‘Porno’ legitimizes Kevin Smith’s career

By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY

MONROEVILLE, Pa. — The amateur moviemakers walk out of a coffee shop into a winter dawn, hauling a small digital camera, a tripod and a boom mike made out of a hockey stick. They’re just happy to find their footage is in focus.

It’s an early scene from Zack and Miri Make a Porno, opening Friday.

Zack (Seth Rogen) begins eagerly outlining his plans for the next evening’s secret shoot at the coffee shop, and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) looks in wonder at her slacker-ish friend. She has never seen his ambitious side before. “It suits you,” she says — and suddenly everything is different between them.

Across the parking lot, filmmaker Kevin Smith is watching the performance on a monitor, slumped in a giant coat that holds back the morning’s bitter chill. He has seen this play out before, in real life.

A no-account guy gets an idea, recruits his friends for help, gets a camera and shoots a movie after hours at the place of business where he mindlessly runs a register for minimum wage. Even the hockey-stick boom mike is familiar.

“Yeah … it’s totally the story of Clerks,” Smith says.

Maybe more important, Zack and Miri is also totally the story of untold aspiring filmmakers who have since followed in his footsteps.

Clerks “kind of democratized filmmaking in some ways,” Smith says. “The movie doesn’t look like much because we were rank amateurs, but that means people watching can say, ‘If this dude can do it and this counts as a movie, I want to be a filmmaker, too.’ “

Clerks, which was made by Smith for $27,575, not only launched his career, but it also is often credited for inspiring a generation of do-it-yourself filmmakers as well as blazing a trail in Hollywood for nasty-and-sweet comedies.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Judd Apatow and Juno’s Jason Reitman have cited Smith as influences. Rogen has, too, though Smith thought the actor would drop his interest in Zack and Miri after he made it big in Apatow’s Knocked Up.

“I don’t know why he thought that,” Rogen says. “It only feels right. In a lot of ways, our comedy comes from Kevin. I have often, and Judd has also, talked about how Clerks was one of the first movies showing guys talking how we talk. It seems very simple, but it was a revelation in many ways for guys who wanted to write comedy.”

Clay Nichols, a former high school theater teacher and co-author of the book Filmmaking for Teens, says Smith has sent a positive message to many aspiring filmmakers.

“Kids have seen those movies and think about them. They quote his movies all the time,” he says. “And the aesthetic he used, the style of dialogue, the characters he created made filmmaking really accessible even before YouTube made it obvious you could make a short movie and have a lot of people see it. The cool thing about Kevin Smith movies is he shows that production values aren’t the point — the story is.”

In Zack and Miri, a couple of teenagers Smith also inspired even turn up on screen. Nick Lombardi and Chris Milan, two Pittsburgh-area high school students who post silly home-video sketches to YouTube, play obnoxious guys who take a voyeur video of Miri wearing “granny panties” as she’s changing her clothes and, of course, post the footage online.

“Having those dudes on the set was kind of fun because between takes they were like, ‘What’s that do? How’s that work?’ ” Smith says. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I went from being a rank amateur to being a teacher of sorts.’ It made me feel really old. Good, but old.”

Now that Smith is joking in Zack and Miri about his do-it-yourself past, he’s on track to break his personal best at the box office.

Filmmakers such as Apatow who followed Smith’s sensibility routinely cross the $100 million mark. But Kevin Smith films rarely clear $30 million. Zack and Miri could be the film to change that.

With Apatow’s films, Smith says, “the only kind of comedy I know how to make became vastly more commercial than we were ever able to make it. The old standby of, ‘We make ’em cheap and even though they don’t gross huge, they still turn a profit’ becomes, ‘Hey man, you got no excuse now … because this genre is viable.’ “

Jeff Bock, a box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations Co., says Smith could indeed break into a bigger bracket.

“It’s funny that a movie with the word ‘porno’ in the title is Smith’s most mainstream film, but it is,” he says. “This is a chance for Kevin Smith to break out of that $25 million to $30 million — tops — grosses. He could go to 75, 80, or $90 million.”

Smith’s prediction: The word “porno” in the title and his tendency to push the limits of taste could hold him back some. And, he says, that’s OK — he’s not in it solely for a $100 million payday.

“If it came, I’d absolutely take it. But I am a bare-minimum kind of guy,” he says with a laugh.

Really big comedies, Smith adds, “just don’t go into creepy areas that I like to go into.” And there’s one scatological scene at the end of Zack and Miri he knows will cost him with the tamer crowd.

“A smarter man would’ve been like, ‘I can do without the (expletive) scene,’ ” he says. “For me, I was like, ‘it’s going to turn some people off. … But it’s going to make my fans go (crazy).’ “

Whatever the outcome, his next movie will be a change of pace — a horror film (and partway political satire) called Red State— but he expects to stick to the scrappy filmmaking roots he says changed his life. “When I realized that I wanted to be a filmmaker, that became my passion. My demeanor completely changed, and people around me noticed,” Smith says.

He goes back to the line Miri says to Zack as they emerge from that first night of filming. “Those were literally the words out of my girlfriend’s mouth: ‘I’ve never seen you be ambitious.’ I was like, ‘Is that what it is? It feels good.’ “

As a bonus, visit the front page of Kevin’s MySpace site for a new Myspace-exclusive video of his mythical home-based editing suite! One of our favorite videos of recent memory, as we have such fond memories of catching bits of previous films as he was putting them together.

Variety reports that the estimated Sunday take is a respectable 10.7 million, though our favorite figure is the huge increase in box office from Friday to Saturday, indicating that great reviews and word of mouth from the Friday shows brought folks into theaters on Saturday:

‘Landing at No. 2 domestically was the Weinstein Co.’s R-rated laffer “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”. Directed by Kevin Smith, comedy opened to an estimated $10.7 million from 2,735 on the strength of younger moviegoers. The Seth Rogen-Elizabeth Banks pic was up a hefty 124% Saturday over Friday.’

If that trend continued, the final take for the weekend could be even higher than estimated. We’re thinking that the “tell two friends” strategy for this one could continue to help the flick hold its own on the big screen (if you liked the movie, tell two people to see it, have them tell two, etc) — Oh, and as always, we’d love for you to see it again yourself this week or weekend, since we’re getting reports at the laughs being so uproarious that many lines/jokes are getting missed! Not that that’s a bad thing, of course, but it makes the value of hitting a second screening all the more worth it.

We’re currently compiling an update which is coming up later today — We’ll be back with lots more including a wrapup of the weekend, exclusive premiere photos, and a lot more.

If you saw the movie this weekend, be sure and tell your co-workers and friends how much you dug it! Word of mouth with comedies is always important, and we’d love to see how the film performs this week and weekend, now that the holiday is behind us. We’ll see ya back here with more soon.

REVIEWS
Roger Ebert – Chicago Sun-Times
Peter Travers – Rolling Stone
Richard Corliss – Time Magazine
A.O. Scott – The New York Times
Michael Phillips – Chicago Tribune
Chris Farnsworth – E! Online
Mark Rahner – Seattle Times
JoBlo.com
Ain’t It Cool News – Capone
Bill Gibron – Pop Matters
Marc Mohan – Oregonian
Kevin Williamson – Toronto Sun
We Are Movie Geeks.com
Mike McGranaghan – The Aisle Seat
Irene Collins – eFluxMedia
Lewis Walla – Wired
Adam Arseneau – Cinema Verdict

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As you’re here reading News Askew, we’re sure you’re going to see the movie today or this weekend, maybe once, maybe a few times. That’s a given. But what we’re hoping you can ALSO do is encourage friends, family, co-workers, and the like to check it out this weekend. There’s so many comedies out there that just aren’t funny these days. Kevin and View Askew deliver the goods in a BIG way, so “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is a sure-fire crowd pleaser. Let’s not only have a great opening weekend, but let’s sail into next week with even bigger word of mouth.

We hope that you all enjoy “Zack and Miri”, and will come back to this post and Talk Back with your thoughts on the final product, the lines, the crowd reactions, and the like.

Thanks to the fans for your support and excitement leading up to this big day — Now it’s time to get to the theaters, buy your popcorn, claim your seats, and laugh it up. Hey, we’ll see ya there.

• First up directly above you will find a hilarious and rauchy interview Kevin did over on G4 yesterday. Definitely turn down your speakers if you are at work!

• The latest issue of Wizard Magazine (#206) has a story on Kevin and Walter Flanagan’s upcoming Batman : Cacophony comic series for DC Comics.
• Roger Ebert posted a new blog today about the unwritten rules for movie critics. In one of the talkbacks asking about rules for posting spoilers, there was this quick and funny Zack And Miri mention:

  
  Question: An interesting post. Do you have any rules of thumb about writing spoilers? I ask because sometimes it is hard to tell where to draw the line. Also, do you have any rules about writing notes during a viewing?

  Ebert: What I sometimes try to do is, refer to an event in a movie in a way that means one thing if you’ve seen it but another thing, although making sense, if you haven’t. For example (spoiler!) this line from my “Zack and Miri” review: “This does not happen easily, and is accompanied by a flood of scatological humor.” Rules about writing during movie: Do so, but not with an illuminated pen!

• Moviephone conducted an exclusive and uncensored interview with Kevin and you can read it right HERE.
• And finally tonight, Ain’t It Cool News’ own Capone tracked down Craig Robinson for and exclusive interview about his career and his experiences working on Zack And Miri with Kevin and the rest of the cast.

Drove from central Pennsylvania out to Pitt for this. The screening was held at the Oaks Theatre in Oakmont, PA (outside of Pittsburgh). The theatre was nice, small, and only one screen. I think the capacity was around 400. They had a large section reserved for the local film crew who worked on the movie. The film itself recieved a great reception from the Pittsburgh crowd. Kevin got stuck in traffic so he arrived a few minutes late after the film, but treated the crowd to about an hour of Q&A including questions about the film itself, Red State, Brandon Routh, favorite Pittsburgh locations, etc. Hilarious as usual. The theatre owner cut him off though because they had a showing of Beetlejuice and Gremlins scheduled which was stupid on the theatre’s part. Having the oppurtunity to have a director such as Kevin in their small theatre, you would think they would have cancelled Beetlejuice, but the owner demanded the Q&A be ended and they pushed everyone out the door. Kind of disappointing on the theatre’s part.

The afterparty was at the Alto Lounge. It was a small place and became extremely crowded with everyone from the screening. The wrong type of place to put the afterparty. A bigger location would have been more sufficient. It should have been planned better. It was so crowded, many people just went outside. Kevin and Jen showed up for the party but quickly moved outside as well because it seemed the Alto did not plan at all for this. Kevin took the time outside on the sidewalk to meet with a few fans, do autographs, and take pics.

In the end…great movie, fun Q&A, though cut short, and poorly organized plans by the PFO. If you check out the Msg Board, many others felt the same and were upset about the organization. Jen also stated on her thread that the Alto was a hassle. No blame on Kevin, he did his best to put on a good Q&A and meet with fans. And the most important thing is that the movie was fabulous!