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.