“Mikey gets in the game and heads up OCC’s latest creation — a Wolverine bike for the University of Michigan’s Mott Children’s Hospital. The cast from NBC’s “My Name is Earl” bursts onto the scene and gets the OCC team to build a My Name is Earl bike.”

My fellow New Jerseyan Kevin Smith appears to see the comic surrealism as well. In Smith’s facetious 1999 film “Dogma,” a misguided effort to modernize the Catholic Church’s image unfolds through a campaign entitled, “Catholicism Wow!” Complete with a revamped, “less depressing” and utterly absurd Jesus figure bearing the name “Buddy Christ,” the attempt at Catholic modernization is portrayed by Smith as both silly and hopeless.

“It’s very strange because I normally don’t direct television,” Kevin tells Cw.com. “Nobody ever asked me to do it before. I’ve had offers to come in on sitcoms which have already been up and running. But this was interesting because my agent called and said there’s a pilot of this show and they want you to direct it. I was like, why would anyone, based on my body of work, want me to direct a TV pilot?

“Generally my stuff seems to be very chatty, frank and obscene. I was so puzzled, I said I would like to read it and see who’s stupid enough to want to hire me. I read the script and I just dug it so much.”

Kevin was attracted to the Reaper pilot script as it reminded him of hit Simon Pegg film Shaun Of The Dead.

“I’m a big Shaun Of The Dead fan,” he says. “The sensibilities of the characters in Reaper are similar to my characters. The only difference between the characters I write and the characters in Reaper is none of these characters use four letter words because we’re on TV.”

“Reaper” returns Stateside to the CW with a new episode on March 4th.

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE – Casey Affleck for “The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford” (brother of Ben Affleck, appeared in “Good Will Hunting”)
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE – Amy Ryan for “Gone Baby Gone” (directed by Ben Affleck, of course)
3 Nominations for Matt Damon’s “Bourne Ultimatum”, for score, editing, and mixing.

Dogma: In Kevin Smith’s religious comedy, the Golgothan is the excrement monster that Jason Lee sends after Jay and Silent Bob. He’s made up of all the evil shit from all over the world, and even has his own action figure that farts when you squeeze it. Unlike the Charmin.

Reaper, E4, 9pm

Imagine a Simon Pegg/Nick Frost-style couple of buddies dropped into a comedy episode of Heroes, and you have Reaper. Tonight’s pilot, in which our champion Sam (Bret Harrison) finds out that his parents sold his soul to the Devil (Ray Wise), also benefits from the direction of the Clerks legend Kevin Smith – it’s great fun, but it’ll be interesting to see how it develops next week without Smith at the helm.

TV Scoop also gives the show a nice little review.

“Zack and Miri Make a Porno” (Fall): Written and directed by Kevin Smith. That’s enough for us.

We couldn’t have typed it better ourselves. Be sure to visit our production page for a complete list of the latest multimedia and press from the film. We’ve just added a few today. See ya next time!

3. Clerks

Sure, it’s been done before. It’s been done well before. But it was done as a cartoon that existed as it’s own beast for the most part. A sitcom that begins more faithful to the source material could easily score big with fans of Kevin Smith’s flick as well as VH1-ers whose lives actually are complaining about their jobs and making snarky remarks about what’s happening in pop culture(which is not to say that there isn’t a helluva lot of overlap there). With this one, I’d especially want to start with a new cast and encourage everyone involved to really make it their own the way that the American version of The Office started being almost too faithful to its source material and then expanded itself to become so much more.

3. Clerks

I’d also like to see a show based on our favorite convenience store clerks, but unlike Ben I have no desire to see the roles recast. In fact, I’d like to See Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson reprise Dante and Randal and pick up the story after Clerks 2, with them running the Quik Stop. I’d want Elias in the show too, because he rules, and of course numerous cameos from Jay and Silent Bob. You’d need new characters as well, since Dante and Randal won’t want to spend all their time at the stores, and Randal deserves a love interest damnit! The one problem is Dante is married with a kid and there’s no way Rosario Dawson would do a TV show (I imagine), so we’d need to recast.

See ya soon – We’re hoping for a new SModcast tomorrow! Get that podcast downloading software ready…

Bullz-Eye: So “Reaper” probably received more positive press than any other show of the new season.

Ray Wise: Yeah, I think so! We were very fortunate.

BE: I’m sure you’ve done enough TV where you don’t get too excited about a project’s long-term chances right off the bat, but did you ever find yourself slipping and thinking, “We might be onto something here?”

RW: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I did that from the get-go. It was a great pilot script and a great character, and I felt that, y’know, with Kevin Smith on board as our director for the pilot and as a consultant of the series, I thought we were really onto something.

BE: Were you a fan of his work?

RW: Oh, yes, of course! Tremendously, yeah. Of course, “Dogma” is a favorite Kevin Smith film of mine.

“Reaper” is currently #9 in the site’s TV Power Rankings which list the best programming currently available on the tube.

May be temporary, may be permanent. Either way, I’ve still got three quarters of a script done (we weren’t gonna be shooting ’til March), so if they decide game on at a later date, I’ll be ready.

We’re betting the story will see the light of day, eventually, somehow. Even if it’s only in a NBC-funded comic form. We’ll keep you posted on the project, of course.

Here’s a few random passages from here, and our interpretation of possible hints that lie within:

“I spend most of day buried in my office, writing the second draft of “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.” Even with the new stuff, I wind up taking the page count down to 110.” [NA: Sounds like we’re getting close to a good running time! Won’t be long til the scripts final now.]

“I wake up and do a radio tour for the book and “Reaper”, doing about ten or fifteen radio stations around the country.” [NA: If anyone has any audio captures of these interviews, let us know.]

“…I finally get to see “Spider-Man 3? – a movie in which many people cry, sing, and dance.” [NA: Sounds about right to us – nice assessment.]

“…I head home, talking to Carla about “Zack and Miri” casting en route.” [NA: We can’t wait until some of this casting is finally revealed. They’re doing a fantastic job keeping it under wraps!]

“…I shower and head to lunch with Dawn Ostroff, head of the CW, at Ca Del Sole.” [NA: More Reaper on the way, or perhaps another directing stint for another show?]

As always, the full story is available free, 24/7 via MySpace and Silent Bob Speaks! We’ll pick through the next blog entry with more observations, of course. Until then…

What can you tell us about the power you plan to give your character?


It’s one that every comic book fan is very familiar with, but one that I consider to be the lamest of all the superpowers.

Care to speculate, anyone? Kevin’s not usually the repeating type, so we can’t see flying, invisibility, mind reading, invincibility…And it’s known that it’s a girl. Super strength perhaps? Hmmm. Rumor has it that the fan favorite hero of “Origins” will become a full-fledged cast member for season 3…Let’s hope it’s this one!

KEVIN SMITH: Let’s give props to Lost. How brilliant was this season finale? I mean, it’s cruel because they’re not coming back until like January, but hats off for taking a foolproof formula and spinning it to make it even better. You’re like, ”Oh my God, so now they’re all flash-forwards?! How genius is that?” … We [had] all settled into ”Okay, this is what they do, they flashback and we learn a lot about the characters.” But that whole episode, you’re sitting there going, like, ”Wait a second — is that Jack’s father’s body [in the coffin]? But wasn’t the body on the plane? Who was this person in the casket that he’s going to see?” And then the moment where Kate f—ing walks up from the car and you’re like, ”Wait — they knew each other before?” And then all of a sudden, it becomes f—ing clear, you’re like, ”Oh my God, that s—‘s insanely brilliant!” You can only do that in TV, though. You can’t do that in a feature. You know what I’m saying? Like, you get a moment like that in a feature like The Sixth Sense, where you’re like, ”Holy s—, he’s been dead the whole time!?” But to do two seasons and then suddenly throw a massive curveball is just so dramatically satisfying, you just take your hats off to the writers in a big, bad way.

Lost’s season three end was one of the most memorable TV finales of all time — We’re in definite agreement that February is just too far away.