Just got back from the premiere. AMAZING flick. Best looking Pixar flick, hands-down. Great, great story/characters/action. The Missile-lock jet sequence is the most gripping action sequence I’ve seen all year. Jason Lee evokes Azrael as Syndrome, and makes us all proud. The production design in too beautiful for words. If this flick doesn’t win the Best Animated Film Academy Award, there’s simply no God.

Rush out and see it when it opens. It’s just the best superhero movie ever made.

Miramax then found another outsider artist in Kevin Smith, whose raucous 1994 debut “Clerks” might be the only feature shot for $27,000 that looks like it cost considerably less to make. But Weinstein possessed the instincts to transform Smith’s underdog-made-good story into an unlikely career.

With Tarantino and Smith, Weinstein has accomplished what had gone out of fashion after the maverick films of the 1970s: He has made the director the star, stoking the surrounding cult of personality. If that has meant absorbing occasional failures and indulgences, such as Tarantino’s 1995 dramedy “Four Rooms” (he was one of four directors on the project) or Smith’s 2001 comedy “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” then so be it — the brand names continue to pay dividends.

Seriously – if you wanna be one of those people who stands at the microphone and asks questions on the DVD, so that one day, you can show it to your grandkids
and proudly declare “I was inquisitive in those days…” this is the only North American shot to make that happen. We’re shooting only two Q&A’s for
“Evening Harder”: this one in Toronto and one in London, England (that’s right, GB – you’re fucking next!). If you’re an American in the northeastern states,
trust me – the T.O. show’ll be worth the drive/flight. If you’re an American in the northwestern states, I can, in good faith, also suggest making the trip – as
it’s gonna be a killer Q&A that we’re saving for posterity. And since I’m not gonna be up in Canada alone at that point, I imagine there might be a guest…

It’s gonna be a blast. Last April’s Roy Thomson gig was one of the greatest Q&A’s I ever attended. Don’t miss out (or oot, as they say up there).

Two days ago we reported to you that Kevin Smith will be appearing as a guest on this season’s final three episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation, but today we’ve got a few more details to help flesh out the plan, and we can tell you now that it includes Jason Mewes.

According to some notes I received from CTV (the Canadian broadcaster who airs Degrassi in Canada) Smith and Mewes will guest-star as themselves and also as their famous alter-egos… Jay (Mewes) & Silent Bob (Smith). The three-episode story arc which is set to air in January will see the duo filming a fictional sequel to Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back where their characters have to find a school to get their high-school diplomas (you guessed it, none of the schools in the U.S. would take them), and Smith ends up picking Degrassi as the best place to shoot.

12/26/2004 – JASBSB 11:30 pm

12/27/2004 – JASBSB 9:00 pm

12/28/2004 – Dogma 10:00 pm

12/29/2004 – Dogma 7:00 pm

Was Green Hornet a comic book you had a particular affinity for?

I did collect it back when I was a hardcore collector in the late ’80s, early ’90s. And I was a big fan of the show when I was a kid
because they would sometimes run it back to back with Batman which I always watched when I was a kid. But they didn’t have a lot of
episodes. They only had one year worth of episodes, where Batman I think had two and a half years. So you didn’t see a lot of Green
Hornet. You didn’t see as much Green Hornet as you did Batman. But yeah, I always kind of dug him. I remember liking it so much more as a
kid. I re-watched all those shows recently and with the exception of those guys in the mask and Bruce Lee kicking ass, the rest of it is
kind of boring. It’s always them after mobsters and racketeers. They didn’t have very colorful villains like the Batman stable. But I was
always kind of a fan.

What villain would be more interesting in the film?
I’ve got to create one for him. I’ve got to give him a villain, at least in this one, because having him go after gyp artists doesn’t
really make for a big action movie. If you listen to the old radio shows, that’s what he’s always doing is going after mobsters, racketeers
and gyp artists. There was one radio show I listened to where he’s going after an insurance scam racket, and it’s like why do you have to
put on a mask to do that?

How are you preparing for big action scenes?

I will definitely have to do storyboards. It just requires more diligence than I’m used to putting in when I’m actually working on a flick because generally I’m just totally shooting dialogue, right? And it’s usually two people talking, so you don’t have to be that visually interesting. This time around, in Jersey Girl, thanks to Vilmos Zsimond, we’ve got a good looking movie about people talking to one another. But with Green Hornet, you’ve got to build in whole action sequences where it has nothing to do with dialogue, it’s all about eye candy. So for me, even on the few action sequences we’ve had in, say, Dogma or Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back are always the most painful for me to shoot because it’s boring. It’s really boring. You work your whole day and get two seconds of usable film, two seconds of actual movie time. I’m used to getting like seven pages of dialogue done in a day. So it’s just a matter of rewiring the brain and just being like all right, we’ll work many long hours to get a few seconds of film, but we’ll make it a really interesting, really fun looking film.

Globe and Mail – “High On Degrassi”

“…The press conference was more like a 20-minute standup by Smith, a hilarious bloke whom his wife, the actress Jennifer Schwalbach, calls Mr. Long Shorts because of his dubious bottom-half attire. He made countless jokes, but said what has always attracted him to Degrassi is the issues and continuity of the series. A program, he adds, that has the balls to tackle topics few other programs will, everything from teen sex, child molestation, wet dreams, animal testing — the list goes on.

“I’m also a sucker for star-crossed romance,” Smith said, referring to the Caitlin and Joey Jeremiah (Pat Mastroianni) storyline.

“This show truly is a soft spot for me. There are very few fascinations I’ve been able to carry with me to adulthood,” said Smith, who writes comic strips, owns two comic book shops, has won independent film awards, and received the Defender of Democracy Award from Norman Lear’s People for the American Way.

“I left Star Wars behind. But Degrassi is just something that makes me feel young. It’s one of the really cool things I wanted to do. And this is the topping on the cake: I said to Schuyler, if my plane goes down after episode three, I don’t give a fuck. This would be my legacy.”

Toronto Sun – School Daze

“…Smith, in fact, has a long-standing crush on the character, dating back to when he named the lead female character Caitlin in Clerks. “When I was working at the Quick Stop (in New Jersey), they used to run Degrassi Sunday morning at 11 on PBS. The first time I watched it I was like ‘Oh my God, this is insanely melodramatic!’ And by the end of the episode, I was weeping.

“I introduced it to Jason Mewes and we’d work toward the 11 o’clock hour, then we’d watch it and talk about it — not in the ‘Let’s do the discussion guide’ way, but ‘Who would you f— on that show?’ For me it was Caitlin Ryan, and Mewes was, like, Joey Jeremiah.”

Smith had his own version of how he agreed to appear on the show. “My wife and I met Linda and (her husband and producing partner) Stephen at a key party in Vancouver. After some awkward pillow talk, I said, ‘So you’re involved in a Canadian melodrama?’ And she said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘I’d love to do that kind of thing. My last movie (Jersey Girl, with Ben and J-Lo) bleep-tanked in the States, so I’m looking for work anyway.’ ”

Globe and Mail – “Filmmaker Kevin Smith gets admission to Degrassi”

“…When I heard some of the storylines they’re doing, my head exploded,” Smith told Entertainment Weekly this month. “I’m known for frank subject matter and I wouldn’t touch that stuff.” (He was referring, perhaps, to an Oct. 12 school-shooting spree.) For years, he has also worked Degrassi references into his films. Smith will star in the final three Degrassis this season, slated to air early next year. He is currently filming in Toronto, and will return in mid-November.”

Toronto Star – “Degrassi girl and role a dream come true for U.S. filmmaker”

…”I want Affleck to show up,” Smith told reporters at Toronto’s Epitome Pictures, where Degrassi is filmed.

“So we’re going to try to get Ben to do a little cameo, too. Because we’re making a movie within the movie, so we want to make the movie as realistic as possible. And Affleck could honestly use the work right now. There’s no better way to reboot your career than starring on a Canadian melodrama.”

There may be some truth to the last joke. Degrassi may indeed be a “Canadian melodrama,” but it has started to catch fire in the U.S. It was the subject of a recent Entertainment Weekly article, a copy of which Smith happened to have with him.

“There’s so much coverage (in the U.S.) … Which is really great. It makes me feel smart because I’ve been talking about Degrassi since about 1994. Now people know, so I feel like I had my finger on the pulse. I just wish I had invested.”

Zap2It – “Kevin Smith Drops by ‘Degrassi’”

“…”I used to work at this convenience store, and on Sunday mornings the only thing that kept me from gutting the customers in a sleepy rage was ‘Degrassi Junior High,’” Smith wrote in a 1996 Details magazine piece. See, I had to put the papers together, and I did it while watching double episodes of ‘Degrassi’ on PBS.”

Smith and “Degrassi: TNG” producer Linda Schuyler tried to arrange for Smith to direct an episode of the show in 2001, but scheduling conflicts prevented that from happening. The guest appearances will make up for that.”

The Edmonton Sun – “Silent Bob High”

“…Of the new Degrassi series (on the U.S.-based N Channel), he says, “I was one of those who say ‘Don’t f— with perfection, don’t go back to the well’ – though I built my career going back to the well.” (He starts filming Passion of the Clerks for real in January).

“But you get two episodes in and it’s great. They’ve taken the best characters from the other show and updated it. And I didn’t know whether I’d like the new kids, ’cause I’m an old man. But I did – in a real creepy way.”