You say you’re not mainstream, but so many people grew up watching your films – you’re a household name!

“It’s a weird position to be in, oddly enough I find that when it s time to promote a movie, it’s never a problem getting press, people are always willing to sit down and talk about it. There’s always far more press than interest in the actual movie, though. I’ve found over the years that the balance between press and how we do has completely shifted in the favour of press. I guess I’m well known for doing what I do, but I don’t think I’m as successful as I guess the press would lead one to believe – the inordinate amount of press you receive, you think ‘wow, the movies would do better’, but they always seem to play to the exact same audience. I’m more well known than the flicks, which is weird, as normally it’s vice versa. I’m normally out there shooting my mouth off, so I’m shocked as many people see our flicks as they do. I never expected them to go beyond that little area of New Jersey that I grew up in!”

“You’d think right away that the fans would have been pleased when Clerks II was announced,” he continues. “But there was more trepidation than joy. I got a bunch of people going, ‘Don’t fuck it up, dude.’ Clerks gets called a cult classic, or the seminal indie film of the 1990s. But I didn’t set out to make that. I wanted to do a film in which the characters sat around talking about sex and Star Wars, just like my friends and I did, and made people laugh. For it to become what it did, and have all these cool but daunting labels attached to it, really clouded its original purpose. I watched Clerks the night before we started shooting Clerks II, and seeing it again demythologised it for me. I was, like, ‘Oh yeah – we didn’t make the seminal indie movie of the 1990s. It was just dudes talking about sex and Star Wars.’ It brought me back to what it was, and it cleared my head to do the sequel. My goal was never to make a film that was better than the original. I just wanted the two movies to stand shoulder-to-shoulder.”

…

Smith’s lack of ambition, which is reflected in Dante and Randal’s desire to simply stay put, can be traced back to his late father, who was employed for 30 years as a postal worker in Red Bank, New Jersey. “He wasn’t even delivering mail, he was cancelling stamps. He was the prime example of a guy who never felt he needed to make his mark professionally. He had that job so he could afford his real dreams – to get married and raise a family – and I always respected that. I think career and ambition are prized too much in our culture. Your job can’t be your whole life; your life has to be your family.”

The ‘Clerks II’ filmmaker – who also stars in his films as the character Silent Bob – insists it is important daughter Harley Quinn learns these words when she is young so she will be able to come out with a string of expletives as an adult.

He told BANG Showbiz: “I’m already teaching her to curse because if she learns to does it well she can make a good living out of it.