Idiosyncratic director Clerks againKevin Smith strikes back
By BRUCE WESTBROOK
He may be an auteur, but Kevin Smith is donning his backward baseball cap and trench coat again as Silent Bob. The New Jersey filmmaker is about to start his seventh feature and first sequel, with sure-to-offend title Clerks 2: The Passion of the Clerks. The film follows 1994’s Clerks, about Smith’s early convenience-store career.
“It’s about what happens to the angry young man when he turns 35,” Smith said of Clerks 2. “How long can you maintain your position of outsider when you’ve left the demographic that counts. It’s a little touch of pre-midlife crisis.”
The first Clerks was shot in the wee hours at the store where he worked. Miramax’s Harvey and Bob Weinstein bought the $27,000 production and launched him into the mainstream — or as close to it as an edgy regional filmmaker can get.
Miramax was bought, too — by Disney — and now the Weinsteins are leaving to form another studio.
“Whither they goest, so go I,” said Smith, who’s doing Clerks 2 for their new studio. “I’ve had great relationships with the Weinsteins for 11 years. I’ve never brought them a movie where they said no.”
The only film he didn’t make for them was his biggest flop — and, in a weird way, his biggest hit. That was 1995’s Mallrats, which just returned to DVD in a 10th-anniversary edition. A cult favorite, it also plays at midnight Friday and Saturday at the Landmark River Oaks.
After the bare-budget Clerks made $3 million, Universal gave Smith $6 million to shoot Mallrats, a raucous comedy about slackers at a New Jersey mall. Savaged by critics, it earned just $2 million at theaters.
“It wasn’t my finest hour,” Smith said of Mallrats, whose ensemble included rising actors Jason Lee and Ben Affleck. They then starred in his next film, acclaimed romantic comedy/drama Chasing Amy.
Mallrats finally found its audience via TV showings and a 1999 DVD.
“For the intelligentsia and people who are into film, Chasing Amy, which I love, and Clerks are the real touchstones,” Smith said. “But for the mass audience — which isn’t that massive, but big enough to keep me doing this for 12 years — it’s Mallrats all the way. That was their entry point to my work. They still hold great affection for it.”
Not expecting a second DVD, Smith crammed Mallrats’ first disc with extras. But when Universal wanted a follow-up, he couldn’t refuse.
“I still carry a sense of Catholic guilt,” he said, “Granted, the movie has long since gone into profit via DVD and TV, but I still felt, ‘Man, I blew somebody’s $6 million, and I’d better make it back for them.’ ”
So he hatched an idea. Since Mallrats was the only film he didn’t edit, Smith would recut it, using alternate takes and unused scenes.
One problem: His raw footage had too many master shots without “coverage,” or cutting to close-ups. “Scenes just go on and on, and there’s no way to get out of them,” Smith said. Yet he managed to tweak some scenes while adding a half-hour of unused footage.
“The longer version is still an exercise in futility,” Smith said. “If you never liked that movie, the longer version won’t make you like it any more. But fans want to see everything — to be entranced in the world of the movie.” (The River Oaks will screen Mallrats’ original cut.)
After Mallrats and Amy, Smith hit his stride with Dogma, a cutting look at organized religion, then Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a comic swipe at Hollywood excess. In each, Smith played Silent Bob, with pal Jason Mewes as Jay, two Jersey stoners who originated in Clerks.
The only film Smith would like to forget was his latest, Jersey Girl. The maligned comedy-drama starred Affleck and then-fiancee Jennifer Lopez at the peak of their overexposure.
“That one I don’t feel as bad about,” Smith said. “It cost $35 million to make, and we made $25 million, but we followed Gigli (also with Affleck and Lopez), which never got past $6 million. That’s the silver lining to the dark cloud of that chapter of my life.”
Besides his film work, Smith writes comics, including recent runs for Spider-Man and Daredevil. He also wrote a screenplay for a Superman movie but was burned by studio meddling and backed off.
“There’s much more freedom on the page,” Smith said. “You can invoke obscure things that, in a movie, an exec will take out to make it palatable to the mainstream.”
Smith believes he’ll never be a mainstream filmmaker.
“I can’t think that broadly,” he said. “I can enjoy broad entertainment, but I can’t make it. That’s why I like staying where I am. As long as the Weinsteins will have me, I’m with them. They’re the dudes who gave me my shot. Without them, I’d still be working in a convenience store.”
But his independent streak has made Smith a favorite filmmaker to dedicated fans. He stays in touch with them via his Web site, viewaskew.com. There, Smith recently held an auction to help Hurricane Katrina victims.
A barbecue at his home sold for $11,500. A walk-on part in Clerks 2 went for $16,000. In all, the auction raised $33,825, which Smith matched, for a total of $67,650 going to the American Red Cross.
“Back in ‘91, we had a terrible storm in New Jersey, and when water came over the sea wall, my house got flooded, and I had water up to my knees,” Smith said. “So when I saw New Orleans, it really took me back. I thought, ‘I’m in a position to raise some loot, so let’s do it.’ ”
Of course, some folks are never satisfied.
“People on the Internet said, ‘Oh, another (half-baked) attempt by a celebrity to help.’ But you know, I’m matching all that money myself, and besides, what are you doing, buddy? I tell you, the Internet has unleashed the most bitter, pejorative people on earth.”
