• Well it’s been promised for almost a week now, and between jet lag, sickness, and general catching up after returning from the west coast, we’ve finally got part one of our On Location report from the set of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back in Hollywood, California! This report was assembled on the fly, during the trip, on a plane, in airport terminals, from a hotel room, and of course from home here in Pennsylvania. Due to the very sensitive nature of the footage we saw filmed and screened, we had to remove spoilers from this report, as well as a lot of photos, but hopefully we made this interesting and informative enough to give you an idea of what it was like to be there while View Askew movie history was made. More details and PART ONE can be found right HERE! Enjoy, and thanks for your patience.

• Kevin stopped by the board to announce that Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back should be getting some nice press this week. In addition to the stuff we’ve printed, there’s been a Hollywood Reporter and Variety article (anyone have those, by the way?) and, most importantly, an Entertainment Tonight piece in the works. We’re not sure if the ET thing is going to air tonight, tomorrow, or even this week, but you may wanna check your local listings and watch the show just in case. You may see your first live action footage of the new film right there, as we assume they paid the set a visit. Expect lots more press on this flick, too, as from the call sheets we saw when we were out there, the press have been welcome and given quite a bit of access to the set, cast and crew.

• Jason Lee checked in at the WWWBoard himself, to answer some questions and fill everyone in on what he’s up to lately. He’s already finishing up his work on “Vanilla Sky”, which is shaping up to be a very interesting project. If it’s anything like the Spanish flick that it’s said to be a remake of, it should play quite well, as Cruise, Lee, Diaz, Russell, and Cruz all fit the “Open Your Eyes” roles quite well (and you can see by Jason’s signature below that the film’s going to be at least associated with it).

Also of interest here is his mention of the Banky and Brodie roles…It’s already been said very early on by Kevin that the two characters won’t meet each other on screen, and interesting to see that the Banky stuff was filmed in LA, while the Brodie stuff will happen in Jersey. That’s about all we can say on the matter right now, but here’s Jason with some more insight:

And in a later message…

• Seems everyone on the web is reviewing the Clerks: Uncensored disc, so much so as we’ll likely stop mentioning these reviews after this, they’re just getting to be too much. There’s also a few tidbits from View Askew DVDs of the past around the way today. First of all, Mutant Reviewers From Hell have finished their Clerks review, which covers the DVD and all six episodes, along with a ton of quotes and trivia points. You can read that HERE.
• DVD Authority has listed Clerks as their DVD of the day, after listing Mallrats yesterday. Guess they’re fans! Another site, DVDorkism has Clerks Uncensored as DVD of the Month.
• On the flipside, the folks at DVD Review didn’t seem to like the Clerks Animated DVD very much.
• In the most recent issue of Spin, there’s mention of both “Chasing Amy” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” It’s in an article called “Totally ’90s”, about how nostaliga for ’90s movies is already happening. It listed “Amy” as part of the legacy of the movie “Three of Hearts” and “J&SBSB” as following the stoner hit “Dude, Where’s my car?” Here’s the text:

• The March 7th Toronto Sun has an article in their Entertainment Section about DVD Easter Eggs, citing such examples as”X-men”, “T2”, etc, but they credit “Mallrats” with the BEST Easter Egg, where “the director comes forward and tells people to stop looking for Easter Eggs, and to get a life”.
• Bam Margera of MTV Jackass fame writes HERE that his favorite movies include Mallrats and Good Will Hunting.

• Aint It Cool News has posted the latest report from Mysterio, with more from the Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back set, containing part one of a good new interview with Holden himself, Ben Affleck. He took some questions from AICN readers themselves and posed it to the man, who’s set to rip up the box office in Pearl Harbor as well as J&SBSB this summer. Here’s a clip:

Read more of the interview, as well as details on Affleck’s first appearances on the set HERE right now! And don’t forget, we’ll be archiving this one as well as all of Mysterio’s columns over at Scooping The Monkey as well.

• Clerks was name checked in this months new release of Empire, the UK film magazine. It’s running a 273 best film moments ever, and Clerks comes in at 193 for best blow job gag, with the very familiar:

• Mallrats was named DVD of the day over at DVD Authority yesterday.
• Shannon Elizabeth made the cover of FHM this month. She doesn’t mention J&SBSB, but she says her favorite movie quote is “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Elizabeth also appears in a full one-page article in the last Total Movie we’ve been talking about, due to the Dogma bloopers on its DVD. That piece DOES mention Jay & Bob quite directly.
• Pete Jones’s “Stolen Summer” was named the winner of Damon & Affleck’s “Project Greenlight” last week, by the way. You can read the full story on the announcement from CNN right HERE.

• Brad here: I am working hard to finish the On Location California story but got the flu today so the time that was planned to finish that up sort of went out the window. Thanks for understanding and being patient, it’ll be worth your while, hopefully. Until then, we’ve got some stuff today on those Dogma DVD outtakes we mentioned yesterday, comics info, and more. Check that stuff out, and hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to present part 1 of our huge California On Location Wrapup.

By the way, one other thing – It seems some spammer out there is scouring News Askew for e-mail addresses. If you got an e-mail as a result of this, we’re sorry, and want you to know that we are NOT cooperating with spammers in any way to share your e-mails. As always, if you submit a scoop and don’t want your mailing address posted, let us know.

• Those of you without that Total Movie DVD we mentioned yesterday will be happy to see that Kala Productions has done an extensive list of the outtakes located on it from the Dogma SE. There’s screenshots of all the outtakes along with the text and descriptions of what appears in them. You’ll definitely want to check this out. Keep in mind that there’s TONS more of this stuff along with almost an hour of deleted footage on the Dogma SE DVD, but we’re still at a loss as to when the sucker’s going to surface. Hopefully soon, as we’re looking forward to seeing it as much as all of you.

• It looks like the popularity of the movie and the desire for more visibility has changed plans for the Bluntman & Chronic comic that was scheduled for this summer – It’s now going to be a graphic novel! This will make the book available not only in comic shops, but in bookstores across the country. The book should tie directly into the film, and provide those who read it beforehand some background and maybe even the inside track on some jokes and material in “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back”. Here’s the full story, courtesy of Comics Continuum:

In a related story, a News Askew reader was at a convention at Valley Forge over the weekend, and ran into B&C artist Michael Avon Oeming. He asked for a sketch of the duo, and here’s how it turned out (click the thumbnail for a bigger picture). The guys are looking cooler than ever.

• USAToday did a story about Internet hype for movies and talked about the most anxiously awaited films. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back of course gets a mention, though they only give it a hype factor of 5 out of 10. We’ll hafta do something about that! Here’s the pertinent section:

• And finally today, in case you haven’t read enough of ‘em, 2 more Clerks cartoon DVD reviews. The first, from DVD Shrine, is quite good and complimentary of the disc, as most have been. This one is quite in-depth and wordy, but very well written. The second, and notable for probably the first lackluster review of the set, appears at DVD Town. We’ll see ya next time.