Metro Toronto: “Smith’s Degrassi high: Director’s stint on series fulfils dream”

“…”I called up (Degrassi: The Next Generation executive producer) Linda Schuyler and said, ‘I would kill or die to write and direct and episode,’” he
told Metro. “She said well, you can’t, you’re not Canadian … I’ve been told no before, but that was the best time.”

Smith understood the Telefilm rules which restrict key roles in government-funded Canadian productions to Canuck talent, but he managed to come up with a
backup plan. He would play himself in three episodes written around a fictional sequel to his film Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, which Smith would film
at Degrassi High. The director would also bring along his potty-mouthed friend and perpetual co-star Jason Mewes (Jay of Jay And Silent Bob fame) along to
Canada to make the fictional movie.”

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CTV: “Kevin Smith lives out his Degrassi fantasy”

…”In tonight’s episode, Smith has Alanis Morissette in his fictitious movie starring as a hoser high school principal. The Canadian superstar musician
has appeared before in a Smith movie, in a small but pivotal role in Dogma. Smith says he was sure she would work with him again.

“I mean, she owed me for heaven’s sakes: I did cast her as God. I always hold that over her head. I’ll be like, ‘Can you come out and do something?’ ‘No.’ And I’m like, ‘I cast you as God!’”

“I told her I was going to be doing the Degrassi episodes. She knew what a huge fan I was, so she was like. ‘I gotta be there. If you’re going to geek out, I’ve got to see that.’ It’s not like she was even in town doing something. She flew up exclusively to do that and took off afterwards.”

Smith adds it’s a pleasure to work with Morissette.

“She is just a phenomenal person, very bright, smart, wonderful, gorgeous, sexy, an incredible spirit. Most people don’t know because they just listen to the music, but she’s really funny.”

The final episode starring Smith will air next week, on Valentine’s Day, at 8 p.m. ET.

I look at a movie like “The Aviator” as a film by a director who was born to direct. I look in slack-jawed awe and know I could never have done that, and I am ashamed to call myself a director in the same breath — it’s like comparing a surgeon with a guy who hands out Band-Aids at the free clinic.

Think about the sequence with [Howard] Hughes locking himself in his screening room: You feel like you are in that fucking screening room with him. Scorsese didn’t do the simple film-school thing of shooting forced perspective to make the walls come in on Hughes, or the high wide-angle that gives you a sense of isolation; he shot that sequence in such a way that you feel you are trapped in the room, too. How did he do it? If I knew how, I would ape it in my next film!

There’s also a wonderful scene in which Errol Flynn reaches over and grabs something off his plate. All of a sudden, Hughes’ mood completely shifts and changes, and Scorsese gets that just be cutting between Hughes’ look and the plate, between the plate and Hughes and over to Errol Flynn.

It’s this really quiet moment in the middle of this massive, loud scene where you go: “I get it! I get it!” He really conveys that mania quite well.

The wonderful thing about “The Aviator” is, it is a story that all comes down to one swear word, when Alec Baldwin’s character finds out that TWA is going to get its international air [routes], and he stops at the globe [in his office] and he just suddenly says, “Fuck!” That whole movie comes down to that word — it is really about how this dude beat the odds — and in that respect, I can relate to what Martin Scorsese is trying to do.

I would give Scorsese best director because this took the most to direct, to keep all of those plates spinning at once. Directing is answering a series of questions: Red or blue? Light or dark? That’s what a director does — field 4 million questions — and in a movie like that, imagine the questions you have to deal with on a daily basis?

The scope of the picture is something very few directors could have handled; add to that the fact that the story is as gripping as it is. It is a movie about passion; Scorsese is a very passionate director, and boy, that translates in the film. For heaven’s sake, isn’t this man due?

Smith originally offered to direct a Degrassi episode, but Schuyler said no because the show’s key staff have to be Canadian.

“Which was the first time I’d ever been told no with that reason — you can’t do it because you’re not Canadian. But she said, ‘How would you like a cameo?’ So I wrote her back a week later with this idea of a three-episode arc.”

Smith shows up at Degrassi to research a new movie, Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh? His Clerks sidekick Jason Mewes appears next Monday, along with Los Angeles-based Canuck singer Alanis Morissette, who played God in Smith’s films Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

“I said, ‘Do you want to come up and play the principal in the fake movie we’re doing in the show?’ She was really sweet about it,” he says. “That’s one of the nicest things anybody’s ever done for me, was just to jump on a plane and come to Toronto just to shoot that one scene.

“But just because she knew it meant a lot to me, that was really kind of cool of her.”

Now, Smith would like to do an entire episode in which Morissette just plays herself. And he’s already thinking of making his own comeback when Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh? makes its fake screen debut.

“I told them I gotta come back next season to premiere the movie.”

Marilyn Ghigliotti checks in with us on that newsbite we ran about an early film appearance yesterday:
“So not worth checking out. Very cheesy movie I did about 3 – 4 yrs prior to Clerks when I was still green. One I wish I hadn’t done.”

Globe And Mail – “You Really Like It Here?”

…”In next week’s episode, Smith makes fun of Affleck. “That’s what friends are for,” says Smith, sprawled out on a couch in Vancouver, where his seven-day promotional tour launched this week.

“I once asked [Affleck] if it bothered him, all the jokes I make about him. He said, ‘Don’t you think I would’ve said something by now? But I think that’s really cute that you asked me.’ “

Smith asked Affleck to play a cameo alongside him, but his friend refused.

“When we were shooting that episode, it was right at the point when Surviving Christmas was coming out. He was just like, ‘Dude, I am getting my ass so kicked in the press right now. You know I love you and if you tell me this is the most important thing in the world to you and you’ll hate me if I don’t, of course I’ll do it. But please, I’m begging you. If I show up on a Canadian teen soap opera, they’ll just have a field day. It’s going to take away from everything you love about the show because they’re just going to talk about this.’ “

Smith understood and instead asked Alanis Morissette, the Ottawa-born singer who he cast as God in Dogma. In next week’s episode, she plays a lumber-jacket wearing high-school principal in the film that Kevin Smith and his perennial sidekick Jason “Jay” Mewes are shooting at Degrassi High.”

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Calgary Sun – “Degrassi Dream”

…””After it was all set up and I got there to the Degrassi set, I thought, ‘It’s never going to live up to the hype. It’s never going to make me feel as good as when I watched the show.

I’ve met people, you know. I used to like Chevy Chase so much. I loved all his movies and his body of work. I never knew him. And then I met him and you know, there’s some people you should just never meet.

“Prince was like that too. I shot a documentary with him and it was a disaster.

“So I was kind of worried that the Degrassi experience would be like that. That afterwards, I wouldn’t even like the show anymore because of the disastrous guest spot. But I couldn’t be happier. It was probably one of the best on-set experiences I’ve ever had — second only to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which was such an enjoyable shoot.”

Back to class?

With the Degrassi episodes now behind him, Smith has started — albeit slowly — to move on with his non-Canadian career.

His next project is The Passion of the Clerks, the sequel to Clerks which he refers to simply as “Clerks 2.” And he’s currently writing the second draft of the action-adventure The Green Hornet for Miramax — a project he was going to direct until he realized helming a franchise-friendly blockbuster isn’t for him.

Yet none of these projects invokes quite the same passion in Smith as Degrassi.

In fact, he even approached creator and executive producer Linda Schuyler about having an ongoing role on the series.

“I told Linda, ‘How about in the Degrassi reality, Jersey Girl tanked so badly that I can’t work in film anymore — which isn’t that far from reality — so I get a teaching gig at Degrassi High?’ She was like, ‘You know, the guest spot is enough.’ ”

I just found the Flesh Eaters from Outer Space/Invasion for Flesh and Blood double feature DVD today at Best Buy. The cover features a picture of Marilyn
Ghigliotti and says “Starring Clerks star Marilyn Ghigliotti”. She gets another mention on the back in the description of the movie: “A soccer mom is
turned into a cyborg alien killing machine on the hunt for extraterrestrials hell-bent on destroying the human race. With a trusty teenage Metalhead at
her side, the fate of the world is held in the balance, as sexual tension oozes from the once-human, now soulless, creature killer. Featuring an
appearance by Marilyn Ghigliotti of Clerks.”