On the other hand, Fiorentino says making Dogma was somewhat frustrating. “Kevin Smith works in a different way. He gave line readings. If someone tells me what to do I immediately think I’m bad and I don’t know what I’m doing. I lose all security. It’s not one of my better performances because of that.”

Surprisingly, she would collaborate with Smith again. “I think he’s a genius writer. He’s young and I think he learned a lot. He started asking the actors questions. Up until that point, he hadn’t worked with veteran actors who know their stuff.” Hey – didn’t he work with Shannen Doherty in Mallrats? – Eddie Roche

Ben Affleck Cleans Toilets To Prepare For New Role

BEN AFFLECK has been bought down to earth – he has taken on a new job as a toilet cleaner. The actor who is in intensive training for his upcoming role in Pearl Harbor (2001) has spent the past week being put through his paces at a real life bootcamp. But Affleck says his experience of the army has been nothing compared to his best pal MATT DAMON’s preparation for Saving Private Ryan (1998). Affleck says, “We thought it was going to be an actor kind of boot camp where they teach you how to salute… It wasn’t quite like that. it was more like the first 20 minutes or Full Metal Jacket (1987) but it was extraordinary… I don’t think I scrubbed a urinal in my entire life.” Affleck jetted out to Hawaii to film the multi-million dollar( pound) movie last weekend. British actress KATE BECKINSALE will play the nurse his character falls in love with.

“And one last thing: each year at Wondercon, Dini has brought a new un-aired Batman or Superman (last year he premiered A Fish Story for example). This year, however, he instead brought one of the episodes of Clerks: The Animated Series he had helped co-write (the 2nd one with their reminiscing to the 1st episode). Frankly, I don’t know why ABC passed on this. All 300 or so people in the room were literally rolling in the aisles none-stop for the entire 24 minutes, it was that funny. ”

To Clerk or Not to Clerk? That is the question, with conflicting reports about whether director Kevin Smith’s much-awaited Clerks: The Animated Series will ever make it on the air.

Controversy has swirled around the project since ABC moved the premiere date from February or March to May 31 after Michael J. Fox announced May 24’s Spin City season finale would be his last show. Clerks would take over in Spin City’s time slot after Spin’s season finale.

The move didn’t sit well with Smith, who was very vocal about his displeasure in being scheduled during the “dry gulch that is the summer,” a move that, Smith says in a post to his official Website, will ensure the show’s failure.

More recently, Smith has been telling fans at his public-speaking appearances that he doubts the show will ever make it on air at all, and he’s investigating the possibility of Miramax (another ABC/Disney affiliate) purchasing the six episodes of the cartoon and releasing them theatrically.

But here’s the official word from an ABC rep: Plans for the May 31 premiere are still a go. All I know is that I’m dying to see the episodes–the sooner, the better.

Smith screened a couple of them during the aforementioned speaking engagements, including a “flashback” installment that has Dante and Randal riffing on everything from Saturday-morning cartoons to how much The Phantom Menace sucked.

Patrick Swayze Has No Sense of Humor One more note about the Clerks ‘toon: Episode three of the show features Randal freaking out about a new pet store that opens in town. And the pet shop is manned by “down on his luck” actor Patrick Swayze, who eventually leaves his job after telling Randal and Dante that he’s gotten a part in the latest Adam Sandler movie. The really funny part, though, is that, according to the News Askew Website, the show originally had the Swayze character admit that he had been fired from the pet store, but it was changed when Swayze threatened to sue. Apparently, his reps, who did not return phone calls to comment, were concerned that the suggestion that he was fired from a pet store would be damaging to his career. Two words: Father Hood.

Submit resumes, headshots, and brief cover letter requesting to be considered for work as a Non-Union EXTRA, for BREAKERS starring Jennifer Love-Hewitt, Sigourney Weaver, & Jason Lee. Shooting begins April 17th.

Send above to:

MGM/Davis Entertainment
C/o THE BREAKER – Fla./Extra Inquiry
2500 Broadway St.
Santa Monica, CA 90404-3061

**Good Luck and wear comfortable shoes

First, They didn’t let us in until 6:50, and the doors were supposed to open at 6:30. With at least a hundred people pretending to be your close personal friends in a building with no AC, you can imagine how comfortable it was. It was to see Kevin Smith, so it wasn’t as bad.

When Kevin came out, the place went nuts. I’ve known that Kevin is a genius since I first saw “Mallrats”, but it’s wonderful to see that his audience still loves him after that movie (just kidding, it was the first one I saw, and possibly the funniest).

It was a pretty relaxed setting, as he showed up in his usual apparel of jeans and a zip up sweat shirt. He’s a cool dude, no doubt about it.

One of the first questions asked, was by some a-hole who had the nerve to ask why the special effects at the end of “Dogma” were so crappy. The dude almost got lynched. Everyone was booing, and of course Kev let him have it some. Another memorable moment was when this guy got up to leave about 30 minutes into the Q&A session. Kevin asked where he was going, and he said a meeting. Then Kevin asked what kind of meeting was more important than hearing him speak, and he said a Frat meeting. Kevin then said something about the first order of business was see which girls the frat had molested. Funny stuff, but it was hard to hear cause everyone was booing the guy. He left with his head hung low, and his feelings hurt. It was wonderful.

After a bunch of questions, Kevin actually showed us the second episode from Clerks: The Cartoon! If I’m not supposed to mention that, then forget I said anything. It was funny as hell! I hate Disney even more for giving my hero and role model the run around. If I ever see Eisner, I have an assasin’s bullet waiting for him. What a dick…

Kevin stuck around till about 11:00, and signed some autographs. another funny thing that happened was when a girl asked him to wave at her while she took a picture, cause she had to leave early. He said okay, and counted to three. On three, when the girl was getting ready to take the picture, Kevin flicked her the bird.

In the school paper, they had a cover story on him and how his career even got started and a recap of the lecture. Pretty cool stuff. They had the 5 dumbest questions asked, also. Here they are, in order…

1) If you could direct a porno, what characters from “Star Wars” would you cast?
2) Do you want to smoke a bowl afterwards?
3) Why do you make fun of New Jersey in your films?
4) Will you cast me in your next film?
5) What’s wrong with being a “drama fag”?

For the last one, he mentioned how Jeff Anderson was a regular guy, and not a “drama fag”, and yet he still got cast in “Clerks”. Some girl got upset, and Kevin defended his words by saying he was a “drama fag” in high school.

Another highlight was when Kevin started talking about “King Gimp”, the handicaped dude who went ape shit at the Oscars. He went to Towson, and when Kevin said how funny it was that the camera guy stayed on him as long as he did while he was flipping out, the dude’s trainer or something stood up and took offense. Kevin defended himself and said that he thought the reaction was brilliant, showing real emotion, and told the lady if she sees him again, to tell “King Gimp” that the “Clerks” guy thought he was cool.

The last, and possibly most interesting tidbit, is an interview with Mewes. Don’t ask me how they got him, but I thought it was pretty funny. He talks about how he was stoned for the entire filming of “Clerks”, and how he had to work harder at being “Jay” for “Dogma”. I’ll finish with a quote from Mewes…

“Around the time of ‘Clerks’ I was pretty much ‘Jay’ 100 percent, you know, like smoking pot and all, so it wasn’t really that hard,” Mewes said. “

DD IN EW! The excellent Entertainment Weekly magazine has recently increased their coverage of comic books… which makes Your Man a happy camper. The latest issue runs a positive review of the DAREDEVIL VISIONARIES: KEVIN SMITH trade paperback. Here’s what Jeff Jensen had tosay about the red-hot story from Marvel Knights: “Hollywood’s most famous comic book fan, writer-director of Clerks and Dogma, got a crack at writing them in 1998 with this relaunch of Marvel’s blind, billy-club-throwing Man Without Fear. Now collected in paperback, Smith’s saga has a faith-doubting Daredevil who unravels a bloody conspiracy involving a mysterious child who may be the Second Coming or the Antichrist… VISIONARIES is a gripping and even thoughtful yarn… to put it in critical jargon Smith knows well: thumbs up.” And a big “thumb’s up” to you too, EW!”

Midway through “Dogma,” Kevin Smith’s unlikely stew of millennial theology and turn-of-the-century pop culture, Loki, the voluble, sociopathic angel of death played by Matt Damon, muses on his shortcomings as a prophet of mass taste. Specifically, he still can’t believe that “E.T.” was the Hollywood blockbuster of the 1980’s, instead of “Krush Groove,” Michael Schultz’s rags-to-riches showbiz parable featuring the rap group Run-D.M.C.