• Yes folks, we’re talking Paris, Mewes, uncensored, clear as day, and yes, even some exposed breasts — Apparently Golden Palace, the gambling website, has quite a stake in the film “Bottoms Up” for sponsorship. So much so that a preliminary reel of clips from the film where the plugs appear has been made available. So, what you’re going to see here is 3 almost complete scenes, featuring Paris and a little bit of Mewes (and, as we said, quite a bit of Golden Palace, including an ad on a barechested female model, guys). So, enjoy. We figure in making this mention you folks are gonna flood the site and it’s gonna slow down, so enjoy it while it lasts! Mewes & Paris Go “Bottoms Up” – First Live Footage Here!

• Chris Moore used his space in the Project Greenlight blog to indicate that he’s rather certain that the project, following the 3rd outing, is quite likely, dead . This is sad news, as we not only believed in the project itself, but were HUGE fans of the reality TV program that came of it — In fact, it may very well have been the best reality on TV. So, Greenlight, should this be your last run, you shall be missed. Let’s hope Feast becomes a huge success despite the Bravo ratings for the TV show (which are what Moore cites as responsible for the prognosis). Let’s not count Greenlight totally out yet, spread the word on Feast, and perhaps it can still be saved. We’d love to see a year 4.

• Just a quick note here to say thanks for all your concerns regarding the blog’s disappearance over the weekend — We’re now happy to report that the missing blog is only temporary, and those of you who wrote to tell us how much you enjoyed having that format, the RSS feed, and all that good stuff…Well, we think you’ll be quite pleased again in a short amount of time. Preparations are being made, so stay tuned, and don’t stray too far — Good things are coming. Thanks for your patience during this transition.

• We told you it’d be back — Didn’t we? Yes folks, your voices were heard…You wanted the blog back and now you’ve got it — Kevin’s “My Boring Ass Life” posts can now once again be read in a daily calendar format, at a brand new url: www.silentbobspeaks.com!

You’ll find the new domain contains all you knew and loved and a bit more — A photos section, fully functional RSS 2.0 and RSS .92 feeds (bug fixed, thanks to some speedy detective work from Ming), and more. You may notice that comments now link you back to “The Board”, as it’s easier to have all the chatter in one spot.

So, there you have it, folks. What a day, eh? Lucas closes out the prequel trilogy and the blog is BACK! Enjoy.

• And just to continue with the Lee news for the day, TV Guide, always a tough critic, had good things to say about the show (and an interestng tidbit we hadn’t heard before):

• Raquel Castro attended last week’s Nintendo World grand opening celebration in New York City (and even made off with a Nintendo DS, games, and a hefty store play gift card, for coming to the event). Pretty good work if you can get it, eh? The store opened officially to the public on Saturday. Anyone been?
• Mark Hamill relates his Jay & Bob story in this profile for the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette:

He has resisted offers to play obvious spin-offs or satires of Skywalker over the years, but he relented when Kevin Smith came calling.

Smith, a notorious comic book and ?Star Wars? geek, asked Skywalker to play a temperamental version of himself and somewhat profane variation on Skywalker for his movie ?Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.?

?When I read the script, I laughed and said to my wife, ?There is no way Lucasfilm is going to sanction this movie. This thing is filthy. There are 30 f-words on every page, lesbian sex, pot-smoking. This is just not going to fly.?

?When I called Kevin back I said, ?I?d love to do it, but you?re going to have a problem clearing it with legal.? And he told me he?d already sent the script to Lucasfilm and the only thing they objected to was the color of the light sabers. They wanted the light sabers to be a different color from the ones in the ?Star Wars? movies.

?If that doesn?t give you an idea about what a bunch of nerds they are,? Hamill says, laughing.

• The always well-written Asbury Park Press brings us yet another great piece with Kevin, featuring new interview quotes, as they discuss “Silent Bob Speaks”, the Tonight Show, Affleck, and the blog:

AN OPEN BOOK

Few subjects off-limits for filmmakerPublished in the Asbury Park Press 05/15/05
BY MARK VOGER, STAFF WRITER

For a second there, it looked like Kevin Smith was in real trouble.

The Shore native and filmmaker behind “Clerks” and “Jersey Girl” was on “The Tonight Show” hawking his new book, “Silent Bob Speaks: The Collected Writings of Kevin Smith,” when he launched into a risky bit of banter about how he would have written and directed “The Passion of the Christ.”

As Smith described his fantasy version, in which ninjas swooped down to rescue Jesus, there was nervous laughter from the audience and, worse, a frozen smile on the face of Jay Leno.

Recalls Smith (whose next film will be titled “The Passion of the Clerks”): “That was about the sixth, seventh time I’ve been a panel guest on “The Tonight Show.’ You do this pre-interview process, where you give them an idea of what you want to talk about. So he (Leno) kind of knew I was going to go into “The Passion of the Clerks’ vs. “The Passion of the Christ.’

“But it’s such a conservative period in our country right now that I think for a moment he was just like, “Wow, this could really go badly.’ ”

For a moment, everyone seemed nervous ? that is, except for Smith.

“I had done that story so many times at college gigs and what-not,” he says, “that I knew it would totally work as long as I got to the punchline.”

That punchline had one of the ninjas say of the crucifixion: “Not on my watch!” The result was a roar of audience laughter ? and a relieved Leno.

“So it worked out,” Smith says, “but I think there was a moment where he was kind of like, “Oh, (expletive), this could really go south.’ ”

Smith’s “Passion” bit was tame compared to the contents of “Silent Bob Speaks,” which Smith compiled for Miramax Books at the suggestion of Miramax Films honcho Harvey Weinstein, who has distributed Smith films.

“The contents are a bunch of columns I did for a British magazine called Arena a couple of years back,” Smith says. “After that, I did a column called “Developing the Monkey’ for a movies-comics-TV Web site (www.psycomic.com), basically talking about the casting of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.’ I started doing online (journals) when we were making “Jersey Girl,’ but it didn’t last very long; I just got wrapped up in the picture. The rest were just sundry magazine articles I’ve written over the years, including one for New Jersey Monthly.”

“Silent Bob Speaks” is not for the squeamish. When Smith describes the regrettable side effects of so-called “fat blocker” pills, he spares no unpleasantries. He writes frankly about being diagnosed with morbid obesity; being at the receiving end of a “lap dance”; his disdain for Britney Spears and Reese Witherspoon; his wife posing nude for an oil painting; and, yes, the filmmaking process.

How will screen stud Ben Affleck, a frequent player in Smith’s films, react when he reads about Smith’s “heterosexual crush” on him (along with descriptions of acts that can’t be shared in polite company)?

“He’s seen that before,” Smith says, “so he’s kind of way-familiar with that quote. You know, he’s kind of charmed by it. He realizes that I wouldn’t have a shot in the world with him, even if he was gay and I was gay.”

It begs the question: What is off-limits for Smith?

“Basically, other people’s lives are kind of off-territory for me,” the filmmaker says.

“To me, nothing is out of bounds with the exception of talking about somebody else’s trials and tribulations. Because some of that stuff, I guess, would be private ? that people share with you that really isn’t yours to tell.

“But my stuff? As long as it’s my life, then I’m kind of OK with talking about it. The problem that you run into is that sometimes your life is other people’s life as well, like (Smith’s wife) Jen. But I just don’t know how else to go about it.

“I feel like I could talk about my life and anything that goes on in my life. I’m doing that to an even greater degree at our Web site (www.viewaskew.com) right now than in the book. There’s a section of the Web site called “My Boring-(expletive) Life,’ where I literally do everything that’s happened in my day. That tends to get very detail-oriented.”

For Smith, all of this public confession has yielded a dividend.

Says the filmmaker: “I think I have a much easier time with my own trials or tribulations by expressing them publicly anyway.”

Read it at APP’s site as well.

• Some wonderful news comes to us today as networks begin to announce their schedule for new and renewed programs for the Fall of 2005. “My Name is Earl”, starring Jason Lee, is the only new sitcom to make it to NBC’s fall premeire schedule (others come midseason). The show will air at 9:00 PM on NBC Tuesdays, which also indicates it’ll be on the edgier side of things (the pilot’s script certainly reads that way). We’re excited to have a dude who got his acting start in a View Askew production starring in a prime time show for the very first time. Some blurbs and article links on the show and NBC’s schedule:

NEW YORK TIMES

“…They were watching a seven-minute clip assembled from the pilot “My Name Is Earl,” a half-hour comedy starring Jason Lee about a ne’er-do-well who wins a lottery and vows to make amends to everyone he’s ever offended.

Had the producers of the program been there, they would surely have been elated that the three people gathered around an editing console – Kevin Reilly, president of NBC Entertainment; Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal Television Group, and John D. Miller, chief marketing officer of the television group – were laughing, heartily and continuously.”

CNN

“NBC said Monday that it will introduce six new series in September, including only one comedy: “My Name is Earl,” featuring Jason Lee (”Chasing Amy”) as a downtrodden lottery winner.”

ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH

“…The comedy addition is “My Name Is Earl,” with Jason Lee as a loser who decides to right all his life’s wrongs after winning a fortune in the lottery. Jamie Pressly plays Earl’s wife in the sitcom from Greg Garcia (”Yes, Dear”).”

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

The press release states: “At 9:00 p.m., “My Name Is Earl” is an innovative, irreverent, single-camera comedy that should work well as a lead-in to the critically hailed “The Office” (television’s most upscale comedy).”

Congratulations to Jason Lee on what’s sure to be an exciting, talked-about program this Fall. And don’t forget, Lee’s Mallrats co-star Ethan Suplee has also joined the cast. For information on all shows expected to debut or return next year, see The Futon Critic.

• After many trials and tribulations, we’ve got our News Askew Poll Topic back and coded here at the site! Yes, this long-lost feature has now returned, and will be a regular part of your daily visits. The poll will live on your left sidebar, where we’ll change the topic at intervals decided by us (might be weekly, or longer, depending on the topic, alternate topics, number of votes, etc).

We’ve tried to keep it as fair as possible, so users should only be able to vote once per topic. We’re also going to be rehashing some older topics from years back, as we figure there’s a lot of new users here who never voted, new flicks and actors to add into the mix and, well, we just plain forgot some that we used before.

Of course, like all else, we thrive on YOUR participation. So please vote, but ALSO — Send us your topic ideas! If we use your poll topic, we’ll of course give you a mention on the front page when it goes live, and you’ll have the joy of knowing that your question is being pondered by the heaps of fans worldwide.

So, enjoy our latest feature addition — The poll topic! More new features to come during our big Spring cleaning event. Stay tuned.

• Spring cleaning events at News Askew continue, as we’re happy to re-introduce a Sunday Night feature – News Askew Retro! Retro brings back stories from the past, interesting tidbits that we dig up from the library here at News Askew that may have been forgotten, fun reads, or just plain bizarre. Every Sunday night, we’ll select an item from the archives to share. For some of you, possibly for the first time.

To celebreate the re-emergence of this feature, though, we’re going to be doing something a bit different for a while. We’ve dug into the tape archives and dug up some audio material of never-before-heard stuff on the web, back from the very early days of View Askew. Some will be quick, some more lengthy, but all come to us from View Askew’s own collection of appearances. We’re talking days before News Askew existed, so most of this stuff will take you back to the Clerks and Mallrats days. All clips are in MP3 format.

Our first is just a quick taste — A small bumper from a Boston radio station on a class appearance Kevin was making back in 1996. Hear Kevin from back when Clerks and Mallrats were still in their infancy stages! We’ll see you every week with more Retro action. More to come!

• For those of you that had been reading Kevin’s local blog here at News Askew, please note the link has changed — We’re now linking direct to the View Askew WWWBoard where the blog is posted and updated. As a result of the blog no longer running in this software, those RSS feed, for those of you who subscribed, will also be discontinued.

The left sidebar link will take you there, or you can just Update your bookmarks with this link. Please continue to visit and post on the diary entries, as the blog has NOT ceased production, it’s just going to be housed only in its original location hence forth. Thanks.