AN INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT PEREIRA
BY CHRIS GRAVES
Chris Graves: For those who do not know, what is your background and how were you introduced to the world of View Askew and Kevin Smith?
Vincent Pereira: My background is I was a tall, quiet, angry, and introverted high schooler who was obsessed with horror flicks and who got a job stocking the shelves at the Quick Stop- albeit a tall, quiet, angry and introverted high schooler who was obsessed with horror flicks AND film and filmmaking since I was in grade school. So here I was, working at the Quick Stop after school as a junior in High School, when Kevin was hired to man the registers at both the convenience and video stores. At first, Kevin seemed almost as quiet, angry, and unapproachable as I was, and sometimes downright snotty (I still remember the day I had asked him to hold some new action movie for me because my dad wanted to see it, but Kevin went ahead and rented it off to a customer instead, and when I confronted him about it a little bit annoyed his response was, “What am I, your mother?”), but before too long we cut through all that bullshit and developed a rapour overour mutual love of David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS, and a friendship was born.
CG: How did you come to be known as the unofficial “View Askew Historian”?
VP: I think it’s because I have a good memory and recall of minutia that other folks normally forget. I tend to pay attention to little details and soak them in and most people don’t do that, I suppose.
CG: What was your first reaction to Mr. Smith when you met at the Quick Stop? And what was your favorite flick (Slacker excluded) that the two of you saw at the Angelica Theater, after working at the store all those years ago?
VP: At first we didn’t really get along, but then we realized that the Thapers (the owners of the Quick Stop) were playing us off against each other. They would tell me that Kevin was complaining to them that I wasn’t working hard enough or whatever, so I figured him to be a snitch. Turns out it wasn’t the case, he didn’t give a shit what I did (or didn’t) do there, and after that we got on just fine.
As for our favorite film that we saw together at the Angelica, I dunno what Kevin’s was, but mine was probably Abel Ferrera’s BAD LIEUTENANT- although my car at the time was broken into while we were watching the film (a midnight screening). As I recall the thieves stole some of Kevin’s money, but they were kindly enough to leave his journal literally sitting on the hood of my car so at least he didn’t lose any of his written-down ideas and notes (some of which found their way not only into CLERKS but later CHASING AMY).
CG: Mr. Smith has said many times before that you were an integral part in getting Clerks made. What was your first reaction to the first draft of Clerks? Is it true that it didn’t seem like a comedy at all, but more like a weird David Lynch-esque drama?
VP: No, the script pages themselves were always comedic. It was the original concept that wasn’t a comedy, but more of a David Lynch-type film about a guy working the midnight to 6 AM shift at an all-night convenience store and the weird people he meets and how he gets through this strange night. Kevin had written a one-page synopsis for that, titled IN CONVENIENCE, but by the time he actually started writing script pages, the comedy just poured out.
He gave me a big bunch of pages that were only in temporary order- he was writing individual scenes with the characters at that point, not a point-A to point-B narrative as such. I loved the material, although it was obvious that some of it was unfilmable at his budget- specifically, a subplot involving the fired mop boy/sniper at the convenience store who takes refuge on a roof overlooking the local bank, and was to take shots at Dante when he goes there to deposit money for the Quik Stop, all while Randal watches the event unfold live on the television news in the Quik Stop…
Although said “angry mop boy” character was clearly based on me and I’d have loved to see myself so memorably immortalized in CLERKS, I swallowed my pride and pointed out to Kev that I doubted he’d ever be able to film something that complex on such a low-budget, so it was dropped. A few other dropped scenes included a bit with a JFK conspiracy nut who visits the video store, my favorite *EVER* unfilmed Kevin scene- “Scruples the Cat”- which wound up in different forms in several other of Kevin’s scripts only to be dropped from them as well, and a long scene where Dante carries an old ladies’ groceries home for her at night. The later was an incredibly funny scene, but again- doing an extended exterior nighttime shoot with a moving camera and pages of dialogue just seemed undoable given the CLERKS budget, so the scene was dropped early on.
CG: Any entertaining anecdotes about the filming of Clerks that might not of been shared yet? And what was your reaction to the film’s success?
VP: To be honest re: anecdotes, I can’t think of anything that hasn’t already been said. As for my reaction to the success, I know I’m supposed to say it was a shock or surprise, but for me at least it really was not. I knew the script was great, and I knew the cut of the film was really clever, incredibly well-written, and funny beyond belief, so when it kept going further and further- first, the Village Voice write-up, then accepted at Sundance, then Miramax buying it- my reaction was, duh. I figured good work was SUPPOSED to be rewarded, so everything that came to CLERKS didn’t surprise me at all, it made perfect sense. Things are supposed to happen the way they did with CLERKS- what surprises me is when really good films are NOT successful, or when bad ones are.
CG: What was the genesis of your film “A Better Place”? Where did the idea come from and what were your thoughts on the finished film, having work with a limited budget? Anything you would’ve done differently with a larger budget?
VP: The “genesis” was, Kevin filmed CLERKS when he was 22 and I was 20, so I put a goal in sight that I wanted to be shooting my own feature when I was 22, too. I had no idea what I wanted it to be, though, until one night in I believe the late summer or fall of 1993 when I caught a 20/20 (I believe) piece about the Jamie Bulger murder case in England- the todler who was picked up by two older boys at a mall then taken to nearby train tracks and murdered. Now, I had always been intrigued by stories of youthful killers- something about somebody that young doing something that devastatingly profound always resonated with and disturbed me. Seeing that piece about the Bulger case just brought all that back into my head, and it just hit me that THIS would be what I’d make a film about. Mind you, not a film about the actual case itself, but the case inspired me to reach deep within myself and expose all of that pent up teenage angst and rage I had growing up. So, inspired by the Bulger case, I took all that pent up rage and sat down and wrote 10-pages of what was to become A BETTER PLACE.
I remember giving those pages to Kevin a couple days later, and he responded really, REALLY favorably to them. Then, he went off on the festival tours for CLERKS and I went into deep thinking mode and the rest of the story germinated in my mind. Several months later, Kevin was home for a bit in between fest showings of CLERKS, and he came into RST Video one afternoon while I was working and basically said, “You know Vinnie, those pages you showed me were the start of something really good. If you finish it, I now have the means to finance it”, and that was that. I was given the kick-start I needed, and I went ahead and turned those opening pages into a first-draft script over the next six months, which I then took to the set of MALLRATS and handed over to Kevin and Scott, and the rest is history.
I’m very happy with the finished film. An interesting thing happens when you go from idea – to script – to screen: What ends up on screen is its own entity and isn’t identicle to what it is you originally had in your head… But then something magical happens- there’s a mood that permeates all three, so even though the final film is its own beast, it’s still connected and it still feels right. To me, that’s what matters- A BETTER PLACE feels right in its final form, despite the budget limitations and whatever technical flaws there may be. The mood and feel of the film match what I always had in mind, even if 100% of the images in my head didn’t make it on screen. I have no regrets and really like the film, and I truly think I’d still like even if it wasn’t “my baby”, so to speak.
CG: What have you been up to since the DVD release of “A Better Place”?
VP: Living my life, writing, etc. I worked for over a year and a half on an aborted attempt to adapt Clive Barker’s short story PIG BLOOD BLUES into a feature. When that fell apart, to be honest it put me into a pretty bad depression, and then my dad unexpectantly got sick and died only a few months later which made it worse. My personal life was thrown into a pretty big upheaval during that time. PIG BLOOD BLUES is now going ahead without me, albeit with some of my ideas in the final script for which I’ll be paid.
That’s the only concrete project I was working on- everything else has been personal stuff. Right now, though, I’m working on two very dark, very indie scripts. One started out as BROKEN BOY and I was on a roll with it last fall, but then I hit a snag and am not quite sure where to go with it in the final act. I have a few different ideas, I need to work them out in my head and see which works best dramatically and thematically.
The other is a fairly straight-forward dramatic thriller called THE TRAIL. It just popped into my head a couple weeks ago while I was bike riding along a 9-mile stretch of the Henry Hudson Trail which is right near where I live here in New Jersey. I’dalways thought it would be neat to do a film set along that stretch and on this particular day, something must have been right because the entire thing just popped into my head out of the blue and it’s all very simple and elegant in a way. I really think it will be my next project, it can be done on a very low budget and while it has a European sensibility to it and gets quite dark and violent, it could also be fairly commercial with the right audiences. The lead character has a lot of me in him, he’s kind of a dreamer and observer. And after that, when I come up with the appropriate final act for what is tentatively titled BROKEN BOY, I have a feeling that A BETTER PLACE, THE TRAIL, and BROKEN BOY (or whatever it ends up being called) will all fit together as kind of “youth violence” trilogy, or maybe the better description would be “troubled youth trilogy”. The stories of all three are completely different but share similar themes and sensibilities and they’re all very small, personal projects. I’m kind of jazzed about having them fit together in that way if these two new ones happen, which I hope they will.
CG: It is somewhat known that you are a horror movie fan. Did Kevin write a horror script for you to direct a few years ago? And what was your reaction to the news that Kevin’s next project would be a horror film?
VP: I’ve been a horror film fan for about as long as I can remember- in fact, my mom has saved pictures I drew in crayon when I was like 5 years old that were images from JAWS which I had seen on TV. Horror movies got me interested in movies in general, and by extension, they got me interested in filmmaking because I always wanted to know, “How’d they do that?”
When I was a senior in High School, I asked Kevin if he’d write me something to do as my major end of the year project for art class. My only stipulation was that I wanted it to be horror, and set in the old ruins out at the end of Sandy Hook. Kev came back with this intense, 80-page or so religious-themed horror epic inspired somewhat by Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL that was WAY beyond my means at the time. I mean, the dialogue was just crazy brilliant, and there was no way I could have mounted that on VHS tape for my high school art class, so the script was forgotten and actually misplaced for several years.
Then, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, my dad found a print out of it among a bunch of my old high school notebooks in our basement. I re-read it and thought it might be worth it to try and turn it into a feature, and Kevin gave me his blessing to go ahead and see what I could do with it. It had to be re-written as some of the concepts and ideas had actually found their way into DOGMA, so I gave it a go. Although I had some ideas that I thought were good, in the end as I was never able to properly connect with it, so I hit a block and abandoned it.
As for RED STATE, I’m really looking forward to seeing what Kevin comes up with. The first writings of his that I ever read were always on the dark side, so for me at least this will be something of a return to that.
CG: What is “Autograph” and is it still in development?
VP: AUTOGRAPH is my “giallo” script, inspired by the early murder/mystery thrillers of my favorite filmmaker, Dario Argento. It’s basically my love letter to him, and to film as a medium. As for being “in development”, I guess in that I now have a draft of it that I flat-out love and would love to do as a future project. It took me a long time to write the first draft- 3 years!- and after that, I was kind of burned out on it. Scott Mosier gave me some great notes but I was so exhausted with just having finished it finally that I couldn’t muster the energy to impliment his notes, so at the time I asked a friend- Pete DeWolf- to do it for me. I have Pete my first draft script, along with Scott’s notes, and asked him if he could do anything with it. Pete was able to work with Scott’s notes and we did two more drafts of the script together, but it still didn’t seem quite right and maybe the time wasn’t right, so I put the script aside.
About two years ago, I dug it out again and started anew. With a couple years of hindsight I was able to approach the script from a fresh perspective and really tighten it up and make it work. I really love what I’ve come up with in these recent drafts- the plotline is basically the same as the first draft I wrote way back when, but the execution is so much better. I still think it’s too “big” for me to try to do just yet- it’s a fairly complex, commercial script, and after all, I only have one $50,000 budgeted angry indie feature to my name- but if THE TRAIL gets made and gets me some attention, AUTOGRAPH will definitely be in my future.
CG: Do you have any new projects coming up?
VP: Just the ones I’ve mentioned, hopefully something will happen with them.
CG: What is your favorite View Askew/Kevin Smith flick?
VP: CHASING AMY, so far.
CG: And finally, is there anything you’d like to add that maybe people haven’t heard yet, regarding the world of View Askew?
VP: Off hand, nothing really comes to mind.
