A View Askew at Kevin Smith’s Box Office Track Record

HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) – When “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” opens at around 2,000 theaters, it will mark the widest release of writer-director and reticent half of the dynamic duo Kevin Smith’s career. At $15 million, it’s also the biggest budget he’s ever had to work with, a pittance when one takes into consideration that the average Hollywood production costs $55 million. But Smith’s movies have never been big at the box office, despite the devoted fanbase his View Askewniverse has garnered, especially on the Internet.

Though it was made on a shoestring budget of $27,000, Smith’s debut “Clerks” cost an additional $230,000 for post-production after it was picked up by Miramax Films. Immediately creating a stir among film buffs with its distinctive voice when it was released on Oct. 19, 1994. It started with a solid $31,665 from two theaters. Ultimately reaching 96 venues, it enjoyed an extended run, ending up with $3.2 million total.

His second picture “Mallrats” opened a year later on Oct. 20, 1995, but it did notregister with audiences in the same way. Produced by Universal Pictures via its now defunct division Gramercy banner on an exponentially larger budget of $6.1 million, it was downright rejected, debuting to just $1.15 million from 852 theaters. It couldn’t even double that by the end of its run, quickly petering out at $2.1 million.

For “Chasing Amy,” Smith returned to Miramax and his micro-budget roots, spending a mere $250,000, though he carried-over actors Jason Lee and Ben Affleck from “Mallrats” for the lead roles. The results were his best reviews and box office yet. Going back to a platform release pattern after the “Mallrats” debacle, “Amy” opened to a solid $52,446 from three venues on the weekend of April 4, 1997. Expanding to 553 theaters at its widest point, it grossed $12 million total.

Labeled blasphemous by various Catholic groups, the release of Smith’s next picture, the $10 million religious comedy “Dogma,” was delayed. Miramax’s parent company Disney buckled under the pressure and ditched it, despite the presence of the post-”Good Will Hunting” team of Affleck and Matt Damon. Canada-based distributor Lion’s Gate Films snatched up the rights and opened “Dogma” nationwide on Nov. 11, 1999. It bowed to $8.7 million from 1,269 theaters, and went on to earn $30.7 million total.

“Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” stars Smith’s most popular characters in what is understood to be their last movie appearance, at least in live-action form as they’ll appear in a planned animated follow-up to “Clerks.” As such, chances are they’ll go out with a bang by Smith standards, likely delivering the director his biggest box office returns to date.

Welded at the hip throughout Jay and Silent Bob with Smith’s mostly (but not entirely) non-verbal, Greek chorus-like character, “Jay” never flinches or hesitates. He speaks only in raw fundamentals. When he runs into Jason Biggs toward the end, he says without hesitation what each and every one of us would probably say to ourselves but would never have the crude honesty to articulate: “Hey, you f***ed the pie!”

And with Smith’s dialogue to work with, he’s funny. This is an article of faith among Smith fans. Watch this film with a group of them and you’ll see what I mean. As Gen-X/Gen-Y culture goes, it’s not inappropriate to call Mewes “legendary.”

One definition of a movie star is someone who essentially plays the same character over and over, which people are happy to pay to see over and over. By this standard, Mewes is starting to qualify. Or will qualify, I should say. I expect Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to get lots of repeat business, which Mewes will be able to take some credit for.

“Jay By Jay”

by Mark Voger
Page X Writer

Same face, same slur, same flair for expletives deleted. But Jason Mewes is not Jay, the dim-witted stoner he embodies in “Jay and Silent Bob Stike Back”.

Jay, the character, has come a long way since birth in a 1994 low-budget indie. Jay became a cartoon, and action figure, and a comic-book hero. Mewes, the actor, has likewise ascended. He and writer-director Kevin Smith are reviving that fossilized movie genre, the comedy team. Roll over, Abbott and Costello.

In “J&SBSB”, opening in seven days, the title characters descend on Los Angeles to thwart a film adaptation of “Bluntman and Chronic”, superheroes based on their likenesses. Mewes is asked to characterize who he has played in five films by Smith.

“He just seems like someone that just is really oblivios to a lot of stuff.,” Mewes tells PAGE X. “It chnages, really, in all the movies. He gets his mind set on something and he just does it. Something really silly.

“Like, in ‘Mallrats’ (1995), he really wants to bust up the stage. He’s set on doing that. That was it. Like, nothing else that came up – like, he wasn’t even thinking about anything else.

“In this (‘J&SBSB’), like, in one scene or another, Holden (Ben Affleck) was talking about the (‘Bluntman and Chronic’) movie and how they’re not talking about Jay and Silent Bob – they’re talking about the characters. And Jay’s just sittin’ there, thinkin’, like, ‘So, all we have to do is stop the movie and they’ll stop talkin’ —- about us!’ “So it’s just getting there and stopping them movie from getting made, even though there was other stuff. They’re always on a mission, it seems like. Always wantin’ to just be obnoxious and hang out and harass people and stuff.”

In the new film, Mewes is top-billed for the first time.

“I mean, it’s awesome,” says the former roofer, 27, who attended Henry Hudson Regional High School, Highlands.

“I was psyched when Kevin told me that we’re the main characters and our names are on the title. It’s been awesome. You know, a lot of dialogue, which was great for, like, a test for me and stuff. And also, hopefully, it’ll help getting other jobs. I’m out there more and stuff.”

Mewes says he has something better than a tuxedo in mind for the film’s premiere.

“I have some new gear that I like to wear when I go out,” Mewes says shyly. “So – see if I can get away with wearing that.”

Er, what kind of gear is that?

“Pimp gear. Me and my friends been goin’ out to, like, bars and —- on the weekends in this gear. It’s cool-lookin’. So maybe we’ll try to get away with goin’ with that.”

DF: Was there anything you wanted to do with the disc that you couldn’t or didn’t?

VP: The only thing, and this was after the fact only because I hadn’t seen it, when Don went out to LA before they started authoring it, he went through the master tape and did a lot of restoration on it. There were like ten or twelve spots in the film where we had damaged frames, they were damaged in the negative or there was dirt on them, and he was able to erase that stuff pretty substantially. Basically get rid of all the big stuff. There’s still a little fleck here or there, but all the big stuff he got rid of. After I saw it, when I was sent the check disc, I thought it would have been cool to do a restoration demonstration. But that’s about the only thing that came to mind and that’s pretty much it. I had some Q&As recorded, but I never had a chance to look at any of them and see if they were good, to throw a Q&A on there. That might have been cool, but I just never really had access to the footage. But I’m not beating myself over the head about it.

DF: So now that A Better Place is done, it’s been a long journey but the disc is finally ready, what are you doing now?

VP: I’ve been writing this script, it seems like forever, being that I am a huge horror movie fan and a big Dario Argento fan, I wrote this sort of Argento-esque murder-mystery. I’ve written three drafts of it so far and I’m writing a forth draft now. The new draft seems to be going well and hopefully I’ll be done with it soon. And that’s what I want to do next, but I’m going to have to raise a pretty decent budget for it. Not like $100 million or anything like that, but compared to the $40 thousand it cost to make A Better Place, it’s going to be a pretty substantial amount more. But that’s the one I want to do next.

There are a couple other ideas that are smaller. One in particular, and the plots so bizarre I’m not even going to describe it because I just have to write it and try and figure it out, that would probably be more like an indie, art house-type film. But the first thing is to finish this draft of Autograph, which is the murder-mystery and then I’ll try my hand at that idea and see what I can make of it. If I can’t get the money up to make Autograph just yet, then maybe I’ll go after that other project cause it’ll cost less to make. It wouldn’t be as commercial, but it would be an interesting little film.