“…That’s what weed taught me, too. I’d sit there going, Wait a second. All these things that people write on the Internet. And, again, they’re not all bad, but I used to gravitate towards it, because it’s, like, “Oh, what can I do to change this?” That’s the sad thing about that. You don’t pay attention to the people that actually like your stuff. You pay more attention to the ones who are trying to bring you down. You’re trying to win them over and shit. That’s just backwards and stupid.
But now, it’s just, like, they can say what they want and, honestly, they don’t take a fuckin’ dime out of my pocket, or piece of food off my table. Just because somebody fuckin’ rips me a new one cleverly online about one of my flicks, I don’t get laid one iota less. I still get laid. You sit there going, Wow, in the last 15 years, out of that 15 years, if you concentrated the time that I spent online trying to correct misconceptions about me, or when people write wrong shit. I never went after people for not liking the movies. That’s subjective, can’t do nothin’ about that, but going around correcting shit. I must have-concentrated time: two years, dude, two years of doing that online. Two years of my life–gone! I’ll never get back. As I’m fuckin’ cruisin’ toward the grave, believe me, I’m gonna be, like, “You piece of shit? I wasted so much time on you. I want those seconds back!” And, that’s a lot of seconds, dude, ’cause I used to do it a lot.”
…
“… I love ZACK AND MIRI. I mean, I think it turned out well, but I look at ZACK AND MIRI, and I look at CHASING AMY, and I go, Okay, two movies cut from similar cloth. What’s the difference? One is made with the passion and brio of somebody who is desperate to get their message across, desperate to communicate desperate to say, “If I don’t make this film, I’m gonna die.” And, the other one was made by a guy who was, like, “Well, that’s the movie I chose to do that year.” And, it’s just not the same thing. I mean, ZACK AND MIRI happened very easily, very quickly. Seth [Rogen] read it. He loved it. The Weinsteins are, like, “Great. We got Seth Rogen. Let’s make it.” It came together. The shooting went well, no fighting, everything was copacetic. But, there’s just not same, like…you know, for CHASING AMY, people were sleeping on couches, dude. We were stacked five men to an apartment and shit like that. That world is gone. That world produces something that I can’t bring back to this world. I can’t replicate the type of films I did.”
…
“A COUPLE OF DICKS-nobody’s gonna believe I directed this movie, because it looks so average. And, when I say ‘average’, I mean that in a good way, like, it looks like everybody else’s movie now. Back in the days, you’d look at my flick and you’d be, like, “Oh, that’s by the motherfucker who made CLERKS. You can tell, because it looks so terrible. His camera won’t move.” A COUPLE OF DICKS, man, it looks like 48 HOURS. It looks like BEVERLY HILLS COP, LETHAL WEAPON. And, I know some people are, like, “Great, your movie looks like an ’80s movie.” But, hey, I’m on a slow curve. What the fuck do you want from me?
You know, my film school has been in front of everybody. I’m not ashamed of that. I mean, I’ve been given this rarefied position, dude, where it’s, like, somebody handing me the golden ticket. Yeah, I made a fuckin’ indie flick like everybody else, and I was in the right place, right time, and Harvey Weinstein gave me a fuckin’ golden ticket, and forced me to become a personality by being, like, Get out there and talk about your fuckin’ movie, it ain’t got anybody else in it, so you become the front man. So, that forces you to become the front man. You’re out front and center, and here I am talking to you, talking to everybody about the flicks. And, you become something of a personality, and suddenly, you’ve got this amazing golden-ticket life, where you’re just like, “Wow, it keeps happening, over and over again. And, people like what we’ve done. And, some people fuckin’ can’t stand it, but some people absolutely dig it.” And, because of those people, you’re inspired to go on, and keep doing it, and shit like that.”
…
“…Like, you know, I did interviews in the beginning of my career, where I talked about, I think I have 10 movies in me. And, guess what, [HIT SOMEBODY]’s going to be Number Ten. So, I got to honor the superstition. Look, I’m not finding any fuckin’ money on RED STATE, because it’s so fuckin’ blatantly uncommercial and very, very marginal in terms of its subject matter. That money’s not forthcoming any time soon. And, so I concentrate on something where my heart actually is, so that there’s a fuckin’ chance, dude, a hope in hell that I can make something that has that fuckin’ fire and that passion in it that CLERKS had, that CHASING AMY had. I mean, it’s not…That didn’t come from desperation or not having the means. That just came from because I was so fuckin’ in love with the material, I was, like, I just gotta share this. If only people could see the world the way I see it, through this particular picture, man, they would get it. So, that’s where I am now, but I wouldn’t have gotten there back in the day, ’cause I was always the dude who was, like, “I write and direct my own stuff. I would never direct something that somebody else wrote or conceived or something like that.”
We had trouble finding clips to pull, the whole thing is just so good, it was tough to pick favorites above. If you’re liking what you’re seeing, be sure to do yourself a favor and head over to Aint It Cool News for the full piece. We’ll let you know as soon as Part Two is up. This is one of the best sit-downs with Kevin of the year. Don’t miss it.
