• Well tonight marked the first night that I’ve seen J&SBSB with a regular, off the street audience, and, though it seemed a great portion of that crew were fans or at least folks who’d seen some of the other films, it went incredibly well. If this is any indication of how the film is screening across the country tonight, it seems that Dimension’s gamble might pay off in a big way, with some great word of mouth going into next week. MINOR SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH…

High laughter and applause points were the Scooby Doo sequence, Silent Bob’s first line to say (great appluase), Mark Hamill’s appearance and the notice on the screen announcing it (laughter and applause) and tons more throughout. The film was very well received by the nearly packed audience. This one’s off to a great start.

On a final note, I was very disappointed when I was told that The Others would NOT be free afterwards for anyone who paid to see J&SBSB. I’m not sure if this is a tactic that the Hoyt’s is using to make some extra bucks on their own, or if Dimension actually did NOT want The Others shown free following this one. It’s a shame, as I really wanted to see it. Anyone out there from Dimension have any insight? Drop me a line. Did YOU get to see The Others for free afterwards? Post it up in the talkbacks and we’ll see. At any rate, a disappointment for sure, but it’s always magical to see a View Askew film that’s been so anticipated over the past months finally in a local theater. Hope a lot of you got out there tonight, and hope to see you back next weekend.

• Hey folks, just a final reminder (in case ya somehow missed it) that over 1,000 theaters across the country are holding a sneak preview of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back TONIGHT around 7:00 or 7:30 PM your local time. This will be the first big chance for you to catch the film. I just discovered that our local theater is showing the flick, as well as screening “The Others” for free afterwards, so Aimee and I are heading out to the theater. Chris is unfortunately stuck at work. It’s a good chance to see what was missed over the laughter on Wednesday night plus I hear The Others is also a pretty decent flick.

Please don’t forget, and Kevin urged this at the premiere as well…See the flick tonight, but see it again and drag all your friends back to theaters next weekend, as tonight’s grosses do NOT count at all towards the weekend total, and the film’s gonna lose at least a million or so due to the preview tonight. See it at least twice!

Have fun, and don’t forget to check in with your reviews over in our Forums area.

• The new Entertainment Weekly, dated Friday August 17th, features a full one page article on J&SBSB called “Mr. Smith Goes To Hollwyood”. The story focuses mostly on the GLADD incident, but also gives the film some nice press and some photos. We’ve included a scan here, click the pic above to enlarge and read it.

• Now that we’re back on the east coast, we can finally get caught up on some of these larger file updates. Thanks to Will Wilkins, we’ve got copies of all the latest appearances for your listening pleasure. First, we’ve got Realaudio clips of Kevin and Jennifer on the Loveline radio program, and Kevin on the Kevin & Bean morning show in Los Angeles.

Next, hot off the presses, it’s Kevin’s appearance last night on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, in RealMovie! You’ll of course need the latest version of RealPlayer to check this stuff out. Click below and check them all out. We’re working on getting more multimedia for you, including the stuff on the premiere that aired late last week, soon. Be sure and visit our Multimedia Area at Scooping The Monkey for ALL the latest (and past) J&SBSB stuff.

• More UK J&SBSB distribution news: The FilmFour website has the film slated for the 21st of December, but doesn’t mention whether or not they are distributing it.
• Stroke 9 is out and about to promote the film: On Thursday, they appeared live on the air at 99X in Atlanta, Georgia to talk about J&SBSB’s premiere and play an acoustic version of “Kick Some Ass”. They also opened the show with a 2-3 minute montage of sound clips from the film and plugged the soundtrack.
• Starting today, for one week, the Towne 3 Theatre in San Jose, CA is going to be showing Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma all up on the big screen! Times are:

For more information, you can visit their website at www.cameracinemas.com.

• We’ve added a fan variation of the Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back logo to our wallpaper area at at STM.
• For the weekend update, ign.dvd.com have posted a small quiz on Kevin Smith and a poll on what his best DVD is.
• We forgot to mention, during all the excitement, that Ben Affleck celebrated a birthday on August 15th, the day of the J&SBSB premiere. Happy belated, Ben!