DAMON & AFFLECK MOVING FORWARD WITH ‘PEOPLE’Matt Damon and Ben Affleck met with HBO last week about making their planned miniseries adaptation of Howard Zinn’s PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES for the cable network. Damon and Affleck were previously set up to adapt HISTORY as a ten-hour epic for FOX, but this shorter version would be a two- or four-hour version focusing on a single chapter of the book, possibly The American Revolution, The Industrial Revolution, or The Civil War.

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QUESADA, PALMIOTTI, HAYNES TO STEP IN FOR DAREDEVIL #12 DAREDEVIL penciller and MARVEL KNIGHTS co-founder Joe Quesada has announced that after DAREDEVIL #11 is released, a fill-in issue related to writer David Mack’s story arc will take part in issue #12, to help put the series back on schedule. The fill in, written by Quesada and inker/MK co-founder Jimmy Palmiotti, will be illustrated by Rob Haynes, and promises to involve both Daredevil and Echo, but in no way “interrupt, change, or alter” anything in Mack’s storyline. Quesada also mentioned more news about the MK books getting back on schedule is coming soon, and this first announcement is just the “tip of the iceberg.”

Matt Zoller Seitz has joined Alan Sepinwall at the Television Critics Association tour in California. PASADENA, Calif. — New Jersey filmmaker Kevin Smith and his Red Bank posse strolled into the Television Critics Association press tour, bringing a bit of a wiseacre attitude with them.

The purpose was to promote the animated ABC series “Clerks,” based on Smith’s 1994 comedy about hyper-verbal convenience store staffers in Leonardo. But Smith and his cohorts — “Clerks” actors Brian O’Halloran and Jason Mewes, producer Scott Mosier and co-creator David Mandel, formerly a “Seinfeld” writer — didn’t give the project the hard sell. Mostly they just kidded around.

“We’re the replacement for ‘The View,’” O’Halloran said. “We thought young men needed a little talk show of their own.”

Asked about the visual style of the animated cartoon — which wasn’t ready for preview and probably won’t debut until March — Smith went off on a tangent about “the history of the project.”

At first, he said, “ABC approached us and asked us if we wanted to do a game show, and they pitched this crazy, stupid notion of Regis (Philbin) hosting a game show. And we were like, ‘That will never fly.’ So we pitched our version, which was Kathie Lee (Gifford) hosting a game show, something to the effect of ‘Guess How Many Sweatshops She’s Operating Now?’ And they wouldn’t go for that. So we said, ‘Well, can we do a cartoon?’”

The result is an animated continuation of the adventures of Dante and Randal, the minimum wage workers of “Clerks,” and their supporting cast of Garden State eccentrics. The absurdist, amazingly profane comedy made a fairly paltry amount in theaters — around $3 million in North America. But it had a huge afterlife on videotape and has become a cult classic with the under-30 set.

That made the prospect of a cartoon spin-off enticing to ABC, a subsidiary of Disney; Disney also owns the boutique mini-studio Miramax, which distributed “Clerks” and most of Smith’s other movies.

Smith and Mandel said the TV version of “Clerks” would necessarily cut down on the film’s profanity, raunch and drug references. But they said the animated format would compensate by allowing more room for flights of fancy.

Alec Baldwin will provide the voice of the town’s resident evil millionaire (”. . . a blatant homage to Mr. Burns on ‘The Simpsons,’” Smith conceded). Guest voices will include Gwyneth Paltrow, James Woods, Charles Barkley, Judge Reinhold and, for some reason, Chris Rock as the voice of a cartoon Patrick Swayze.

“Rock won’t imitate Swayze,” Smith explained. “You’re just gonna see a cartoon Patrick Swayze and the voice coming out of it will be Chris Rock’s.”

There will be superhero fantasies, outlandish plots and parodies of halfhearted public service announcements, a la the Saturday morning cartoons of the ’70s and ’80s. In one episode, Randal will slip in the convenience store and sue Danteand the owners; the episode will conclude not with a trial verdict, but a self-contained variety program done in the style of a Japanese anime cartoon.

Smith says if the show fails, he won’t be stung. There’s a “Clerks 2” movie in the works, and he and his co-creators will be able to take solace in the fact that they reached a network audience, whatever its size.

“We’ve never done big box-office business with any movies,” Smith said. “The first episode is guaranteed to have the biggest audience of anything we’ve ever done.”

Can’t… breathe… up here… Must… get… oxygen…

That’s what Sundance is like. People always talk about the films and the like, but most fail to mention that we’re at 7000 or so feet, and there’s very little to breathe – what with all the cell-phoners gabbing away between (and sometimes during) screenings, about God-only-knows what (I swear – I think some people use cell phones up here publicly just to seem more important; because who the fuck do they need to talk to that badly?).

Then there’s the flicks thus far, which – because I’m a juror – I can’t speak about freely. I can say that I’ve seen two competition flicks so far, with two more to see today. I’ve also seen two Premiere Screenings (‘What’s Cooking’ and ‘American Psycho’). When all’s done, I think I will have seen over twenty flicks during my ten day jaunt here.

We screen a trailer we made for the Cartoon up here on Monday. It’s a first-look for the press. Should be fun, what with the history (I mean, this is where ‘Clerks’ was sort of born – at least as the world would know it).

The day before I trod up here, we showed the network the first episode, mixed with James Venables score (he who makes the music for ‘Powerpuff Girls’). As we were heading in, a couple of working actors I’m familiar with were coming out of the Presidents’ (there are two of them) office, after having pitched a project of their own (‘A People’s History of the U.S.’). We invited Matt and Ben (and Chris Moore, their producer) in with us to watch the show (hey man – it never hurts to have a pair of America’s most beloved young stars chuckling with your shit in front of powerful people). The word from on high was that the network loved the show. Now it’s a matter or scheduling it somewhere, but hey – the first big hurdle (sp?) has been leapt. I offer a big congrats to the ‘Clerks’ team, and a little one to myself as well (hey man, I deserve it at this point).

But the real news is that Illinois Wesleyan (sp?) University asked me to be the commencement speaker this year. I felt honored for that alone, but then they sweetened the deal…

They’re bestowing on me a Doctorate in Humanities.

That’s right! From now on, call me…

Doctor Smith.

“Oh dear!”

There is going to be one complete version of DOGMA on the DVD- the theatrical cut. We’re currently working on also having the option to view most of the alternate scenes from the Cannes cut (which runs about 10-minutes longer than the theatrical cut) in context with the main film (basically, the theatrical cut will play until it gets to a scene that was changed between Cannes and release, then it will “jump” to said scene from the Cannes version, then back to the theatrical, and so on and so forth). The technology to make the above feasible is still being discussed however, so don’t quote me on it as definate just yet.

Beyond that, the DOGMA DVD will contain the usual boatload of supplements- a lively commentary track, a documentary, a shitload of deleted scenes (a LOT more than were on the MALLRATS DVD), the trailer, storyboards…