And the negative ones:
Personally, the whole list seems a bit off-kilter, so I wouldn’t take too much of it to heart.
Summer Fling: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (August 24)
Claim to Fame: When writer-director Kevin Smith needed a slacker sidekick for his Silent Bob character in his no-budget Clerks (1994), he turned to real-life pal Mewes. Though the Jersey native had never acted before, he seemed to inherently understand the motivation of his character: Toke up a “fatty boom batty blunt,” and dispense potty-mouthed, dude-speak bon mots like, “What’s up, sluts?”
Mewes, who turns 27 in June, has become Smith’s good-luck charm, appearing alongside him as Jay (aka, Jay Phat Buds) in Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997) and Dogma (1999).
Big-Screen Break: A sideshow no more, Mewes’ character is front and center in Smith’s latest, which finds the titular Jersey boys out for revenge after they learn that Banky (Chasing Amy’s Jason Lee) has sold them out. See, Banky’s Bluntman and Chronic, a comic book based on Jay and Silent Bob, is being turned into a movie starring-spoilers ahead!-James Van Der Beek and Jason Biggs. Someone must pay!
Career Prognosis: Smokin’. Mewes has had trouble breaking into the mainstream, but with Jay and Silent Bob (featuring such Smith alums as Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Rock and Shannen Doherty), his time may have finally come. Can it be long before his “snootch to the nootch” catchphrase (English translation: “just kidding”) sweeps the nation?
KS: The problem is monthly runs kind of conflict with my day job, so I have to pick them carefully. I’ve been offered a bunch of different things to write, like ‘The Authority’ (which I’ve yet to read, even though I’m a Millar fan), ‘The X-Men’ (which was too daunting to jump onto, due to all that continuity), and even ‘Daredevil’ (which I had zero interest in, if Quesada wasn’t drawing). But while a monthly ‘DD’ is out of the question, a one-shot or a hardcover story of some sort is not. Joe and I have talked about doing something along those lines.
You’ll definitely want to surf over and give the review a quick read HERE.
Read the whole article HERE.
Dimension chief Bob Weinstein called to say he’s moving ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ off the August 10th release date. Our new release date is August 24th, two weeks later.
The reason for the move has more to do with the ‘Rush Hour 2′ juggernaut than the ‘American Pie 2′ juggernaut. ‘RH2′ opens August 3rd, and it’s going to be huge. If it opened to, say, forty million that weekend, even if it dropped by 50% percent the following weekend, that’s a potential 20 mill we’d be competing for (and losing, no doubt). Add to that the fact that ‘AP2′ opens the 10th, along with ‘Osmosis Jones’ (and to a lesser degree, the new Woody Allen flick), and Bob surmised it’s just plain stupid to jump in the pool that soon, when by waiting two weeks, we stand a better chance of doing some strong business.
Disappointing? Hardly. I trust Bob. This is the guy who did the then-unthinkable and put ‘Scream’ out on Christmas day. This is the guy who moved the ‘Scarey Movie’ release at least twice before it opened last year. The man knows what he’s doing.
All it means for you guys is you’ll have an additional two week wait for the flick. What it means for us is a slightly looser post schedule, which we can really use at this point. The test screening was scheduled for May 17th, but now we can do it two weeks later instead. And in a world where we jumped from thirty digital effects shots to over two hundred during the course of production, this’ll give the multiple effects houses doing the shots a bit more time to nail them all in time for the test screening, as well as give our composer, Jim Venable (the genius behind the score of ‘The Powerpuff Girls’ score, as well as the ‘Clerks’ Cartoon) some more time to lock in most of his original score for said test screening, so we’re not forced to use a temp score.
All in all, this is a good thing. The only aspect of it that bugs me is that we were on that date before any of the other flicks got scheduled in there. And when push came to shove, WE wound up moving.
But, hey – if it means some folks won’t have to choose between ‘J&SB’ and four other flicks on opening day, I’m kosher with the move.
In other news, I’ve checked out half of the aforementioned effects shots. All I can say is… Wow. Kudos to Joe Grossberg and the many artisans crafting these images that look like they don’t belong anywhere near a View Askew Production.
But then, come August 24th, the audience’s perception of what a View Askew Production looks like is going to be blown out of the water.
That being said, since I goofed I’ll give the street date on the DVD and VHS now- June 19th. Barring any major catastrophies (like the DVD pressing plant spontaneously combusting), this date is definite. The DVD will be chock full of extras, and we’ll put a few of them (such as one of the Kevin and Scott intros) on the VHS as well. The VHS will also likely be sell-through and released by Ventura, the same company that put THE LAST BROADCAST out on VHS.
A BETTER PLACE will also be airing on the Independent Film Channel starting in either September or October. It’s actually going to be listed in the June issue of their viewing guide as premiering on June 4th, but I asked them to move it to the fall due to the film’s schooltime setting and also to give some distance between the June 19th DVD/VHS release and the pay-cable airing on IFC. However, the June issue of their magazine had already gone to print so it’s still listed in there, but it won’t be airing until the fall.
We’re hoping to get an advanced look at this one for you, well before it’s on shelves, but you’re going to want to add this one to your collection. Ask those who’ve seen the film at Vulgarthon or elsewhere – It’s worth it. If you’ve yet to catch it, mark this date, it’s a great film and the DVD’s gonna be packed with material.
