- We forgot to mention: Kevin revealed that he is, in fact, planning on having both the Clerks Animated Movie and the new “Chasing Amy-like” flick out by next summer, if all goes well. This comes from his posts at the board yesterday.
- An official website has gone up regarding the upcoming Marvel Comics project to benefit the victims and heroes of last week’s attacks, for which Kevin will be writing a piece for. Check that out HERE, and be sure to buy many, many copies.
- Here’s a new piece on Jay & Bob’s controversy from The Village Voice.
- And finally today, a nice humor break from all the heaviness of the past few weeks: Brian Lynch’s Angry Naked Pat animated cartoon is now online for your watching pleasure. Check it out at www.angrynakedpat.com. Take care, all.
You are at the archive for the News category &rarr
Kevin Does The Board Q&A Thing…
- For the first time in quite some time, Kevin did a massive Q&A session on his WWWBoard at the View Askew site. You can surf over and check out all his posts for yourself, though we’ve summarized some of the major revelations for you right here:
- Vulgarthon 2001: Kevin says he is “working on it now” and that it will happen in New Jersey (but not at least until he’s back later this Winter).
- The Bluntman and Chronic comic is now slated to hit shelves by the end of September or start of October.
- The new movie (for which he still didn’t reveal the title) is “More like ‘Chasing Amy’ territory”, and very Jersey/NYC specific.
- That Starwoids thing (documentary about the Star Wars phenomenon): Kevin did “Just an interview, really. And I did some opening narration for the flick too.”
- Kevin says he’s done with Star Wars and Jaws references in his films…for now.
- Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back’s original plotline: “Originally, it was about Jay and Silent Bob trying to save Quick Stop from being closed.”
- There are no ties between the new flick and the first five they’ve made, though Kevin will continue to use Affleck, Lee, and other actors from the previous films.
- Marvel is working on a charity project to benefit those affected by last week’s tragedies here in the US. Kevin will be writing something for it, and Joe Quesada’s already drawn his piece.
- Fletch Won is still scheduled, and Miramax has optioned the whole library (minus the two with Flynn in them), so if the movie hits, they might make more. Kevin, however, will not be involved with any future Fletch films after “Won”.
View Askew NewsBites™
- Jay and Silent Bob came in at #13 with an estimated $1.4 million for a 24-day total of $27.7 million, about 13 percent ahead of Dogma at the same point. Details are HERE.
- Tickets for Kevin’s talk at Cornell, set for October 1st, went on sale this morning to CU students. They go on sale Wednesday to the general public for $12 ($7 for students).
- “Clerks” will be screened at Silver Cinemas South Hills 8 in Poughkeepsie, NY, September 21st at midnight. For more info, email BrainWrappedFilms@hotmail.com.
- In this week’s Guardian, they feature Jason lee in their “Overexposed/underexposed” column where they write about two celebrities, one who’s overexposed and one that’s underexposed. Lee is obviously underexposed and they mention Kevin and Mumford, and call him the high point of “Almost Famous”. Two weeks ago, they featured Will Ferrell in the underexposed section as well.
- Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back is set for a November 15th release, the same as in Australia. TV4 in NZ will also screen Clerks 9:30pm on Monday the 24th. The TV Guide there gave it 4 stars, making it one of the highest rated movies for the week, equal to Return of the Jedi, screening the previous night.
- Jay & Bob (and some of the Clerks gang) appear in the Jay & Silent Bob Dance, another of those hamster-dance spinoff pages.
- J&SBSB has received an R(A) rating in Singapore ‘Restricted (Artistic)’), which means no one under 21 can see the film, not even accompanied by an adult. The film is however being released uncut (films are notoriously cut in Singapore, even with the R(A) rating, if content is deemed objectionable).
- Finally today, some photos. The first one comes from Australian magazine NEW WEEKLY, and has Affleck touting the View Askew website. Good stuff. The second scan from Aussie rag NEW IDEA features Affleck and Matt Damon at a Six Flags amusement park…Check out who’s in the front of that coaster with them. Finally, as bootlegs of the film are starting to make the rounds in foreign markets, we thought you’d enjoy this strange, strange cover art for the film that showed up on a bootleg copy in China. Catch ya later, folks.
Kevin: “Coming Up For Air”…
- Hey folks, just wanted to check in tonight with a post from Kevin after his absence, which includes his thoughts on last week’s terrible events, as well as thoughts on the box office of Jay & Bob and the upcoming flick:
Coming Up For Air
Is it me, or are there a slew of twelve year olds hanging around on the board lately?
Would you all kindly stop picking fights and then dramatically exiting the board only to show up again mere posts later? Thank you.
Sorry for my absence. I’ve been knee-deep in the new script. I’m almost done, too. Got a title and everything.
‘Course, it’s a little too early to share any of the particulars of the film with you, but I’ll start talking about it soon enough. Suffice it to say, it’s pretty much the biggest 180 you can make from ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’.
Speaking of which, another reason I’ve been MIA: I was off licking my box office wounds. Don’t get me wrong – thirty million is nothing to sneeze at (ask the ‘Rock Star’ folks if they’d be happy with a thirty million box office take). But the feeling was that we’d do better than ‘Dogma’, as the movie wasn’t a niche film about Catholicism. However, we forgot that the flick was, ultimately, a niche film about the View Askewniverse. Oops.
That being said, I’ve since made peace with what we’ll wind up making. Once the expectation was cleared away, it was kind of nice to know that me and Mewes “opened” the movie ourselves – to the tune of eleven million bucks (and I’m not even movie star pretty… or a movie star at all, for that matter). That’s all due to you folks – the ladies and gents who’ve encouraged our nonsense, flick after flick. Because of you all, and your fierce loyalty, I get to continue making whatever flicks I want to make. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: thank you.
So, as we place thirteenth at the box office for this week, drop down to twelve hundred or so screens, and prepare to do our last lap toward that thirty million dollar figure, some have asked what my perspective on ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ is? Was it worth the effort?
Fuck, yes.
It was a blast. We made the ultimate fan’s flick and were extremely well reviewed, by and large. I got to put my wife and kid in the movie, as well as all of my friends. We made the exact film we wanted to make that the large majority of you really dug – and it’s a flick that’ll be very profitable for Dimension, when all’s said and done.
Yes, dear friends and peers, I’ve dodged yet another bullet.
But box office, shmox office – let’s talk about something that really matters.
Good Lord, the horror of Tuesday the 11th…
I was on the west coast during the attack, sleeping. The phone woke me up at around seven thirty, west coast time. My mother had left a message, urging me to turn on the television, as the United States was under attack. What I saw when I did so shocked the hell out of me. The burning WTC. The reports of people jumping from the building. The Pentagon broken. After watching about ten minutes of coverage, for me, the whole tragedy crystallized into one thought…
This is what happens when people take their religion far too seriously.
My prayers go out to the survivors of the attack and those who’ve lost loved ones, but my heart goes out to the hijacked passengers and the folks who populated that grand monument that always made New York City seem bigger than life, the World Trade Center. These were the folks who wound up as afterthoughts to some misguided lunatic’s political statement, and I can’t imagine a worse way to go than dying for someone else’s self-righteous cause – and doing it while being held in check by a box cutter and the threat of a phantom bomb.
As a Nation, we’re sad. We’re horrified and scared. We’re outraged. We’re hungry for vengeance. That was all to be expected.
What wasn’t expected – but should have been, really – has been watching us band together as Americans.
The candle-lit vigils I witnessed dotting the streets of L.A. Friday night.
The report that there have been more food donations made than can be handled in NYC.
The news that volunteers had to be turned away, so many were there offering to clean up the debris at what was once the World Trade Center.
If you’re not proud to be an American this week, I urge you to get your jaded head out of your ass and stand in front of a flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance with as much fervor as you did when you first learned it in grade school. Because all that rhetoric we’re usually fed during election years about patriotism and love for our country that normally seems like bullshit? That rhetoric has become a reality again. And I’d like to think of it as the parting gift of the passengers of the hijacked airliners and the nearly five thousand innocents who perished in both towers of the World Trade Center. That’s the silver lining to the dark and evil cloud that loomed over our country just long enough last week to remind us why we’re all on this particular land mass to begin with…
Because we choose to be Americans.
I’ll check back with you later.
This is Brad posting this update by the way, first in over a week. Those of you that need to reach me directly by mail should be able to do so again. We’re back safe and sound from the honeymoon, thanks again for all your well wishes, and thanks to Chris for keeping everything up to speed on his own during that time. We can personally vouch for what Kevin’s saying in his post, by the way, the airlines, car rental agencies, as well as pretty much anyone that we had to deal with during our trip were very kind, helpful, and understanding. It truly is a time to be proud to be an American. Thanks again, folks.
View Askew NewsBites™
- J&SBSB has been rated MA15+ (SEXUAL REFERENCES; MEDIUM LEVEL COARSE LANGUAGE; ADULT THEMES) in Austaliaby The Office of Film and Literature Classification. This means that no person under the age of 15 is allowed in without being accompanied by an adult or guardian. Incidentally, all Kevin’s films with the exception of “Clerks” also recieved the same MA15+ rating.
- More Australian news… “Because I Got High” by Afroman was the most requested song on Thursday on the national radio station Triple J. They even mentioned it’s tie to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
- Claire Forlani was recently hired as the new face of L’oreal and will be in adverts in a few weeks according to an article in the Daily Mirror (UK). The article mentions her career, but sadly not Mallrats.
- Amazon.com has reported that the screenplay book for J&SBSB has a release date of September 22 and already begun shipping them to customers.
- Word has it too that Ben Affleck’s Jack Ryan flick “Sum Of All Fears” may undergo some changes too due to it’s plot revolving around a terrorist bombing of the Super Bowl.
- Major ViewAskew mentions in the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly (#616). Here’s a summary:
p.37, Indiana University’s Cult DVD/Video Rental is “anything by Kevin Smith”
p.40, University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill)’s Cult DVD is “Kevin Smith flicks”
p.37 Davidson College’s Cult DVD is Dazed and Confused with Joey Adams & Ben Affleck
p.38 The “Major Movies” listing breaks it down by traditional subject areas.
First flick in the Math section is Good Will Hunting (of course!) but under English Clerks not only gets a mention but a thumbnail illustration (one of only 6 in this sidebar). Too bad they missed Chasing Amy under Gender Studies …
- Here’s a J&SBSB review from UK national newspaper “The Guardian”. Click the scan above to check it out!
View Askew NewsBites™
- Jason Lee‘s new flick “Big Trouble” has been postponed indefinetly due to a bomb-related poltline. On a side note, Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s new movie “Collateral Damage” has been delayed also.
- We’ve been informed that Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back has been given an 18 certificate in the UK, which means that NO-ONE under 18 can see it, even if accompanied by an adult. You can read about it HERE.
- Another positive review for the “A Better Place” DVD has popped up on Horror DVD’s.com. Check it out HERE.
- Finally today, here’s some scans of a few articles scoopers sent in. The first two scans are from the Peoria Star Journal and the third is from the Video Store Magazine article we posted a few days ago. Enjoy!
A Message From David Mandel…
- We just received this e-mail from Clerks The Cartoon writer/producer David Mandel and he wanted us to share it with you all:
Got a call from Paul Dini who saw on the list that I guess some people mis-heard and thought I was dead.
It was a producer of Frasier named David Angell (sp?).
So if you could tell people on the board that I am alive and well in Los Angeles and appreciated the kind words.
Thanks,
David Mandel
Toyfare : KS On Dating Barbie!
 |
BACKTALK : What’s it like being immortalized in plastic?
KEVIN SMITH : It’s pretty hot. It’s kinda mind-bending too, ’cause look at me – I’m the least active person on the planet. Having an action figure is kinda humorous. BACKTALK : Did you have a favorite toy growing up? BACKTALK : Silent Bob and Malibu Barbie in the Barbie Dream House: What happens? BACKTALK : Any downside to having an action figure made of you? BACKTALK : Now that we’ve published this, it probably will. |
- Here’s a scan and transcript from Kevin’s new interview in the new issue of Toyfare Magazine. Make sure you send in those home-made tapes! 😉
Just checking in…
- Hey, Chris here. I just wanted to check in with you all to let you know we’re ok here. Both Brad and I live near Harrisburg, PA. That’s about 3 hours from Somerset and Pittsburgh. And actually Brad’s on his honeymoon right now down in Orlando, so he’s far from this tragedy. I’m touched that people were worried for us and wanted to thank you all. Now get out to your local blood bank and make a donation! This is truly a sad day, and we should try to keep the friends and families of everyone involved in our thoughts.
J&SBSB Mentioned At Star Wars DVD Rally
- During the recent Phantom Meance DVD press gathering held last weekend, George Lucas and his producer Rick McCallum had some nice things to say about J&SBSB. Check out what they had to say here, courtesy of DVD File.com:
Writer/Director George Lucas
|
Question: What kind of movie experience does watching DVD represent to you? Do you enjoy renting a DVD rather than going to a movie theatre?
George Lucas: I generally go to the movie theatres. I mean, I go to the movie theatres to see what’s happening now and then I watch DVDs for older movies that are no longer in the theatres. So I don’t really choose one or the other. If I want to see Dr. Strangelove, I can’t go to the movie theatre. But if I want to see something more contemporary, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (laughs), I have to go to a movie theatre. |
 Producer Rick McCallum |
Question: You mentioned that making the DVD was like making a movie, another movie. Can you talk about how much it cost to put the DVD together? What kind of investment you guys have in it?
Rick McCallum: It cost (laughter), that’s something, you know… does it matter? Question: I think it’s interesting. Rick McCallum: Let’s put it this way, it cost a lot, it took a lot of effort, a lot of time. Question: How many Kevin Smith movies could you make? (laughter) Rick McCallum: Well, it depends. Based on his last one? (laughs) It cost a lot. |
We’ll be back with more later today.