- Our scooper conducted a nice little interview with Producer extraordinaire Scott Mosier at the San Diego con a while back, and was now kind enough to send us the text for inclusion on this site.
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 …”
