Kevin Smith: Angry Young Man

Monday, May 29, 2000

Suggestion for MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch: Linda Fiorentino vs. Kevin Smith.

“Linda created crisis and trauma and anguish,” Smith says of working with Fiorentino on Dogma. “She created drama while we were making a comedy. She was ticked off that there were other people in the movie who were more famous than she was.”

Smith also claims that Fiorentino bailed on promoting the flick. “She saw the poster and went nuts. They put her head on another body because she never did a photo shoot. The body had more cleavage than she has and she was pissed that nobody approved it with her, so she refused to do any more press. It’s not like we were hinging on all that Fiorentino press — I fought to cast the woman in the movie.”

Perhaps Fiorentino can bond with Disney chief Michael Eisner, who is also on the outspoken director’s hit list. Smith posted a scathing diatribe on his web site when he heard through the grapevine that Eisner “didn’t get” his animated version of Clerks, which premieres Wednesday on ABC, but he’s not scared that his recent comments bashing ABC and Eisner will hurt his career.

“Does he have that much power to kick me out of movies? Maybe out of the Disney family. Am I afraid? No! [I was being] honest. It’s not me screaming for the sake of being a baby. I guess they expected us to take it on the chin. We put a lot of hard work into the show.”

Kevin, tell us how you really feel.

GIST — Negative, MAJOR Spoilers

LA TIMES — Neutral, NO Spoilers

There were a few more slams from People and US Magazine (both weekly issues), but we don’t have the text. The new issue of STUFF Magazine with Lucy Lawless on the cover also mentions the show, in a very positive light. It’s a shame to see the show getting some bad press, though response has still been overwhelmingly positive as a whole. Don’t let any of this dissuade you, we dug the show, and know that you will too.

The Mewes Snaganooch! And further meditations from the man behind Jay

By Darcel Rockett

Jason Mewes is the real-life equivalent of Neo from “The Matrix.” Stay with me on this.

The Matrix was all around Neo, an imagined world with rules and ideas shared by similar minds, or in other words, things that people thought were important and defined them.

Mewes, made famous as the fast-talking, jibe-dishing, surly drug dealer/loser Jay from Kevin Smith’s films, is Neo. And our pop culture is … his Matrix.

Mewes and Smith (aka Jay and Silent Bob) have exuded their musings on the world around them in “Dogma,” “Chasing Amy,” “Mallrats” and “Clerks” and have become, through comics and movies and action figures, a part of the very world that they pick apart.

“I don’t think too much about shit like that,” Mewes told us during a lunch date at the Saddle Ranch Restaurant on Sunset Blvd. last week. “I’m just as boring. I hang out with my friends, go out once in a while, read lots of comics, try to get laid as much as I can.”

But he proves his pop messiah status again Wendesday night as the animated “Clerks” series debuts on ABC. (iFUSE got it’s grubby little hands on all six episodes and luuuuvved every slap-happy moment of it.)

Which got us thinking about all this, the Neo/Matrix/pop culture thing, and so we had to go meet the guy.

Decked out in jogging pants, gym shoes and boating hat, Mewes is, in his own right, an icon. He tells it like it is and doesn’t apologize for it. As Jay, he is the smart aleck who somehow blends street savvy with trailer-trash bravado. And with his signature phrase, “Snooch to the nooch,” he has even introduced a new synonym to “just kidding.”

With Mewes, even at lunch, anything goes and usually does. He rides a mechanical bull right after a meal of buffalo wings and spilled drinks. He tries to catch the attention of groups of girls by pressing his face against the restaurant glass and tapping on it.

The same goes for the culture he has infiltrated — everything goes and usually does — which is what makes it work on so many levels. But what makes one into an iconic pop culture god, a character worthy of an action figure? That’s what we wanted to know.

But Jason wasn’t interested in talking about that.

“I ain’t been with a black girl. Black girls don’t like me,” he said instead. “One black girl said she would sleep with me, if I started to doing sit-ups and got a better stomach. She says I’m cute and nice and stuff, but I can’t fuck you with your stomach. It’s got this beer belly.”

From the mouth of Jay. We just put quotations around the words.

“Do you like white guys?” he continued. “What are you attracted to in white guys, I mean sexually?”

Trying to get back on the topic, I posed the question: “Where does Jason Mewes end and Jay begin?”

“I say like 60-70 percent,” he answered. “I’m not as obnoxious as that, I used to be, but now I can’t get away with it.”

A bus passed the restaurant with a poster for Samuel L. Jackson’s “Shaft” on the side. Mewes is mesmerized.

“You’re a big fan of his?”I asked.

He stood up, gave me some hip action and said, “I’m a big fan of the Shaaaft!”

Point taken: As a true pop cultural Neo, he, too, can appreciate other heroes in the same game.

“I want to do more movies, commercials,” said Mewes. “I’d like to do action films. Can you see me as 006 or 009? Snaganooch! I did a Nike commercialbefore. I wouldn’t mind doing another shoe commercial or some kind of kiss-a-little-longer, you know, Big Red stuff.”

But, wait, doesn’t doing that stuff take away from your iconic, legendary status? And make you more of a sell-out?

“No. If I read a script and I like it, I’ll do it. Same with commercials,” he explains. “Four days of work and I make some phat cash.”

And as we all know, phat cash is the key to modern pop culture — heck it’s all cultures. But what are Mewes’ thoughts on the fact that too many things today focus only on the popular? Is there such a thing as too much? There’s got to be more to the world than TV and “Star Wars”?

“You mean like heavy metal culture?” he said. “I’m not sure. What do *you* think about pop culture?”

iFUSE casually reminded Jason that the interview is not about us, but him. This definitive statement still doesn’t dissuade Mewes.

“You wanna do pornos or what?” he asks. “Do you wanna rock the mike?”

Not to be outdone, I tell him about a rumor I heard, about him panhandling in Santa Monica a couple months ago.

“Was this last week? Asking for money? What kind of man will ask you for money, unless it was a quarter for a phone call,” he said. “I don’t ask people for money. I don’t ask people for money unless I know them, but I ain’t screamin’ for money.”

And then, anxious, Jason asked: “Any other questions? I’m gonna go ride the bull. You wanna ride the bull? You want to ride my bull? I don’t want you to have to start fuckin’ chasing the car, saying ‘One more thing, what kind of briefs you wear? Tighty whities or boxers?’ Do you like guys who wear tighty whities? Do they turn you on?”

That said, Mewes went off to play cowboy, leaving us with thoughts on our original question — what makes one an icon of modern culture? As Mewes displayed, maybe it’s the fact that one doesn’t act like he is a pop god.

Kevin Smith Talks About ‘Clerks’
Fri, May 26, 2000 04:12 PM PDT
LOS ANGELES (Zap2It) – ”They win, we lose,” says Smith. ”What can you do?”

After receiving a dizzying mix of critical acclaim, rabid press coverage, public denouncement from religious groups and death threats last year for his radical religious movie “Dogma,” Kevin Smith just didn’t have the heart to wrestle the Mouse to the mat.

The Mouse is The Walt Disney Company, which owns Miramax, Touchstone Television and ABC, a trinity that Smith thought ensured the success of his latest venture, an animated series based on his low-budget, black-and-white 1994 indie film ”Clerks.”

The actors from the movie voice the same New Jersey characters they played in live action: Brian O’Halloran as convenience-store clerk Dante; Jeff Anderson as video-store clerk Randal; and Jason Mewes and Smith as the duo of Jay and Silent Bob, who hang out in front of the stores (and have appeared Smith’s movies “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma”).

The show is currently set to premiere May 31 at 9:30 p.m. ET on ABC, but up until just a few weeks ago, Smith was engaged in a very public battle with ABC over the scheduling of the six episodes. Presented to TV critics in January, ”Clerks” was to begin in March, but ABC opted instead for a Kyra Sedgwick comedy called ”Talk to Me,” which vanished in short order.< Already, Smith and fellow producers Scott Mosier and David Mandel had endured censorship battles with Touchstone Television during the production of “Clerks.” These included, Smith says, one reference made by Randal to a nonexistent adult-erotica book by Dr. Seuss.

Says Smith, ”They finally told us the honest answer was they didn’t want to do the joke because the Seuss estate is very litigious.”

Then press reports came out that ”Clerks” would not air in March, but launch on May 31, after the end of the official TV season. Furious, Smith lashed out at ABC in a posting at the website for his View Askew Productions (http://www.viewaskew.com).

Smith says ”I haven’t spoken to anyone at ABC since before they made that announcement in Variety about our show. They never called to say we were going to be moved. They never called, even after I called them names, even to say, ‘You’re a jerk, Smith.’ Never called.

”I sat down with these cats. I all but broke bread with them, for heaven’s sake, been in all their offices, but still no call. I’ll stay in Jersey, thanks.”

Until very recently, Smith and Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein were considering buying back the six existing episodes (which were ready to go in March), reediting them into a feature film and releasing them to theaters.

”I think they (ABC) were absolutely delighted that we were going to be buying it back, from what I understood,” says Smith. ”They’re like, `Great, get it out of here.’ But then we came back and told Harvey, `No, let it ride.’ And they were like, `Oh, OK.’, “We opted against the movie, because it was designed as a TV show. Also, there are a lot of TV jokes in it, and it plays with the medium.’ So we said, …let it air on TV.’ And Harvey said, ‘Great, let it air. We know it’s not coming back, but if people like it, then we’ll do an animated movie. We could start from scratch, curse our heads off, and not worry.’ ”

You knew Kevin Smith was going to make waves with his animated version ofClerks on ABC this summer: The first bootleg clip from a scene nixed by thenetwork is already making the rounds on the Internet. The deleted scene,which can be downloaded from the Clerks web site and is also available onaint-it-cool-news, is a dig at Steven Spielberg, and not inconsequentially,at Holocaust movies.

In it, Dante, the convenience-store clerk, and Randal, the video-storeclerk, discuss watching Flintsone’s List, the ”latest opus from StevenSpielberg, who combined his nose for commercial prospects with his integrityas a chronicler of the Holocaust.” The bit features Flinstone-like menbeing herded onto a train car, which, of course, is foot-powered.

It may have been a laugh for some people, but it was too much for ABC. ”Wedidn’t think it would get on, but we animated it anyway,” says Smith, whohas been critical of ABC for burying his show.

In fact, the scene was too much for NBC, too. Clerks co-writer Dave Mandelcame up with the joke years ago when he worked as a writer at Saturday NightLive for the night John Goodman, Fred in the 1994 live-action film, washosting. Not only couldn’t you make a Holocaust joke on TV, Mandel was told,but it was too expensive to build the train.