- Just a few newsworthy items from Kevin’s twitter feed for ya this week, including a couple lines on his “Hit Somebody” pitch at Warner Brothers this week, fast ticket sales in DC, and a photo/news on a famous singer who’s contributing a new tune to “Cop Out”‘s final credits:
Via @RyanInHollywood “How’d HIT pitch go?” Dunno yet; maybe today. But I gave it my all in the room. All-heart pitch. Cried during 3rd act.
Via @hockeynight “How did the Hit Somebody pitch go?” Did the game proud and emptied the tank, sir. Puck’s in their zone now…
DC gig half sold-out after first day of sale. Never thought I’d say this, but THANK YOU, WASHINGTON! http://tinyurl.com/springtour2010
Unlikely pic of the week: Me, Harold Faltermeyer & Lady Marmalade herself, Patti LaBelle: http://preview.tinyurl.com/gitchigitchiyayadada
ThatKevinSmith: Via @dizzygirl “How the hell does she continue to look THAT good?” Can you believe she’s 64? She pwned COP OUT closing song, “SOUL BROTHER.”
Get the latest up-to-the-second tweets from Mr. Smith at his official Twitter feed.
You are at the archive for the Hit Somebody category &rarr
“Hit Somebody” Skates A Little Closer…
- Kevin would love to make his new hockey-centric drama “Hit Somebody” with Warner Brothers, and we sure think they’d be smart to stay in business with the guy. By way of his latest tweet, he’s heading into the studio today to pitch his idea officially:
Hey @MitchAlbom! Headed to WB for official HIT SOMEBODY pitch! Roll by the Joe & give it a rub for good luck. Big Thx. The Cup Run begins…
Kevin’s also recently said his goal for this film is to rival the “Chasing Amy” as far as acclaim and tone. We’ve got a fingers crossed for a successful pitch tonight, as we’d love to see Kev get right to work on this one after “Cop Out”.
He’d best do it fast though, as it sounds like idea thieves are lurking — In his latest podcast, ESPN’s Bill Simmons pitches a hockey film to director Jason Reitman that sounds remarkably like “Hit Somebody”. Check in around the 45 minute mark. When Reitman suggests that he’s writing a flim about an NHL referee, Simmons suggests that he should make a film about a goon. Reitman also mentions that Kevin told him he was doing “God’s work” when he mentioned he was serving on an NHL board a few years ago, so maybe he’s already aware of the “Hit Somebody” project.
Come on, WB — Let’s get this one in ink!
The “Twitter” Report…
- A mystery Red Bank event in August. Ticket leftovers in Toronto. Anderson-signed script pages for charity. All that and more in today’s edition of the “Twitter” report, actual tweets from @ThatKevinSmith:
Via @BrandonConsoli “what kind of feel is hit somebody gonna have?” I’m going for FORREST GUMP of sports films. Big valentine to the Game.
Via @LeakingPan “Just got tickets to a prescreening for tomorrow” Score me up, Homey: I wanna make A BIGGER COP OUT after HIT SOMEBODY.
Via @dibbs34 “LOVED The Smomcast. does she return for next weeks as well?” For two solid hours. One of ’em completely baked. S’awesome.
Re: Toronto’s Roy Thomson Show, Feb 6th – 23 tix freed up on TicketMaster. 63 full view. 48 partial view. http://tinyurl.com/tdotkev
Via @rosecity1980 “ticketmaster is turning me down, sir. says they got nothing…again” Call Roy Thomson box office. They’ve got some there.
DailyDevils: @NHLDevils want to get to 10k followers, and they’re giving out 100 pairs of tickets to do so! http://bit.ly/7bW2hK #devs10k
A request from Jeff Anderson (and a rare chance to get a signed page from his CLERKS II script): http://tinyurl.com/arequestfromjeffanderson
Via @themuckshow “is it worth the 9+hr drive from Ont 2 NJ just to see a store?” It’s gonna be, the weekend of August 2nd…
Yes, all we can confirm right now is that early August weekend will bring something big to Red Bank. But for now…No further deets. When we know, so will you.
View Askew NewsBites™
- Howdy folks, just a few newsbites for the middle of a fairly quiet week — We do hope you’ve scoured the awesome new SModcast site from top to bottom. Ming’s design is amazing, the site’s a work of art and yes, it’s got every single episode there at your fingertips. A great time to get on board or pass on to a friend. Share the love of the greatest podcast in all the land! Hit up www.smodcast.com today , and don’t forget to check out the freshly minted episode #101.
- While this tweet’s getting near a day old now, twitter user @spoilertvmovies sent out the following message:
If you are in the LOS ANGELES area on Thursday and would like to see a Sneak Screening of the new Bruce Wilis movie Cop Out – Contact us
It might be worth hitting them up with a tweet or message to see if you can still get into the show tomorrow. Seeing Kev’s flick almost 2 months early? Priceless.
- Scooper Pat sends us the following deets on Kevin’s involvement in the Hughes doc, “Don’t You Forget About Me”:
“…He basically explained his take on Hughes and his work. (As far as his films go, the doc focused mostly on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and Weird Science.) Kevin also mentioned that as much as the movies touched him, what he felt was missing for himself personally, he made into Clerks.”
Pretty cool stuff, can’t say we recall Kevin ever referring to “Clerks” as missing material from the other Hughes movies brought to life in Kevin’s own world, but we like it.
- We ran the scan last update, now here’s a bit more detail from Entertainment Weekly on that “Cop Out” image they ran in this week’s ish:
After an undercover stolen cell-phone bust goes bad in the cop comedy Cop Out, out Feb. 26, the detectives on the case — Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis — are hauled in for what director Kevin Smith calls “the classic ‘You guys are f– ups!’ scene.” Clearly, Willis isn’t too happy about it. “Later on, you’ll see three different forms of Bruce Willis action grimace,” says Smith. “But this is the getting-dressed-down-by-a-superior grimace, and that, mercifully, happens very little in the movie, because as we all know, Bruce Willis has no superior.”
As for Morgan’s cellular attire, Smith jokes that the suit was “definitely a controversial choice.” While Morgan was always supposed to wear the suit in the previous scene, Smith explains, “I remember in the script, it didn’t say that Tracy was still wearing the suit. [I thought], let’s spin it a little bit by leaving him in that ridiculous outfit — it just plays into what happened, and we get a few more [comedy] beats out of it. The first time we see Tracy [in the scene], it’s Bruce and Tracy in profile. So you see Bruce and you see this giant cell phone suit, and then Tracy pops his head out of the suit altogether and says, ‘Thank you captain!'”
The film also wasn’t always called Cop Out, either. You can click here for Smith’s ode to the film’s original risqué title, A Couple of Dicks, but the director says he stood firm about worries over the film’s salty R-rated language. “I’m sorry, in the world of cops, if people are firing guns at you, nobody says ‘freakin,'” says the director. “Except on TV, where they say ‘mother falcon’ all the time.”
- And finally to finish off the ‘Bites today, there’s nothing really new in this article, but we like how Empire brings up the tune of “Hit Somebody” and promotes their love of the idea — There’s even a direct link where you can listen to the song that’s inspiring Kev to write the film. Worth a listen.
Furthermore, Obsessed With Film logs a nice summary of the project so far, piecing together a lot of the news we’ve logged over the past few months in a tidy little package. Sort of a “Cliff’s Notes” of “Hit Somebody” in its early stages.
2009: The Year In Askew – Part One!
- It was a year like no other – 2009 marked quite possibly the most major changes in Kevin’s professional life since he started View Askew productions almost 20 years ago. For the first time, his film work would take place on a non-View Askew production, furthermore, a project he had not scripted. He would re-discover his love for hockey in a major way. He would blaze trails being among the first celebrities to make use of the Twitter service, taking it to a new level to interact with the fans. He would discover a new love for a popularly-prescribed herb (in some states). Most of all, Kevin Smith will mark 2009 as the year of the people, where his stage presence would rise to new levels of popularity, geography, and frequency.
Let’s take a look back at the last 12 months, shall we? 2009: The Year In Askew, part one, is straight ahead.
January 2009
2009 kicked off in an uncharacteristically quiet, low key way. Kevin’s normally regular web presence continued to remain at low-key levels. Interviews and promotions for his latest comic, “Batman: Cacophony”, which he wrote, continued — longtime friend and fan favorite Walt Flanagan drew the book. However, it was obvious that this was a much more subdued press push than the past. We’d soon know why. Meanwhile, as the shrinking home video window continued, a February release date was already announced for “Porno”, which had just hit theaters at the end of October. The Bluray release would be day and date with the DVD, a first for a View Askew flick. Despite a lower than expected box office bow, the film would wind up on many “Best of 2008” lists which were revealed this month.
While Kevin wasn’t posting to the web and conducting as many regular interviews, the great SModcast would not be stopped. Episode #71 hit the webs in early January. Before the year was out, Kevin and Scott would hit a significant SMod milestone. By the end of the month, the guys would have recorded 3 more episodes for the web.
As the month continued, details began to surface for the “Zack and Miri” discs. Thankfully, View Askew would not let us down once again as far as extras go — The package would include a brand new documentary, a pile of deleted scenes, bloopers, and lots more. As Kevin and Scott had discussed the film at length on SModcast, for the first time, a View Askew DVD would not include an audio commentary track (though the extras would more than make up for the lack of one). Kevin made a rare post to explain his feelings on the commentary and how SModcast was an even better replacement. Our extensive review of the film details the greatness of the discs.
His first live appearance of the year took place in Hartford, laying groundwork for what would be the most significant year for Kevin’s stage show yet. Meanwhile, Smith made plans for a major event in Toronto for early February…
February 2009
February 2009 arrived with rave reviews for the “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” DVD. Critics and fans alike praised the film and the disc’s abundance of extras, some who had unfortunately discovered the film for the first time in their homes. Canadians were gifted with versions of the disc that featured exclusive “scratch and sniff” packaging.
While it had now been over 2 years since the last Vulgarthon film festival, Toronto celebrated their own mini-film fest of sorts in early February. With Kevin coming to town for a historic two-night appearance at the beloved Roy Thompson Hall, where every one of his gigs continually sells out, the Bloor Cinema tacked on a 3-night film festival following the appearances. Kevin appeared live for a Q&A session following each of the films, creating Canada’s own mini-Vulgarthon — a bright spot among their normally brutally cold winter. Audience reports raved that the appearances were among the best ever, with Jason Mewes making a rare onstage appearance alongside Kevin for most of the second night.
Kevin capped February with more live shows in New York and Ohio. At these shows, rumors began to circle on what his next project would be. Would it be “Red State”? “Ranger Danger”? Something new? It seemed that anything was possible, though Kevin’s immediate concern was getting out in front of the public, as his love for being onstage continued to blossom, as fans continued to pack seats to watch Kevin spend a few hours taking questions and entertaining crowds with one of the best impromptu shows in the land….A theme that would continue throughout the year. Until…
March 2009
In the most exciting, unexpected announcement of the year, March 2009 kicked off with a bombshell — Kevin had become a director for hire. But not just for any studio, and not just for any movie. Warner Brothers pictures signed Kevin to direct a major motion picture starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, titled “A Couple of Dicks”. The film was one of the great unpublished screenplays of 2008, so to see this script land in Kevin’s lap was a dialogue-lover’s dream. Full of raunchy, hilarious text, the script was the perfect fit for Kevin’s sensibilities. It would also mark the first time that Kevin would direct a feature film that was not from his own script. News agencies across the web picked up the news, and it appeared that we now had our main project/theme for 2009. This would be the year of “A Couple of Dicks”.
Within mere days of the announcement, rumors already started to circle that the title may change, to the more tame “A Couple of Cops”.
In mid-March, “Reaper”, a show with a pedigree similar to “Dicks” (Kevin directed, but did not write, the pilot episode), returned to the CW airwaves for a second season. While building on its mythology and critical acclaim, the program would not survive past its second-season finale.
In comic news, artist Walt Flanagan revealed that he and Kevin were working on a yet-to-be-titled follow-up project to the highly successful “Batman: Cacophony”. Before the year was out, we’d not only know its identity, but have quite a few issues on shelves to enjoy. Astute listeners to SModcast soon suggested that it had slipped that a “Batman” series was being written after the first series was already in the can, prompting us to speculate correctly that the next series would once again feature the caped crusader.
As March “marched” on, Kevin’s signing to direct “A Couple of Dicks” continued to generate quite a bit of press and speculation. In the middle of the month, though, another film briefly stole the spotlight — After a great deal of anticipation due to his praise of an early cut of the film, the world finally got to see “Watchmen”, one of the greatest graphic novels of all time, come to life on the big screen. And as one highly-anticipated geek movie debuted, one of the most beloved geek series of recent memory concluded — Sci Fi aired the final two hours of the incredible “Battlestar Galactica”, a show beloved to Kevin (who had the pleasure of making a set visit before everything was struck and boxed for good).
Around this time, when Kevin was in a particularly introspective mood, journalist Lee Stranhan scheduled what would become one of the most amazing sit-down interviews of his entire career. The interview, which was conducted earlier in the month, would feature the director discussing all aspects of his life and career in an even more open and honest way than ever before (a feat many thought not even possible for the already public Smith).
Since “Clerks”, hockey had always played a role in the films of View Askew. But in late March, Kevin laid groundwork to take his love of the game to a whole new level. After being touched by the story of Wayne Gretzky and his father Walter, Kevin mounted efforts to bring himself, fans, and friends to Brantford, Ontario for June’s Walter Gretzky Street Hockey Invitational. During an appearance in Vancouver, he also mentioned, for the first time, that he had an interest in making a hockey-themed film in the future.
By the end of March, SModcast, still rolling strong, had celebrated its 81st episode of free entertainment.
April 2009
It would become a buzzword on many reporter’s lists of the best of 2009. Twitter. Tweeting. While the service had been active for a few years prior to 2009, it wasn’t until this year that the mainstream embraced this service, burgeoned by the sudden celebrity love for the technology. By eliminating publicists, for the first time, celebs could use twitter as a direct line to their fans. By contrast, this was a practice that Kevin had adopted from early in his career with ViewAskew.com. Still, always being in the forefront of technology, Smith saw Twitter as yet another viable communication vehicle. Frequent use of the service started in early April, when Kevin trekked back to the east coast, where he would live for many months as production on “A Couple of Dicks” took place. The film would shoot in and around New York City, mostly on location.
Not ones to shy away from technology, News Askew also began tweeting our headlines and stories as well, giving readers yet another way to keep up with the latest.
Following a pre-production trip into NYC, Kevin jetted to Vail, Colorado, where he was presented with the Renegade Award at the Vail Film Festival, celebrating his entire body of work.
The good news continued, as Kevin made a weeklong visual clue game of one of the biggest announcements of the year: He would bring his beloved Q&A act to the stage of New York City’s prestigious Carnegie Hall in mid-June. To sweeten the announcement, it was also revealed that a new book would arrive in the Fall: “Shooting the Shit with Kevin Smith” would collect some of the best moments of SModcast in print form.
Hockey came back in a big way in April, when Kevin revealed he would be writing a new blog for the NHL to highlight the experience of watching the Devils in the playoffs. He’d also purchased a luxury box at Prudential’s center city Newark arena, The Rock, where he would entertain family and friends and introduce newcomers to the great game of ice hockey, with his beloved Jersey team.
May 2009
With the popularity of SModcast continuing on iTunes and Quick Stop Entertainment, Kevin and Scott decided to try an experiment – It was announced that the first LIVE SModcast would be held next month in Canada, the same weekend that the crew would be heading north for the Gretzky hockey tournament. Dubbed “Stocky Night in Canada”, the limited event would sell out in record time.
We also had a new date to add to calendars – Before film had started to roll on the movie, we had a tentative release date for “A Couple of Dicks” – February 26, 2010. Those brothers Warner sure don’t mess around.
By the middle of the month, Entertainment Weekly announced another newsworthy release — Kevin and Walt would indeed return with that speculated “Batman” series. This one, titled “The Widening Gyre” was already half completed with issue 1 set to debut in August. In addition to this expected news, it was also revealed that Kevin’s “Green Hornet” script ideas would see the light of day in comic form. A new miniseries would be on the way following the completion of “Gyre”.
The month of big announcements continued when on May 14th, Kevin revealed to MTV that he wasn’t kidding around when he mentioned that hockey-themed movie idea in March. “Hit Somebody” would be the title of this one, based on a Warren Zevon song penned by author Mitch Albom. Following the announcement, quite a bit of articles on and by Kevin tied into the sport. It was apparent that hockey was on the brain, and in a very big way.
Followed by all the good news in May, a spot of bad news arrived on the 19th via Twitter – Star Ethan Suplee revealed that he and longtime-Askewer Jason Lee’s hilarious sitcom “My Name is Earl” had been cancelled by NBC. A glimmer of hope via a save by network TBS would come briefly before the official June cancellation announcement.
With filming getting close to rolling, May capped off with the announcement of two more cast members for “Dicks”: Seann William Scott and Adam Brody. By the end of May, the cast would have gathered for the first full read-through of the script.
June 2009
Production might have been starting on “A Couple of Dicks” as of June 2nd, but Kevin wasn’t going back to work behind the cameras without a gift to the fans — He and Scott presented SModcast #87 on the eve of the shoot. Due to the public nature of the on-location summer in New York City set, fans were quick to locate the cast and crew and snapped the first of what would be many looks at Willis, Morgan, and Smith in action.
Though filming had begun, Kevin wasn’t about to let that stop his hockey-themed weekend plans in Canada. Starting on June 6th, he and a large crew of friends and fans took to Brantford, Ontario for the Wayne Gretzky Hockey Tournament and the first live SModcast. The View Askew all-star team name? Puck U.
Then, on Saturday, the first ever live SModcast found Smith and Mosier on stage before a sold-out crowd of 1,100 where history was made.
On June 17th, we arrived at one of the biggest events of the year, and one of the most significant in Kevin’s life — Kevin took the stage to a sold out crowd in Carnegie Hall. Some of the world’s greatest performers have stepped onto that stage, and Kevin had now joined the ranks of a very elite few — Especially from the point of view that this was a one man show, where he’d single-handedly entertain the packed house for almost three full hours. News Askew was fortunate enough to witness this magical and historic event – One of Kevin’s finest performances of all-time.
While the first half of the year would have already celebrated a fairly busy, public schedule for Kevin as far as events, the next six months would set records, as Kevin announced a very aggressive Fall Tour schedule which would take him across the United States, to new cities, and abroad.
Finally, as June came to a close, more confirmed casting reports for “A Couple of Dicks” that built on an already impressive cast: Michele Trachtenberg, Kevin Pollak, and the great Jason Lee were all confirmed for supporting or cameo roles.
Join us later this week as we wrap it up, and cover the last 6 months of 2009. See you then.