Rabid Fanboy Captured in Kevin Smith Hostage Case

RED BANK – Police in Red Bank, New Jersey were able to prevent tragedy yesterday, as a belligerent fanboy was removed from the stately manor of comic writer and film director Kevin Smith, after a five hour stand-off.

The fanboy was identified as 23 year-old Damon Swindall of Lewisville, Texas. Swindall, a technical support rep and part-time exotic dancer apparently journeyed over 2000 miles in order to force Smith, at gunpoint, to finish writing the final issues of the “Daredevil: The Target” mini-series, which was three months late at last count.

“I just couldnt take it anymore,” Swindall said in a statement through his lawyer. “The first Daredevil book took forever to come out. And then Green Arrow gave me some hope he could stick to a schedule, even though he missed a few issues, but they were all so good and worth waiting for! But then Spider-Man/Black Cat wound up six months lat! e and then I dont know. I had to do something!”

Swindall is currently being held on charges of breaking and entering, stalking, harassment, assault and failure to stalk an attractive celebrity. He is expected to plead insanity. Despite this, many members of the fandom community have come out in support of Swindall, despite his expressions of sorrow for his actions.

“We need more fans with Damon’s dedication,” said Bruce Elliot, president of Comic Readers Against Belated Stories. “If we had more people like him, we might yet see another Astro City series in our lifetime!”

While documentary tape rolls: Drug-using actor stars in real-life court drama

By KAREN SUDOL

FREEHOLD — A film star best known for portraying a drug-using character in a series of movies by Red Bank director Kevin Smith will be featured in an upcoming HBO documentary that shows him quitting heroin cold turkey.

And while HBO isn’t revealing too many details about the documentary, included in it will be Jason Mewes’ appearance before Superior Court Judge Michael D. Farren yesterday to plead guilty to violating his probation for a 1999 heroin possession conviction. He turned himself in yesterday after a bench warrant was issued in December 2001 for his arrest.

While the tape rolled, the judge ordered Mewes, 28, formerly of Keansburg and Highlands, to report to the Discovery House drug rehabilitation center in Marlboro within 10 days. He is not permitted to leave New Jersey until he completes the program, which lasts between four and six months. His probation, which was continued to Feb. 25, 2005, can then be transferred to Hollywood, Calif., where he currently lives.

If he violates probation again, he faces up to five years in jail, according to Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Susan Schroeder.

Mewes, dressed casually and wearing sneakers, declined to comment afterward.

Mewes, has starred in films by Smith. He played Jay, a marijuana-smoking drug dealer, in the movie “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” Mewes had debuted as the character in the 1994 hit “Clerks” and appeared in “Chasing Amy” in 1997.

HBO executive producer Craig Veytia, who is also Mewes’ personal manager, said he convinced Mewes to do the documentary so people could have a better understanding of his life and drug addiction. The documentary is a collaboration of Craig Entertainment Group, which Veytia owns, and HBO, he said.

“He (Mewes) wants to help other people so they don’t fall into the same trap as he did,” added Veytia.

Airtime this summer

Called “Rock Bottom,” the documentary includes footage of Mewes using heroin, even experiencing withdrawal symptoms while he quits cold turkey. It will show him in court and likely during his rehabilitation, said Veytia.

The documentary, which begins in Rhode Island and will end in New Jersey, will air this summer, he said. Production began March 20.

“This is building to what we hope is the reconstruction of himself so he gets back on track,” said Veytia, adding that he encouraged Mewes to turn himself in yesterday.

Mewes pleaded guilty to six counts of violating his probation — failing to perform community service; failing to report to the probation department; testing positive for drugs and failing to perform other drug tests; failing to cooperate with counseling and treatment; leaving the state without permission; and lying to the probation department.

In February 2000, Mewes had admitted possessing heroin in 1999 in Keansburg and was placed on two years’ probation. In December, 2001 Farren issued a bench warrant for his arrest.

AFFLECK BREAKS UP FLICK FRACAS

By RICHARD JOHNSON with Paula Froelich and Chris Wilson

THE producer and director of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s upcoming “Tough Love” got into a shouting match after a test screening for the picture left the audience unhappy, sources said.

According to industry tipsters, early test audiences responded so poorly to the romantic comedy about a mobster, his lesbian love interest and a young retarded man that producer Joe Roth gave Marty Brest an extra $5 million to reshoot the ending.

But when Brest showed the new, more traditional ending to an L.A. audience the other day, the response was another resounding thud, and tempers went through the roof.

“Joe Roth and Marty Brest got into a huge fight,” our spy tells PAGE SIX’s Ian Spiegel man. “Marty said, ‘See, we did it your way, we did your Hollywood ending, and people hated it!’”

Roth “basically” responded, ‘[Bleep] you!’”

But before things got out of hand, Affleck came to the rescue. “Ben and J.Lo heard screaming, so he went outside and broke them up. He had to calm them down,” our source said.

The film has had a troubled history. Its title was changed from “Gigli.” Its release date has been moved back several times. Originally set for a November 2002 launch, it’s now due out in August.

A rep for Revolution Studios has a more gentle account. “There was a creative disagreement among the many people involved with the film,” she said. “The disagreement was not over scenes that were reshot, but over suggested cuts for the final feature.”

It all ended happily, says the rep. “There has now been a meeting of the minds, and everyone has come up with a cut that both parties are happy with.

“Ben was present during the disagreement but there was no fight to break up and no expletives were exchanged.” According to a reviewer for the Aint’ It Cool News Web site, everyone involved has plenty to wail about. The pseudononymous critic pronounced the movie “an unreleaseable piece of [bleep]!”

The writer trashed the dialogue, stating that J.Lo delivers a monolgue about her private parts “which is even more degrading and embarrassing than Liz Berkley’s “I am not a whore” speech in “Showgirls.”

“I’m actually surprised that J.Lo didn’t take a stand and say to Brest, ‘You don’t really expect me to say those lines, do you?’”

Saw K-Smith at the Dogma screening at the Arclight Cinemas last night. Gotta say, never get tired of seeing him live.

The show started a little late, was supposed to be 7:30, but rolled probably closer to 7:45 or so. I’d never been to these theaters before — it’s the type of place where you drop $14 for reserved seating, and that’s more scratch just to get into the theater than I can spend most movie nights. But it’s a nice place, with great sound and comfortable seats – and since as an ‘Arclight Member’ I got a buck off the cover price, it only cost me $10! Whoo! Now I can pay for parking.

The print itself had seen better days — it was a little rough and that was sort of a bummer but it’d been years since I saw it on a big screen and I never saw it with much of an audience — the experience was awesome, bad print or no.

After the flick and a short intermission, they trotted Kev out for some sit-down Q&A with a ‘host’, some dude who used to work the Entertainment beat on CNN. They talked the usual stuff — the Dogma backlash (including the now infamous ‘Dogma is Dog-‘ protest sign story), how Kev came to write Dogma, how people got cast – if you were a fan of Dogma or Kevin, you knew most of it. Then they broke with the ‘Arclight’ hosted format and allowed Kev to do what he does best – talk to his fans.

Man does the cat come alive then — he just loves to shoot the crap with his fans. Some of the questions were, well, inane might be overstating, but one chick (who, ad nauseum, talked about being from NJ) went on and on about how Kev doesn’t cast real Jersey people in his supposed Jersey flicks. Which, in usual Smith manner, Kev responded to with ‘Let’s cut to the chase – you just want me to cast you, right?’.

He hit on –

‘Fletch’ (he still wants only Lee and Miramax/Weistein wants Affleck or the generic equivelent)

Superhero movies (no interest – I’m betting the Jon Peters thing still stings – plus he said he did one – Dogma is a big graphic novel – and he says it’s a badly drawn one at that – which I kinda disagree, but thats me)

Comics (wants to finish Spidey/Black Cat and Daredevil, but never finishes a story arc – would love to work Green Arrow again, but has no plans for anything now)

Clerks animated movie (still awaiting the flash demo – from the guys who did the Jen Saves Ben game)

Getting married on the sly at Skywalker ranch (I had never heard this one).

And more — he spoke for a few hours until we were kicked out at 12:30! Didn’t feel that late – but that’s Kev. When he speaks, the hours just fly. Can’t wait to see him again.

I attended the show and it was highly entertaining. Dogma was amazing on the big screen and didn’t fail to impress. Heres a quick lowdown (of what i can remember) of the rougly 2 hour Q&A that followed:

Well the Q&A was part of the “Master Storytellers” series at the Arclight. There was a moderator who filtered the questions submitted on 3X5 cards. This was somewhat entertaining but the good stuff came out after when Kevin did the normal Q&A format. He touched on many things a few which I prolly forgot 🙂

Jason Mewes: Number one on my list is Jason Mewes status. It was a touchy topic for Kevin but he expressed all his feelings rather bluntly and opened up with the fans. Apparently Kevin got a call last week from Mewes telling him that there is an HBO crew following him around filming a documentry about his life. The HBO crew is not confirmed as Kevin was trying to figure it out still. He said Mewes has been bad with the drugs for the past few years and has been in and out of rehab for some time. His court appearance was today and apparently he got 2 years probation and 6 months mandatory rehab. This is straight from Kevins mouth so it must be pretty legit. He said that he wants to do another Jay and Silent Bob picture but he’s only willing to do it if Mewes is clean. He is offering it as sort of a reward for Mewes since he loves doing the pictures so much. Hope things go well for him in the future 🙂

Clerks Animated Movie: Next up he talked about the clerks animated feature rather shortly. No new news here, he just talked about the animation tests that were previously reported.

Vulgarthon: He said that most likley the next one will be held in the Los Angeles area. What he wasn’t sure of though is if there would be one this year or not.

Next Project: He mentioned VERY briefly about what his next project might be. He said said and I quote “Something in the realm of sci-fi, but not really sci-fi, about relationships” Take that with a grain of salt because even he didn’t look like he knew what he was talking about when he said it. He also mentioned doing a remake of the old 1973 movie “Running with the Devil” He said this rather jokingly and went into detail about how he decided he wanted to do it and how eventually Weinstein told him it was a dumb idea. Was a funny story and you could tell that he never really meant to go full steam ahead with the project.

First off, the appearance was criminally under attended with only about 75 or so people in attendance in a hall that could probably hold 500. While it made the autograph line at the end of the night shorter, I feel bad for any fans in the region who might have wanted to go but just didn’t know about it. (My guess is that they didn’t advertise very well.)

After a quick introduction, Brian took to the stage to introduce a screening of CLERKS (on VHS video projection, ugh!). After the movie he came back and fielded questions for close to two hours.

Normally, I don’t ever equate an actor’s personality with any type of role that they’ve performed. But since CLERKS is really the only extended exposure that I’ve seen of Brian’s acting (his other VA roles are too quick and I haven’t seen VULGAR yet) I’ve unfairly just associated Dante’s demeanor with the face of Brian O’Halloran. I say unfairly because throughout the Q & A he was incredibly outgoing and cracking jokes that left the audience in stitches. It’s a shame that he won’t be getting his “An Evening With…” DVD anytime soon.

He first talked about the service he got at the local TGI Fridays he ran to for dinner while we were watching the movie. It seems that some of the bar and wait staff recognized him, but wouldn’t approach him to find out if he really was the guy from CLERKS. Instead, they would huddle in a corner and say things like “I’m not even supposed to be here today,” really loud.

Brian talked a lot about the filming of CLERKS, and while most fans have probably heard lots of stories about the late nights in the Quick Stop, it was refreshing to hear them from a different person.

He also talked about how excited he was when THE ANIMATED SERIES was announced as he always wanted to see a cartoon version of himself. He danced around the stage talking about how cool it was going to be getting all that big SIMPSONS type money as the show was sure to run and run for years. He did mention that he was glad that they didn’t have a certain clause in their contracts that was in the SIMPSONS stars contracts – it seems that for the first seven years of the SIMPSONS, the actors couldn’t perform their characters voices in public. “I was using my own voice,” said Brian. “What was going to do?” He then launched into a series of comic accents that he would have had to use to get through the day. (He also mentioned that originally they had wanted Alan Rickman for Leonardo Leonardo, but it wasn’t working out so they got Alec Baldwin at the last minute. This was new info to me but it might have been mentioned somewhere and I’ve just forgotten it.)

And if you’ve never seen Brian speak before, you must go just for his Jason Mewes impression. It’s not Rich Little-perfect, but it was funny. He gave us his impression of how Mewes would have been if he had been asked to speak at the all-girls Cedar Crest College- “Ladies. How ya doin’? You know I got a hotel room? I’m talking to ALL the ladies in here! Just bring me a pack of smokes.”

Brian did get a little more serious when he talked about his stage work (”My bank account loves film work, but the actor in me loves live theatre.”) and how he prepares for a role.

He also talked up DROP DEAD ROSES and made it sound so intriguing that I bought my ticket Monday for the screening in NYC this Friday. (See ya there!)

That’s about it. Folks, if you were nearby and gave the show a pass, you made a big mistake. As a speaker O’Halloran was engaging and fun. Definitely see him if he’s speaking near you.