How much shit do you give Ben Affleck for the ‘Bennifer Effect’ on Jersey Girl?

Believe me I’m still sorting that out in my head. There was a period for about two months after the movie came out, where I was, I’d hesitate to say the word ‘depressed’, but I was in a fucking funk. Because we should have done better, that movie easily should have done double what it did. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful we didn’t do Gigli business. The fact that we were able to do 25 million bucks after Gigli is pretty fucking great. However, that movie should easily have been able to make $50 Million, it should have done Uptown Girls business or Raising Helen business. The fact that we did $25 Million, definitely Gigli had an effect. In that period when I was in a funk, I wanted to find someone to blame, because I know I did my job… Even if you read the reviews it wasn’t like everyone was saying ‘Oh this movie blows, because fucking Bennifer is in it.’ A lot of people were just like ‘this movie blows and this dude has no business making this movie.’ All those critics who smashed this film were really hardcore supporters of my first five movies, and then interestingly enough all the people who hated the first five movies I did loved this movie.

What are you working on next?

Next up, I’ve still got to finish the script for the Green Hornet movie. I don’t think I’m going to direct, I’m just writing it. Then I’m going to do that $250,000 movie I was talking about. Ten years in, the thing I start thinking about is: what I do doesn’t require a lot of money, like the kind of movies I like to make. It’s this (gestures to the interview), just put a camera onto this shit and let it roll. I just like fucking talking movies. Talk is cheap and shooting talk is cheap. I don’t know, for me, I’d just like to make movies that are cheaper than what we got used to. Like Jersey Girl, I love that film to death, man, but there’s no reason that movie should have cost thirty five million bucks. You can’t even go, ‘Well Ben got paid $10 million, and Jen got $21 million’, because you’re still at a $21 million dollar movie. There’s no way that movie needed to cost twenty one fucking million dollars. So I’m trying to reign my shit in, be more in control of it. Not listen to people go, ‘Well, this should be your budget’. Because it’s not necessary.

He hunts the biggest of all game

Well, Hollywood is finally doing it. They’re going to make a movie about the coolest masked hero of all time — the Green Hornet.

And what makes him the coolest hero of all time, you ask? Because, in his real life, he had the coolest job anybody could have — that’s right, he was a newspaper editor.

The Green Hornet’s secret identity was Britt Reid, dashing young editor and publisher of the Sentinel.

What makes him different than Batman or Spider-Man or anybody else who wears a mask is that the Green Hornet fought crime by pretending to be a criminal and fighting the mob by their own rules.

Only his right-hand man, Kato, knew who he really was.

Anyway, Mirimax is making a big-budget feature film on the journalist/crimefighter.

Thirtysomethings may remember the TV show with Van Williams and a very young Bruce Lee in the role that made him a star.

But chances are the older folks of the Valley remember the old radio show starring Gordon Jones in the 1930s, with its opening line: He hunts the biggest of all game — public enemies that even the G-men cannot reach — the Green Hornet!

The character was sort of a latter-day Lone Ranger. In fact, Britt Reid was supposed to be the great-nephew of John Reid, the Lone Ranger. He rode around in his car, the Black Beauty, and took on the mob in many different non-lethal ways.

A script is being written by Kevin Smith, the guy who made the Jay and Silent Bob movies.

Of course, it’s not unusual for a super hero’s secret identity to be some guy who works for a newspaper. Superman was really mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. Spider-Man was really freelance news photographer Peter Parker. And Captain Marvel was cub reporter Billy Batson.

Each of those characters was created at a time when journalists had a lot more respect than they do these days. Everybody read the paper and everybody trusted Edward R. Murrow.

It’ll be interesting to see what Kevin Smith does with the character. Like everything else, it will probably be modernized to appeal to today’s audiences, complete with explosions, car chases and theatrical martial arts.

To me it will always be film noir — a guy with his own code of honor rubbing elbows with the denizens of the underworld, only to sting them when the time is right.

It’s vigilante justice at its 1930s best, when a new breed of criminal found his way around the law.

Let’s roll, Kato!

KEVIN SMITH LAUNCHES NEW FILMMAKER WEBSITE: MOVIESASKEW.COM!

SOMEWHERE, CA – AUGUST 19, 2004

Make movies, not love!

For years, View Askew has made you sit through our shitty, amateurish, self-indulgent (yet *ahem* award-winning) excuses for cinema. Now, it’s payback time… and this time, it’s personal! Because just because they serve you, doesn’t mean they like you (insert a dozen other taglines here)!

Anyhoo, View Askew is weeks away from launching a new website to join its already over-crowded ‘net empire of ViewAskew.com, NewsAskew.com, MoviePoopShot.com, and Google.com (I’m pretty sure we own that last one too), and this one’s a doozy! We’re giving you, the undiscovered filmmakers, a chance to show the world what you’ve got, via the stunningly originally titled…MoviesAskew.Com!

“What’s the skinny, Tubby?”

For a small fee (what – you thought it’d be free? It’s View Askew, sir – we’re money-grubbing whores), wanna-be filmmakers (and has-beens too; I’ll be submitting “Jersey Girl” myself) will be able to submit their short films of thirty minutes or less to our distinguished panel of judges and a chance to secure one of five monthly spots at MoviesAskew.com. From there, visitors to the site will vote to decide which of the five shorts gets named Best of the Month, and all twelve of the monthly winners will earn a place on the MoviesAskew Vol. 1 DVD!

But wait! There’s more!

The fun doesn’t stop with the MoviesAskew DVD. Fuck no! Those twelve winning shorts will also screen at the First Annual MoviesAskew Film Festival (to be held in either Red Bank, NJ or Westwood, CA; y’know – close to one of the two Secret Stash locations, so we can foist some of our merchandise on ya’) where a panel of celebrity judges (me and Mewes, probably; maybe someone with more juice) will pick the best five shorts. Filmmakers making it to the last final round will have their shorts re-screeened, followed by a sit down Q&A session with the audience. After that, the audience will determine, by vote, which film will be named the Best Short of the Year!

The Winner will walk away with the Grand Prize: a Panasonic Home Entertainment Center, a bunch of Miramax/Dimension Home Videos, and an apprentice position on the next View Askew Film (which is hardly a prize, we realize; more like a punishment).

WIN LIFE ETERNAL!

Or at least feel like you have. Don’t miss out on all the pseudo-fun! Dig deep into your circular files and yank out those terrible-looking shorts your film school teachers failed you for, your friends mocked for, and your parents berated you for, and get ready to flip ‘em all the bird, compliments of the home of second chances and dreams come true – View Askew Productions!

Don’t call it Project Greenlight (or else we’ll get sued); call it Project Bluelight Special (old school K-Mart style – before all this Big K crap). Or better yet, just call it what it is: a crass grab at your wallet. Aka MoviesAskew.Com!

MoviesAskew.com

But the true highlight of last night’s presentation was Kevin Smith, swearing away without fear or favour, jokingly exclaiming to the packed media: “I’m here representing Miramax while they still exist”, alluding to the recent Disney/Miramax squabble. Asked about what the status was with “Green Hornet”, Smith said he has written a script “and I might direct it, but I’m nervous about directing a bigger budgeted film again after Jersey Girl.”

After the presentation, Smith told me that “immediately next I’m doing an ultra low budget flick and if I end up not doing Green Hornet, then I’ll finally be directing Fletch.” So it seems that Fletch lives after all. He said poor reviews were more to blame for the failure of his $35m “Jersey Girl” than “the whole Bennifer thing”, and he hopes to work with his pal Affleck again soon, “but never his ex.”

Smith Backs Off Hornet

Writer-director Kevin Smith told SCI FI Wire that he may withdraw from directing the upcoming Green Hornet movie because his last film, Jersey Girl , failed at the box office and shook his confidence in his ability to handle a major movie. “Right after Jersey Girl came out and kind of underperformed, I was just like, ‘I got no business making large-budget movies,’” Smith said in an interview at a preview for the DVD set for his first movie, Clerks . “I should always make movies that cost less than 10 million bucks. … I just don’t think somebody like me should be in charge of big-budget movies. I’m too interested in dialogue, and dialogue and big budgets just don’t blend very well.”

Smith continues to write the script for the proposed movie, an update of the 1930s radio serial about millionaire newspaper publisher Britt Reid, who masquerades as the crime-fighting Green Hornet, for Miramax. Smith added that Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein has encouraged Smith to keep his options open. “Ideally, yeah,” Smith said. “He said, yes, he would like me to do it. He wants me to get over my chickens–t attitude. I don’t know if it’s chickens–t.”

What would it take for Smith to helm the film? “I don’t know,” he said. “Like I said, if I do it, I don’t think I’m going to do it alone. I think I’m going to bring somebody on with me to co-direct it. Because I just don’t trust myself. … There’s people that I like. And whether or not Miramax would agree to let me bring those people on is a whole different story.”

Smith said that he is about 50 pages away from completing the script. He added: “We have to start making the movie by April [2005]. Or Miramax has to start making the movie by April ‘05, so whether it’s with me or not, it’ll go into production.”

“I try not to get into too much detail because they’re going to hire a fight choreographer anyway,” Smith said. “So I’ve always been a screenwriter that when it comes to the prose sections of the script, the scripted passages, in my own scripts I’ve always left them relatively thin because A, there’s not much action going on, so hence not much need for screen direction. And B, I just feel like I know what it’s going to look like when I direct it so I don’t need to waste page space with scene descriptions or action descriptions. But when it comes to something like this, you do have to kind of lay it out visually for people because this movie like Green Hornet isn’t supposed to be dialogue driven. They want moments, tentpole moments and stuff. So I tend to describe just enough and then leave it open for interpretation by a fight choreographer or whoever winds up directing it if it’s not me.”

The project is set up at Miramax/Dimension, and with indications that the Weinsteins are not going to leave Disney, the project looks to stay on track. “If anything, I guess maybe Harvey is now going to step down as cochairman and take a production deal, if what I’ve read in some of the papers is true,” Smith continued. “In any event, that’s not going to happen for at least a year or something, because he’s still got time left in his deal. So it seems like everything for the next year or maybe two is going to be status quo. And regardless, Bob is staying at Miramax and continuing to run Dimension and Harvey’s just going to set up a production deal and become a production entity, I guess similar to what Joe Roth is doing or has done with Revolution. So he’s still going to be there, which means I’m still going to be there. Maybe Harvey could negotiate it into his production deal that it would become a movie that would be done under his new shingle, but right now we’re on track to start that movie in March or April of 2005. So I don’t think Harvey’s going anywhere before that.”

Kevin Smith Q & A: He is pulling back from directing Green Hornet, but is still writing it. He says he doesn’t think he can handle the scope of a big budget action movie like that. He said that a big announcement is coming about his next film, to shoot in November. He said it’s a small film. He promised to tell us if we bought all the “Big Ass” Jay Inaction Figures – but I guess we didn’t do it, cause he didn’t spill (hey, I bought one for the team!).

In other news, we practically walked by Jason Mewes (”Jay” from the Clerks series) who looks completely different and “regular” in that he was blended right in at some random booth in the convention hall. If someone hadn’t said “hey there’s Jason Mewes” and I hadn’t heard his voice I would have missed him. I didn’t bother him as he appeared to be speaking with friends and was already surrounded by some fans.