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View Askew NewsBites™

January 21st, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Jason Birzer, OJ Temple, Rob Pouria, John Rodriguez, Zeebadaboodee, Mr. Blond, Justin McGill, Matt Blume, Simon, Nick Lynch, & Andrew Mitchell

  • Jason Mewes made a surprise appearance as a judge on MTV‘s Say What Karaoke earlier tonight, wearing an afro wig. We hear that it was quite a show. Perhaps you can catch a rerun tonight or this weekend. Check your local listings.
  • DVD website extraordinaire The Digital Bits confirms what we’d heard a week ago: The studio still lists the Dogma DVD as having an April 25th release date. We’ll keep ya posted. And speaking of DVDs, the Bits also lists a tentative release of April for Jason Lee‘s “Mumford”. If you missed this one in the theater, be sure and catch it on home video.
  • Jim Mahfood‘s 4th and final issue of Grrl Scouts hit comic shelves everywhere this week. Be sure and hit your local shop to complete your collection, or search out any of the back issues you may have missed.

  • Dark Horizons and Tuesday Night Movie Club report today that filming is well underway on “Coyote Ugly”, the script that Kevin helped doctor up for Jerry Bruckheimer last year. The Plot: Young songwriter Violet Sanford travels to New York seeking fame and fortune. Along the way she ends up working at Coyote Ugly, the most infamous bar in the city where the motto is “Don’t get drunk, get ugly.” The bar features a team of women bartenders who do outrageous things with patrons and the press. Here’s a pic of the lead (Piper Perabo) dancing on the bar with Maria Bello off to her right side.
  • ZENtertainment reports that DareDevil inker Jimmy Palmiotti and the lovely and talented Amanda Conner will be working on covers for issues #24 and #25 of HARRIS Comics’ VAMPIRELLA, which feature the VAMPIRELLA & PANTHA: HELL’S ANGELS story arc.
  • Here’s some more details on those advanced Dogma screenings happening in Australia on the 25th: The flick will headline a movie marathon at plenty of locations of Australia’s two most popular theatres, Hoyts and Village. Hoyts are showing Dogma followed by Three to Tango and Deep Blue Sea, while Village have it followed by Three to Tango and Detroit Rock City. The marathons start between 11pm and midnight, with tickets at the increased price of $17, because you have to pay for all 3 films. At this stage there has been no announcements about any cast or crew coming out to promote the event.
  • Ben Affleck stopped by his board to let folks know that he and Matt have been peddling their “People’s History of the US” idea around the networks, so it sounds like they’re still into the project and looking for some backing.
  • Last, but not least, Vincent asked us to point out that the second epsiode of Kevin on SPLIT SCREEN (mentioned in yesterday’s newsbites) features the Jason Lee “Nature of Hell” speech that was cut from the theatrical version of DOGMA. It’s the first place you can see it ANYWHERE (before the DVD, we assume).

Commentary…

January 20th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Just a couple additions to our mention of TV stuff the other day, since it got a TON of mail. First of all, we’re not dogging on Malcolm in the Middle, it seems like a fine show, but we’d MUCH rather have Futurama back in that timeslot. Nuff said. Second, if ya wanna get Glenn Quinn back on Angel, either send a note to the website at Buffy@buffy.com. OR, if you really wanna get noticed, write Joss Whedon directly (and politely) via snailmail at the following address:

Joss Whedon, Executive Producer
c/o Buffy the Vampire Slayer
c/o The Warner Brothers Television Network
4000 Warner Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91552

Sorry, we realize that stuff isn’t Askew related, but we wanted to followup since we opened our big mouths in the first place.

Also, the premiere date for the Clerks Animated Series has been removed jsut because we don’t have a definite airdate for March yet. We just know that it WILL start in March.

Alright, that should cover the old stuff left over. Now then, let’s see what’s happening today:

NY Post: Dogma An “Unseen Gem”…

January 20th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Jer & Sean Jordan (Zentertainment)

  • Well, we’re not sure about the unseen part since the grosses were good, but it’s still a nice compliment. Today’s New York Post called Dogma one of the most underrated films of the year! Here’s the story:
WHILE heavyweights like “The Green Mile,” “American Beauty” and “Topsy-Turvy” will battle for Academy Awards and other honors, a host of gems from 1999 offer just as much enjoyment for the adventurous moviegoer.

Many were released in the first half of the year, and that means they’re available at a video store near you, or will be arriving shortly.

Here is my list of the most underrated movies of the year.

…

“DOGMA”: Kevin Smith’s latest effort divided critics, but it’s got a terrific, intelligent script (unlike the year’s other Armageddon epic, “End of Days”) and an amazing cast that includes Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek — plus Alanis Morissette as God!

TV Guide Online Talks Clerks TAS…

January 20th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Jess & Brad Preston

Clerks Cartoon’s Seinfeld Pedigree

Seinfeld, Kevin Smith and The Superfriends. What’s the connection? One David Mandel, the award-winning Seinfeld scribe who penned the memorable Bizarro episode (among others) and is a creator/executive producer of ABC’s upcoming Clerks animated series.

How do Dante, Silent Bob and Jay differ from Seinfeld’s notoriously neurotic foursome? “One of the biggest differences is that there is an age thing,” Mandel tells TV Guide Online. “Seinfeld was about people in their 30s who were dealing with the foibles of their lives, and these characters are younger. These are the kids that were watching Seinfeld. There is something interesting about writing characters that the audience are rather than characters they will be in five or 10 years.”

Truth be told, there’s another reason why Mandel is so excited to be working on an edgy project like Clerks. “This may sound horrible, because Seinfeld was an incredible experience and a great show and I was a fan before I worked there, but you look around and everyone is doing Seinfeld. Everyone has taken Seinfeld, stolen Seinfeld. This is a chance to not do Seinfeld. These are not characters that sit around and worry that their girlfriend eats too many peas one at a time because, quite honestly, these guys don’t have girlfriends!”

That is not to say that Clerks won’t preoccupy itself with minutiae on occasion. On the contrary, Mandel says, the show will include “small little safety tips and magic tricks and stuff like that. Like the old Superfriends [cartoon].”

He’s joking, of course, but he tells us that “If you’re a fan of the Superfriends, you just may want to sit there [watching] with a pen and paper. Let’s just leave it at that.”- Jonathan Reiner

View Askew NewsBites™

January 20th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Virginia Thompson, Andrew Wickliffe, Rob Pouria, Sam Hilton, Matt Booker, TobiasAC, Keri-Jade, JewElmo, Dave Houston, & Steve

  • Today’s most popular scoop: Reel.Com has a trivia game they run where you can win money towards future purchases. Today’s question revolved around Chasing Amy, asking what the name of the comicHolden & Banky write is titled. We’re sure you know.
  • Heading to Sundance? You lucky dog. There is a brew pub / movie house that is showing Dogma near the festival. We hear it’s is a great place watch movies and throw back a few. The name of the place is Brewvies. Have fun!
  • Dogma Worldwide Release Info: The flick opens in Thailand on FEBRUARY 4TH. Also, in Australia, folks around the country will be able to see early screenings of Dogma at movie marathons this Tuesday the 25th at Hoyts cinemas.
  • Jay & Silent Bob artist Duncan Fegredo is appearing at the Comics 2000 Festival in Bristol, England, which runs April 22nd & 23rd. Stop by and get your books signed! We promise they’ll go up in value even more.
  • For those of you with the Indepedent Film Channel (We’re not one of ‘em, which is why we always miss these scoops), Kevin’s This Ain’t no Junkett part 1 interwiew was on Split Screen Tuesday night. Episode 50 of split screen: This ain’t no Junkett part 2 will be RE-airing this coming Monday. Tune in if ya missed it!
  • More screenings? You bet! A special showing of a double feature of Dogma and Clerks happens in Los Angeles on February 3rd and 4th atThe New Beverly Cinema theater. It’ll cost ya 5 bucks. See their site for more info.
  • Comic writer Mark Millar lists Kevin as one of his favorite writers on the Wildstorm site.
  • A column on Psycomic.com mentions ‘Dogma’ and ‘Clerks: The Lost Scene’ (a fantastic book) in a discussion of independent comics.
  • More Clerks TAS online columns: ANIMATION BLAST ran a bit on the series…A bit opinionated, but we thought you’d like to check it out, all the same.
  • Finally today, it looks like Bill Donohue STILL isn’t done Dogma bashing. Check out this strange letter that appeared in this February’s Esquire magazine:
Acting on faith

Catholic League president William A. Donohue responds to Tom Carson’s column (The Screen, December) on Kevin Smith’s film Dogma.

The Catholic League’s protest of the movie Dogma led Tom Carson to write, “Just once I’d like to see the blasphemous film that the people who make it their business to denounce these things keep promising me.” Gay bashers feel the same way – they keep waiting for a really good flick that sticks it to the homosexuals. Any bet which movie will never be made?

Cason also says, “This side of theocracy, I have no idea how today’s zealots justify their conviction that they have veto power over anything they dislike, since I don’t know what passage in the Constitution declares religion or any other hot potato off-limits to in-orthodox views.” That’s easy. It’s the same passage in the Constitution that homosexuals repaired to when they lay down on the set of Crusing to protest what they believed to be a bogoted film: It’s called the First Amendment. The only difference is that the Catholic League’s protest of Dogma didn’t do violence to anyone else’s rights.

Finally, Carson concludes that “Donohue has probably won simply by making Dogma an issue.” What’s with the “probably”?

WILLIAM A. DONOHUE
President, Catholic League
New York, N.Y.

Commentary…

January 19th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Well, the news continues to roll in, much to our delight and surprise (and here we thought things would be dead post-Dogma!). It is friggin FREEZING here in Central PA, the kind of cold and wind that just makes you want to drop over dead. It’s awful. WELL below 0 wind chills. Is it Spring yet?

Times like this it’s great to have some good shows on TV. And we’d just like to give a few shout outs to some great shows that have really been impressing this year. Naturally, Sunday’s season premiere of The Sopranos on HBO was excellent and again setting up for another season of the best TV ever made. Buffy and Angel came back on Tuesday with 2 fantastic new episodes — The mythology on those shows continues to advance, while the X-Files, still quite good lately (the magician episode from Sunday was quite clever indeed), seems to be straying from its own mythology which got it a cult following. Strange how things change.

By the way, for those of you that care at all, there’s a chance of getting Glenn Quinn, the Doyle character from Angel, back on the show. The Buffy website‘s got a movement going on over there for just that purpose. And it will happen if they get enough requests. So if ya dig the show, we figured we’d give you an in on that one. We’d like to see the guy back. Everyone loves a heavy drinking Irishman.

Also worth watching: Ally Mcbeal (even though Chris HATES it and the courtroom element seems to have gone almost totally out the window, still a fun, well-written show), The Simpsons (By the way can we get this Malcolm in the Middle show out of the way and have our Futurama back, please?), Friends (though it seems to have lost a bit of its edge lately) and, of course…Clerks TAS this March!!!

Alright, now that we’ve talked about TV that’s totally unrelated to anything else really (though you really should watch those shows!), let’s get on with the REAL news:

View Askew NewsBites™

January 19th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by SmilinJoeFission, John Couchoud, Matt Singer, Geof Aberhart, & Glenn Gaslin

  • Attention New Zealand Askewers!!!! Those of you in the land of Peter Jackson can catch Dogma in theaters in your area starting March 9th! This info comes courtesy of a scooper in the area who spoke with a Hoyts cinema representative.
  • Syracuse University‘s UUCinema Board has scheduled a View Askew Marathon on February 25 and 26th. All ya need is 4 bucks and you can see ALL FOUR Kevin Smith flicks in a row! Not a bad deal at all, and the first we’ve heard of all 4 flicks playing one night in a row like that ANYWHERE. Here’s the official info from the source:
Showtimes:

Clerks: 7:00 PM
Dogma: 8:45
Chasing Amy: 11:15
Mallrats: 1:15 AM

(You may ask why we would chose this odd, nonsensical order. The sad fact of the matter is that it is purely economical. Syracuse University students always show up in the largest numbers to the 8:30-9:30 show, and we all agreed that Dogma should be in that spot. I wish we could show them in release or even chronological order, but no one’s gonna pay forDogma at 1 o’clock).

Admission: $4 for the whole night (Come when you want for $4 see as many flicks as you want)

Place: Syracuse University’s Gifford Auditorium (If anyone wants directions, they can e-mail me at the below address)

Who: SU’s University Union Cinemas, the on-campus movie people.

Crap We’re Giving Away: If you stay whole night, we’ll be playing ViewAskew Trivia (If you guys want to help us with this that’d be sweet as hell) and you can win few tickets to our shows, and we’ll probably also give out some free posters, and perhaps some other stuff as well.

Contact E-Mail: For more info, e-mail viewaskew@giminy.syr.edu.

The theater holds 330-350 lucky visitors and is open to anyone.

The White House drug office should have its hands full trying to shoehorn anti-drug messages into “Clerks,” an animated show based on the indie movie of the same name that ABC’s plans to launch this spring. Creator Kevin Smith (”Dogma”), who’ll reprise the Silent Bob character he’s played in all his movies, describes the characters he and co-star Jason Mewes voice as “kind of our classic stoner duo without being stoners because, you know, it’s ABC.”
  • Even more on that Clerks TAS press conference courtesy of iFUSE. They did a wonderful summary of hilarous quotes from that press conference. Check this out:
Clerks step up to the register

Kevin Smith’s first movie is being made into a cartoon series. And God, does he look funny

By Leslie Gornstein

A cartoon Clerks may be on its way. Kevin Smith, who directed the original movie and still kicks around as Silent Bob, dished this weekend about the still-just-possible ABC-TV series during a twice-yearly meeting between critics and networks.

He said it’ll have the voices of the original male cast, but it won’t have the black-and-white false artiness of its predecessor. If it takes off at all, that is. The pilot is still somewhere in Korea, where animators are polishing and caressing it.

Smith has this habit of saying things where you’re not sure if he’s joking or not. Like this ongoing thing about how there might be safety tips at the end of every episode. They kept on talking about it, saying it would be like the Superfriends.

The only stuff we know he’s serious about is that he hopes there’s going to be a show, and he’s hoping to debut it on ABC in March, and it’ll be based on the movie.

Other than that, we give up. Here’s what Kevin had to say. You do the rest.

On possible time slots: “We’re the replacement for The View.”

On doing comedy without vulgarity: “We knew we couldn’t do what we did in the movie, so we thought, ‘Let’s just kind of go in the opposite direction and just make it funny without being crude. But at the same time you are trying to find 96 different ways to say ‘blow job.’”

On the last 365 days: “We had a rough year in the movie industry; we made a religious picture, and it’s just time to get out of that. We wanted to do a show called The Wacky Adventures of Martin Luther and Why He Was Right.”

On royalties: “In the movie, Silent Bob rarely speaks, but I do get to collect a paycheck for barely speaking (in the series), which is really sweet. Only on TV.”

On his proposed role: “Jay and Silent Bob are certainly the cartoon’s buffoonery: Whip out a few dick and fart jokes and get out.”

On comin’ up: “The movie made $3 million at the theater. Clerks was something that people would see and feel like they were discovering something else. If we could start with just 10 people watching the show, in 10 years we might have 1,000 people watching the show!”

On serendipity: “I didn’t have a backup plan. It wasn’t like, ‘I have to have a cartoon on the air!’ If we would have just done a sitcom it would have been really cheesy.”

On the future: “In the 6th episode Randal thinks the town is under siege by the Mataba virus, like in Outbreak, and so the stores get sealed into bubbles. There is a race to find the disease chimp, which does not exist.”

On ambition: “If Clerks takes off, believe you me, there will be a Mallrats half-hour.”

On success: “People come up to you and say, ‘Great movie! Wanna get stoned?’ That demographic spends money!”

On movie development throughout the decades: “As bad as Clerks looked, a couple years later, Blair Witch looks even worse.”

On opting into ABC’s plan: “We’ll be called sellouts for at least a year.”

On being like the Superfriends: “We have been trying to come up with ‘One to Grow On’ type things.”

  • One of our first scoops when News Askew started was a porn knockoff of “Chasing Amy” called “Chasing Asia”. A scooper now informs us that the flick’s airing on The Playboy Channel. Check your listings and tune in…you friggin perverts!
  • We got a note from Linklane today telling us that they’ve added us to their listing of Kevin Smith sites on the web. Glad to hear the word’s getting around. Thanks, folks.

Clerks TAS: FIRST LOOK!!!

January 18th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Just a quickie update before work this morning, because ABC has released the first publicity shots from the Clerks Animated Series! Huge thanks to Comics Continuum for the story and the shots. You can read the full piece HERE at their site. For now, here’s the shots (they don’t expand, that’s as big as they get). See ya later!

View Askew NewsBites™

January 17th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Liam Gibson, John Couture, Steve Rhodes & Schmuck

  • An intesting sidenote: Our inside source in the video industry tells us that Dogma’s video and DVD release is listed a week sooner than Kev’s prediction: April 25th. And this right from Columbia/Tristar . We’ll try and get to the bottom of it, though we assume a week won’t make much difference either way.
  • A fan from the Kevin Smith newsgroup is looking to compile a list of all that visit it. If you read the group, you may wanna surf over and sign the book.
  • A nice honor from The Digital Bits website: Mallrats won Bitsy Awards for best commentary and best easter egg of the year! Well deserved indeed. Bravo!!!

Kevin On Clerks, Swag, & More!!!

January 17th, 2000 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Jess, Sean Jordan (Zentertainment), & Steve Rhodes

  • Kevin’s back with more from the west coast! Sounds like he had a hilarious press conference (details below courtesy of Zentertainment) and that all is well. And MAN, how the heck can we get our hands on some of this ultra cool swag??? Check this stuff out!!! Get your credit cards or checkbooks ready. This all sounds like must-have stuff to us:
I rarely try to sell you guys things, but I have to put in a plug for Graphiti Designs’ ‘Chasing Dogma’ hardcover. It’s one of the sweetest View Askew-related items ever produced. The color pages are nice, but it’s the design of this fine item and the fact that it’s a hardcover that make it a must-have (at least in my book). For those of you who’ve already pre-ordered it: you’re in for a treat and a half. I got mine today, and boy do I feel like the luckiest boy in the world.

And the Mooby dolls are done as well. They look cool. Look for them in the mail within the next few weeks.

The other item Graphiti mastermind Bob Chapman shared with me today was the Buddy Christ miniature statue. The detail is amazing. Wait’ll you see them.

Hawking shit aside, yesterday was ABC’s mid-season press tour. Dave, Jay, Brian, Scott and myself held a press conference at the Ritz Carlton in Pasadena, and then I spent the day doing one-on-one interviews with E!, ET, Access Hollywood, CNN – stuff like that. Look for it in the next few weeks if you’re so inclined, but there’s not much new info there you guys aren’t already up on.

And that’d be about it for the time being. Thanks, as always, for the interest.

Want more details on that press conference? First of all Canada’s Canoe website ran a piece from the Toronto Sun on the event today, which you can read HERE. In it, Kev talks about Degrassi,the Clerks series, Regis & Kathy Lee…Ya know, the usual stuff.

Also, Zentertainment had this to say:

SMITH ANIMATES QUIRKY CLERKSLOS ANGELES (UltimateTV.com) – Filmmaker Kevin Smith met critics Saturday during the annual TCA press tour to discuss the conversion of his independent hit “Clerks” to the small screen — as an animated series for ABC.

“ABC first approached us about doing a game show,” Smith joked, before explaining that his natural love of comics has always made him interested in doing an animated show.

The series is centered around characters introduced in the 1994 film, and is set in the same locale: the Quick Stop in Leonardo, New Jersey. Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith lend their voices to the series, which follows slacker Dante Hicks (O’Halloran) and his friend Randal (Anderson) as they work at their respective stores. Mewes and Smith voice Jay and Silent Bob, characters Smith has carried through his films “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” and last year’s “Dogma.”

The original film’s dirty humor was a major stumbling block, Smith admitted, explaining they are, “trying to be funny without being crude.”

When asked about the show’s similar theme to the twentysomething animated show “Mission Hill,” which briefly appeared on The WB earlier this season, Smith admitted a link.

“We wanted to model ourselves after the least successful animated show,” he joked. “‘Mission Hill’ was a no-brainer.”

Smith managed to get in a few digs at his own network, at one point pretending to read a statement by the net describing the show. “It’s a family show,” he read, “…featuring a lot of ethnic diversity.”

He also discussed the advantage of working with animated characters instead of live actors, explaining it was easier to direct them and get usable takes.

“We’re trying to get to a place where you don’t need actors at all… Like ‘The Practice.’”

The show is expected to launch in March, and if successful, may return next December. Smith is optimistic about the future, even thinking about a possible follow-up if “Clerks” is a hit.

“If this takes off, believe me — there will be a ‘Mallrats’ half-hour.”

Man, that joke about “The Practice” is classic! Where does he come up with this stuff?