- With this being the last weekend before Jersey Girl hits theaters (yes, it’s finally here!), lots of newspapers, magazines, and websites have stories running on the film. We’re going to try and organize this as best we can, by presenting you with links to all of the pieces, and a snippet from each. So, feel free to just skim through here, read the highlights, or click the link to view the full story. As always, these articles DO contain spoilers for happenings and cameos in the film, so read at your own risk:
…As he reflects on life since he hit the Clerks jackpot 10 years ago, Smith can’t avoid being superstitious. “I’ve had a great decade, but I keep wondering, ‘Where’s the bill?’ I keep expecting to wake up at the counter of Quick Stop,” the convenience store featured in Clerks.
Write it off as the garden-variety stage fright all filmmakers experience before their movie debuts, worrying that it will flop and they’ll never work again.
There are two reasons Smith needn’t sweat. First, Jersey Girl is a freakin’ fine movie, as Carlin’s character might say, with a key modification in language.
And second, Smith is already in preproduction on The Green Hornet, based on the character created by Fran Striker and George Trendle for a 1936 radio serial. Smith is both writing and directing the movie, his first foray into mega-budget territory.
His only worry should be to cast someone as offbeat and spot-on as Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
…CURTIS You say in the press notes, “This isn’t my funniest or most original film to date.” That’s got to be a first for movie press notes.
SMITH It’s true — in many ways, people have seen a movie like this before. But there’s nothing saying you can’t work with clichés and make them your own. There’s only three basic story structures in the world: man versus man, man versus nature, man versus himself. That’s already a very small pool. I’ve always historically made relationship pictures. That’s what I do. This is a relationship picture about fatherhood, the relationship one has with one’s father and the relationship one has as a father. So I sat down and thought about it, and it’s not that original. It’s not a movie like, “Hey, man, everything you know about family movies we’re going to reinvent.” I’m not the guy that reinvents the wheel. I’m just the guy that adds another spoke, and hopefully it’s a very strong spoke.
CURTIS A lot of people think of you as somebody running away from the conventions of genre films. But you don’t see yourself as that.
SMITH Not at all. When I look at “Clerks,” I don’t think of it as, “This runs away from the genre conventions.” I look at it as, “Well, we didn’t have any money.”
CURTIS You’ve said that you and Harvey Weinstein bonded over a shared passion for vulgarity. True?
SMITH Very much so. I was very attracted to him the moment I met him, and he was cursing. He’s free. He’s free with his language, and I kind of dug that. That, and he was smoking. He’s cursing, he’s smoking, he’s a big guy and he’s eating potato skins. I’m like, “I like this man.”
CURTIS What did he say when you showed him “Jersey Girl”?
SMITH He cried. And he said, “I could watch 10 more minutes of that movie” — which for Harvey is high praise, because he’s known for wanting to cut movies up. Without Harvey, I probably wouldn’t be in this business at all.
MSNBC/Newsweek – “Chasing Kevin”
…In the March 29 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 22), Smith tells Ansen that in five of his films, Affleck has played his “way better-looking proxy.” “He’s a guy whose acting I really adore,” says Smith. “But he was at this point where he was being cast in role after role as man with a gun, you know? Man in tights jumping off buildings. Man almost single- handedly beating the Japanese in World War II…I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear this, but Ben is always best when he’s playing himself, essentially. In real life, he’s very charming-a funny guy, erudite, good to be around.”
In this installment of “Review & Rebuttal,” an occasional feature in which Newsweek’s critics tell artists what they think of their work and the artists get to talk back, Ansen tells Smith that “Jersey Girl” felt “cliched” and slipped into sentimentality. Smith admits the movie represents a departure for him. “Because I’ve made movies that pushed the edge of the envelope in the past, I get penalized when I make one that doesn’t,” he says. “Some people are, like, ‘Well, it’s not your riskiest movie.’ What am I, a stuntman? I got in the movies to tell the stories that I wanted to tell. So, maybe this time around I lose some of the critics who have liked my edgier stuff.”
Ansen tells Smith that while the film has some funny moments, he had a hard time believing that, following his wife’s death, Affleck’s character would go for seven years without having sex. Smith, who has been married five years, disagrees. “Once I got married I realized that I never wanted to f— anyone else for the rest of my life,” he says. “Even if my wife died. It’s not just physical, though that’s fantastic. Psychologically, I am tied to her. When you’re really committed to somebody, forget it, man. It’s impossible to think about f—ing somebody else.”
TRENTON TIMES – “Still a Jersey Guy at Heart”
…With a budget of $35 million, “Jersey Girl” may be modest by industry standards, but it’s huge by Smith’s. “The Green Hornet” will be even bigger, a film with a built-in fan base from the comic-book hero that inspired it.
“He’s a precursor to `Batman’ in that he’s a millionaire vigilante with a sidekick. It’s my chance to make a comic book come to life under the best circumstances,” adds Smith, who also took a shot at rewriting a new “Superman” screenplay for Warner Bros.
“With `Green Hornet,’ I won’t have to answer to five or six different cooks, but I’ll have to answer to the fan base.”
For all of his success, Smith doesn’t seem to have changed. His conversation is still laced with pungent vocabulary and biting humor. He’s loyal to actors who have worked for him when he was nobody. (This is his fifth collaboration with Affleck.) And he’s willing to discuss just about anything – or anyone – if you ask.
The sentimental side of Smith is what may surprise his diehard fans when they see “Jersey Girl.” It’s the side of him that included dozens of “thank yous” in the film’s credits to people connected with the movie, which he’s dedicated to his late father.
MSNBC – “Raquel Castro is the Real Jersey Girl”
Smith was inspired to write the story back in 2000 when he watched his wife put their baby to bed one night.
“I was really kind of moved by it — kind of swept up by the feeling of like what if my wife had died and left me with a kid? How on earth would I have possibly done this alone because we worked as such a really good team?”
He wrote 50 pages in two hours, did another quick burst the following year, and finished it in early 2002.
“All told, it was probably a total of a three week write with all the combination of time,” he said.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE – “SMITH BREAKS HIS SILENCE WITH ‘GIRL'”
“I relish the opportunity to be the comeback vehicle because then that mother — will be indebted to me much more than he is now,” Smith said with a grin. “It’s nice to keep that iron grasp on him. Both of our careers were kind of launched to the next level because of ‘Chasing Amy.’ ”
“Jersey Girl” has the heartfelt quality of “Amy,” Smith’s 1997 film about a comic-book artist in love with a lesbian, but this one doesn’t coin any new names for three-ways. The sweet-natured “Jersey” is missing the smutty humor that has characterized Smith’s work since he endeared himself to mini-market loiterers with 1994’s “Clerks.” Stoner jesters Jay and Silent Bob aren’t even in the new movie.
“I was at that point in my life where I had had a kid, so the edges got a little, I hate to say duller, but that’s probably all right in the context,” Smith said.
He wrote “Jersey Girl” after he and his wife, Jennifer, had their daughter, Harley, now 4. A sort of Valentine to fatherhood, “Jersey Girl” follows the Affleck character’s relationships with his daughter (Raquel Castro) and his father (George Carlin), and is dedicated to Smith’s own father, Donald, who died last year. “Once I became a dad, I realized what a great father my old man was,” Smith said.
The film also showcases Affleck’s paternal side, his director says.
“There’s a real sweetness to the dude that a lot of people don’t see. He’s always scooping up other people’s kids. … I barely even wanted to pick up mine when she was little, much less other people’s kids, because you don’t want to be the guy who drops the kid.”
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