News Askew and DenVog, author of the awesome, brand new Kevin Smith iPhone Application (now on sale for a mere .99 cents via the iTunes store), want to give you a shot at ringing in the New Year by winning a contest! We’re going to award 5 lucky, randomly drawn winners a code which will entitle you or a friend to a free download of the App. Best of all, future upgrades to Apps are free, so as Dennis updates the app per Kevin’s (and fan’s) suggestions, you’ll get those, too.

Ready to enter? It’s pretty easy. Just shoot an e-mail off to our SCOOOPS@NEWSASKEW.COM , but eliminate one of the O’s from that making it just SCOOPS (we do this to try and cut down on the spam). You’ll need to use the words App Contest Entry in the subject heading of your e-mail exactly. In the body of the e-mail, we just need your name, first and last, and your return e-mail address. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON. If you double-enter, we’ll throw out all your entries. We want to keep this fair, and the way to do that is not to reward folks who send us hundreds of e-mails. So please, send just one. As always, your e-mail address and name are safe with us, we don’t share it and actually destroy all entries once the contest is over.

This runs until 11:59:59 PM PST on Wednesday, December 30th. We’ll announce our 5 winners on New Year’s Eve, December 31st. They’ll be randomly selected from a bucket of all entries.

Already using the app? Use the code you win to pass it on to a pal. And please, if you’re using the application, we’d love to see you add your positive reviews to the iTunes store. Even if you’re just supplying a star rating. It goes a long way with visibility and sales, among the huge mountain of apps out there.

Good luck!

Me & @smosier sitting down to record SModcast 101 in six hours. No new ep tonight, though. Next week. P.S.-Everything changes with SMod 101.

Via @Choccster “Everything changes with SMod 101? will you start charging?” As long as I can pay for server space, SMod will always be free.

@conantbrian “isn’t there at least the view askew tag?” No – because it’s not a View Askew Production. Peep the billing block and you’ll see I actually have only one less credit than I normally do: writer. Still my flick.

Via @Capn_Midnight “check the tree for wrap-up to BULLSEYE series!” You’ll find an IOU that reads “This year, if Marvel’s still into it.”

Via @FooRay “did you cut the trailer together yourself?” Nah. They have a whole department for that kinda thing.

Via @rtward “You don’t get to edit your own trailer?” Most directors don’t. I’ve cut some online trailers, but filmmakers are not marketers.

Via @jdr822 “proudest moment in your film career?” 8 minute standing ovation for CLERKS II at Cannes: http://clerks2.com/trainwreck/?p=79

Via @Modesix “Why is there only 1 show for Toronto? You know it’s almost sold out already?” Chill: if it sells out, we can just add another.

John Hughes said my name!!! “I saw Clerks, and it made me a little jealous. I wanted to do something similar. I like how he stays in New Jersey and retains that regional flavor. I admire what he’s doing.” Fuck. Thanks Mr. Hughes; the feeling was very mutual.

The full Hughes interview is, one of (if not THE) last he gave.

“done with view askew?!”

I’m 39; my view is no longer all that askew.

Alright, let’s be honest: it still is. But the name always felt too impressed with itself, y’know? If one’s view is truly askew, does one really have to proclaim it? The work should speak for itself; and if nothing else, my work certainly does that.

Think of it like this: my pet peeve is when people refer to themselves as crazy or unusual in some way.

“Look out for me, ’cause I’m a total lunatic!”
“When we go out, we’re just crazy!”
“I mean, that’s just us, right? We’ll do anything for a laugh!”
“People are always like ‘Look out for THIS guy’…”

I’m certainly not profiling, but women seem to be the worse offenders of this harmless-yet-irritating expression of self esteem. But when guys do it, it’s REALLY tough to watch; you can’t simply smile through it, thinking “If I keep agreeing with her, she might touch my dick.”

So if I feel that way about people who boast, shouldn’t I loathe my own production company name?

Might be nice to box “View Askew Productions” ’til the eventual look back in on Dante and Randal with CLERKS III.

The idea of continuing the story of Dante and Randal every 10 years is quite interesting, especially considering Kevin could potentially continue to do this through his career. While they may not necessarily be actual “Clerks” any longer as they continue on, to visit these guys once a decade to see where their lives have taken them could prove to be a fascinating and original exercise in cinema. Sign us up. Kevin predicts circa 2016.

To usher in the series, issue #1 has 4 covers in total, which have now been revealed (click above for a better look). Several sites have picked up the covers and posted some commentary. GeekTyrant has a nice little summary
of what little has been revealed thus far:

Smith?s unproduced screenplay has been adapted into a 10 part miniseries, that has been illustrated by Jonathan Lau. The series will be fully complete before the first issue hits the shelf, which is great to hear because we wont have to impatiently wait a long amount of unorganized time for each issue to hit the comic shops.

The story follows the original Green Hornet Britt Reid as he passes the torch to his son Britt Jr. who will continue the adventures. And it looks as if his crime fighting Kato type character is a lovely lady sporting a tight leather outfit. I assume this is Mishi Kato who is the grand daughter of Kato. You can learn more about her here.

For more on this story, check out /Film and Bleeding Cool.

Ready to enter? It’s pretty easy. Just shoot an e-mail off to our SCOOOPS@NEWSASKEW.COM , but eliminate one of the O’s from that making it just SCOOPS (we do this to try and cut down on the spam). You’ll need to use the words App Contest Entry in the subject heading of your e-mail exactly. In the body of the e-mail, we just need your name, first and last, and your return e-mail address. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON. If you double-enter, we’ll throw out all your entries. We want to keep this fair, and the way to do that is not to reward folks who send us hundreds of e-mails. So please, send just one. As always, your e-mail address and name are safe with us, we don’t share it and actually destroy all entries once the contest is over.

This runs until 11:59:59 PM PST on Wednesday, December 30th. We’ll announce our 5 winners on New Year’s Eve, December 31st. They’ll be randomly selected from a bucket of all entries.

Already using the app? Use the code you win to pass it on to a pal. And please, if you’re using the application, we’d love to see you add your positive reviews to the iTunes store. Even if you’re just supplying a star rating. It goes a long way with visibility and sales, among the huge mountain of apps out there.

Good luck, and Merry Christmas!

Kevin Smith on why ‘A Couple of Dicks’ became ‘Cop Out’

The new trailer for the upcoming buddy cop comedy Cop Out just hit the internet, but anyone who had been following the project knows the film, out February 26, 2010, had long gone by a more distinctive title: A Couple of Dicks. Fortunately, the film has an even more distinctive director: Kevin Smith, the hilariously profane indie film hero (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Zack and Miri Make a Porno) making his debut as a director of a script he did not write himself. Smith was more than happy to give EW his frank perspective on how A Couple of Dicks became Cop Out in a nutshell, blame the networks.

Kevin Smith: Look, losing A Couple of Dicks was almost akin to losing my own dick. It was a perfect buddy-cop movie comedy title. Everyone knew it. You couldnt say that title to somebody without a fing smile crossing their face. But what I had gone through with Zack and Miri Make a Porno porno had become very problematic, it became tough for us to advertise [the film], blah blah blah. Warner Bros. decided, Hey man, well call the networks and see if were going to get any problems [with A Couple of Dicks as a title], months before the movies ever going to come out. The top 3 networks CBS, ABC, NBC said we cant run one of your spots before 9 oclock.

Im like, Well what about Inglourious Basterds? And I guess, because of the spelling, they got away with it. So we were like, Can we call it A Couple of D.I.C.s? Because thats the proper acronym for detectives, Detective In Charge. And [the networks] kicked that back as well. It was the pluralizing of any form of dick, whether it was d-i-c-k or any derivation.

So my feeling was like, its an R-rated movie, so who the f are we talking to anyway before 9 oclock? Warner Bross feeling was like, Hey man, the sports audience, dickhead. We have to advertise to the sports audience on Saturday and Sunday and all those sporting events usually take place before 9 p.m. in the evening. At which point, I was like, Oh wow, you guys are way smarter than me.

All credit due to Warner Bros., they tried really fing hard to score that title. It just came down to a point blank choice of run a campaign where youre not going to be able to advertise on the big three networks before 9 oclock, or run a campaign where there are no hindrances. I came from a world where you play the ball where it lays. [The studio execs] come from a world where theyre like, Well if we dont like where the ball lays, well just create a brand new golf green. If I hadnt gone through Zack and Miri Make a Porno, I think I would have gotten my old-school fing angry indie spirit, if you will: Fuck it, we live or die by A Couple of Dicks, or I take my name off the picture! But even my mom was like, I might go see Zack and Miri, but I would never go see Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I feel like Chief Brody in Jaws 2: Ive seen the shark up close. I aint going through that hell again.

And Ive got a lot of people online, on Twitter especially, going, Dont lose this fight! Dont let them change it! And its like, Dude, its not my call. All these people online seem to think I have the almighty juice. I got no juice. I made Jersey Girl. I cant pull any fing strings.

So for months now, theyve always had A Couple of Cops as kind of this fallback thing a placeholder, essentially. And then all of a sudden, one of the producers of the movie was like, Hey theyre locking the title, because the trailer is going to be put on Sherlock Holmes. And I was like, This is an abundance of wonderful and horrible information. I want to be on Sherlock Holmes because everyone on the planet will probably go see it on Christmas, but I dont want it to be A Couple of Cops. That just seems like we didnt even try! We went from a really clever title to the least clever title of all time. I was like, God that title is going to feel like such a fing cop out. And [the producer] goes, We should just call the movie that.

I liked it because it sounds like exactly what we set out to be: An 80s buddy cop movie, without sounding like Loaded Weapon, or some such s. But more importantly, to me, the title tells the story of what happened to our other title. I think its kind of ironic. Its win-win. For 100 percent of the potential audience for this movie, I would say 0.5 percent knows that we were once called A Couple of Dicks. After they read this article, maybe you could bump it up to 0.75 percent. The rest of the potential audience, they have no idea what this movie used to be called. For them it will always be Cop Out. Theyll just never know that there was that one magical moment where it was called A Couple of Dicks. We were making up sequel titles in our heads, dude. Like, you know, Two Bigger Dicks. Or Dicks 2: It Just Got Harder.

Somebody online said you could take Cop Out and vary it with like, Rock out with your Cop Out! Hopefully that will be a tagline on a poster or a trailer. And if it is, we owe that random dude on Twitter like at least a few free passes.

Scooper Kyle even managed a blurry camphone snap of the green-band “Cop Out” trailer in the can as it arrived at his local theater. We’ve given you a peek at that as well as some more screengrabs from the slick new trailer which has just arrived on the webs (see next story). Watch. Download. Repeat!

Synopsis – Two longtime NYPD partners on the trail of a stolen, rare, mint-condition baseball card find themselves up against a merciless, memorabilia-obsessed gangster. Jimmy (Bruce Willis) is the veteran detective whose missing collectible is his only hope to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding, and Paul (Tracy Morgan) is his “partner-against-crime” whose preoccupation with his wife’s alleged infidelity makes it hard for him to keep his eye on the ball.

It’s a pre-holiday treat!!! Watch it over and over again, spread the word, and then catch the trailer on the big screen with “Sherlock Holmes” on Christmas. Holy cow…Kevin made a buddy action comedy with Bruce Willis! There’s evidence now! We love it.

We’re still recovering from the big storm here in the Northeast (bad timing when it gets in the way of family events/travels, shopping, and the like), but we’ve got some news, a Twitter update, and a little contest for ya, all coming up later today. Stay tuned.