• Via @courtenaymmkay “whatcha doing today?” Signing mountains of merchandise for http://www.jayandsilentbob.com – Christmas rush is coming…
• Via @movieinsiders “Check out this Amazon deal: Dogma(Bluray) $7.99 http://bit.ly/28a7fM ” That’s a pretty sweet deal and a packed disc.
• Via @dvdmike “Dave: getting in the ASC” HUGE congrats to Baby Dave Klein (my eyes), invited 2 join the American Society of Cinematographers.
• Via @timmcknightUK “does Jason Mewes have twitter?” Yes, but be warned: it’s a lot of “Mmm..coffee” and “Love the Puggle” Tweets. @JayMewes

Hit up the official twitter page for detailed tweet sessions on some recent couples times with the wife, and his thoughts on attending the recent “Twilight: New Moon” premiere with his daughter. WireImage has the photos.

“Preacher was never “set up” at View Askew with a $25mil budget. http://t.co/CY2WSx5 At one point, Garth & Steve grabbed a beer & burger with me & @SMosier at the Tribeca Grill, where we said “Use our names for whatever our names are worth.” Our names were worth bupkis. @SMosier & I pitched it to BobWeinstein, who said “I don’t get it. This is a comic book? The Crow I get. This? No.” And that was the extent of our involvement with Preacher: a beer & burger & a no from Bob. It was Rachel Talalay’s flick; me & just fans of the book & the creative team of Garth & Steve. James Marsden was never involved during this period (which wasn’t even a period, so much as a three day stretch). So strange to watch a fiction become fact. Happy to have Twitter as a means to correct misinformation.”

Coach said “Buddy, remember your role: the fast guys get paid, they shoot & they score. Protect them, Buddy, that’s what you’re here for.” With all due respect to RedState, Hit Somebody is all I can think about lately. Top shelf, glove-side in 2012.

The goal is for a Toronto Film Festival preem of this one in the Fall of 2012 — We’d sure love to be there as Kevin’s last ever debuts to the world, much like we were lucky enough to be for “Dogma” back in ’99.

Jason Mewes (Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Clerks, Chasing Amy) and Samantha Lockwood (Lords of Dogtown, TV’s CSI: NY) are Nate and Kate, a newly engaged couple whose search for the perfect wedding rings catapult them into a scenario that that may end their relationship–and lives! After they witness a jewelry store heist gone awry in a hail of gunfire from rival hoods, they hit the road, unaware that they are now targets of a hit ordered by mob boss Crazy Joe, played by Danny Trejo (Spy Kids, From Dusk Till Dawn and the upcoming Machete). Meanwhile, the Smith Brothers (Nic Nac of Van Wilder: Freshman Year and Mike Hatton of Fairway to Heaven), stranded on their way to work after a series of misfortunes, manage to get a ride from Nate and Kate. As the evening unfolds, everyone quickly discovers that their lives are strangely connected in a night of intrigue, plot twists, a desert militia and a heavy dose of action and comedy!

NBC surprised everyone when it canceled “Earl.” How did you feel about it?

I definitely miss Earl and working on the show. It was a shame the way they canceled it. We didn’t get to finish the series. I was devastated; we were all confused. But I guess life goes on and now here I am working on something entirely different.

Do you guys still get to see each other every once in a while?

Yeah, I see Ethan [Suplee] quite a bit. He was a friend of mind sort of from “Mall Rats” basically. And so we got to work on “Earl”-came full circle, just about 15 years later.

Well its good to have you back.

Oh, thank you, thank you.

And “Memphis” couldn’t be more different really.

No, I mean, as an actor you look forward to that, I guess. It’s like you don’t always expect what’s coming and interesting things really come your way and kind of surprise you.

It’s a fascinating read, which not only includes links to all of the work, but some inside details and memories from the projects that we’d never heard before. Here’s a sample:

…Mr. Smith had seen this and asked if we could make a version for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez as a wrap party present for the film Jersey Girl. We wrote a proposal, which Kevin then took and added a bunch of gags and inside jokes and developed the script. We also sent ideas for a Dogma game and a game based off of the Clerks animated series. We had 8 weeks till the wrap of the film, where Kevin wanted to give the arcade machine to them.

We worked most of the hours of those 8 weeks. We were still programming the game when we drove it straight from Austin to New York City in a U-haul attached to Brad’s jeep. We took turns working, sleeping, and driving in shifts. We presented the arcade machine on the last night of shooting, with paparazzi everywhere ruining multiple takes of the final scene. We installed the machine in the couples’ apartment. That part is pretty hazy, I personally only remember that the refrigerator was 100% full of diet-caffeine-free cokes, and showing a bodyguard how to play Frogger on the machine.

Kevin Smith: (laughs) Roger Ebert is in rare form with how he keeps re-tweeting his Cop Out review. I was thinking if Roger was trying to send me a message. But he’s liked enough of my stuff in the past. He liked Jersey Girl, but I know he didn’t like Mallrats and Clerks II. He also said something great about Chasing Amy saying how he regretted not putting it in his top ten. Roger has always been so fucking fair. Even though people kept pointing out he keeps re-tweeting that Cop Out review and saying, “isn’t that suspicious?” Obviously I’m not retarded, it’s very suspicious. But he’s a guy who’s been nice to me throughout my career in particular when I really needed it. I wasn’t going to start yelling, “he did what? I fucking guested on his show!” I mean I’ve been saying a lot lately and it’s dawning on me, but I’m almost 40. Getting mad at Roger Ebert is just not in the cards for me. He’s an icon and I like the dude. He didn’t like it? That’s fine, he liked something else I did. It’s not like I don’t get it. I used to be very contentious… Shit, used to be? A few weeks ago I took on a huge corporation (laughs). That was a real thing, but getting mad about an opinion isn’t my thing. Maybe they’ll like the next one. For Cop Out, it’s a different world. A bad review for Cop Out isn’t going to fucking kill the movie. Most people going in are thinking, “we know it’s stupid, who cares?”

Read it all over at DVD Talk.

We’re talking about Dogma, the 1999 comedy in which Smith pits a pair of exiled angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) against a ragtag group that includes a Greek muse turned stripper (Salma Hayek), the heretofore unknown 13th apostle (Chris Rock), Jesus Christ’s last surviving relative (Linda Fiorentino), and a pair of unwitting prophets (Jason Mewes and Smith as, of course, Jay and Silent Bob) — all while God (played by Alanis Morissette, natch) lies trapped in the comatose body of a homeless man (s)He was using to play skee ball. Not for the easily offended, obviously — but despite what Dogma’s detractors may have thought, Smith didn’t go for cheap gags, instead using humor to leaven a thoughtful look at what we believe, and why. “Make no mistake,” cautioned TV Guide’s Maitland McDonagh, “Kevin Smith’s talky, farcical comedy of cosmic errors is clever. But it’s clever in a deeply juvenile way.”

#16: Clerks (1994)

The ’90s Film: At the time, Kevin Smith’s comedy was a defining document of no-budget slacker filmmaking, with its slapshod camerawork, shaggy-dog dialogue and on-the-pulse video store setting.

Nowadays, apart from still being hilarious, it’s a period piece. The technical ability bar has been raised for budding auteurs, and – as Clerks 2 confirmed – nobody rents anymore.

If They Have To Remake It: It should be topical. Let’s set it in the vast warehouses of Lovefilm.com, with Dante and Randall bitching and moaning all day long as they traipse to the stockroom to post yet another boxset of The Hills.

In some ways Mae Day is a sort of proto-Lost in La Mancha. Incidental footage and anything else available is used to create a film that would have at least some sort of measured success. Mae Day does a decent enough job at this, though its 10-minute length means that there isnt much depth given and, well, student films fall through all the time. That part of the story isnt particularly interesting, and it seems like the original idea wouldve been a much better way of using everyones time. In this way its a decent bailout video for the students grades, but not much more.

Now, what I really like about the short is that while half of it is about this failed documentary, half of it is Smith and Mosier making fun of their classmates, the schools faculty and documentary form in general. The pair finds what theyre putting together utterly ridiculous and theyre not afraid to say this, albeit in a highly ironic fashion. Keeping themselves in silhouette as if theyre informants is done to parody bad TV documentaries of the time, as are their overly dramatic pronouncements about what theyd done. Smith in fact wrote all of their interview dialogue beforehand in order to maximize the films ridiculousness.

Cop Out (Feb. 26) Kevin Smith directs Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as the po-po, in what we’re hoping will be the funniest cop film since Bad Boys (the original, not Bad Boys 2). Our prediction: When it comes to buddy cops, Tracy Morgan is the next Eddie Murphy and/or Will Smith!

The Director: Kevin Smith
Age: 22
How Did They Get Their Break
Smith?s first film, Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary, was shot with co-director Scott Mosier while the pair were at the Vancouver Film School.

The latter dubbed it ?the greatest documentary that never was?. It followed the duo?s failed attempt to made a documentary about the titular Mae Day, who was going through a sex change.

Just two years later, Smith made Clerks.

Via @wadew22 “Who plays the villian in COP OUT?” A guy I’ve wanted to work with for a long time now: http://tinyurl.com/iloveguillermodiaz

Via @JeepersMedia “Is there ANY Old Movie that you could Remake Better?” DOGMA. I’d make minor cast changes and move the camera a lot more.

Via @codyunderblood “Austin Q&A: Still a chance we’ll get live SMOD to close the show?” If it sells out, yes: http://tinyurl.com/kevaustin

Via @thebdizzle “widening gyre kicking ass.” Thanks! I love it, too. Ish 4 ships this week (or next) & Walt’s almost half done w/ ish 5 art.

Via @TJdaSportsGuy “Ever consider getting a show on XM/Sirius?” If they can set it up so I can do it all from my office every morning? In.

As always, hit up the Twitter feed directly for all the lurid details, but strap in — And hide the kiddies!