymore.
(Laughs) Right. I don’t know. I mean, this is a town where you see a lot of teenagers hanging out and I walk around a lot. I walk from home to the office and the comic book store. Every once in a while someone’s like, “Silent Bob!” And you turn around and they’re smiling. But, generally, they keep to themselves. They never comment to you. We’ve never gotten a brick through either the windows of the comic book store or the office, so I take that as a good sign. But I’m sure there has to be a group that’s like, “Fuck that guy and his movies, man. He thinks he’s so famous.”
I couldn’t believe how many people have ventured to Red Bank previously, some just to visit Quick Stop Convenience before you’d opened your store [Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash]. Does that blow you away?
That does. I think that’s really cool. When I first started hearing about people making the Quick Stop trek, I thought that was really interesting. When people [at Vulgarthon] were saying that they’ve been here before – that they’d been to the comic book store – I was like, Jesus, you knew you were coming, why didn’t you just wait until now?
You mentioned your “steal the thunder” philosophy, by which you say something bad about yourself before the audience has the opportunity. Is that something you devised yourself or is there a mentor behind that approach?
I think just from growing up chubby, you kind of build that mindset around you. Because you always want to take the attention off where you think people are going to focus the attention. And be in control of that. Take the reins, so to speak. I think it just came from there.
You mentioned that Tarantino was on your good side this week. Was that because he proclaimed Chasing Amy his favorite film of 1997 on Charlie Rose?
Yeah. That pretty much, you know, put him on my good side. But it’s not important who’s on my good or bad side. Most of the time, you just don’t think about other people. Because they’re not thinking about you. For the longest time, I never really thought about Robert Rodriguez or Robert’s stuff. And then one day he called me out of the blue. He was up for the Superman script. So we got to talking and stuff. I was like, I like this cat, I’m a fan of this guy. It’s one of those unspoken things where you can like a guy’s work but until they weigh in on you, you’re always kind of wary of them, just as people. And, contrary to popular belief, I don’t think this is a very close knit community. I wouldn’t feel comfortable just calling up a filmmaker and saying, hey, I like your stuff. It’s just kind of weird like that. I always feel like I’m perceived – like the stuff I do – by other filmmakers like, yeah, he does those movies, you know, the cult things, or the dick and fart movies. Chasing Amy may have opened that up a bit, but I just don’t think people feel that I do movie movies or filmmaker movies or whatever. So it never occurs to me to think about other filmmakers beyond the label of filmmaker, like what makes them tick underneath or do they like my stuff.
At Vulgarthon, you mentioned calling up Rodriguez a few weeks back in regards to a panic you had over directing Dogma. What’s your biggest fear: directing proven talents like Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, dealing with the special effects, or playing Silent Bob in your biggest acting role yet? Or is there even one particular thing that has you most concerned?
I’m most concerned, Mike, that when all is said and done, it’s just going to look flat. It’s going to look like Clerks and Mallrats and Chasing Amy. And for this film, that would be an injustice because the script is not written like those three movies. And those movies were kind of easy stories to tell. I feel justified in not swinging the camera around or getting very cinematic because I don’t think they’re very cinematic tales. They’re small, personal, intimate stories. This movie is not. While it is a personal film, it’s not small, and it’s not intimate, and it can’t feel that way. And it can’t feel like it was shot for zero bucks. It needs to open up. And I just know me, man. I know I’m lazy and I’ll always choose the lazy route. Like, we don’t have to move the camera, we’ll just do a three shot or something. I’ve got to be a little more rigorous this time around. Whatever my first instinct is, I have to ignore it and go with the next one.
Are you doing storyboards this time?
Sure. I’ve already got a lot of them in my head, but we’ve got a storyboard guy up.
Last year there was a quote from you – I believe it was in Variety – where you said that it’s back to register jockeying for you if Dogma flops. How serious was that? Do you think you could withstand a series of box office duds like Wes Craven or somebody else who just continues on?
Some days yes and some days no. I mean, there are days when I look around and I’m like, wow, Kathryn Bigelow continues to work in this business even though her movies haven’t really done all that great. I guess anyone can continue to work in the business then, because it seems like people that lose money can continue to work. Once you’re in, it seems like you’re in. But sometimes that doesn’t affect me, and I just think, well, what story do I have to tell after this? And is it worthy of telling? There are some days you get up and you’re like, oh, this will be the last one and then I’ll go do something else in life. With the comic book store, periodically you’re in there and you’re like, I can do this and enjoy this quite well for probably the rest of my days. So, I don’t know. I think I was probably kidding, but there’s a half-serious tone to it. Whether the film flops or not, there’s always the question of do you really, really want to do the next one, or do you just want to continue working in this business. The answer should always be yes, but to the former, not the latter.
