By Martin A. Grove

Smith story: When a film crashes and burns big time as “Gigli” did, the fallout can impact in a big way on its stars, especially if they’re re-teamed in a new project. In the case of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, they are but they aren’t.

While Affleck stars in Miramax’s “Jersey Girl,” written and directed by Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Chasing Amy”), Lopez only has a cameo role as Affleck’s wife and dies 15 minutes into the movie. Affleck’s real co-star is Raquel Castro, the adorable 9-year-old who plays his daughter and looks so much like Lopez that you’d swear they were mother and daughter.

“Jersey,” opening wide Mar. 26, is produced by Scott Mosier (who’s partnered with Smith on six films to date) and executive produced by Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein and Jonathan Gordon. Also starring are Liv Tyler, George Carlin, Stephen Root, Mike Starr and Jason Biggs.

Having had an early look at “Jersey” Thursday afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised because like many people I thought it would be something along the lines of “Gigli 2.” But that’s just not the case. This is a sweet father-daughter story that Smith tells so believably well that even I wound up enjoying it — and, in all honesty, this isn’t the kind of film I generally like. Although Lopez’s role in the movie is very abbreviated and she disappears quickly, she does have a few scenes with Affleck where they have exactly the sort of good romantic chemistry that somehow didn’t materialize in “Gigli.”

Affleck plays Ollie, a former superstar New York publicist whose career died after his wife Gertrude died giving birth to their daughter Gertie. Ollie moves back home to New Jersey with the infant Gertie (Castro) to live with his widowed father (Carlin). The film’s adult female lead is actually Tyler, who plays Maya, a video store clerk (what else with Smith writing and directing?) who meets Ollie when he brings Gertie to rent a tape. While Gertie’s busy considering videos, Ollie ducks into the adult section to grab something for himself. When he checks out, Maya’s interest is aroused and romance takes its course.

Along the way, Ollie tries hard to resurrect the PR career that blew up in his face seven years earlier when he badly mishandled a press conference where then-TV star Will Smith was late in arriving. Desperately trying to get back in action now, Ollie meets with the heads of one PR firm, who Smith has played by Matt Damon and Jason Lee (who’s worked with Smith in films like “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”). After determining that Ollie is, indeed, the legendary PR guy who told off that jam packed press conference and then had some choice words to say about Smith, they make it instantly clear that there’s no way in hell they’d ever hire him.

Smith gives us another great insider moment when Ollie’s pitching for a job at a top of the line New York PR firm called “Angellotti” — presumably after Hollywood Oscar marketing and publicity maestro Tony Angellotti. While he’s there, who turns up and somehow winds up also sitting in the waiting room next to Ollie? None other than Will Smith, of course. Ollie, of course, recognizes Smith, who by then is a movie superstar (so why is he cooling his heels in the waiting room other than because the story needs him to do so?).

Smith, who has no idea who Ollie is or how their lives once intersected, gives Ollie some random words of advice that finally set him on the right track in his life.

When I spoke recently to Smith about “Jersey” he told me that despite all the media fuss about Ben & Jen that stemmed from “Gigli,” he’s still happy he cast Lopez in “Jersey.” “She’s great in the movie,” he explained.

“Without her, I don’t think we would have gotten the same committed, wonderful performance that we got out of Ben. I’d have gotten something great out of him, but I really got what I feel is something magical out of him because he was so in love with Jen while we were shooting the movie. And that comes across in their limited time together on screen. But it really comes across when she prepares to die and she’s out of the movie. You feel a sense of lose from this for the rest of the film. I think that’s largely because he was really into Jen while we were shooting.

“Also, I was glad to cast Jen because we also cast Raquel Castro, primarily because she looks like Jennifer Lopez. When she first came in the room, I was shocked by how close to Jennifer she looked. She looked like a mini Jennifer. And then, thankfully, her performance was also way up there. But the reason we started looking at her more closely was because she bore a resemblance to Jennifer.”

Lopez, Smith added, “was really crucial to this movie. And even though stuff happened with ‘Gigli’ it doesn’t matter to me because without Jen I don’t think the movie would be as good as it is on all those fronts. Then, of course, there’s always the question of, ‘That’s great for the making of the movie, but what about the marketing of the movie? How does that affect selling the movie?’ Thank God, that’s not my job. That’s the job of Miramax.

But the fact that ‘Gigli’ did kind of bomb, gives us the opportunity for us to be the come-back picture (for Affleck). I’m always for the underdog story. And it forces the marketing to be a bit more honest. I think if ‘Gigli’ had been a big hit, you probably would have seen a poster that had Ben and Jen on it. And that’s not really the movie because Jennifer dies in the first 15 minutes. Because ‘Gigli’ died (at the boxoffice) we got marketing that I really believe in that sells the movie honestly. It’s a story about a guy and his kid and a story about a guy and his father.”

Looking back at how he came to write the film’s screenplay, Smith told me, “I was working on the ‘Clerks’ cartoon (the short lived ABC-TV animated series spin-off from Smith’s career launching Sundance and Cannes Film Festival award winning feature) at the time back in 2000. It was fun, but a lot of gag writing and there was not a lot of substance to it. So I was kind of hoping to do something at the same time that might have a little more weight to it so I could exercise the other part of the brain. We were out in California. We were stationed, if you will, out there for a few months with the show. I came home and my wife was putting our six month old to bed. I was really kind of moved by it — kind of swept up by the feeling of like what if my wife had died and left me with a kid? How on earth would I have possibly done this alone because we worked as such a really good team?

“I figured it’s not uncommon for most new fathers to think that way and I just kind of responded to it by starting to write the script. I did 50 pages in two hours. I checked it out and I liked what I had. Then I put it in a drawer and sat on it for a year and a half. There was a moment where I was like, ‘Do I want to do this movie next or do I want to do the ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ movie?’ I decided to do that instead.”

Fate, as often is the case, stepped in to sort things out. “The Fourth of July 2001, before ‘Jay and Bob’ came out, I was at Affleck’s for a barbecue,” said Smith, who’s collaborated with Affleck on five films, including “Jersey.” “He was harassing me about doing what he called ‘Chasing Amy.’ He was like, ‘I want to do something where we rehearse it a lot and we do a lot of dialogue and it’s all about the story. And I’m not going to be marketing the movie while we’re making the movie. He was just coming off the ‘Pearl Harbor’ press junket at the time.

“He tends to romanticize that ‘Chasing Amy’ period, I think, because that was the last moment before he was Ben Affleck Movie Star. He wanted to do something more intimate and something that was more about the performance than the special effects. I said, ‘Well, I started writing this thing a year and a half ago. It’s 50 pages long. Do you want to check it out?’ He said yes. So I dropped it off to him and he read it and immediately called me back and was like, ‘This is it! This is what we’ve gotta do. Finish this.

This is the thing that we should do next.’ So I finished it and it became ‘Jersey Girl.'”

How long did it take to write? “That was July when he read it,” he replied.

“I wrote a little bit more between that and the release of ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ and (doing) all the press and whatnot. Then September 11 happened and I got real busy with doing benefits and things like that back east. So by the time I wrapped it all up, I moved out to California in January 2002. In the first two weeks I got there I finished the script. All told, it was probably a total of a three week write with all the combination of time.”

After that, it turned into a movie quickly. “He was on board. I wanted to do it. I gave it to Miramax. They loved the script. So we started moving forward from there,” Smith explained.

Asked about casting “Jersey’s” other key roles, Smith said, “I’d written the role of (Ollie’s) dad for George Carlin. I didn’t know how Miramax was going to take to it. I thought they might want me to cast somebody more well known, but frankly they were just like, ‘Yeah, Carlin’s great.’ I had Liv Tyler in mind while I was writing because I was a big fan of the movie she did ‘Inventing the Abbotts.’ So we started to bang down her door. We were trying to figure out who would play the older Gertrude and my wife when she read the script said, ‘I just watched ‘The Wedding Planner’ and Jennifer Lopez was really great in it.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but Ben just shot as movie called ‘Gigli’ with her. A couple weeks ago they’d just wrapped. So I was like, ‘I don’t know if he’s going to want to do another movie with her again so soon.’

“And then, ironically enough, he called me a week later and said, ‘Hey, I was thinking maybe for Gertrude this actress I just worked with — Jennifer Lopez — in ‘Gigli.” And I was like, ‘Really? You’d want to do a movie with her (again) so soon?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah. I mean it’s only a cameo really in your movie, but I talked to her about the movie while we were on the ‘Gigli’ set and she really dug it.’ So we asked Jennifer if she wanted in and she did.”

In production, Smith said, “We were based in Philly and shot in Jersey and also shot in Manhattan. It was a pretty stress free, problem free shoot. The City of Philadelphia was wonderful. The people in Philly were great. The crew base was magnificent. And while we were shooting, Ben & Jen mania hadn’t even kicked in yet. So those two were together, but we weren’t hounded. There was no paparazzi, no press until we got to New York City for the last two days of the shoot. And then suddenly the paparazzi came out in full force and you started to get the impression that people were really fascinated by this relationship for whatever reason. So up until that point, we were relatively non-harassed. But once we got to Manhattan, literally a hundred paparazzi showed up in Central Park while we were shooting a very quick shot of Ben & Jen in a (horse drawn) carriage. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

Although “Jersey” doesn’t hit theaters until Mar. 26, Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein is clearly so enthusiastic about the film that in February he handed Smith “The Green Hornet” to write and direct. Miramax has high hopes that Smith can turn the classic comic book, whose roots are in a radio serial that began in 1936, into a movie franchise.

“He seemed to like our movie enough to give me ‘The Green Hornet,’ which is kind of cool,” Smith observed. “I can’t wait to do it. I’m a huge comic book nut. I did a lot of comic book writing for Marvel and D.C. and I’ve been a reader forever. So the chance to make a comic book movie is a big opportunity for me and it’s one I kind of relish. But it’s also a little frightening because it’s a bigger movie than I’ve ever done before. And it also has special effects and you’ve got to be very visually interesting. So I had a bit of trepidation going into it, but I just realized it’s no different than the other movies inasmuch as you surround yourself with people who are excellent at their jobs, a great support team, and everyone has equipped themselves as well as they can and you come up with the final picture.

“My goal for the movie is to just make whoever plays Britt Reid, the secret identity of the Green Hornet, as compelling a character as he is when he’s in costume. So often with these comic book movies, it’s great when they’re in the suit but when they’re not in the suit you just don’t even care. Or the villain is far more interesting than the hero. I just want to make one where the hero is the most interesting guy in the movie and you care about him when he’s out of costume, as well. There’s a reason why the movies were called ‘Batman’ and not ‘Joker.’ And there’s a reason why this one will be called ‘Green Hornet’ because the Green Hornet better be the most compelling character.”

What Smith particularly likes about working with “Green Hornet,” he pointed out, is that, “Unlike say ‘The Hulk’ or ‘Spider-Man’ or ‘Superman’ or ‘Batman,’ it’s not like it’s a character or property that people know the ins and outs of and know every aspect of the character’s history and every story ever told about him. ‘The Green Hornet’ is kind of known by what he looks like and it’s known that he hangs out with Kato, his sidekick and chauffer who does kung fu. And some people know that he’s got a car called the Black Beauty. Other than that, that’s it. There’s not a lot that people know about the character. There’s not a lot of history that you’ve got to make sure you stick biblically close to. There’s a lot more wiggle room with ‘The Green Hornet’ than there is with something like ‘Spider-Man.’ So that’s kind of good for me. It helps that it’s a known property, but at the same time it really helps creatively that you can kind of go in a bunch of different directions with it so long as you (handle) the key aspects of the character correctly.”

When we spoke Smith was about 50 pages into writing “Green Hornet.” Asked when he thought he’d have a draft done, he said, “Once I get off the ‘Jersey Girl’ press tour, I’m going to devote myself to it entirely. We’re hoping to be shooting by the end of the summer or the (early) fall. Somewhere in there.”

Is he going back to read volume after volume of “Green Hornet” comic books?
“Not so much,” he replied. “With ‘Green Hornet’ I’ve been listening to all the old radio shows and I’ve watched the one season of the TV show they did (in 1966 which starred Van Williams as the Hornet and introduced Bruce Lee as Kato). In terms of the comic stuff, I was very familiar with it from when I was a collector — the more recent comic stuff, not the old 1940s or 1950s comics. But I also looked at other comic books for inspiration. You read a bunch of stuff that gets you pumped up.”

Smith’s connections to the world of comic books go beyond moviemaking. “We have a comic book store in Redbank, New Jersey called ‘Jay and Silent Bob’s Silent Stash.’ We’ve had it since ’97 and it’s been very successful. It’s a comic book store and we sell a lot of memorabilia and merchandise from our movies. We put up a lot of props from all the movies we’ve worked on. Now we’re going to open up a version (of this store in L.A.) in Westwood. We’re aiming for June 1 (to open) right now.”

Martin Grove is seen Mondays at 9:30 a.m., PT on CNN FN’s “The Biz” and is heard weekdays at 1:55 p.m. on KNX 1070 AM in Los Angeles.