Since I live just a few blocks from the set of Clerks II (opening August 18th, 2006), I thought I would share this. This is (was) the filming set of the fast food joint, Mooby’s, where a majority of the film takes place. In the film, Mooby’s is set in New Jersey, but was actually filmed in Buena Park, California. Near Knott’s Berry Farm.

This was originally a Burger King which I occasionally visited. It wasn’t a very good Burger King – kind of run down and the food was so-so. After it closed down, it wasn’t much of a surprise that it would be demolished. Little did I know that it would be the future set of Clerks II before it’s demise. I was lucky enough to see the transformation into Mooby’s take place prior to the October 2005 filming, which was pretty cool.

I drove by the location everyday on my way to pick up my son from preschool. Always checking for signs of the impending demolition. On Friday March 3, 2006, there was a bull dozer in the now defunct Mooby’s parking lot – not good. Monday 6, 2006, it was gone.

Sunday March 5, 2006. Aware of what was about to happen, I took some pictures of the dilapidated building.

It’s kind of sad to see it that it’s gone now.

Earl Hickey, Meet Stewie Griffin

‘Earl’ DVD to feature mini-episode with ‘Family Guy’ character

LOS ANGELES — Imagine for a moment a TV world in which Earl Hickey, after winning his $100,000 and getting run over by a car, doesn’t see Carson Daly talking about karma from his hospital bed.

Imagine, instead, that he instead took a life lesson from … Stewie Griffin.

Or, save yourself some imaginative effort and just wait until the first season of “My Name Is Earl” is released on DVD sometime later this year. Because then you’ll find out.

Greg Garcia, creator of the hit NBC comedy, unveiled plans for the show’s first-season DVD set Tuesday night (March 7) to the audience at the Museum of Television & Radio’s annual Paley Festival. He says it should be released before the show’s second season begins in the fall, and it will contain a fair number of bells and whistles including commentary tracks and selections from “hours and hours” of gag-reel footage cast and crew have accumulated this year.

“We’re actually doing 15-minute mini-episode [that asks] what if Earl [Jason Lee] passed by Carson Daly and landed on Stewie from ‘Family Guy,’” Garcia says. Garcia is a former producer on “Family Guy,” and both it and “Earl” are produced by 20th Century Fox TV.

Lee and Garcia also discussed the origins of television’s most famous facial hair since the heyday of “Magnum, P.I.” Garcia says that NBC initially was hesitant about having a mustachioed Earl, “but Jason said, ‘Trust me, I look funny with facial hair.’”

The network did, however, convince Lee to trim the ‘stache back a little bit. “I originally went for a fu manchu, but NBC said no. I guess it made me look a little bit too trashy,” he says. “So we sort of shaved off the chu and left the fu man.”

“My Name Is Earl” is in the homestretch of production for this season, with three episodes and part of a fourth left to shoot. Garcia says in the season finale, we’ll find out the No. 1 item on Earl’s karmic to-do list, which was the misdeed he performed just before he won the lottery.

Other upcoming episodes include two that were screened for the audience Tuesday: one in which Earl and Randy (Ethan Suplee) try to make up for all the bad Mother’s Days they’ve given their mom (Nancy Linehan and Beau Bridges reprise their roles as Earl’s parents) and a flashback-heavy episode that shows how Earl, Randy, Joy (Jaime Pressly) and Darnell (Eddie Steeples) lived through Y2K.

I shot the menus for “Evening Harder” yesterday.

Those who recall the “Evening With” menus will remember me coming out, waiting impatiently for the viewer to choose “Play” or whatever. We’re doing that again, though with British and Canadian flavors (i.e. – you’ll see me with hockey stick and gloves in/on hand; on roller blades, no less).

When I ask Rosario about her childhood, she starts at the beginning–right at conception.

“I was conceived on Avenue X in Brooklyn with a prison condom that broke,” she says (a prison condom being a condom they give you when you leave prison, just to clarify). “My mom was ready to get an abortion. She was at the clinic, had an appointment. And then she says she felt me move, and she fell in love with me right then. But I was just a speck, so it wasn’t me moving. It was probably gas.”

Okay, but what about after that? What about her life growing up?

Also not so ordinary. Dawson–a mix of Puerto Rican, Native American, Cuban, African-American, and Irish–grew up in a squat on the Lower East Side. When the family moved in, there was no electricity, no water, a hole in the floor, and a crack house across the street. Her mom was sixteen when Rosario was born and kept her in line with an interesting discipline technique: licking. “She’d lick me right across my cheek like a cougar. And it was just so humiliating.”

You can find the full Rosario article in the April 2006 issue of Esquire.

12. The Girl who ‘Lights up a Room’: Of the dozens (hundreds?) of evaluations that have been conducted over the years be it for Playboy, or the Intern Beauty Pageants this one from 1997 stands out. Judges Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes and AJ Benza had to hand down the bad news to an aspiring actress who thought she lit up a room. Not only did she not light up a room, Howard recommended that she go light up a cigarette.

New York Times: “A Tent Without Tent-Poles”

“…During the proceedings, Kevin Smith recalled that he had a first date with his wife on the night he was a Spirit winner and that she responded enthusiastically in ways we won’t go into. He went on to suggest that the night’s winners might have the drawn the same response from her.

Standing outside after the show, Mr. Smith was asked whether this year’s Oscars seemed almost redundant, being centered on just the kind of small films that the Spirit awards are. (”Brokeback Mountain” won best picture and Ang Lee best director — Imagine that.)

“Do any awards show matter, really?” he said, not in a cranky way, but just asking the question. “I’m no expert, I guess. I am not the awards kind of director. I’m the director that you call when you want to give out awards to other directors.” Terrence Howard, who chose a crystal encrusted Bluetooth earpiece while selecting goodies, said there was no danger that he would join Three 6 Mafia in their performance of “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” “Nah, I think my rapping days are over,” he told the Bagger outside one of the press tents.”

---

LA Times: “An Oscar Prequel?”

“…Comedian/actress Sarah Silverman served as this year’s master of ceremonies, but her salty and sexual banter was easily upstaged by director Kevin Smith, who presented the best director honor with a wind-up laced with expletives — many involving his own wife — that drew groans and catcalls from the audience.”

---

E! Online: “Spirit Awards Go for ‘Broke’”

“…While show producers might have feared that the notoriously potty-mouthed host may have kept the censors busy, the raunchiest moment of the night actually came from Best Director presenter Kevin Smith, who turned his remembrance of his first Spirit Awards experience into an over-sharing anecdote about him and his wife’s first lovemaking escapade.”

Today, I’ll be presenting at the Independent Spirit Awards (broadcast live on IFC at 2pm PST). The last time I was at the Spirit Awards, I not only won Best Screenplay for “Chasing Amy”, but also, the heart (and vag) of a one Jennifer Schwalbach. Yes, that Spirit Awards ceremony eight years ago represented my first date with Jen. And what a date it was…

I mean, Jesus – she gave up the pussy later that night.

But, mind you, this wasn’t just any ol’ pussy. This was the pussy that changed my life: the pussy that turned me into a married man and Father (and not necessarily in that chronological order, either). This was the pussy that aided and abetted in me falling in love with Jen (although, I could argue that I’d kinda done that when I interviewed with her a month prior).

Shockingly, this’ll be the first time we’ve attended the Spirit Awards since that fateful afternoon. You’d imagine that, based on sentimentality alone, Schwalbach and I would’ve made Spirit Awards attendance an annual thing. And yet, oddly, neither of us have stepped foot in that tent on the beach in Santa Monica in eight years. So today’s being treated as something of an anniversary date (even though, technically, the date of that Spirit Awards/First Fuck in ‘98 was March 21st). M’lady and I are getting gussied up (which, for me, means putting on a jacket instead of a shooter), and we’re gonna trip the lights fantastic, waltzing down memory lane, this time hand-in-hand.

And then, post ceremony, we’re gonna bone our brains out – just like we did eight years ago.

Today marks another anniversary in the Askewniverse as well. Peep this…

Ladies and gentlemen, in that document, emailed ten years ago today, lay the origins of www.viewaskew.com. A few months later, Ming and I took the site live, and it changed both of our lives forever (and, happily, I would stop using terms like “tres’, tres’”).

Ming Chen is, oftentimes, the unsung hero of the Askewniverse. Had I never been directed to his “Clerks” shrine site a decade back, you probably wouldn’t be reading this now. www.viewaskew.com became the stage from which we grew our audience and met so many of the folks who’ve kept me employed for the last ten years. Without Ming, I wouldn’t have been as in-touch with the folks that watch our flicks as I am; and keeping in touch with those folks has made all the difference in not just my career, but my life as well. www.viewaskew.com has shaped and defined my life and career in such a way, that Ming has become about as indispensable to me at this point as Scott Mosier or Jason Mewes is; meaning he’s not just a guy I work with, but also a great sounding board and friend.

The websites in the Askewniverse family number many at this point (www.viewaskew.com, www.clerks2.com, www.silentbobspeaks.com, www.moviepoopshoot.com, www.moviesaskew.com, www.jayandsilentbob.com, www.newsaskew.com, etc., etc); none of them would’ve existed at all, were it not for Ming Chen.

Take a bow, Asian Design Major.

An Evening With Kevin Smith 2

Fans of the View Askew universe may want to decide to circle the week of August 18th, 2006 on their calendars, for that is the theatrical release date for Clerks II — which, by all accounts, is shaping up to be the most profane and wildly funny film in the Jay & Silent Bob series. But also look for the long-talked-about An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder DVD (and possibly Blu-Ray) to be released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment conveniently timed to coincide with the sequel. Naga nootch!