“…I’d written Dogma before I wrote Mallrats, but even in Dogma, I was bringing Jay and Silent Bob back, just ‘cause I like Jason Mewes a lot. He’s funny, and I thought those characters would be a nice way to keep that movie from becoming too heavy-handed. So I knew I’d use them again when I got to Dogma, but actually since Mallrats was the next movie, I started thinking about whether or not I’d want to include them in Mallrats, and I decided to go for it. Since Jay and Bob were in it, at one point they were the only touchstone, the only reference point, and then we wound up re-shooting the opening to Mallrats. After the movie was done, we test screened the movie, and the opening was long. It took about half an hour to get to the mall, so we just decided to shoot a new opening for it. That referenced the Julie Dwyer in the pool thing, and that really tied those two movies together in a subtle way. I mean, Jay and Silent Bob obviously in a very overt way too puts those two movies together, but the fact that the characters in Mallrats were referencing incidents from Clerks, and a character that we never even saw in Clerks, was a subtle reference to that movie. That kicked off the domino effect of including something in each film that tied it back into that same area, the same few towns.”


“…I guess I do have regional pride in that aspect of a state. South Jersey is more like North Pennsylvania to me and north Jersey is more like the south of New York. But central Jersey is in the dead center of the state, it’s where the shore is. Predominantly, it’s where the shore is. It’s what everyone thinks of when they say “down the Shore.” But really it didn’t come from that aspect of New Jersey that makes it the best; it’s just where I was raised. Like if I was raised in north Jersey, I would probably be a bigger fan of north Jersey. Same for south Jersey. But since I was raised where I was, it’s all I knew for like 22 years, so familiarity bred that loyalty I think more than anything else.”

This is one you’ll want to check out from start to finish, so make a click over to The Cornell Sun for a look. It covers a lot of background and history, some of which you may know, some not — But we dig the way it’s not all about the latest projects (which is rehash of what we already know) and takes a more personal approach. Don’t miss the Q&A in Ithaca on Saturday, if the recent Red Bank session is any indication, Kevin’s got some fantastic new tales to tell, IF you ask the right questions, of course…