Like Jay and Silent Bob in a Kevin Smith feature or Eugene Levy and Fred Willard in Christopher Guest’s movies, Ratzenberger has become Pixar’s company player. He’s never the lead, but pops up in key supporting roles like the villainous Underminer in “The Incredibles” or the Yeti in “Monsters, Inc.”

Wanna help us spread the word about Clerks II in true guerilla marketing fashion, and maybe win some cool shit in the process? The “Clerks II” Banner Contest tasks fearless participants with one of the easiest challenges you’ll ever be a part of: getting the “Clerks II” banner on as many websites, messageboards, MySpace pages, and blogs as possible.

As you get the banner placed on various locations across the net, simply send the URL of the site/page/board in to us at bannercontest@viewaskew.com.

Well add that site to your running tally. The person who gets the banner placed in the most locations across the net (without repeats!) by midnight on the day of the films release (7/21/2006) will win one of THESE FABULOUS PRIZES!!!

1st PLACE: AN ON-CAMERA, GUARANTEED-NOT-TO-BE-CUT WALK-ON IN THE NEXT VIEW ASKEW PRODUCTION (shooting early 2007)!

2nd PLACE: RANDAL’S SCREEN-WORN MOOBY’S SMOCK AND “RANGER DANGER” T-SHIRT!

3rd PLACE: A MOOBY’S PROP PACKAGE OF SCREEN-USED ITEMS (including “Bovine-Size It” cup and fries container, as well as Sweet ‘n Sour Surly box)!

4th PLACE: A SET OF JAY AND SILENT BOB COLD CAST STATUES!

5th PLACE: A COPY OF THE “CLERKS II” SCRIPT SIGNED BY KEV!

6th THROUGH 10th PLACE: A “CLERKS II” PRIZE PACKAGE, COMPLETE WITH THREE WRIST BANDS AND A “CLERKS II” CAN COOLER!”

11th PLACE: ROSARIO DAWSON HERSELF! (Just kidding; there is no 11th place.)

Provided below is a line of code that will automatically insert the “Clerks II” banner and a link back to the Clerks2.com website. Your banner placements must use this line of code or your entry will be ineligible towards your tally.

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I couldn’t be any easier than that!

So what’re you waiting for?! Start smearing our “Clerks II” feces all over the internet landscape NOW!

“Clerks II” in theaters July 21st.

KEVIN SMITH ADDRESSES FANS, TALKS “CLERKS 2” IN PHILLY

By his own reckoning, Kevin Smith’s last appearance at Wizard World Philadelphia three years earlier went very well at first. However, the director and comic book writer’s father, who was in the audience for 2003’s question-and-answer session, passed away that same night.

“Goddamit, my Q&A was so good,” mused the creator, “that it iced my old man.” Things went much better for him this past weekend, when he returned to the Philadelphia Convention Center to field questions, preview a clip from the upcoming film “Clerks 2,” and reminisce about cohort Jason Mewes.

Smith entered the room to a standing ovation from hundreds of eager fans, and began a two-hour conversation with questions ranging from the earnest (”Will this film live up to ‘Clerks?’”) to the ludicrous (”Will you eat this chicken nugget on the floor for $5?”) to the outright obscene (”Does your wife do anal?”).

The answers are: “I love it more than anything I’ve ever done,” even nudging the previous record-holder “Chasing Amy” aside; an accounting of his dignity required to eat the nugget; and an admonition to the crowd’s low “Booooo” that Smith himself had explored far more obscene ideas than the bold question.

Even at low points of inquiry, he retained his characteristic humor, honesty and charm. And, of course, the salty language. His fans ask seemingly inane questions not to pursue answers, but to reach out and grab a little bit of dirty humor for themselves. He obliges with the same attitude that makes them love his films: a Chaucerian love of human nature and its various functions that destroy barriers between the filmmaker and fans. He makes their conversations with friends into adventures. That’s one of Smith’s roles: he’s one of them, the fanboy who made it.

So it was illuminating to learn that after Miramax producer Harvey Weinstein passed Smith the “Green Hornet” film on a plate, the director was honest enough with himself and his employer to say that he was “not a very visual director.” He then enacted the Kevin Smith version of Green Hornet and Kato: two dudes standing around asking each other if they got laid before dispatching trouble off-camera.

The truth, as fans know, is that two dudes standing around inevitably proceed from vulgarity to self-discovery, much like when one attendee asked what was the most important lesson Smith had learned from making the original “Clerks.” “If you want the cat to shit on cue,” he whipped back, “keep the cat away from the litter box,” before moving to the slightly more serious response, “How to make a movie: set the camera up and let shit happen.” The answer he settled on, however, was to follow your passion right now in the moment and “Take a fucking chance! The worst that happens is…you go deep into debt,” which is actually pretty bad, he mused.

More informative to “Clerks 2” than “Clerks,” surprisingly, was his previous film, “Jersey Girl.” Returning to “Clerks” was not a retreat to safe ground following “Jersey Girl’s” failure to meet popular expectations. After the hullabaloo surrounding stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, Smith said he wanted to make a film where the attention was on the story first and the stars second.

“Clerks 2” dominated the conversation, with anecdotes like cohort Jason Mewes (a.k.a. “Jay” the dope-peddling misanthrope) dressing out his hotel room with Target furnishings and refusing to abandon his new home after the shoot’s completion. Smith described his lifemate as “a big cheerleader” on the set.

The film was well received at Cannes, where it garnered an 8-minute standing ovation. Smith recounted trying to leave after the first few minutes, when a stern look from Weinstein kept him rooted to the applause.

“I’m so trying not to oversell it,” he said, “It lived up to my expectations and surpassed them by a thousand degrees, but I have very low expectations. I don’t want to jinx it.” He added that for him the film is a personal success because “I just feel it.”

At one point he brought a member of his website’s message boards onstage for the “Everyman” testimonial. The film was described as having the passion of “Chasing Amy” and the humor of “Clerks.”

Smith also announced a straight-to-DVD Clerks animated movie, “Clerks: Sell-out,” in which characters Randall and Dante make a movie about working at the Quick-Stop. The room burst into cheers, when Smith dryly inserted, “Don’t applaud that,” for the first of many times. “I announce things and they don’t come out for years.”

One of the first things the audience wanted to know, of course, was whether anymore comic book work lay in the future. On that front, the horizon is bleak, but there will be a collected edition of “Clerks” comics with a new 22-page story drawn by Jim Mahfood.

The session ended with a clip from the new film, in which Randall taunts a coworker and customer with the inferiority of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy to “Star Wars.” Closing out the scene, Smith’s avatar Silent Bob played music to allay Jay’s boredom, causing him to re-enact “The Silence of the Lambs’” transvestite Buffalo Bill scene. “Would you fuck me?” Jay asked the camera.

As answer, one could only think of Smith’s response to an earlier question about whether he’d consider doing other sequels besides “Clerks 2”: “It’s like fucking Mewes. I’ve thought about it…but I wouldn’t do it.”

Smith stood at the door of the theater shaking hands and greeting each film-goer as he or she entered. He served as the master of ceremonies both days and participated in some question-and-answer sessions when the movies ended. He could also be found chatting with fans, posing for photos and answering questions, acting nothing like the Silent Bob character he has played in five films.

… Split between the two theaters, fans on day one were shown a longer version of Smith’s 2004 film “Jersey Girl,” the yet-to-be-released “Catch and Release,” which Smith acted in, and a documentary about Smith’s film “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” titled “Oh What a Lovely Tea Party.” Also included was a documentary on homosexual bars in the South called “Small Town Gay Bar,” Brian Lynch’s comedy “Big Helium Dog” and “Clerks II.” On day two “Big Helium Dog” and “Jersey Girl” were dropped from the schedule since day one started at 10 a.m. and ran past midnight.

The sequel to “Clerks” and “Catch and Release” were a surprise to fans, who knew only that the day would include two secret films. However, “Clerks II” was definitely the highlight for many fans, some of whom had traveled to Red Bank from as far as Florida and Detroit.

Dan Drajesk from Massachusetts attended day two of Vulgarthon and said seeing “Clerks II” was his favorite part.

“I get to brag to all my friends,” he said about seeing the film almost two months earlier than its scheduled July 21 release date.

As for coming all the way from Massachusetts, Drajesk felt the day was worth the travel.

“Kevin Smith. Jason Mewes. It’s just a good experience,” he said.

So tonight, after dodging the bullet for months now, we had our first (and only) test screening with a general audience for “Clerks II”.

Let me say a few words about test screenings: I hate them. Fuck, do I hate them. I don’t mind the actual screening portion, where you’re sitting there with an audience watching the flick and listening to their reactions; that part’s totally cool. It’s when the screening ends, the lights come up, and the folks in charge start handing out survey cards for the audience to fill out… that’s when shit usually goes south for me. And even worse, twenty or twenty five people are kept behind to take part in what’s known as a “focus group”, where they’re asked pointed questions about the movie (”Did you like it?” and “What didn’t you like about it?” and “Would you recommend it to people, and if not, why not?”) and the filmmakers are forced to hide in the back of theater and listen to an audience eviscerate something they’ve worked so hard on for so long, without being able to get up and defend themselves or the flick. Of all the aspects of filmmaking that go into the gestalt of cinematic storytelling, this is definitely the least appetizing. I don’t know any filmmaker who enjoys it.

Now normally, one test screens (or is forced to test screen by the studio) in an effort to look for cuts or make changes in the flick, based on how audiences react to the screening. On “Jersey Girl”, we endured ten of these screenings, in a failed effort to make the movie more palatable to a mainstream audience. With “Clerks II”, the idea wasn’t to look for cuts or changes (indeed, the prints are locked at this point); tonight’s test screening was purely a marketing screening, set up by the Weinstein Company in an effort to shed some light on how to go about selling the flick.

Based on that, there was no real risk to us: if the audience hated the flick, we weren’t going to be forced to make changes. After all, the flick only cost five million to make, so the financial risks facing the Weinstein Company are minimal at best. And with the lion’s share of our foreign pre-sales taken care of at Cannes 2005 (a year before we’d screen at the fest to an eight minute standing ovation, plug, plug) the movie’s budget, it’s been revealed, was already taken care of; in essence, the movie’s in profit before opening day.

Still, any screening in which cards are gonna be filled out and comments about the qualities (or lack thereof) of the flick are gonna be made is nerve-wracking to a filmmaker. So when the lights dimmed in this Kansas City theater (chosen because the Weinstein Company wanted to see how the movie would play in the heartland), I was sweating it. This wasn’t a room comprised of hardcore fans. The audience recruit for the test screening didn’t list any of our previous flicks on the list of movies potential attendees had to have seen theatrically to be considered for inclusion. The “Qualifying Films” list (of which the audience Must Have Seen at least three) looked like this: “Bad Santa”, “Malibu’s Most Wanted”, “The 40 Year Old Virgin”, “Dodgeball”, “White Chicks”, “Team America: World Police”, “The Ringer”, “Old School”, “Anchorman”, “High Fidelity”, “Napoleon Dynamite”, and “Wedding Crashers”. Not a “Chasing Amy” or “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” anywhere in sight.

The Demographics they were looking for were 60% Male, 40% Female, 17-34 (60% under 25). Essentially, a mainstream comedy audience – something, I feel, our flick really isn’t.

The good news is that it was, apparently, an easy recruit. They had a line that wrapped the building of people looking to get in. 30 or 40 potential attendees had to be turned away. We had a packed house of close to 400. But when the “Clerks II” title card came up, there was no raucous applause (a normally great indicator that the room is full of friendlies).

However, that was about the only point in the screening when there weren’t applause.

Man, that screening rocked. The audience was with the flick every step of the way. It played even better, I dare say, than it did in Cannes (which I guess isn’t that surprising, since the entire audience, unlike the Cannes screening, was comprised of folks whose first language was English). There were only three walk-outs (one of whom was a mid-30’s woman who felt the film was “disgusting”), and they all left in the first twenty minutes (by which time anybody who feels the flick isn’t their kinda poison heads for the hills). After that first twenty minutes, nobody left. That’s rare for us and our flicks (especially considering how out there our flicks can get; this one in particular).

When the flick ended, there was resounding applause (also pretty fucking rare in a test screening). The audience filled out their cards, and twenty five folks were kept behind for the focus group.

The focus group didn’t seem to match the audience reaction we heard while watching the flick. Folks were a bit more reserved in their praise. But the majority of the focus group rated the flick “excellent”, “very good”, and “good”. Only one person rated it “fair”. Nobody chose “poor”. Marketing data gleaned from the screening: folks felt (thank Christ) that no subtitle (i.e. “Clerks II: The Second Coming”) was needed; “Clerks II” said it all. And much to the delight of the Weinstein Company, no one in the focus group felt that seeing the first “Clerks” was necessary in order to dig “Clerks II”.

That top two boxes score is key in the test screening process: it’s the figure that represents the percentage of people who rated the flick “excellent” and “very good”. When the scores are tallied from the survey sheets, there are two figures everyone immediately wants to know: the top two boxes score, and the “definite recommends” (the percentage of those surveyed who say they would definitely recommend the flick to friends). Based on the focus group, Scott and I felt that we were looking at a score of 70% in the top two boxes, but neither of us could imagine what the definite recommends figure would be.

When Laurie Eddings brought us the score sheet, she had a smile on her face. Scott and I had told her we thought it was a 70% top two box score, and Laurie held up the sheet and said “It’s better than that.”

The percentage of that audience who rated the film “excellent” was 56%. The normal average is 25%. The combined score of the top two boxes was 84%; the normal top two boxes average is 55%. We were 29% above the average (the average being the score that everyone breathes easier at). 13% of the audience rated the film as “good”. 2% rated the film as “fair”. Only 1% rated the film as “poor” (likely the “disgusted” woman).

The “definite recommends” score “norm” is 45%. “Clerks II” got a 74% – nearly thirty percent above the norm. 74% of that audience said they would definitely recommend the film to their friends, with a vast lion’s share of the remaining 26% saying they’d “probably” recommend the movie to their friends.

Considering where we were screening, for this flick to score an 84% with a 74% definite recommend is nothing short of astounding. Mainstream movies testing in Kansas City score 84%; a sequel to a black and white indie flick that’s filled with some of the crudest, weirdest shit you’ve ever seen and heard in a movie theater doesn’t score an 84%. And yet, tonight, it did. In the fucking heartland. In middle-America.

Needless to say, we’re all thrilled.

So thank you, Kansas City, Missouri, for an amazing, very memorable night; you’ve made my life considerably easier. And thanks to Harvey for forcing us to do the test screening; it was definitely worth all the worry leading up to it. And thanks to the cast and crew for all their hard work; without them, there’s no movie to score in the first place.

But most of all, thanks to that mid-30’s woman who walked out in disgust. Because, for a second there, I was beginning to think maybe I’d gone soft in my old age. I’m relieved to know that my sense of humor is still not to everyone’s taste.

Fuck, this movie’s been a sweet-ass ride thus far. God-willing, it’ll continue through ’til July 21st (and beyond).