MD: Are you familiar with News Askew?

WM: Yes.

MD: Well, I send them scoops a lot, and I get so many of them from you I figured I’d take this opportunity to ask you what you think of Kevin, since I get the impression you are a big fan.

WM: Of course I’m into Kevin, how can you not be into him? He’s great. You can’t not like Kevin Smith

MD: What’s your favorite movie?

WM: Clerks.

MD: Have you ever met him? If you could interview him what would you ask?

WM: I was just thinking about that. I don’t think I’ve ever met him, I’ve seen him speak, at the Q&A’s, and the Evening with Kevin Smith stuff. He’s someone who is interveiwed all the time, and he’s asked everything. So it would be difficult. The questions that he gets asked all the time are so specific- it would be tough.

One thing I love is that he does perservere, He just keeps making work and doesn’t care what the reviewers say and keeps working with the people he likes and I really admire that in him.

MD: He’s true to who he is. He takes something that he finds funny and just goes with it.

MD: Do you find yourself quoting him in daily life? My husband and I are always saying “37!” “In a row?”

WM: I don’t think I have a Kevin Smith quote that I repeat. Maybe I should get one…

MD: Yeah, just go through and find one that only people who know the movies will know just how dirty what you are saying is

We also talked about Reaper, Red State, Zach and Miri Make a Porno, his blogs and the Smodcasts, and the irony that Jen and he met when she was working for USA Today. It was a really fun little conversation just geeking out about a film-maker we admire.

“It’s the real deal. And the central idea to the movie is so damn good. I wish we could talk about it, but I can’t.

The BHD remake is actually kinda serious. It’s the same plot, but with a 40 million dollar budget, and it definitely loses the sketch comedy aspect and concentrates more on the dramatic aspects of the plot.

We still have the opening involving the little boy with cancer, but it’s played straight. It’s a great thing when the movie itself heals the little bit, less so when it turns out to be a fraud. We see the highs and lows the director goes through, thinking he created something so supernaturally awesome and it turns out he didn’t. I think it’s going to be quite soul-crushing, in a good way.

As for the rest of the movie, it also annoyed me when I watched it and all this serious stuff: suicide, satan worshipping, racism, homophobia, was played for laughs. So the new version will, without a doubt, tackle all those subjects but do it in a way that will make you think AND bring a tear to your eye.

Michael Black is not back. I thought he was too goofy. We were lucky enough to work with Sir Anthony Hopkins for that role. Only had him for a day, but man is his stuff powerful.”

…Still, I have always, and will always, love that show. And I’m not bitching about the ending (though, if I had any hardcore complaint it was that there was no shout-out to the ducks that kicked off this nearly decade-long love affair) because they provided one really beautiful moment that I feel summed up the entire series quite nicely: Tony visiting Uncle Junior.

“You and my Dad,” Tony said. “You two ran North Jersey.”
“We did?”
“Yeah.”
“Hm.” Beat. “That’s nice.”

I thought that brief exchange really captured the futility of not just This Thing of Ours, but ambition and accomplisment in general: you struggle and toil and put shit together from scratch, and it all seems so epic and important in the moment, and you make sacrifices, and there are casualties along the way… and ultimately, if you’re lucky, you wind up in a wheelchair, unable to remember most of what you’ve done.

SModcast 15: The Pretty-Good Worker

In which things go back to normal and our heroes discuss the passing of a bear-like legend, ruminate on the emotional and physical perils of pet ownership, confess to being cat people, fret over Weiners hunting weiners, become the Jolie of dog adoption, and incur the wrath of all right-thinking and decent people by spending nearly an hour trying to figure out whether Helen Keller was truly impaired or just party to an elaborate ruse.

CG: I was wondering the status of this project as well. Did “Shaun Of The DEAD” kill it (pardon the pun)?

BL: Nope, EVERYBODY’S DEAD will see the light of day. But probably not as a movie at first. I think by this time next year we can all talk about EVERYBODY’S DEAD at length, for it will be thrust out into the world like a crying, angry baby. But, again, not as a movie at first.

CG: You think the Henson Company will put your script out as a comic some day?

Just out of curiosity, what was the plot of your script (ala…Muppets Take Manhattan, Muppets In Space, etc…)? Any hints??

BL: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW!

The name of it was THE NEXT MUPPET MOVIE, and it was the same universe as THE MUPPET MOVIE, only years and years later, and the Muppets were hugely successful and some were getting kind of spoiled. Kermit’s trying to keep them together and he’s stressing out.

Anyway, an evil Hollywood agent signs the Muppets and starts putting them in solo movies and TV shows (Gonzo is the next James Bond and the next Batman, the Electric Mayhem goes Marilyn Manson-y after Animal starts a solo rap career, that kinda thing).

Kermit has to pull together a makeshift band of Muppets (Robin, Rizzo, Pepe, Bean Bunny, Digit from THE JIM HENSON HOUR, etc.) to re-start the Muppet show.

Eventually Kermit figures out the Agent had an ulterior motive in breaking up the Muppets, goes to confront the Agent, gets kidnapped, and the original Muppets have to work with the newbies to save him. The ending involves a lot of Ninjas, a giant Elephant, a seven foot Kermit, and Gonzo saving the day by crashing through the skylight in his Batman gear.

The Agent runs away, the Muppets all come back together, everyone is happy…

…but at the very end, we see the Agent gets dropped off by a taxi, fully ready to try to break up a new group. As he walks away, we pan out and reveal he’s on Sesame Street.

Cameos were from Pierce Brosnan, John Cleese, Mary Tyler Moore, Marilyn Manson, all the Sesame Street Characters, Mr. Rogers, the Teletubbies…it was epic.

I talked to Michael Keaton once who had read the script and wanted to meet me because of it. I asked him to play the agent if it ever got made, and he said that would be cool. I’m very sorry it didn’t get made.

That’s the most I’ve ever spoiled about it. It was like a purging.

“…I’ve been flirting with doing something about porn for a decade now. First there was the Jason Lee porn show (”Hiatus”) that Carsey-Werner felt no network would touch, then there was “Name”. Now, ten years later, it’s “Zack and Miri”.”

“…Granted, I’m biased because I wrote it; but I really dig this script. It’s funny, bawdy, sexy, dirty, titillating (emphasis on the tit) and dripping with heart. If you were gonna do that movie-description thing, I’d say it’s like Chasing Amy meets Clerks II, with a dash each of Boogie Nights and Bowfinger tossed in.”

…

“…Chasing Amy – the flick we get the most credit for – was pretty much the same-old, same-old boy meets girl, boy loses girl story with a bit of a different spin. Were I really sweating the fact that that story had been done to death before, I wouldn’t have bothered with Amy – and I’d be all the poorer for it (both figuratively and literally). After centuries of story-telling, there’s always bound to be some familiarity/similarity in books/shows/movies; it’s how each author handles the material that makes all the difference. Just because we’ve seen For Keeps, She’s Having a Baby, and Nine Months doesn’t mean we don’t want to see Knocked Up.

Regardless, I know I’m in for a few months of “That movie sounds like…”, but I’m not sweating it; I’ve read my script (even wrote it) and while it’s preoccupied with dirty movies, I know what it’s really about.

And about a year from now, you will too.”

After six little words, Harvey Weinstein is sold

By Jay A. Fernandez
Special to The Times

It’s rarely a good idea to greenlight a movie off of a title alone (unless it includes the words “Pirates” and “Caribbean”). That’s like falling in love with a MySpace photo.

But when Harvey Weinstein pulled the trigger on the latest raunchy comedy idea from “Dogma” and “Clerks II” writer-director Kevin Smith after Smith had written only six words of it, Weinstein’s $15 million looked like a pretty good bet.

The title? “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.”

For a certain stripe of moviegoer, that’s a sure thing.

“A bawdy sex comedy with heart,” as Smith describes the just-completed script, “Zack and Miri” is about two friends who have managed to trudge into their 30s with a satisfying lack of accomplishment. But a 15-year high school reunion and dire rent problems spark the novel moneymaking idea of pulling together an amateur porn enterprise. As for where it goes from there, just think of Smith’s characteristic sexual verbosity finally coupled with matching imagery.

“It’s … dirty, with nudity,” says Smith. “But funny nudity, not gratuitous nudity.” Well, leave it to Smith to choose a plotline that kneecaps the issue entirely. (The civilians-making-a-blue-movie conceit also drove the narrative of writer-director Michael Traeger’s “The Amateurs,” which played festivals last year.) Because the story unfolds during a snowy Minnesota winter, Smith plans to film “Zack and Miri” there in February (although, Smith jokes, global warming may force him to shoot at one of the poles).

In the intervening months, Smith is publishing a book of reprinted blog entries from SilentBobSpeaks.com called “My Boring Ass Life.” And he hopes to squeeze in filming of his low-budget ($3 million) horror script, “Red State,” by the end of the year. Smith is aiming to give the politically charged screenplay, about outsiders who stumble into “fundamentalism gone to the extreme” in Middle America, a naturalistic, drive-in feel.

“Horror is more than a dude with a chain saw,” says Smith, who engaged the Christian right promotional machine for the release of “Dogma.” Given his rabid fan base, Smith is keeping the screenplay on lockdown at his Hollywood Hills home, so agents, actors and executives have needed a personal invitation to see it. Rosario Dawson, a “Clerks II” star, is supposed to give it a read this week.

After her vampy turns in “Sin City” and “Grindhouse,” it sounds like a perfect trilogy.

…But scrape away all the corporate jizz, trademarked bullshit, and industry-cornholing, and I can still find a silver lining: you guys cared enough to vote for me and the boy (multiple times, even). And that’s very cool. So I’d like to take the time here (the time they didn’t give us during the “commercial”) to thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. Even though it’s a dopey award, I appreciate your effort and enthusiasm. Awards are nice (even this award), but it’s you folks – the audience who supports our stuff – that make me dick-sneeze in my Y-fronts, without even touching myself or rubbing my erection up against something like a mattress or the shower wall. It may be a tired cliche’ that’s lost much of its original depth and meaning based on constant overuse, but You Guys Rock.

SModcast 14: On Guard For Thee

In which our heroes cross the border with a guest from the True North, analyze the “Loose Change” of UFOs, posit that even unidentified species worship the Devils, lament the loss of Bigfoot, question Nessie’s diet, theorize how the Republicans can take the White House for the next one hundred terms, and reveal Canada’s greatest shame.