After your bad experience Jersey Girl, are you about to make another Hollywood movie any time soon?

I think it all comes down to what your perception of a Hollywood movie is. The 40 Year Old Virgin is a Hollywood movie, but it doesn’t occur to you that it’s a Hollywood movie. It’s got some edge to it. Same with Wedding Crashers. The parameters are blurred. It’s tough to figure out what’s indie and not indie any more.

Part of Clerks II was taking a break from that, having just made a movie with two of the biggest stars on the planet [Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez]. Even before the movie came out, it was like, man, it’s a bit much. Especially when you’re talking about people who were on the cover of US Weekly every fuckin’ week. You spend two years trying to tell a story, then you talk to the press about it, and most of them are like, “Hey man, have you seen the big, pink diamond?” What does this have to do with anything? Part of that, I guess, is that they didn’t want to talk about the movie and were trying to be polite. The other part is they’re far too wrapped up in the behind the scenes than what’s up front. It was all backstory, and then got progressively worse as we had to fight the ghost of fuckin’ Gigli.

What was it like making a movie with a $10 million star?

It sounds weird but I don’t think actors should be paid that much. And to Ben’s credit on Jersey Girl, he tried to take 15 per cent of the gross, which meant he would be taking the risk — for ever dollar the movie made, he would have gotten 15 cents. But Harvey felt the movie had a chance of earning so he said no to 15 per cent and said, “I’ll give you $10 million up front.” What’s Ben supposed to do, say no? But then that’s $10 million tacked onto the cost of the movie, which wound up costing $35 million and could have easily cost $20 million.

ComingSoon.Net – Interview: Brian O’Halloran

CS: Is there any room for improvisation when you’re doing a movie like this or any more with the sequel than with the first movie?

O’Halloran: Moreso this one than the first one. The first one was all Kevin’s work and all his movie. It was all of our first attempt at a film, and we didn’t have the film stock to actually take multiple takes of something, so if we went beyond four or five takes of something, you’d actually see the color leave Kevin’s skin, because he was all sweatin’, “We don’t got this type of film to be doin’ these type of takes.” So this time around, being that it’s still a relatively modest budget of just five million in Hollywood terms, it still had the room to take multiple takes on something, so we would get what Kevin would want, and then if we had something we wanted to throw in or try, he would give us the couple takes to do that. And so even in the first read of the first draft of the script, Kevin opened it up to a discussion period afterwards, “So what do you think?” And we had some issues with certain things in the film that we wanted to tweak and make better or just rearrange, that we did by the second and third draft. After twelve years of us living with these characters and portraying them in many different formats, I think the trust level has gone way up for me and Jeff from Kevin, as to what these characters would do or not do.

JoBlo – Interview: Brian & Jeff

Aren’t we glad they didn’t use the original ending for Clerks?

O’Halloran: Well, I hated the original ending when I first read that stupid script. I was just like, “killing him, what?” And I remember jokingly saying to him back then, “What if we ever wanna do a sequel?” [laughs] And he was like, “Yeah. Real funny there, boy. Put the sweater on and get shot.” I was like, “All right.” He [points to Anderson] always had a problem with the ending, too.

Anderson: I was fine with the ending, but I always felt they should have pulled back to reveal Randall did it. Then Clerks II would be a whole different movie.

O’Halloran: Ten years later, you’ve obviously finished your ten-year sentence. Jersey only giving ten years for murder.

Anderson: That’s the way Clerks II opens, with me coming out of prison with the little box.

O’Halloran: And ripped. Tattooed.

CinemaBlend – Interview: Kevin Smith

“…I’ve been really lucky in as much as like we built ourselves a little audience. It’s not a big audience, but it’s enough of an audience where it’s kind of easy to get the stuff we do financed. Make no bones about it, this is a business. We can sit here and talk art and storytelling all we want, but it’s a fucking business. When someone else is paying for it it’s definitely a business and no one gives you money unless they’re assured some kind of a return on their investment. Historically we’ve done that. Our movies have never grossed more than $30 million theatrically, but our DVD is very strong. So even though you can’t build a studio system on the movies that we’ve made, someone is making a profit and that’s why they keep giving us money to make flicks. So for that reason I’m beholden to the audience. I love my audience almost more than I fucking love myself which isn’t that difficult, but because of them I got the job and that’s why I continue to work.”

About.com – “Jeff Anderson and Brian O’Halloran Discuss Clerks II”

“…On Becoming Convinced Clerks II was a Good Idea: Anderson said, “Literally the first day driving to the set I was in a full panic, sweaty mode. One of the smartest things Kevin did was he put an editing bay… We filmed at a location that was adjacent to a Day’s Inn, so we took over rooms at the Day’s Inn in lieu of having trailers. Kevin put an editing suite in there, and was literally editing as we went. About the fourth day into it he called me into the [editing room]. I showed up to the set and I went up to the room and Kevin came out. His hair was all messed up and he looked crazed. I was like, ‘Oh my God, he finally realized we shouldn’t do this,’ and he was like, ‘No, I’ve been up all night editing. Come see what I’ve done.’ I went in and I watched the first day of filming, which was Brian and Rosario [Dawson’s] stuff. It was a scene that I’m in but I just sort of pop in and pop out. I really didn’t watch them film the scene because they were in another room, and in watching the footage together I just really got into it.”