With his new movie, director Kevin Smith says thanks to family, friends and, yes, those nutty fans on the Web

By Devin Gordon
NEWSWEEK

Aug. 27 issue — The first person you meet on the set of Kevin Smith’s new movie, “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” is a guy named Ratface. He is Smith’s production designer, a job usually held by extravagant Italians or tasteful women. Ratface, ne Robert Holtzman, is just an old buddy of Smith’s. Like everybody else here. In today’s scene our heroes, played by Smith (“Chasing Amy,” “Dogma”) and childhood pal Jason Mewes, learn that a comic book based on their lives is being made into a movie—and the boys aren’t seeing a dime. At the moment, the crew is on a break.

PRODUCER SCOTT MOSIER (a film-school classmate) sips coffee while Smith smokes a cigarette and gripes about a nasty post he got on his Web site. Some guy blasted him for failing to include an actress from “Clerks,” his cult-classic debut, in the cameo-heavy new film. Smith, his accuser claimed, was forgetting his roots. “Come on,” says the director, 31. “You can say a lot of s—t about me, but that’s gotta be the last thing. I mean, look around!”

The man’s got a point. “Jay and Silent Bob,” or “J&SB,” as cyberfans have dubbed it, is Smith’s cinematic thank-you to everyone who helped make him what he is today: arguably cinema’s funniest writer about sex, certainly its most candid. In bit parts over four films, his twin creations have become minor heroes—like C3PO and R2D2, only perpetually stoned (hence the title, an allusion to “The Empire Strikes Back”). This time they’re the stars, clearing room for cameos by old friends from Ben Affleck to Brian O’Halloran, who played Dante in “Clerks.” Today’s shooting location, in fact, is Smith’s own comic-book shop in Red Bank, N.J., his hometown, where he still lives with his wife and infant daughter. Fans get their nod as well: Jay and Silent Bob embark on a voyage to stop their movie after reading bad buzz about it on the Internet.

In case it’s not clear from the screwball plot, “Jay and Silent Bob” isn’t exactly a good movie. Unlike his last two films, the straight-gay romance “Chasing Amy” and the polemical religious comedy “Dogma,” here Smith has less than nothing to say. Still, the movie is damn funny—even if the terms “snootchie bootchies” and “phatty boom batty” mean nothing to you. And after “Dogma,” which prompted death threats for its critical take on the Roman Catholic Church, that’s all Smith wants to hear. “Biting your nails, not being able to open your f—king mail—after a while, I was like, ‘Hey, why don’t we do something light next time?’ ” With this movie, he says, “either you laugh or you don’t.”

Succeed or fail, Smith is bound to get an earful from his fans—and he’s looking forward to it. It’s three months after the shoot in Red Bank, and Smith is sitting in a dim recording studio in Los Angeles, working on the “J&SB” score. Or, rather, everyone else in the room is working on the score. Smith, eating a tuna sandwich, is surfing the Web on his laptop. He stops first at the movie-gossip site Ain’t It Cool News to check out an interview he gave. Then it’s on to Smith’s home page, ViewAskew.com, where he’ll post an update on his movie’s progress.

He launched the site in 1996, and a love affair was born. Smith is a warm, chatty soul whose portly frame and sloppy clothes are the outward signs of a guy who couldn’t pull off phoniness if he tried, and he tingled at the idea of meeting some kid in Idaho who loved his work. It slowly dawned on him that it was also shrewd business. Smith’s films are not blockbusters—his budgets are tiny, and his biggest hit to date, “Dogma,” grossed just $31 million. But he always turns a profit, largely because his rabid fan base is champing at the bit by the time his movies open.

Easy access doesn’t come without a price, though. “People who don’t like your s—t will hunt you down and tell you—behind the anonymity of a modern-day CB handle. I honestly don’t mind if someone says, ‘You suck.’ But have the courage to say who you are. It’s fascinating to get a three-page analysis of your work from some guy named Wampa12.” Smith stops to take a drag on his cigarette. He’s not done. “Some days you just wanna pick up the phone, call Magnum P.I. and say, ‘Get me the address of Wampa12′.” At the end of “Jay and Silent Bob” the boys do exactly that, showing up on the doorstep of their slanderers and beating them silly. For that one, Kevin, the thank-you is on us.