We’re hearing that the Weinstein Co. folks are going to take our trailer down off YouTube because it’s unrated, so I’m trying to get the hit count and comment count even higher before it goes away. So if you wanna help a brother out, click here to watch and comment on the “Clerks II” exclusive online trailer.

The interesting wrinkle in all of this has been MGM.

Weinstein Co. made a deal with MGM to distribute some of their titles through the studio, recently acquired by Sony. Problem is, MGM being an MPAA signatory, that would require all of the Weinstein Co. flicks to be “R” rated at their hardest. For months now, we’ve been talking about (with Harvey Weinstein’s blessing, naturally) going out with “Clerks II” unrated.

So even though “Clerks II” was one of the titles MGM announced it was distributing with the Weinstein deal, the uncertainty of our rating has left the issue up in the air, as far as Scott and I were concerned.

Nevertheless, we’ve now been instructed to include an MGM logo on the exclusive online trailer… even though we don’t know whether or not MGM will ultimately distribute it.

Ah, the ever-changing movie biz…

It’s not like we don’t want to be distributed by MGM; Lord knows they’ll be able to get us into a bunch of theaters as well as secure a big pay cable fee for the flick when the times comes, which makes the Weinstein Company very happy (remember, folks: called it’s show BUSINESS). There’s also a bit of perverse joy in seeing the Lion that roared in front of Dorothy and the Tin Man do the same in front of our dirty little flick. However, if it means we’ve gotta cut the guts out of our movie to secure an “R”, the whole thing is a lot less appetizing for me – regardless of how much more money there is to make.

So what it all comes down to is the MPAA screening of the flick, come mid-May. If, in a perfect world, they hand “Clerks II” an “R” rating, with zero cuts necessary, all’s well that ends well. But if the MPAA slaps us with an NC-17… well, things could get dicey.

The new “Clerks II” trailer gets four hamburgers at the always awesome JoBlo.com.

And Time Out London named the spot the number one trailer of the week.

Thanks, guys!

Kevin Smith and Brian O’Halloran Kevin Smith and Ming Chen

Monday night, we showed “Clerks II” to an audience for the second time. It really couldn’t have gone better than it did: laughter in all the right places, gut-punched silence in others. So delighted to know that the flick works for more people than just me.

The two highlights of the night…

1) Bob Weinstein (who hadn’t seen the flick before) gushing after the screening, insisting it was the best flick we’ve made thus far. Bob is not normally an effusive guy, but he was so wonderfully dialed-into the flick and he expressed what I’ve thought for awhile now: “Clerks II” takes the best elements and stand-out stuff from our six previous flicks and puts them to work in a cohesive, ultimately satisfying fashion, under one roof. Bob said “It’s like watching a movie where the filmmaker puts everything they’ve learned over a decade into one movie, and it works on every level.” That made me feel terrific, considering the source.

2) Janet Maslin, the former lead critic of the NY Times (the woman who wrote this review of “Clerks” twelve years ago) shot me this email when I got home…

I mean, Janet’s Times review practically made my career twelve years ago, as it gave a lot of folks the impression I was legit. To have her dig on “Clerks II” as well brought my career full circle.

Amy Taubin, the first person to ever write about “Clerks” (waaaaaay back in ‘93, in her IFFM wrap-up piece in the Village Voice) was also in the house (I didn’t get to speak to her after the screening, but Mos did, and reported that she loved the flick). Mark Tusk, the man responsible for bringing “Clerks” to Miramax, was on hand, too, and dug it. Harvey Weinstein, naturally, was there and still digs it (might even dig it a little more, after watching it with an audience and hearing the response). And many folks who post on the message board over at ViewAskew.com (some of who’ve been around since we first opened the site back in ‘95/’96) filled out the screening room and also seemed to be into the flick. All in all, it was one of the ten best screenings of one of our flicks I’ve ever attended.

Post-screening, me, Mos, Harvey, and Weinstein Co.’s Michael Cole, Carla Gardini, and Kelly Carmichael huddled in a corner of the bar attached to the IFC Center theater (where we screened the flick) and talked about what’s left to do (lock up the music rights, screen for the Cannes programmers). I saw a couple poster concepts, and one really leapt out at me; hopefully, it’ll be what eventually hits the theaters.

We’re now pretty much locked-and-loaded for August 18th – a date that can’t come soon enough…

‘Clerks II’: Growth and gross-outs

“”I wanted to see what happened to the characters when they lost their center point,” Smith says, sitting on the creaky merry-go-round outside the restaurant building they’ve co-opted for the shoot. “It opened up a world for Dante. He met somebody, fell in love and got engaged, then he met somebody else (the restaurant manager, played by Rosario Dawson). He reacted well to the outside world, while Randal just got more closed up and scared and angrier.

“The whole flick comes down to whether or not the two of them can reach a compromise of some sort,” Smith adds. “It really comes down to the choice a friend makes for another friend.”
Sequel or sellout? Smith feels heat

“”I never want to taint the original,” Smith says. “But that’s not a reason not to tell this story, just because you’re afraid of the potential reaction.”

The sequel, he promises, is not a “money grab” after the poor response to his Jersey Girl. He says it’s a chance to catch up with some characters who used to be like him, and further explore their non-lives.

Among those who are nervous about it were the two stars, Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson — two local Jersey guys plucked from obscurity by Clerks who are hoping not to fade back to obscurity this time. “You’re touching a film that is beloved by a rabid following. I was excited about the sequel, but at the same time I was like, ‘I hope we can do it right,’ ” O’Halloran says.

Offbeat original shattered barriers

“Smith says Clerks “said something about a certain time in American culture, when there were a lot of kids coming out of college and not getting jobs, overeducated and underemployed, with a sense of entitlement.” Now finishing Clerks II, he says, “these are those same kids, 10 years later. Not all of them found their place in the world.”

Kevin Smith Vows ‘Clerks 2′ Language, Content Ups The Ante Of The Original ‘A Hundredfold’

No nudity, no graphic violence and ‘no way it gets an R’ the director says of the sequel to his indie classic.

PARK CITY, UTAH — Loyalists swear by the movement he spearheaded with the help of his foot soldiers; others wonder why he still has a job. His common-man persona and disarming grin might be masking a brilliant mind, or he might be as simplistic as his detractors insist. Now, he has returned for a second term that’s shaping up as even more controversial than the first.

No, Kevin Smith isn’t the president — although the polarizing figures have more in common than one might think. As the famously indie writer/director made the rounds at the Sundance Film Festival to support “Small Town Gay Bar,” a documentary he executive produced, Smith admitted with some trepidation that his next mission could go disastrously wrong if he’s rushing into a battle that can’t be won.

Still, in the form of the upcoming sequel to his breakthrough 1994 comedy he claimed to have substantial weapons of crass production at his disposal.

” ‘Clerks 2′ came out phenomenally, and I couldn’t be happier with it,” the bearded, not-so-silent Bob said. “We were really hoping to come to Sundance with it this year, which would have been great because it’s the 25th anniversary of Sundance, and it would have been the only sequel to a Sundance film to ever play at Sundance. Then Harvey Weinstein — the chairman of The Weinstein Company, who we produced the movie with — said, ‘No, we want to go to Cannes instead.’ ”

“The movie itself is kind of a look at what happens when the angry young man enters his thirties. The movie is primarily set in a fast-food joint, but it has so little to do with working in a fast-food joint.”

“Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson, who played Dante and Randall in ‘Clerks,’ are back and Jason Mewes and I play Jay and Silent Bob,” Smith continued. “Ben Affleck showed up for a day. Jason Lee came in for a day. Wanda Sykes came in for a day. There’s a guy named Earthquake, this really funny comedian, and Kevin Wiseman, who plays Marshall on ‘Alias,’ he came in.”

“There’s this kid in the movie, Trevor Fehrman, who’s really funny,” Smith said. “I think he’s gonna pop in a really big way off this film. Rosario Dawson’s in the movie; she’s one of the main characters. My wife, Jennifer Schwalbach, is in the movie,” he laughed. “So for a movie that’s about two dudes, it’s got a really well-rounded cast.”

Although some vocal fans and film purists have expressed their displeasure with the revisiting of, arguably, a classic, Smith insists that by moving Dante and Randal to the fast-food industry, he simultaneously moved his own game to the next level.

“It’s my favorite of all the movies I’ve ever done,” Smith said of the sequel. “It used to be that ‘Chasing Amy’ was my favorite, but this has supplanted ‘Chasing Amy.’ ‘Clerks’ was what it felt like to be in my twenties, but ‘Clerks 2′ is what it feels like to be in my thirties. A portrait of that. It’s about how people have to struggle to grow out of a role that they’ve filled for the better part of their adult life. It’s really poignant, but it’s insanely funny.”

As with previous flicks, such as “Clerks,” “Dogma” and “Amy,” the New Jersey auteur intends to balance the aforementioned seriousness with his bread-and-butter: “di– and fart jokes.”

“We’re not even going to rate it — we’re going to go out unrated,” Smith declared defiantly. “If we put it in front of the ratings board they’d be like, ‘You’re insane. We have to create a new rating for that.’ ”

Even more noteworthy, however, is that the boundary-busting film is devoid of the nudity or graphic violence that typically pushes the NC-17 envelope. Instead, when these clerks say “I assure you, we’re open” this summer, the phrase will likely be peppered with even more four-letter words than the original.

“I’ve never been a nudity dude,” Smith insisted. “We did nudity once, in ‘Mallrats,’ and it was just such an uncomfortable thing to shoot. Anybody can get somebody to take their clothes off. ‘Clerks’ was a movie that the MPAA gave an NC-17 for language and content alone. This movie ups the ante by a hundred-fold, and there’s just no way it gets an R.”

As for everybody’s favorite drug-selling, adventure-seeking, bootchie-snoochin’ duo, Smith says that they’ve grown up — so much so, in fact, that they’ve gone from grade-school humor to something closer to junior high.

“Jay and Silent Bob in ‘Clerks 2′ have about as much, if not less, screen time than they had in ‘Clerks,” Smith revealed, “but it’s a different Jay and Silent Bob, a slightly more mature Jay and Silent Bob.”

“Slightly,” he laughed, after a moment. “Ever so slightly.”