Kevin Smith, director of “Clerks,” “Mallrats, ” and “Chasing Amy,” is a notorious workaholic. When I contacted his production company, View Askew, to ask if he was available to sit down with me to talk about his extensive work in comic books — not only is he working on titles for DC and Marvel, he also has his own titles for Oni Press, most recently a “Jay and Silent Bob” mini-series, the second of which is slated to be available to coincide with the release of “Dogma,” his fourth feature film — I was told he was tied up in globe-trotting post production on the film. However, where there is a will, there is a way. While Smith was willing to grant me a brief phone interview, I thought it might be more advantageous to utilize another passion the two of us have in common — e-mail. After all, that is how the British Monarchy have taken to answering questions, and Smith is the crown prince of Indies — the star in the Miramax crown. While I have a feeling he was typing on a laptop while simultaneously hunching over an edit bay, checking sound loops on his ‘flick,’ as he refers to his films, I prefer to romanticize it a little. He’s sitting in his bedroom, in a pair of footie pj’s (hey, it’s MY fantasy, damn it!), surrounded by half-finished comic art and scrawled-in spiral notebooks, a cigarette dripping from his mouth, a cold cup of coffee next to him, typing away on his laptop, and every once in a while, he’s smiling (it makes his eyes crinkle in a very appealing way.) And I am in my apartment, in a red satin teddy, a lipstick print on the cup of cold coffee next to me, smiling and typing right back. That’s as much as I’m going to tell you… except I hope it was as good for him as it was for me.
NY Press : The great thing about the Jay and Silent Bob books is that it’s moved you away from the label “vanity press,” and the common belief held by non-comic lovers that all you were doing was illustrating scripts of your movies. They really do stand on their own as independent stories, while maintaining that prevalent point of view you infuse your other projects with. Which came first, the desire to create comics or films?
Kevin Smith : It depends which comics you mean.
Long before I wanted to be a filmmaker, I wanted to write comics in the vein of Alan Moore and Frank Miller — the first authors I’d read after dropping out of the comics scene during those too-cool-for-that-shit high school years. I was blown away by their stuff, and figured that if ‘Dark Knight’ and ‘Watchmen’ were what comics were today, then I wanted to be a comic book writer.
It was, however, a field that didn’t seem like there was much access to — a very incestuous field, almost. Very few new writers ever popped up, and when they did, they were someone like Neil Gaiman — someone who made it seem that much more daunting by virtue of the fact that they were so fucking brilliant, and writing incredibly original stuff.
Film, in comparison, seemed far more accessible to me. In the end, I think I just took a roundabout way of getting into comics.
NY Press : Do you draw at all? Do you storyboard together with the artist, or do you give your stuff over to that artist’s interpretation? As a writer/director, it’s clearly your vision — how does it feel to be under an editor as opposed to being in control?
Kevin Smith : I couldn’t draw with a gun to my head. I’m a terrible artist (in ALL media, my detractors would suggest). Based on that, I’ve had to be a thousand times more descriptive and detailed in the comic strips, whereas in the screenplays to the flicks I’m going to direct I can be as fast and loose with the descriptive passages because I know what I want to see and will make sure I see it when we shoot — I’m not the one visualizing the comic script. I have to detail anything I want to see in each panel on every page. So, comparatively, the comic scripts end up being longer on a per-page basis than the screenplays.
In terms of having an editor, Schreck and Joe (my publishers/editors) have been about as liberal as folks who hold the title can be. They’ve never restricted me, always have been supportive, and offered only the most technical of editorial notes (for example — how to figure out whether or not you can stick a splash page anywhere you want to). I’m fairly decent with spelling and my grammar, so they rarely have to worry about that. And it’s not like they have to play “continuity cops” on the scripts; the only continuity I have to be mindful of are the films, really, and who knows those better than me?
But having an editor for ‘Daredevil’ — that’s a different story. There’s decades worth of history on that character, as well as a comics code to contend with. It’s notes-city with that title.
NY Press : Ok, I can see that you feel you need the strong visual element to tell your stories — that’s why comic books (and movies) and not novels… I can see that it’s easy to translate your work into comics, similar scripting and all. But will there be a graphic novel, something longer, deeper, and meaty for fans of both your prose and visual sensibilities?
Kevin Smith : Do I even have visual sensibilities? I never think of myself as being visual — something I’ve always marked as ironic, being that I work in a visual medium (now two).
I don’t know if there’s a graphic novel somewhere down the road, but I can say that the writing I’m doing on ‘Daredevil” at Marvel and plan to do on ‘Green Arrow’ over at DC is leaps and bounds away from what I call the ‘Askewniverse’ stuff — the titles that stem from the flicks. The DD and GA stuff is more along the lines of what I’ve always wanted to do — tell literate, haunting stories like Moore, Miller, Gaiman, Grant Morrison, John Ostrander, Matt Wagner, Mark Millar, etc. When Joe Quesada first gave my DD pages a look, he said, “I don’t want this to come off as [sounding] bad, but it’s not ‘you’, it’s not what I expected. It’s hard core, classical comic book storytelling.” That made my year.
NY Press : Why Oni as your publishing company? I mean, it’s hard to see a commitment to a singular vision there. Is that the point? Is this so your work doesn’t get tarted up by marketing it through Dark Horse or lost in the infamous Fantagraphics-Dennis Kitchen “have another bong hit, great comic, man, so, we’ll shoot for say, next year to release it” shuffle?
Kevin Smith : We’re with Oni for two reasons — a) Bob Schreck, and b) they asked.
It’s true — no one else was knocking on our door. In fact, we’d tried to set up house a few times before, to no avail.
After we’d shot “Chasing Amy,” we met Schreck in Atlanta at the DragonCon. He was with Dark Horse at the time, and Scott Mosier (my producer) and I had this idea that we could maybe do a ‘Bluntman and Chronic’ title to coincide with the release of the flick. It made sense, here’s a movie set in the comic book industry, featuring a title drawn by the main characters. Schreck thought it was a no-brainer, so he went back to Mike Richardson (editor in chief at the Horse) and pitched it. Richardson said, “Nah.” That was that.
The frustration over that — and for many other reasons– prompted Bob to quit the Horse. So a few months after he quit, Schreck called me and Mosier and announced he’d decided to go into publishing. After all his years toiling at places like Comico, Marvel, and Dark Horse, he’d worked with almost anyone on the talent side you could think of, so it was going to be no problem getting good material to put out there. He wanted to know if we still felt like doing any comics stuff.
At that point, Mosier and I had been entertaining notions of self-publishing a ‘Jay and Silent Bob’ book anyway, so joining forces with Bob seemed like a good move — he knew the business, and was the only guy (outside of Quesada and Palmiotti) who ever said to himself, “Duh! Those guys like comics, AND they have a built-in audience!”
Kudos to the man who uses his noggin and works on a hunch, I say. That’s the guy I hitch my wagon to.
NY Press : The Oni imprint says it’s dedicated to some sort of quality, and they certainly have signed up all kinds of big names to do bit work, but by diversifying your artists and editors, aren’t you afraid that your vision will be diluted?
Kevin Smith : Again, I don’t know that I necessarily have a ‘vision.’ I just want to tell these stories that wouldn’t be strong enough to carry their own feature, but work like gang-busters on the paneled page.
The nice thing about the three artists I’ve worked with on the Oni stuff is that they’ve had three completely different sensibilities, all of which have blended nicely with the particular stories they’ve drawn. As much as I love what Jim Mahfood did with the ‘Clerks’ comic, I don’t think his style would’ve suited the ‘Jay and Silent Bob’ mini-series. And as gorgeous as Duncan’s stuff is on the ‘Jay and Silent Bob’ mini-series, it wouldn’t have fit the surrealistic story of the ‘Clerks’ comic. And Matt’s take on Jay and Bob was the only one that could’ve possibly made the transition to action figures. I’m happy that each book has had a different artist; it’s given each book its own distinct look.
NY Press : Duncan Fegredo is the illustrator of the new Jay and Silent Bob comic. Why, and how, did you work with Duncan? After all, the illustrated cover (as opposed to the photo cover also available, featuring both yourself and Jason Mewes as the title characters) was done by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti…
Kevin Smith : There was a project Duncan was working on that got pulled out from under him rather unfairly. It left a huge window open for him to do some work. He was telling Schreck about his misfortune, and Schreck was looking for an artist for the mini at that point. He asked Duncan if he’d like to give it a shot, then asked me what I thought of Duncan. I’d loved Duncan’s work on DC’s ‘Enigma’ years before, so I jumped at the chance to work with him. I was a little worried at first that his ultra-realistic style might not blend with the slightly – heightened tone of the series, but Duncan’s delivered in spades. He’s stretching with this book, if you can believe that. I think it’s his first “humorous” work.
Joe and Jimmy were kind enough to provide the cover for the first issue, Mike Allred did the cover to issue #2, and Duncan’s doing the covers to #3 and #4.
NY Press : You’re not the first director to make the crossover to comics, obviously. What did you think of the Spike Lee comics? I saw him more of a producer than a creator, myself — not a writer/editor/artist, but someone more committed to creating an independent (politicized) vision than to creating the kind of quality that comic audiences expect.
Kevin Smith : I had no idea Spike dabbled in comics.
NY Press : Do you identify with Glenn Danzig and his Verotic press? He’s certainly creating comics he’d like to buy, the whole sex, violence, fantasy, teenage geek heaven trip.
Kevin Smith : While I haven’t liked everything they’ve put out, I do respect the fact that Danzig’s doing precisely the kinds of titles he’d like to buy. He saw a void out there and filled it. Good for him.
NY Press : You know, the more I read about you, the more I’m reminded of Frank Miller and his rise from Daredevil to Ronin to RoboCop 2 (the movie), then back to any damn comic project he wants…
Kevin Smith : Thanks. That’s a compliment and a half.
NY Press : … and now (Event Comics proprietor and Daredevil artist) Joe Quesada has brought you in to write a six-issue run of Daredevil for Marvel…
Kevin Smith : That was a real vote of confidence. It’s been a challenge, too — both for me and for Joe and Jimmy. I’ve had to labor like hell to come up with a storyline that we’d never seen in ‘Daredevil’, and Joe and Jimmy have had to labor like hell to get me to meet my deadlines. Unfortunately, we were shooting “Dogma” while the first DD issue was due, so there was a lot of , “It’ll be on your desk tomorrow,” that Joe, Jimmy, and especially Nancy (the editor) had to put up with. I know those cats are ecstatic that I’m done with the film — it means they’ll start getting their scripts on time.
I’ve seen artwork on the book, and it’s beyond what you’d expect from Joe and Jimmy. There’s some simply gorgeous stuff on those pages. Those boys have outdone themselves.
As for the storyline… I’m not saying a word.
NY Press : Stan Lee (founder of Marvel Comics) has a cameo in Mallrats, your second movie. Has he given you any feedback on the Jay and Silent Bob books?
Kevin Smith : I haven’t seen Stan since ComiCon last year, at which the Oni stuff wasn’t out yet. I guess I’ll get his take on it in August at this year’s Con(though I’m sure it will be something like, “Watch that language, Spider-friend.”)
NY Press : Would you consider an on-line comic series for one of the titles you’ve been given to resurrect? Mike Carlin (DC editor) might be open to the idea for the Green Arrow series, especially as you’re thinking of bringing back (alter ego) Oliver Queen. Granted, the quality of on-line comics has a ways to go, but is it an option?
Kevin Smith : Nope. GA’s for the four color page only.
NY Press : If you had your druthers, who are some of the artists you’d like to work with?
Kevin Smith : Working with Wagner was a dream come true. Beyond him, everyone else seems like gravy at this point– icing on the cake.
But I would like to work with Tim Sale. I love the stuff he’d done on the ‘Batman Halloween’ specials. And wouldn’t you like to see a Frank Miller rendition of ‘Jay and Silent Bob?’
NY Press : Your comics are kind of Modern Romance type comics — never a truly popular comic form in this country, the big exception being the ones with a touch of porn a la Penthouse Comics. Why not do shojo manga in Japan — your stuff is VERY Rumiko Takahasi (the creator of “Ranma 1/2” and “Maison Ikkoku”, she is the foremost female comic creator in Japan.)
Kevin Smith : I’m not sure if she’s the one, but there’s a Japanese artist who’s illustrating a ‘Chasing Amy’ book for release in Japan, to coincide with the release of the film there next month. I can’t wait to see it.
NY Press : Would you do a series from a non-superhero, female perspective? A Love and Rockets-esque title in the future?
Kevin Smith : I’ll be writing some strong female characters in ‘Daredevil’ and ‘Green Arrow,’ but I can’t see myself writing something like ‘Love and Rockets.’
NY Press : Your comic book store, Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, in Red Bank NJ, has become the comic lover’s mecca of late — I know guys who could easily pick up the latest titles at St. Mark’s Comics or Forbidden Planet, but insist on renting a car once a month and driving out to Red Bank just so they can write “A Stash Score” in red ink on the Mylar bag they keep the comic in. You gotta love that…
Kevin Smith : Makes me feel great. We see a lot… and I mean A LOT… of out of state traffic at the Stash. The fucked up thing is that they sometimes feel that entitles them to a discount of some sort. When someone comes in and says, “I drove all the way from Long Island to come here, how about twenty percent off?” we smile and offer, “Yesterday, we had folks from Alaska in here, man. Trek more than fifty miles and we’ll talk percentage off.”
NY Press : The Kevin Smith Legend goes like this: you sold your comic book collection to help finance your first movie, Clerks. Then, after the movie turned a profit, you bought ’em back. But what I want to know is, what was the first comic you splurged on, the one you bought because you finally COULD, you know what I mean?
Kevin Smith : There hasn’t been a book like that in years. Back when I was collecting EVERYTHING (prior to “Clerks”), I once threw down the seventy bucks for the ‘Giant Size X-Men.’ That was about as extravagant as I ever got. To this day, I still can’t bring myself to pay huge prices for something that I should’ve had the foresight to buy for the cover price.
NY Press : And the elusive, “if I could only get my hands on that book I’d die with a load of spunk in my shorts and a smile on my face” title for you, as a, well, rabid collector?
Kevin Smith : A mint run of ‘Grimjack.’ Had one once, and now it’s next to impossible to get it all back as pristine as I’d had it.
NY Press : Oni Press aside, are we going to be seeing “Jay and Silent Bob Babies,” or “Kevin Smith’s Tiny Clerks Toons” on the Saturday morning cartoon circuit? Or will you leave the corruption of our youth to Trey Parker and Matt Stone?
Kevin Smith : We’re talking about putting together a “Clerks” animated series, actually.
NY Press : You were the guest of honor at the recent annual Pittsburgh ComiCon. How does it feel to be on the other side of the velvet rope in such a big way?
Kevin Smith : It’s nice to have a little respect in an industry you love. I’ve been asked to deliver the key-note address at this year’s ExpoMart at ComiCon International in San Diego. It always feels nice to be acknowledged.
NY Press : Ok, but most importantly, who’s longer, Jay or Silent Bob? (I mean sure, The Thing is strong, but Mr. Fantastic can stretch…) Or will the action figures be anatomically correct?
Kevin Smith : Only their hairdressers know for sure.

> I read in a post on the main board about a week ago asking
> if Kevin would show the original version of MALLRATS, with the
> missing thirty minutes, on the DVD along with the theatrical
> version. Is Kevin interested in showing both versions of the
> film on the DVD version?

The problem with that is the only existing copy of the original cut of MALLRATS has a temp-music soundtrack, and we’d have to get the rights to use all of the songs we put in that temp mix if we were to present this entire version of the film on the DVD. Belive me though, ALL the meaningful cut material will be included, NOT JUST the 30-mintues that are frequently talked about but some really interesting other stuff as well, and it will be presented in a very interesting, enlightening fassion (that is, it won’t just be the extra scenes after the film- this will be BY FAR the best and most elaborate of the View Askew special editions) fassion, AND there apparently WILL be a laserdisc release of this special-edition as well as the DVD.

Scott Mosier: An integral piece of the “View Askewniverse”
Mike Sauter
Correspondent
In the “View Askewniverse,” the world that centers around Kevin Smith and his Jersey-set film series, Scott Mosier has been as integral a component as one could imagine. He’s served as producer to all of Smith’s directorial projects — Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and the upcoming movie Dogma. Additionally, he has appeared on camera in each of those films (he’s the comic book collector who accuses Banky of being simply a “tracer” in the opening sequence of Chasing Amy), including the requisite multiple roles in Clerks.
Kevin Smith’s movies have a Woody Allenesque real-world starting point — not necessarily autobiographical, but definitely based on certain true facts — and Chasing Amy fans will take note that Smith and Mosier and their View Askew production company appear to be the starting point for main characters Holden and Banky (and their BankHoldup comic book company).
But while Smith often lives under the sharp glare of media and fan attention, Mosier toils away further toward the background. IN Jersey’s Mike Sauter attempts to find out what makes Kevin Smith’s co-conspirator tick.
Mike : I wanted to get some background info on you, because people don’t know who you are as much…
Scott : I’m a mystery man….
Mike : An enigma wrapped in a riddle.
Scott : Exactly.
Mike : Where are you from?
Scott : I’m from the Pacific Northwest. I did spend a short term in Canada, so I’ve lived in two countries.
Mike : Where did you meet up with Kevin?
Scott : In Vancouver, B.C., at the Vancouver Film School. Dave [Klein] — our D.P. [Director of Photography] — all three of us met there. We were the key crew for Clerks.
Mike : Did you guys work together while you were at school? Did you shoot any student films together?
Scott : Kevin and I did a 10-minute documentary for the film school. That was all we really did, because right after that, Kevin took off. He went back to New Jersey and started writing the script for Clerks, and I stuck around to keep ——- around with stuff.
Mike : What was the documentary on?
Scott : It’s a class of 24 people, and you pitch your idea. Ours was on a transvestite turning into a transsexual — you know, a chick with a —- who was going to get it cut off. We weren’t quite as brutal as that when we pitched it. That was the bulk of it, it was about a guy becoming a girl. We got the job, and we shot some footage with her, but after the first day of shooting, she left town. She just left us hanging. We were just like, “—-!” The school started giving us —- they thought it was Kevin and my fault because we didn’t organize it well enough. We were like, “Well, whatever! Okay, let’s do a documentary about how our documentary fell apart.” Just so we could do something. And they were hemming and hawing, and we were like, “Bitch! I just paid ten thousand bucks, man — I could ——- make a documentary about somebody taking a —-! I paid the money, you have no right to tell me whether I can or can’t do it.” It really came to that, and they let us do it. What came out of it was Mayday: The Crumbling of a Documentary.
The crew hated us. Our whole crew really didn’t like us because they thought we were really irresponsible and obnoxious. We kept saying things like, “We’re going to get into independent film.” We’d say ridiculous things like, “Oh, we’ll go make a low-budget film and get into the industry that way.” They were all like, “No way! That’ll never happen!”
Mike : The crew were also students?
Scott : Yeah, they were all students. They were all mad because they didn’t think we took it very seriously. In the end, they were probably right. [laughs]
Mike : [laughing] Yeah, but it turns out the joke’s on them, because not taking it seriously turned out to be the ticket in.
Scott : Yeah, exactly. It was weird. We’d always sit there and talk about doing an independent film, and that’s what we were going to do when we got out of there. We didn’t know each other going in, but the way that Kevin and I hooked up was we were talking about reading Film Threat and Independent Film and this and that, and that’s how we started hanging out. We had this common interest. The other students — we’d talk to them about films like Slacker and 20-something-thousand dollar films that had taken off, and they all seemed like, “Aww, no way! That’s a pipe dream.” Nobody really believed that it was a possibility. Dave, too. Dave was always on our team, and very much like, “Yeah, you’ve got to go out there and grab it for yourself. And if you want to be a P.A., go ahead, but it’s just going to teach you to be a better P.A.”
That’s how we got together and started our friendship. After the documentary was over with, Kevin decided to take his money and go and try to save it and put it towards Clerks. We had this agreement that if I’m going to do something, he’ll come out and help me, but if he had something going first — which seemed most likely — I’d come out to Jersey and help him do it. And the plan was that I would stick around school, and learn what we had to know to get the film off the ground and take it through to fruition. Dave and I came out about five months after we graduated in October of ’92, and we started Clerks.
Mike : Right away?
Scott : Kevin had finished the script right around when I finished school. We started talking about it, and I was breaking it down and doing some preproduction —-. We were going to shoot it in January of ’93, but the big Nor’easter [of December 1992] kind of flooded Kevin’s house. We postponed and we decided to go in March. Dave and I flew out in March, and we started shooting in mid-March, so it was about five months after we graduated. It was pretty quick.
Mike : Yeah, anybody who goes to school for something and is able to do it right away afterwards — even ignoring the fact that it’s shooting a film — is pretty cool.
Scott : Yeah, filmmaking is one of those things that as much as people like Richard Linklater and Jim Jarmusch empowered us to feel like it’s possible, we, in turn, have done some of the same. There are people who watch our films and see it with a mixture of awe and arrogance. They think it’s really great, but at the same time it fuels a lot of people with a feeling of “Yeah, we can do it, too! Look what they had when they started. They were five months out of film school, they didn’t really know that much, and they didn’t have any money, and they still were able to do” what we did. I felt the same way when I watched films like Slacker and Trust and all these films that a lot of people never heard of, but to me, it really made it accessible for the first time. If you go to see Batman, that’s not accessible to anybody.
But that’s the thing — when you go to film school, they show you stuff like Silence of the Lambs. It’s sort of like, “Why are you showing me this?” One, I can watch it on my own — and I already have — and two, I can’t do this when I get out of school. This is not available to me. What is available to me is things like Laws of Gravity and Slacker and, now, Clerks. It’s accessible to people — credit cards, parents …
Mike : So has it happened yet — now that you’re three films in — that you’ve met anybody who has actually put together their own film and comes up to you and say, “Hey, I’ve got this film, and Clerks was the inspiration”?
Scott : Absolutely! We get it a lot, and it’s really neat when people come up to you, and are like, “You really inspired me. I was just floundering around, and I saw you guys’ movie” or they’ll say things flat out like, “if my film ever gets made it’s because I saw your film Clerks.” In the end, that’s a pretty incredible thing to say. It really makes you feel great. It’s a great thing to inspire people to really do things. Of course, if the film is really bad, sometimes you want to go to the audience, and be like, [whispering] “I didn’t mean it!”
But regardless, even if it is a piece of —-, and there are some people making bad movies out there — they’re making a real stinker right now, and maybe we inspired them to do it, but maybe they’ll make a great film after that. Maybe they need to get their feet wet a couple of times and make some mistakes, and then maybe they’ll come back and make a great film. It’s fantastic when you get to meet up with these kids who are not just fans but filmmakers. It’s a rush to feel like you’ve inspired people.
Mike : When you were shooting Clerks, was there ever a feeling on the set that there was…
Scott : Magic in the air?
Mike : Yeah, that, or were you just gritting your teeth and saying like, “Hope this works out the way we want it to” and just trying to get through it?
Scott : I think there was always a certain air of “Let’s do it!”, of being unrealistic … [at this point, Kevin interrupts Scott in the background; Scott addresses Kevin] Hey, I’m doing an interview, man! If you don’t watch it, I’m going to say some —– things about you! [back to the phone conversation] It’s Kevin …
At the time, we put a lot of time into thinking about what was going to happen. We spent a lot of time having fun. The pressing matters of how successful we were going to be with the film didn’t start to arise until we finished shooting and had our first screening. It was after we were done that we realized we had only completed half of the process. Just making the film wasn’t the end. For me, I lost sight of that. At the time, I was just having a good time, and just trying to sleep when I could and shower when I could and eat as little as possible because you didn’t have any money. In the end, that’s why when people ask me what was the funnest experience, in a way, I have to say Clerks, because I’ll never make another film where I don’t have to think of what will happen in the end. Because I’m in the business of making films, and now, it’s not just about making them, it’s about continuing to make them. And what matters most when it comes to making more of them is your box office. You have to look at the bottom line of what you’re doing, and whether you’re succeeding or failing comes down to how much money you made. In a case like Clerks, it went really well, and in a case like Mallrats, it didn’t. In a case of Chasing Amy, we’ve busted into a new league. It’s a graduation, and we’ve moved on into another level. We’ve really carved out a niche for ourselves, and really secured a place.
Mike : Does that ever boggle your mind that you’re involved with something that is involved with so much money? People always hear about such-and-such a movie made X millions of dollars–like a Batman and Robin or whatever — it doesn’t even connect with any kind of reality for people. Did you ever think, like maybe five years ago, “Man, I’ll be involved with something that millions of dollars will be passing through”?
Scott : There’s people I know who think I’m jaded, because they’ll catch me on a day when I’m working. When I’m working, I don’t really think that way because I don’t really have the grace period. When I’m in the middle of production, I don’t really have the time to look around and go, “Wow!” You try to, because it helps you when you’re going, “This ——- sucks! I haven’t slept in two days!” In the end, you look at what you’re doing and look at the outcome.
I think the big thing is the next film we’re doing, when I get to walk into a meeting as the 26-year-old kid and say, “I want six million dollars.” It’s not the getting, it’s the asking, when you just walk into a place and say, “Well, this next little thing we want to do has a price tag of about six or seven million bucks.” I really stand outside of myself when I do that, and I go, “Dude! You’re asking them for six million dollars.”
Mike : [laughing] Yeah! Twenty years ago, that was a whole bionic man!
Scott : Yeah, exactly! I could’ve built a cyborg, half-man, half-robot. Yeah, it’s a real wild experience. But more and more every day, I do stuff that’s pretty incredible and I don’t get the opportunity to stand back and go, “Wow! That’s neat.” I’ve got to do this, this, and this, and then it’s over and I’m on to something else. In reality, I work in a business where I ask people for that amount of money. And then you start to get used to the fact that I’m not even asking for that much money. In the world that I live in now, that’s nothing. I’m asking them for a pittance. But it’s still a gas.
Mike : Going back to mood on the set, when you were working on Chasing Amy — after the experience of Mallrats — was it more of the kind of vibe of working on Clerks, more of a “guerrilla” type of shoot? Was there more of a feeling of “we’re just going to go out and do this and have a good time doing it,” or was it more like a businesslike atmosphere?
Scott : It was really lodged safely in between. It was a little sterile [shooting Mallrats] because all you do is throw money at problems. Things get done, and there’s not a lot of creative problem-solving or breaking of laws done at all. It’s not necessary, and no one wants to do it. On Chasing Amy, it was a mixture of both. I got to break some laws, I got to figure out some things — we had our feet to the fire sometimes, and we had to really move. For every sacrifice you make in your budget, for every dollar you take off, you make up for in creative freedom, the ability to explore your instincts and not have anyone over your shoulder saying, “No, no! Don’t do that!” You can sit there and be like, “Let’s try this, let’s try that.” And if Kevin wants to keep going and we don’t have enough money, then it’s my problem to figure out how he can do it and how I can pull it off.
Mike : Now that you’re in a better position to pick your opportunities if there’s anything you want to do in your life, do you have any other plans or goals for yourself?
Scott : It’s funny, because I’m just starting to look at it now. With Clerks, things happened real fast and there wasn’t a lot of thinking, and with Mallrats, it was, “Let’s prove that we can do it again.” Unfortunately, it didn’t really prove anything. It didn’t really pan out. To do Chasing Amy — not that it was all about proving ourselves — there was a certain amount of pride involved, where you want to go out there and prove to everyone that you’re not a pig in a poke. You are a filmmaker. You do have talent, and they may have written you off, but you’re going to make them look again and say, “Actually, I guess we should give these guys some credit.”
Now things have settled down, and I’m in a position where your mind does start to wander and you start to look at other things. I’m sort of enjoying the moment. I know there’s other stuff I’d like to try and do, like comic books. I like drawing. I’d like to work on that kind of stuff. And there’s some movie projects I’ve been interested in, but nothing too fleshed out. Like I said, with everything that’s happened, it’s only recently that I’ve come into a place where I think that exploring them has a real purpose to it.
There’s a film that Kevin and I executive-produced called Good Will Hunting, which was directed by Gus Van Sant. It stars Ben Affleck, from Chasing Amy, and Matt Damon, who was in Courage Under Fire and stars in The Rainmaker. He and Ben wrote it together, and we brought it to Miramax and got it set up. Gus is directing it, Robin Williams is in it, Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd from Breaking the Waves is in it, and Minnie Driver. It’s a big movie, bigger than anything we’ve done. It’s another avenue for us — getting other people’s movies made.
And we’re doing some low budget, $40,000 features, as well. We did a couple of last year, one called Drawing Flies and one called A Better Place. We’ve got one from this summer called Vulgar, which is written and directed by this guy Bryan Johnson, and Kevin and I are exec producing it. It stars Brian O’Halloran from Clerks, and it’s a story based on our mascot, the clown. It’s a really great script.
Mike : One fantasy question. If you could remake any movie in history, what would you pick?
Scott : The funny thing about remaking movies is, it’s not about what movie you love, because if I love it, I would never want to remake it because why mess with what I consider to be perfection? I love Brazil, but I wouldn’t ——- remake it!
There are movies that were good ideas but just weren’t done properly. There’s things like The Black Hole, which has the earmarks of a great premise and it has some really great effects in it, but it lacks a certain amount of intensity. It’s very Disney-fied. I think it worked back then, but I think you turn the crank up and make it a little bit more exciting. It created a really interesting situation. I was just watching it the other day, I don’t even know why. My girlfriend has it on tape, and I just threw it in there. Some of the effects are really fantastic. Some of the ships are really great. This guy’s sitting at the edge of a black hole, and he’s about to enter, and there’s all these robots, and I think if you took to the level where the doctor not only turned these people into robots, but he also integrated himself into the ship. Where he actually became the ship — he created the technology where he controlled the ship from a central room. Up the stakes a bit, make it a little more pulse-pounding. I think it would be fantastic. You look for those movies which just …
Mike : Just missing the mark?
Scott : Yeah, just missed the mark. Those, to me, are the ones to remake. Don’t remake Lolita. Don’t remake any film with Peter Sellers. My thing with Lolita is, look at the original. Who would ——- —- with that? Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers together — why even try?
Mike : And James Mason.
Scott : Why even mess with that chemistry? I felt like going up to [director of the remake] Adrian Lyne and saying “What are you thinking? You did Indecent Proposal, you can’t tackle this! You’re going to look like a jackass!”
Mike : I guess that’s one of the reasons he can’t get it out.
Scott : I haven’t heard that it’s unreleaseable or anything, but I think it is a real tough thing. You’re trying to take after something that was truly great. I think a lot of people will be scared of it — “Well, do we really want to throw it out there and have it attacked by the critics?”
Mike : Regardless of what the subject matter is, if it’s of sufficient quality and the story is told well enough, I’m sure it would have no problem. But you already have a lot of strikes against you if you’re going up against something as well-regarded as the original Lolita.
Scott : I would try to be impartial to go to see it, but I definitely wouldn’t walk away from the theater without throwing in my two cents about comparing it to the other one. It’s hard to take it on the terms of just watching it as a movie. I mean, I could try and see if I could do it. But in the end, it would still be like, “God! It really sucks compared to …”

NEW YORK (Variety) – Rapper-turned-actor Master P is joining Skeet Ulrich, Russell Wong and Forest Whitaker in the castof “Takedown”, based on the real-life story of computer hacker Kevin Mitnick.

The screenplay was adapted from the book of the same name by TsutomuShimomura, the computer genius who tracked downMitnick, and John Markoff, a New York Times technology reporter.

Joe Chappelle is directing “Takedown,” the second in his three-picturedeal with Dimension Films, a unit of Miramax.

Master P was last seen in the comedy feature “I Got the Hook Up”.

Also joining “Takedown” are Donal Logue (MTV‘s “Jimmy McBride the Cab Driver”), Angela Featherstone (“The Wedding Singer”) and Christopher McDonald (Dimension’s upcoming “The Faculty”).

Rounding out the cast are Jeremy Sisto (“White Squall”), Amanda Peet(“She’s the One”), Cara Buono (Miramax’s upcoming “Next Stop, Wonderland”) and Ethan Suplee (“Chasing Amy”).

Thanks for stopping by…And making it this far! We’ll catch ya on the flip side…

Jay and Silent Bob Mini #1
Find out what happens to Jay and Silent Bob as they head away from theGarden State and into the world of ‘Dogma’. Yes folks, this comic is the only way to find out the events that transpire between their adventures in Chasing Amy and their hijinks in Dogma! Issue #1 of thisfour part series begins before Jay and Silent Bob meet Holden on that fateful dayin the diner and meticulously describes the events that occur after. If you’ve seen Chasing Amy and plan to see Dogma, you can’t miss thisone!

Jay and Silent Bob #1 comes in two cover variations. Please specify whichcover you want – PHOTO COVER or DRAWN COVER.

ORDER HERE (Only $10.00 each, SHIPPING INCLUDED)

Jay and Silent Bob Magnet Set
FGraphitti Designs does it again! You’ve seen their awesome magnet sets for other comics, now own your very own Jay and Silent Bob Magnet Set! This set (#1) comes with 7 magnets including Jay, Silent Bob, Walt the fanboy and his dog complete with a HUGE boner. Also included are three accessory magnets including the infamous bigass boombox, bong and brown paper bag wrapped bottle of booze. These magnets are perfect for any fridge, whiteboard or any flat metal surface.

ORDER HERE (Only $7 each)

Now that Ben Affleck is a big Oscar-winning star, Heroica Films has dusted off “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her Out on a Meat Hook and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (that really is the title) the short film Affleck directed two years ago.

Film distributors are said to be scrambling for tickets to the sold-out screening of the film about a woman-hating movie director whose misogyny shatters his life.

What can we say? Anyone got tickets?

Our thoughts: Will there be some protest and unrest surrounding Dogma? You betcha. But we think that Kevin and the ‘Maxexpect this, in fact, they COUNT on it (face it folks, controversy will definitely help those ticket sales with all the extra media exposure). The movie won’t be cut to satisfy these folks, but just because it’s too damn long. Shame, too…It’s really tough to think what Kevin can remove without losing the depth of the story and characters! Time will tell, and we’ll certainly be on top of all of this stuff. For now, though, enough with the worries! The flick’s not gonna be in theatres for nearly a year.

Here’s the entire Mr. Showbiz article as we reported it on July 2, 1998 :
Affleck Phophesies Dogma Controversy…

Scoop Courtesy Of Michael Anderson ,Urban,Rod Unck,Aug,Mike Ghost, Feldamundo, Ira Leiman, Matt Brown, Susan Dudley, GWHunting, David Adams, George Cifrancis, Matt, &Exile
It’s a SCOOP RECORD, folks! Over the couse of two hours, we got 13, count ’em, 13 mails on this story…Yikes! We’re not going to even take the time to reply personally to you all on this one, it’s just too much…But thanks all the same.Anyway, an interesting article on <../dogmarc">Dogma and the impending controversy that may surround it appeared on Mr. Showbiz today…Read for youself right here:



Affleck Prophesies Dogma Controversy
By Jeffrey Wells
Ben Affleck has his hands full with a gigantic asteroid in Disney‘s new thrill-ride Armageddon, but he believes the weather could be even stormier for his next movie, <../dogmarc">Dogma.
Miramax plans to release that film, a $5 million religious satire from Chasing Amy writer-director Kevin Smith, early next year. Insiders say, however, that the satirical grenades contained in Smith’s widely circulated script are so explosive the Walt Disney Company, which owns Miramax, is growing nervous about the potential for protests from the religious right.
A fantasy about a pair of foul-mouthed, homicidal angels (Affleck and Matt Damon) who’ve been banished from Heaven, Dogma is a tongue-in-cheek riff on Catholic mythology. In Affleck’s words, the film offers the notion that “Mary and Joseph had sex, and they had a kid, and therefore there’s a [female] descendant of Christ on earth who works at an abortion clinic.” The subject matter, he adds, is “definitely meant to push buttons. There are clearly things about it that will be incendiary.”
Smith’s characters include a black 13th apostle (played by Chris Rock) and a female God (played by rock singer Alanis Morissette). The comedy, written before the success of Smith’s 1994 debut Clerks, was inspired by Smith’s irreverent attitude toward his own Catholic upbringing. Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Salma Hayek, Janeane Garafalo, Alan Rickman, and Smith himself co-star.
A well-positioned industry source tells Mr. Showbiz that Disney chairman Michael Eisner “is not comfortable with this film. He’s responsible to the stockholders, and this will be a thorn in Disney’s side. He’d rather not see it go out [to theaters].”
>From his perspective, says Affleck, “It would not surprise me if the political situation around Dogma was very tenuous. I know [Miramax chairman] Harvey Weinstein has his trepidations about this, and he’s gotta answer to Disney.” Continuing on a rhetorical train of thought, he asked, “Is Michael Eisner nervous about it? Probably. For a $5 million movie, which is small beans, he may take a disproportionate amount of heat over it. So if I were Eisner, I might be a little nervous, but I certainly hope [Disney] supports the movie and stands behind it and [is] brave enough to say, ‘Listen, this isn’t necessarily Disney’s credo—this is Harvey Weinstein and Miramax, whom we allow to make the kind of movies they want to make.'”
A Miramax spokeswoman contends the film’s subject matter is a non-issue: Disney, she said, is contractually obliged to release Miramax’s films, as long as they haven’t been rated NC-17. (Dogma, which finished shooting in June, is expected to receive an R rating.)
The alleged concern at Disney (which declined comment for this story) apparently stems from the company’s recent problems with the religious right. In 1995, Miramax’s Priest, a drama featuring a pair of sexually active priests, aroused the ire of the Catholic community and resulted in a boycott of Disney products. In 1997, Southern Baptist leaders called for another Disney boycott due to what one religious publication called “pro-homosexual and anti-family products and policies.”
Controversy may make studio executives nervous, but every good movie marketer knows that a little free attention can be good for a film’s commercial fortunes. Affleck believes that whatever happens, Dogma stands a good chance of becoming a hit. “It’s one of the most original, funny, smart, interesting movies I’ve ever done,” he said. “I have very, very high hopes. I think it has a kind of Pulp Fiction break-out potential.”
And, he added, it would be highly ironic if Dogma were to draw fire from religious types, “because [Smith] is a devoutly religious Catholic. This is a criticism of the Catholic Church by someone who was raised in it. He’s a firm believer in Christianity and God and a believer in the Catholic doctrine.”
Affleck is more than a little bemused by all the hubbub these religious issues tend to raise. “I was reading the Bible recently in a hotel room,” he said, “and it occurred to me that Christianity is actually a liberal religion. Jesus preached a sense of tolerance, mercy, understanding, you know? It’s funny that Christianity is so staunchly represented by people who are so conservative in their beliefs [and] who demonstrate a lack of tolerance.”
As evidence, Affleck cited a speech he’d seen Pat Robertson give on television recently, about a gay rights parade in Orlando, Fla. “He was saying,” recalled the actor, dropping into the televangelist’s soft, southern drawl, “‘If I were in Orlando, I would be very concerned waving these gay flags around. The people there could be encountering terrorist bombs and possibly even a meteor.'”
Returning to his own voice, Affleck laughed and said, “I was saying to myself, ‘You’re insane! God throws meteors? [Armageddon producer] Jerry Bruckheimer throws meteors—not God!'”
Kevin Smith was unavailable for comment.


Wow, Kevin unavailable for comment!??! That’s a first. Anyway, this marks the first time we’ve seen a public mentionof the concern over studio trouble, but it’s all just rumor at this point. We’re sure the film will make it out in its intended form (with an “R” rating, of course)…It’s also the first we’ve heard talk of a release date, which looks to have slipped from the rumored December/Christmas into early next year.

The question posted by Vivian on August 03, 1998 at 21:43:31:

I was reading about the Dogma controversy with Disney being worried about religious groups protesting against the story of Dogma and I was curious to what your opinion is on this whole thing. Do you understand how the religious groups may protest and Disney should be worried? Or do you think it’s just a fantasy movie that no one should take too seriously? Also, hearing how the movie will probably get rated NC-17 or R, what’s your view on that? Would you want the younger crowd to see this film?

The reply posted by Ben Affleck on August 04, 1998 at 01:28:45:

I actually have a very strong opinion on this matter. Some chump who writes for an internet tabloid (“Mr. Showbiz” I think it’s called– how silly and lame is that?) snuck into the Armageddon junket and asked me about Dogma at a print round-table interview (circular tables filled with seven or eight journalists with tape recorders who ask questions and tape record your answers.) Everyone was (appropriately) asking about Armageddon (“What’s Bruce like?” “How hard were the space suits to wear, day in and day out?” etc. etc.) So all of a sudden, this one fool plunges into a rambling, semi-coherent Dogma question, out of the blue. First of all, this is innapropriate as all the journalists accept the invitation to the junket (where they are feted with gifts, free food, little pins and books and jackets, etc.) under the implied agreement that, for good or ill (and many, as evidenced by the deluge of negative press the movie got, evidently chose the latter) they would write about the movie. All but two of the some odd one hundred and twenty journalists I spoke with over the two days were good to their (implied) word and wrote about Armageddon. The exceptions were some idiot from a Chicago paper and this chucklehead from “Mr. Showbiz” (what kind of a name is that? I mean, to borrow a phrase; ‘who the fuck talks like that? That is fuckin’ baby-talk!’ You don’t hear Sam Donaldson stooping to refer to himself as “The White House Prowler,” or some such nonsense, just to pick up a few errant viewers…) decide to write about a film that won’t be released for another year, no one has seen, few have read and has literally nothing to do with Armageddon; Dogma. His question would be disallowed by any competant judge as seriously leading, were we in a courtroom, but we are far from there. The O.J. jury got a better look at the truth than these ‘celebrity-journalists’ (a contradiction in terms if ever I’ve heard one) give you. He begins “I hear Michael Eisner is very nervous about Dogma…” “Really?” I say, “That suprises me.” nods his head furiously and begins taking copious notes. I stare at him dumbly as I can’t imagine what he’s writing down (or why, since eighteen thousand tape recorders are running at the table.) I go to great pains to say “I don’t know Michael Eisner. I’ve never met him. That seems strange..” “Oh, yes,” he assures me. Very nervous. At this point I’m wondering how this pathetic dingbat has any idea what Michale Eisner thinks, since I get the distinct feeling Eisner wouldn’t throw this guy a nickel if he were standing next to an off-ramp by a vending machine with a sign saying: ‘Will write senseless horeshit for two-bits.’ But I play along, out of politeness and answer in very non-specific terms aslong the lines of ‘well, the Disney Miramax marriage is not always easy, but both parties have a proven formula for success, it wouldn’t suprise me, necessarily, to find out that one party or another had it’s nervous moments at times, but I know Joe Roth (Disney exec/ entertainment head) and he’s a very smart guy– I know Harvey (Weinstein, Miramax Co-Chairman) and he’s also very on-top-of-it, so I assume everything will work out, blah, blah blah…”
After that response, ‘Mr. Showbiz’ (who has already demonstrated that he knows far less about his namesake than the average internet user, nevermind supposed internet industry ‘insider,’ in contrast to what his moniker seems to suggest) goes on a rather lengthy and prosaic tirade about some ‘war’ between Disney and Southern Baptists over same-sex health benefits. At this point it occurs to me that we have gone so far afield as to be almost comical, but I nod politely and think “note to self, avoid sitting at table with ‘Mr. Bonehead’ in foreseeable future.” And I leave it at that.
Weeks later, a piece runs on Chucklehead’s site under some outrageous headline like “Affleck forsees trouble with Dogma and Miramax.” I groan. The ‘text’ of the piece is really an elegant exercise in selective quotation, misquotation and out of context, text-manipulation. I assume it’s taken this guy the intermediate weeks since the junket to cobble this piece together. Only now, too late, do I realize I’ve been had by the Tim McVeigh of the gay left and duped into playing a role in his imagined ‘war’ between Disney and some fringe religious group. There’s always some guy with an agenda. And, more often than not, the end product reflects that agenda much more than what you were trying to express in the interview. Ah, freedom… at what price. At least I’m not running for office (and coming up next, after ‘Beastiality On-line’: Mr. 37th Congressional District!!!)
So you heard it here, from the horse’s mouth. There is no Dogma controversy that I (or anybody I know) know of. In fact, there isn’t even any ‘Dogma’ yet. So, a word to the wise, beware of Greeks bearing gifts and always beware of journalists with kooky pseudonyms. My only comfort is in the old adage ‘what goes around comes around.’
By the way (and for the record) that’s Karma, my friends, not Dogma.

Jeffrey Wells’ rebuttal from TNT’s Rough Cut:

WRITER OF THE DAY: The “rambling, semi-coherent, chucklehead, chump” is Jeffrey Wells, a long-established entertainment writer who now works primarily for the L.A. Times Syndicate. The article that Affleck cites has an awful lot of direct quotes in it, cobbled though they may be. (You might also find it interesting that Affleck and his publicists were sent the transcript of the roundtable interview before Wells delivered his story to Mr. Showbiz and that the publicist told Wells at that time that Ben stood by everything he said.) And this quotation from the article is particularly hard to claim as out of context: “It would not surprise me if the political situation around Dogma was very tenuous. I know [Miramax co-chairman] Harvey Weinstein has his trepidations about this, and he’s gotta answer to Disney.” Well, Ben says he knows Harvey. And Ben says Harvey has trepidations. Sounds like controversy to me. I can’t defend the article headline, “Affleck Prophesies Dogma Controversy,” because all he really does is acknowledge the possible controversy and that it had been considered by Weinstein and possibly others. But this response seems a little over the top. And the thing I find most fascinating about it is Affleck’s basic contempt for the media, in general, and the inherent falsity of most junkets in specific. Here it is, indeed, from the horse’s mouth.