There are tiny things to fix (”Clerks II” is no longer called “The Passion of the Clerks”, obviously), but it’s pretty damn close to what’ll be on the racks, in stores everywhere, August 15th (or order it signed right here, at Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash online).

This time around, instead of hitting five different colleges like we did on the first “Evening with Kevin Smith”, we shot at two different international venues: the Roy Thompson Hall, in Toronto, Canada and the Criterion Theater in London, England.

In case you’ve never seen the trailer for the Toronto portion of the show (Disc One of the two disc set)…

CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE, IN QUICKTIME

Or

RIGHT HERE, ON YOUTUBE.

* Over the past dozen years indie filmmaker Kevin Smith has built a huge cult following through his films and his one-on-one relationship with his fans. Since the surprise success of “Clerks,” Smith and his alter-ego, Silent Bob, have bombarded audiences with “Dogma,” “Mallrats,” and this summer’s sequel, “Clerks 2.” ICONS journeys inside Smith’s world to meet his band of merry-makers, and joins him on a trip back to his New Jersey childhood.

This is gonna be a pretty cool show, actually. The “ICONS” crew were at WizardWorld L.A., the UCLA Jack Benny awards, and they’re going to Cannes and Vulgarthon to shoot, too. They’ve also interviewed a bunch of cats I’ve worked with over the years. Can’t wait to see it.

Some highlights of the evening…

– Sitting at a table on the deck with Johnny Rotten on my left and Stan Lee on my right, and listening to them have-at one another. Always a gentle joker, Stan was saying “I can’t understand a word this guy’s saying,” about Johnny, and Johnny was hissing “Listen, Dad – you don’t know who you’re dealing with. I’m Rotten.”

– Jeffrey Tambor wrapping up his set with a dryly delivered “I’ll read one more piece, because I’ve got two more poetry events to hit before the night’s over.”

– Finesse Mitchell, doing a pair of impromptu poems entitled “Mapquest Don’t Know Where This House Is” and “Goddamn, This is a Nice House.” As funny as he was, he wrapped his set up with a really moving poem entitled “There Was Ugly in the Church Today”. That guy’s totally cool in my book.

– Stan Lee, working without a microphone, reciting three not-short poems from memory, and then humorously editorializing at the end of each. He was all prepared to do “The Raven” from memory as well, but decided to hold onto it ’til next year’s event. The man, mind you, is 84 fucking years old – and yet, he owned that room. The crowd loved him.

– Kathy Bates, riffing on my intro, saying “Now I wish I’d brought the other poem I wrote with me: Big, Luscious Dicks.”

– Carrie Fisher sweating the event once she heard the intro and some of the other readers, insisting she only came prepared with one short poem. Then, when it was her turn, she took the mic and said “Sherlock Holmes used to say that the mind can only house so much information. And when new things are learned, old things get pushed out. But this is something that I’ve been able to hold onto for a long time.” She paused, and then began “General Kenobi – years ago, you served my Father in the Clone Wars…” Yes – she did the entire “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi” speech from memory. Brought the cheering house to its fucking feet, she did.

– Mary Lynn Rajskub doing not just a really funny excerpt from her forthcoming, one-woman show, but also an extended hysterical intro about being “24” famous and not knowing shit about computers.

– Steve Valentine rocking some Shel Silverstein, then following it up with reading some morbidly funny epitaphs he’d found online. And if that wasn’t enough, he capped his presentation off with a pretty wicked card trick, reciting patter from a 1930’s magician, set to a rap beat. He killed.

– Eva Longoria, post-introduction, saying “You mention liking vibrators in one interview, and it haunts you forever.”

– John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon launching into what seemed like a blistering, anti-abortion screed (”Bodies”) at a room full of terrified parents, calling one of the audience members out when she uncomfortably chuckled by saying “Is this fucking funny to you?! Are you an animal?”, blaming all of us for electing George Bush and then dismissing petrol-centric politics with “This is what you need oil for,” while rubbing his asshole over his pants and then patting a balding dude in the front row’s head, Benny Hill style, adding “Or this,” and then finishing up with an a capella version of “God Save the Queen” with the audience singing along. Fucking amazing.

Yes – “Clerks II” is, indeed, going to Cannes! Official Selection, Out of Competition. I found out last week, but wasn’t allowed to say anything ’til the fest did.

Needless to say, this is pretty huge for us – and somewhat poetic, as “Clerks”, also, went to Cannes in ‘94 (and “Dogma” in ‘99).

So I say…

YYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

Naturally, I’ll be over there for our screening. Gonna actually try to get over even earlier, so I can attend the “Southland Tales” premiere as well.

Sweet, sweet fucking news.

We’re a midnight screening, though. Most midnight screenings are shown in the Debussy Theater (in the Palais, the same complex as the Lumiere; where, incidentally, “Dogma” screened back in ‘99).

Interestingly enough, the Debussy doesn’t have a Red Carpet; they have a Blue Carpet. Fitting, considering the flick.

The way I see it, Cannes is Cannes. I’m just happy they dug the film enough to invite it to the fest.

Clerks II (The Weinstein Company) – August 18

One has to assume that Kevin Smith has a lot more fans now than he did in 1994, when his independent comedy Clerks, made for less than $250,000, changed the face of indie cinema. Twelve years later and five years after Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the movie that was supposed to wrap up Smith’s five-movie “Jersey trilogy,” he’s returning to the characters who started it off, Randal and Dante, now facing their thirties and new jobs at a fast food restaurant. Smith’s fans will probably make this their #1 priority in life, but few others.

Box Office Potential: $30 to 35 million

Some Press-ing Questions

Yahoo has a button for a sneak peak at “Clerks II” on their front page.

When you click on it, it brings you to this page, where you can peep a bunch of pics from the flick.

The holy New York Times put up their summer movie preview, and a pic of Jay and Silent Bob rides the top of the page. This is cool online, but the pic was even bigger in the actual, old-fashioned newspaper version in the Sunday edition of the Times this morning.

In Entertainment Weekly, I got a shout out on their “Must List (Ten Things We Love This Week)”. Number six was the blog-site My Boring-Ass Life, of which they wrote “Kevin Smith’s no-holds-barred online diary is like his best films: raw, openhearted, and mordantly funny.” In the mag, there’s a nice picture of me having what I can only describe as a bad hair day.

However, on the back page of EW, Stephen King does a weekly column, with the current edition being a piece detailing his summer movie predictions.

Alright, they’re not King’s predictions; they’re the predictions of a guy he calls “The Longhair”. But being that this is the guy who’s also worked under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, I’m not convinced “The Longhair” isn’t, in fact, King himself.

Regardless, “The Longhair” predicts this summer’s hits and misses, and under the heading “Flop City” (below “The Omen”, “An American Haunting”, the Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston flick “The Break-Up”, and M. Night Shymalan’s “Lady in the Water”), he lists “Clerks II”. Of it, he (”The Longhair”) writes “In ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, Major Toht tells Indy, “That time is past.” He might have been speaking of the Clerks franchise. Uh… what franchise?”

Some folks on the message board at my home-base, ViewAskew.com, thought I might be pissed at Entertainment Weekly for running this. But I got no bones with EW. Aside from the two times they’ve given My Boring-Ass Life a shout-out on their “Must List”, they also hyped “Clerks II” at Number 10 in a feature last week entitled “The Ten Movies We Can’t Wait to See”, and gave us a nice write-up in their Summer Preview Issue.

I also have no bones with someone named “The Longhair” opining that “Clerks II” will flop. You mean to tell me there’s someone out there who doesn’t give a tin-whistle about the flicks I do? I’m shocked…

However, the irony is that “Clerks II” CAN’T flop. Since our entire budget was five million bucks, if the flick makes ten million bucks theatrically, we’re successful (and that ten million theatrical doesn’t even include the DVD windfall that’ll eventually follow; our flicks do extremely well on DVD).

And there’s DEFINITELY ten million bucks worth of theatrical box office out there for us – maybe a little more than ten million, actually (”Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” opened to eleven million the weekend it opened in August 2001, on its way to a theatrical gross of thirty million; and “Strike Back” cost fifteen million more to make than “Clerks II” did).

So when folks like “The Longhair” poo-poo the theatrical prospects of “Clerks II”, they don’t come off as offensive to me; they come off as more misinformed than anything else. “The Longhair” can chicken-little it all he (or she) wants, but “Clerks II” will never have an apartment in “Flop City”.

King and his imaginary friend aside, here’s a brief, random sampling of just a few folks who, sight-unseen, are a bit more optimistic about the future of “Clerks II”…

Austin Represent!

Chi-Town represent!

Chi-Town represent AGAIN!

College kids represent!

“Clerks II” won’t see “Superman Returns”, “X-3” or even “Snakes on a Plane”-type box office numbers, granted. But relative to the flick’s budget, it’ll mint some nice coin, to be sure.

However, box office-shmox office: what really counts is whether a flick stays with the viewer after they’ve gone home, and for how long. Considering the fact that, twelve years later, there was still enough love for/interest in “Clerks” to warrant a “Clerks II”, I’m hoping the lastest installment in Dante and Randal’s (complete lack of) adventures earns the same amount of affection, if not more. Keep the theatrical grosses, I say; I’m all about longevity.

Except, y’know… in bed. As my wife will tell you, I’m a five minute-max-kinda-guy there. But they’re some of the sweatiest, fear-of-being-crushed-inducing five minutes my woman has ever known.

So I got THAT going for me.