21. CLERKS

With its cruddy lensing and sound, Kevin Smith’s way-low-budget debut feels like a bootleg copy of an adolescent mind.

AVC: You were in Zack And Miri Do A Porno with Seth Rogen. You’ve both worked extensively with Judd Apatow, who is famous for encouraging improvisation, where Kevin Smith is known for discouraging ad-libbing. Did Smith allow improvisation on Zack?

CR: Definitely. This was supposed to be the first movie he did that on. He just told us to go for it, to do our thing. I wouldn’t have guessed that he’d ever discouraged improvisation, but I guess he’s just used to doing scenes down to the letter. He was very encouraging about doing improv at this particular time.

AVC: Were there any particular improvisations you were especially proud of?

CR: There were a couple of things. Tisha Campbell came out with both guns blazing. She was going off. She was totally off-book, so I just had to catch up with her and go with her toe-to-toe. Kevin’s direction was that at first I was kind of stunned, but then I think, “Are you going to take that?” So I’m like, “Oh yeah, here we go.” Then the titty auditions, that was all improv. Kevin just told us to start here, then end up somewhere else.

Read the whole thing at AV Club.

7. “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”


Writer/director Kevin Smith found his stroke once again with this riotous and surprisingly heartfelt comic yarn about a platonic couple (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) who discover they’re in love while making a nudie flick. The movie encapsulates Smith’s heedless joy of filmmaking.

“Jersey Girl” (2004)

Continuing his streak of playing #2s, Damon reunited with his “Dogma” director Kevin Smith for a bit of déjà vu. Shortly before he became a household name with “Good Will Hunting,” Damon took a minor role in “Chasing Amy” as “Shawn Oran – Executive #2,” an MTV producer who tries to lure Holden and Banky (Ben Affleck and Jason Lee) to adapt their comic book for TV. In “Jersey Girl,” Lee and Damon sit across from Affleck’s Ollie Trinke as PR execs #1 and #2, respectively, who interview Trinke for a job. Smith laments on the DVD commentary, “You don’t know how disheartening it is to be at a test screening and get cards back where like ‘scene liked most: Jason Lee and Matt Damon’ because you’re like dude, they were in the movie for a minute.”

The “Clerks: The Animated Series” scenario

This is by far the most depressing of the three scenarios. The network might initially give support to the show in the conceptual phase even though they’re not entirely sold on it. Once the show has got a few episodes in the can, the network executives will balk at the prospect of giving it even the tiniest bit of support.

This has happened many times before with other shows, I’m certain, but there is one particularly ugly example that comes to mind for me. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with movie writer/director Kevin Smith. Back in the early part of the decade he was approached by ABC to have his very first film, “Clerks”, translated into an animated series. Even though Kevin’s involvement with the project was minimal compared to that of his films the project looked good on paper. It had Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson & Jason Mewes reprising their roles as Dante, Randal & Jay, so what could go wrong? Everything!

First of all, the often vulgar “Clerks” was a concept that was not at all compatible with ABC, which is owned by Disney. If it had been optioned by a cable network like Comedy Central or Cartoon Network there was a chance it would have translated quite well to the small screen. Even the Fox network could have made it work, given their success with shows like “The Simpsons” & “Family Guy”. But because ABC took it on the show’s producers attempted to transform “Clerks” into something it definitely wasn’t: a normal animated sitcom. It ended up being such a watered-down version of the source material that it turned off a lot of Kevin Smith’s normally loyal and forgiving fanbase (myself included) and viewers unfamiliar with Smith’s other work just didn’t connect with it.

It doesn’t help that ABC seemed to revel in making a bad situation worse. It delayed the premiere of the series from early Spring to Summer, then it made the decision to air the fourth episode of the series as the pilot episode. The network then aired the second episode, which was a “flashback” episode with the flashback sequences referring almost solely to what was intended to be the first episode. With seemingly the entire deck stacked against it, “Clerks: The Animated Series” was cancelled after merely two out of the six completed episodes having aired.

Meanwhile, check out a look at this DVD cover for “Porno” that was discovered on the Amazon.com servers. This likely means we’ll see a confirmed date and some real specs on the disc’s contents soon. The cover looks like a newly composed shot to feature the entire cast, and doesn’t match any of the previous poster artwork that we’ve seen. We like it, though.

The only item giving us pause is the news that the Bluray release of “Clerks 2” has been bumped up a week to February 3rd:

The Weinstein Company has officially announced the Blu-ray release of Kevin Smith’s ‘Clerks II’, which is due to hit store shelves on February 3rd. Originally scheduled for a February 10th release, this two disc set will feature all the extras from the previous HD DVD release. No technical specs have been announced at this time.

Typically, studios like to release similar titles on the same day, so if you’re going to the store to pick up one, you’ll get both — So PERHAPS “Porno” will also bump up a week. We’ll let ya know as soon as we know.

“As of 2008, he is working on Marry Me To Death, which follows a suicidal man hiring a destitute woman to marry and then murder him to leave her with the insurance money.”

That’s all we know so far, though we’re fans of his first effort, “Now You Know”, so we’ll certainly keep an eye on this project and let you know here at News Askew as we hear more.

1. Booberty

The time in a girl’s life when she begins maturing into a woman, as shown by her developing boobs.

“Wow, did you see what happened to Brittany over the summer? She must have hit booberty, because she sure is filling out that tank top.”

They are using the “stick-figure” poster as an icon, but also use Seth’s and Elizabeth’s heads from the “banned” poster, adapting the stick figure phrase to “They made a movie so naughty we can only show their faces.” In Singapore, the film is rated R21 for “Sexual Content & Crude Humour”, but we hear that rating is quite common. No cuts were made from what we hear, so you should be seeing the same film we saw in the States, in all its raunchy glory. Enjoy!

16. ELIZABETH BANKS

Over a few weeks this fall, Elizabeth Banks babysat Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott in Role Models; evinced Laura Bush’s quiet devotion to her hubby in Oliver Stone’s W.; and tackled her first title role, as an amateur porn star, in Zack and Miri Make a Porno — all with enviable ease. After years of thankless roles as The Girlfriend (to Ryan Reynolds, Mark Wahlberg, even a robot Eddie Murphy), the 34-year-old actress is finally Having Her Moment, even if she can’t quite make the poster for Zack and Miri. ”It’s a f—ing drawing of a girl,” Banks says with a full-bodied laugh. ”I can’t even get myself on the f—ing poster. What moment am I having?” We have a feeling, with her wide range and genuine charm, she’s going to be having plenty more chances to be front and center.

Clerks

Kevin Smith isn’t really a director you’d associate with sequels, and thus eyebrows were raised when he announced he was revisiting his debut film, Clerks, to find out what had happened to Randal and Dante since we met them last. Leaving a 12 year gap between the films, this gave Smith the space to build some genuine evolution into his characters, and he gladly took the chance to do so. And while the worldwide box office take of $26m may not raise eyebrows, set against the sizeable business it’s done on DVD and the low production budget, it’s proven to be a very profitable enterprise. More than that, though, Clerks II was a terrific sequel, and one that makes the rumours of a third movie later down the line very interesting indeed…

Truly Trivial

This actor was considered for the male lead in Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

The answer links to the great Jason Bateman, whom Kevin confirmed was NEVER in the running for the role (so the question is incorrect), though Kevin did in the same answer to us reveal that he’d love to work with Bateman in the future. Let’s hope it happens. We think the dude would be a fantastic fit for Kevin’s words. Catch ya back here soon!

Q: This is probably your most emotional film. I mean it’s close to Chasing Amy, because that had some emotional moments, but this one was like this had like naked, open emotion in it. Was that the hardest part of it for you, or the porno part the hardest part?

A: The porno part was definitely the hardest. The naked emotion stuff, I feel like we had in Chasing Amy, I feel like even in the last movie Clerks 2 they’re sitting between Dante and Randal in the jail scene, which is just emotionally devastating. You watch one dude who’s always confident, always a wise ass, like laid bare. That to me is like devastating, because that’s a dude completely unguarded.

So doing a version, not a version of that, but doing a girl-boy type emotion that lay bare, that was easy. Shooting fake sex––that was definitely something I wasn’t ready for…

Of course, you’ll want to surf over and read every word at Spout Blog. We’ve gotta say, we’ve never seen a posted interview taken so literally that it blogs it down all the way to a charlie horse.

#13 – CLERKS 2

To many people Kevin Smith and his films are an acquired taste. To be honest, as much of a fan that I am of Smith, I’m not actually that thrilled with many of his films. Having said that, I honestly think Clerks 2 is one of the sharpest, funniest and yes smartest comedies I’ve seen in a long long time. Smith shows he’s more than just fart and fuck jokes. Clerks 2 has so much heart to it that many people miss. Real issues struggled with by a lot of people entering their mid 30’s, issues of friendship, home, belonging, dreams, all dealt with within the context of Smith’s edgy humor. I unapologetically love this movie.

Clerks/Mallrats – Actually, you can probably insert any and all of Kevin Smith’s view askewniverse movies. The fact that the dude has created an entire universe upon which his two main characters Jay and Silent Bob and countless others mingle makes Kevin Smith like the creator of Sims, but for funny movies. Whether it’s a chance encounter in a bedroom leading to an alternative lifestyle or watching Smokey finally “give it” to the Bandit, John K throws the best parties and we desperately want an invite.