Kevin Smith spoke at my college (Northern Illinois University) today and he mentioned a few things that may be of interest. He said he has about an hour of extra footage he’s putting on the Mallrats DVD and he’s putting the cut ending of Clerks on its DVD. He would have had the extra stuff on the Mallrats video and LD but since as he says, “it tanked” Universal put it out so fast there wasn’t any time to do it.

He also talked a bit on Dogma saying it cost Miramax about $8.5M. As far as test screening goes, he says he’s getting great results. His original cut was 3:15, he tested it, cut it to 2:30, tested it in Pittsburgh to about 440 people and got even better results. It currently runs at 2:15. Jay and Silent Bob also have the biggest parts they’ve ever had as they are in the film for about 75-80% of the time. They are about 2nd or 3rd leads.

He said he hopes to take it to Cannes in May and Miramax has it slated for a Fall ’99 release which he says could possibly mean sometime in 2000. Or not. Who knows.

He then showed us a working trailer of Dogma. (No word on when it will we out yet though) Some images we saw from it were, Hayek stripping, Silent Bob kissing Linda Fiorentino, Damon, Affleck and Jason Mewes (“Jay”) sporting some very heavy weaponery, one shot had Jay firing an automatic weapon in slow motion like Rambo which got a huge laugh, another scene had Chris Rock giving the line, “Do I know Jesus? Hell the nigger owes me $12!” (which got the biggest laugh of the night), we see Affleck and Rickman sprout their wings, and finally we saw George Carlin covered in blood freaking out inside a telephone booth.

The film also starts in McHenry, IL (filmed near Pittsburgh) and works its way to New Jersey.