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[Video tape rattles]
[Machine beeps, rewinding sounds]
- Mom, Dad, there's probably a million things I wanna say,
but I won't be able to.
[Sighs]
So, I think I could probably say some from here.
Notice how half of my face is lit?
For professionalism.
That's why I'm going to film school.
Feeling pretty scared,
and it has nothing to do with going away.
You know, going to school,
it has to do with the fact that everything's gonna change.
Perhaps bring fame to this family name,
although, I know that's not all that important.
That all starts with you, Dad.
Goes back to when you used to take me to the movies.
Thanks.
I love you. [Tape stops]
♪♪♪
♪ Ahhhh... ahhhh...
♪ Ahhhhh... ahhhh...
♪ Ahhhh
♪♪♪
♪ Ahhhh...
♪ Ahhhhh... ahhhh...
♪ Ahhhhh...
♪♪♪
♪ Ahhhhh...
♪♪♪
♪ Ahhhh...
♪ Ahhhhh... ahhhh...
♪ Ahhhh
♪♪♪
♪ Ahhhh...
♪ Ahhhhh...
♪♪♪
["My Hometown" by Bruce Springsteen plays]
[Seagulls cry]
- My people came from up north Jersey.
I was the first generation born down here,
down the shore.
Highlands is the epitome of a small town.
♪ I was eight years old
♪ And running with dime in my hand ♪
- That is Our Lady of Perpetual Hope Parochial School.
They filled my head full of lies
about a magician from the Far East
who was the Son of God.
No, they taught me great things.
There was my first-grade classroom, right there.
That's where I learned the basics.
I would become a writer because of that building.
- Kevin was a very quiet child when he was growing up.
But he liked to play,
and we had one of those um, word processors,
and that's what the older ones gave him for his birthday,
and he worked on that all the time.
- I remember a scenario that he had gave me to read
that was family oriented.
You'd go to visit the relatives and there was always a story
what we could tell and laugh about.
So, I remember the writing had something to do with that.
I thought it was hysterical.
My Dad, I guess you would say,
is probably polar opposite of Kevin.
My father and Kevin were very close.
When Kevin would have to go to the dentist, you know,
they would take him out of school,
take him to the dentist, then take him to the movies.
- It was movies. It was always--
- Always movies. Always. - Always movies.
And he would take me out on Wednesdays,
to go see a matinee.
My Mom was like, Dad's coming to get you, you're gonna go
see a movie today. I was like, "What do I tell the office?"
Like, "Tell them your uncle died."
The sister, at one point, was like,
Kevin, there are too many dead people in your, in your family.
And I was like, "I know, they're droppin' like flies."
- My father worked for the postal service,
very like, old school about the work thing.
You don't have to like your job; you just have to do it.
It's responsibility.
- Loved my Mom, loved us.
Didn't really care about anything else.
That was his biggest dream, he wanted to get married
and have kids, and he accomplished it and stuff,
and so, everything else was just shit to pay for that.
So, like, he wasn't like,
"Oh, my career at the post office,"
it was like, my job, and I hate my job.
My life is a reaction to his life, inasmuch as like,
well, I don't wanna get a job.
Like, I see what a job does to people.
Maybe I'll take my shot trying something that's not a job.
- He was in every play in high school.
He did pretty good; everyone liked it.
- This, right here, Henry Hudson Regional,
this is where our, I did high school.
You know, it was clear that I liked the arts
more than anything else.
I was familiar with the concept of the high school hero,
like, people that quote unquote peaked in high school.
So, I didn't, I didn't want that for me.
I didn't want like, high school to be the greatest time
of my life, and I loved high school.
I just wanted that to keep goin'.
Never understood why we were expected to stop
pretending and, and dreaming,
and-and making things,
and you know,
shootin' the moon.
So, this is the Highlands recreation center.
This is where I meet Walter Flanagan,
Bryan Johnson, Jason Mewes,
the people who will define the rest of my life.
I met here.
- He got a job a the location I was working at,
the uh, community center.
I knew he was one of these guys that was into the-into plays,
and into being on stage.
And I immediately associate that with like, corn bowl,
or like, somebody I would never have anything in common with.
I didn't talk to anybody about comic books.
I was intrigued by having somebody else
that talked about comic books, that really pushed me
towards opening up and becoming friends with him.
- Kevin, I knew of in high school.
He was a couple years younger,
and he was like a, one of the video geek guys.
He was into drama, which I was not into.
He was a big fan of SNL stuff,
so, my humor was a brand of humor that he hadn't seen
thus far, that's dark.
What I loved about him was how quick he was.
The recreation center itself is what brought us together,
brought Mewes there.
- Sister, can I come in? Okay, come on in.
You wanna come in?
Eyeline. - [Man laughs]
[Rock music plays]
♪♪♪
Get the fuck outta here!
Kevin, Walt, Bryan, we used to all hang out and,
and read comic books, and stuff.
And Kevin knew of me because Bryan and Walter were like,
"Oh, Mewes is funny, man. He loves comics,
he wants to go to the comic book convention.
Let's bring this kid." He thought, you know,
"No, I'm the funny one, not him."
He didn't want a new person in the group,
and then, when we dropped him off from that show,
like I knew where he lived, and I was like, "Oh, my God,
he's one block." So, I would walk to his house
and knock on his door and be like,
"Hey, what are you doin' today?"
Um, and he'd be like, "Yo, bro, we're not hanging out,
we're not friends now."
He was like, "Hey, I'm writing a script
and I'm puttin' you in it." I was like,
"Yeah, sure, whatever." I thought he literally
was gonna borrow his aunt's VHS camera
and we were gonna make like a, video with some friends.
And I'll kick his fuckin' ass
if he talks about my girl like that.
- Kick his fuckin' heart if he talks about your woman.
- I'll kick his ass! I'll kick his ass!
- Black Panther whoop his ass! - Yeah!
- "Clerks" was forged in the kiln
of the Highlands Recreation Center.
We're comin' up on the foundation
upon which my entire life was built.
[Heavenly singing]
Can't escape it. Best job I ever had
in terms of return on investment of time.
Holy shit. Can you imagine?
I came to interview at RST Video,
the video store next door, which is closed.
Because I went to Quick Stop and Mr. Topper was there.
He goes, "Would you be interested, from time to time,
in working at the convenience store?"
So, what had happened was, it wound up being
mostly convenience store.
It was, I got catfished into this job, man.
Like, I came for the video store job,
but then they were like,
"You're really here for a convenience store!"
and they netted me and put me behind the counter.
So, it wasn't even a job that I wanted.
It wasn't even me going like,
"Oh, my lord, I-I desperately wanna work
in yet another convenience store."
It was by default,
that I wound up working at the store
that would literally change my life.
- I was workin' at the Quick Stop.
I was workin' there before he was, actually,
so, I was like, you know, I had seniority.
We would sit around at the Quick Stop
reading the Village Voice,
and we started noticing these ads for these midnight movies,
and they looked interesting,
and more interesting than the type of films
that were playing at the multiplexes around New Jersey.
So, uh, we had gone up there to see "Slacker".
In the car ride home, he was driving,
and I would look over at him,
and you could see this intensity in his eyes.
I, I could tell that his mind was racing.
It was going a million miles an hour,
and that something that clicked.
Through "Slacker" he saw filmmaking
as an outlet for his writing, really.
Like, he had always wanted to be a writer,
and then, he was like, "Holy shit,
I can make a film for next to nothing.
I can self-finance a film
and get my writing out there that way."
- I saw it all crystallize when I saw
Richard Linklater's "Slacker" because I'm like,
here's a guy who's like, I'm gonna make a movie.
Never mind waiting for somebody to let me make a movie.
- Oh, did that inspire Kevin to get in front of the camera?
[Laughs] 'Cause I show up in my movie?
At least I gave myself a three-page monologue.
Kevin used that to stand around and be quiet all the time.
Tough acting.
♪♪♪
What inspired me to make "Slacker"?
Probably not being able to do another kind of movie
I wanted to make,
so I made the film that was kinda in my head.
Some experimental narrative that I was,
can make in my backyard. Very cheap.
- You cannot argue the power of,
of cinema,
when I saw a movie
and it made me change everything.
Everything!
Like, what I thought about myself.
And it's not like I saw this movie
and it challenged what I thought about myself
because it spoke to me on some level,
I just like, this counts.
Like, this, this is what I've been waiting for my whole life.
Like, I wanna do this.
I had to educate myself.
I wound up going to film school in Vancouver.
I had seen an ad for the VFS -
wanna go to film school, but don't have time
to go to four year? Hit this program.
And so, I went, and it's very uncharacteristic of me
to have made this weird move.
Like, my friends often think like,
"You, who never thought about doing that shit,
what made you leave there and go there?"
Because there was no other way.
- His word processor was going up on a belt
to go into the bottom of the plane, and he goes,
"Oh, my God! Why isn't it up here with me?"
- My education of film school was
"You need to surround yourself with talented people."
I did that, and then I bolted.
So, if I hadn't seen that ad,
I don't know that I would've pursued film school.
I never would've met Scott Mosier,
and Scott Mosier is absolutely essential, the key,
the battery, to all this shit.
♪♪♪
- That's beautiful, man.
♪♪♪
I knew I wanted to get into movies, but I was not--
I was the guy who was like,
I was playing sports.
I guess I was more jockish.
Man: You're Emilio Estevez in "Breakfast Club."
- I was-- - If it was the five.
- I would, if, okay. So, I have to align myself
with a part of "The Breakfast Club"
I would be more in the Emilio Estevez camp.
- If I had to put Mosier in "The Breakfast Club",
he's not Molly Ringwald.
He's not the princess.
He might see me as Molly Ringwald.
- He's not Molly Ringwald.
I mean, he might want to fantasize about,
but I don't think he's Molly Ringwald.
- Emilio Estevez, the jock.
But I mean, at the same time, I know if somebody said,
"Hey man, in a documentary,
I said you were Emilio Estevez in 'The Breakfast Club'",
I'd be like, "What the fuck? Is that how you see me?
After all this time, you think I'm the Emilio?"
- It's tougher to say. I mean, on one level,
I guess I'd have to put him in the Judd Nelson's character.
Man: Really?
- Bender's the smartest guy in there,
and he's the smartest manipulator of the conversation.
And there's something of Kevin in that.
- Maybe it's one of the girl characters.
[Applause]
Who does he think he was?
- I wish I was Bender, but I'm probably not.
- I do think people underestimate like,
how hard he worked, or how much time he put in
when we got to that point,
'cause there was nobody in film school or anything like that,
that could write like him.
The script was the star, right.
The script isn't the star of that movie
if he doesn't work his ass off
and put in a ton of hours as a writer,
leading up to that point. It's just not.
This is somebody who has a voice.
- It's gonna be on my tombstone,
"Here likes Brian O'Halloran, born December 20, 1969,
died whenever,
he's not even supposed to be here today."
I'm not even supposed to be here today!
I don't need this. I'm not even supposed to be here today.
I'm not even supposed to be here today!
- Oh, fuck you!
- Cool the fact that someone of our age
was taking a chance to make a film.
In reading the script, he was incredibly witty
and incredibly poignant at the same time.
When making it, I don't know,
I didn't have that type of, you know, vision of like,
well, this is gonna be awesome!
I was hoping that, you know, we'll get a VHS copy of it,
I'd be able to show friends.
[Door creaks open] - John?
Ah, my old friend.
- Becomes clearer and clearer, the more times you see it,
just how unbelievably meticulously structured
and worked out "Clerks" really is.
- 37. My girlfriend sucked 37 dicks.
- In a row?
- Everyone got it. Just like,
the voice, and the, you know, the authenticity of it.
- You think the average Storm Trooper knows
how to install a toilet main?
All's they know is killin' in white uniforms.
♪♪♪
- Who knew, you know, that it tapped into
the subculture that's been so, we've been able to see now,
all these years later,
of people who Kevin were speaking to,
that were like, I've never been spoken to before.
You're my guy.
- There's something about Kevin's story
cobbling together the resources he had and like,
coming out of working in a video store,
dropping out of film school.
Like, he is the sort of number one story
of what Sundance represents for, for filmmakers.
♪♪♪
[Indistinct chatter]
♪♪♪
- We're now looking to get a distributor for "Clerks".
- We're still getting picked up. - Yeah.
Woman: Okay, guys, so how's it been going?
- Great. We just did like, three killer interviews today.
- Is this the last screening today?
- And there is a great piece in the New York Times coming out.
- Yeah. - And a great review
in the Hollywood Reporter, so, it's been a great day.
[Applause]
- The film won over that festival
that was a very clear sense of a build,
the culminating screening at The Egyptian,
which sold the film.
- I actually brought something with me.
This is my "Clerks" ticket.
On the back of it,
I wrote "The Clerks."
I didn't even get the name right. [Scoffs]
["Ghostbusters" theme song plays]
I told Kevin Smith, many times,
"Hey, you're one of the reasons I'm a director,"
and he's like,
"Uh, you grew up on the set of 'Ghostbusters'.
Why did you need me to tell you,
you were a director?"
"Clerks" became this access point for me,
to independent cinema,
in a way I didn't think it could be.
I didn't think that art house films could be funny.
I grew up surrounded by big comedic movies,
but those always felt like my dad's movies.
When I saw "Clerks,"
it felt like I belonged to this.
- When's the last time you actually worked here,
Mr. Smith?
- God, it would have to be back in May.
You know, it was right after Cannes, I think.
I think I even came back from Cannes,
and worked for another week or something,
and then, that was it. That fateful '94 year.
- There's an element of luck involved, but it's also,
you know, kind of been the voice of your generation,
which, you know, I mean he, he was.
- "Clerks" was, you know, me jumping out
in front of the audience and saying,
"Hi, my name's Kevin Smith,
and I'd like to speak to you for the rest of my life."
♪♪♪
I, I did my thing, I sang my song,
in a very fortunate time.
Timing was everything, in the case of "Clerks,"
me starting my career,
because if I had started a year or two later,
that's the advent of the internet,
and there's gonna be a generation of me.
- When you sent me one at the house to see it, a VCR tape.
- VHS, yeah. - Donald called me and said,
"Well, what do you think of it, Mom?"
I said, "Oh, it's good, it's really good."
And right away, Donald said, "You didn't even turn
the voice on, did you." - [Claps]
- I said, "Oh, I was afraid to."
- Making "Clerks" making it to coming out,
was still one of the, you know,
great experiences of my life.
♪♪♪
You know, it's like being on "The Price is Right."
With each thing that happened, there was a new,
there was like, one more reveal, like yeah, and fucking boat!
And you're like, "Holy shit, there's a boat!"
- The underdog story of like, "Look at this,
movie looks like shit. Don't we love these kids?
Give it up for the kids!" You know, like oh!
It was always a shock, and a surprise,
and stuff like that.
But once we'd gotten our foot in the door, you know,
I didn't wanna fuckin' risk pulling it out again.
You'd heard about one-hit wonders and stuff like that,
I didn't wanna be that.
I was immediately tryin' to set up the next thing.
- Yeah, at Sundance, we met Jim Jacks.
- Jim Jacks, met him at a party at Sundance,
after we'd won an award and shit like that, for "Clerks"
and I was introduced to him, and I was like,
"Oh, shit, man, you did 'Dazed and Confused.'"
- My same casting guy, my same producer, same studio,
same everything. I don't know,
I was trying to give him advice on,
to avoid some of the pitfalls.
- We talked about when they were ready to start
talking about their next movie, that we would talk.
- We had this idea for "Clerks" in a mall,
and he was just like, "Oh, my God, that's perfect."
- That's January '94 and I feel like by summer '94
we were making "Mallrats."
Jay: [Sings incoherently]
♪♪♪
Kevin: We were making a movie at a studio -
the same studio that had made "Animal House"
and the "Blues Brothers," "Breakfast Club."
"Mallrats" is literally me,
making an 80s movie in the 90s.
- Snoots to the doo!
♪♪♪
- I felt like it was an opportunity
that I didn't wanna pass up,
but I wouldn't say at that point, even I was like,
"Oh, my God, I wanna be in movies, and act, and do that."
It was more just like, "Wow, this fell in my lap
and I'd rather do this than roofing."
Growing up in Jersey,
and flying out to California,
and seeing like, palm trees and stuff,
I'd only seen them in like "Beverly Hills Cop,"
and "90210" and all this stuff,
and now, all of a sudden, I'm like,
driving down Hollywood Boulevard, you know,
with the palm trees, and meeting Shannon Doherty.
It would seem surreal.
Well, if it isn't my neighbor, Mr. Svenning.
- I get bags of chocolate covered pretzels, all the time.
You know, and it's just,
that's such a memorable moment.
Oh, my God, people like, "No!
Oh, no, don't eat it!
Yeah, eat it! Oh, no!"
It was great working with Kevin.
We all got along; everybody had a fun time.
We met afterwards, we'd have dinner, we'd eat,
we'd go to the pool, we'd play games.
It was a great experience. We took over the mall.
- I was excited about it. I was excited for him.
I really liked the script.
- When Jim Jacks read the script, he goes,
"This one character, who's that supposed to be?"
I was like, "Well, he's kinda like a Stan Lee, I guess."
You know, somebody that everybody knows
in the comic book community. And he's like,
"Well, why don't you just write it for Stan Lee?"
I'm like, "Well, I don't know Stan Lee."
Jim Jacks goes, "Well, I do."
And I was like, "Hollywood is good."
- Oh, my God!
Holy shit!
Aren't you...? - Oh, Stan Lee.
- My very first cameo,
people refer to it as its cameo.
I would rather think of it
as my first starring role.
♪♪♪
Filming on "Mallrats"
was some of the most fun
one could ever have.
- "Mallrats" was me trying to be entertaining,
going like, you know, "Clerks" worked out, and I was like,
"Oh, they like me. Well, here's me being
entertaining to the masses!"
And people were like, "What? Comic books?
Who is Stan Lee?"
- It was an acting job. I expect an award for that.
- Kevin is not only a terrific director,
he's a great humorist.
- It was fantastic.
He was everything you hoped in the world that he would be.
- You don't somehow feel that you're working,
when you're working with Kevin.
It's more like you're with a friend
and you're having a great time together.
♪♪♪
- At one point, I got a phone call from head of the studio,
he's like, "I'm watching the dailies.
This scene with Stan Lee reminds me
of the Wolfman Jack scene in 'American Graffiti.'"
- There was no reason it couldn't,
and shouldn't, be a big hit.
- Things were lookin' up for that movie, man!
♪♪♪
My dream, of course,
because I was a child of the 80s,
is a hundred million dollars is a lot of money and stuff,
and that's, used to be a banner,
hallmark in our industry of like,
oh my, if you could make a hundred million dollars.
Head of the studio, Tom Pollock, said,
"We're gonna to 'Animal House' business with this movie."
He goes, "We're gonna make a hundred million dollars,"
and he was off by 98 million,
which is like, close.
[Whistling through air]
[Hard thud] - Ah!
- Suddenly, I went from a high high to a low low.
It mattered, to me, to you know,
get critical praise.
Uh, that was, you know, how "Clerks" thrived.
- Whoever sent the review that was like,
"If they're ever gonna teach a class in what not to do
for your second film, 'Mallrats' should be
at the heart of the curriculum,"
is not a, is not a great review.
And that was a review admonishing Kevin for like,
you know, we built you up.
- The audience that ushered me into this world,
uh, were you know, were intelligencia.
"Clerks" never played on more than 50 screens,
and it was reviewed by like, "The New York Times,"
the "LA Times," the "Washington Post."
- You know, those reviews were painful because they were,
they were, essentially, you know, critics who had made him,
you know, feeling betrayed.
- Those were the people that elevated that movie.
Wasn't like the general audience.
General audience wouldn't discover "Clerks"
until home video, and then, boy,
it really connected, man, and that was my true audience.
So, when I went out there a second time with "Mallrats,"
the intelligencia were like,
"What? What is this?
John Landis, John Hughes?
Like, ew. We put you here.
We let you into our club,
and this is the kinda shit you're gonna make?
Get outta here!"
And so, it went south, like real fuckin' fast.
- You know, at that moment, it's like,
we're not, "Mallrats" isn't a cult movie,
it's not anything. It's like, that's it.
Like, its fate was sealed.
It was a fuckin' bomb that we made.
You know, like that was it.
Jason: "Mallrats didn't make a huge box office hit,
or anything, but enough people saw it
that I remember when I was delivering pizza,
um, people would be like, "Hey, man,
I saw you in that movie, 'Mallrats.'"
And I'd hand them the pizza, and I would be like,
"Please, tip me big. Please give me them tips, baby."
- I feel like on "Clerks" we were a real team,
and on "Mallrats," we were a team,
but in a little bit of a different way.
- On that movie, he didn't know what to do.
Like, you know, there were times I think he was just like,
"I should go home." - I wanna be more involved,
like, I want more responsibility.
- Scott was, to me,
the most important person on the journey
'cause he was the only one who was comin' with me.
It's like, we have to keep the fuckin' nucleus together.
When "Mallrats" fails,
you're like, all right, well, fuck, we were in,
and now we're not,
so, how the fuck do you stay in?
- "Mallrats" hurt... hurt us,
and a lot of people were like, "Done!"
- I have never seen those two look more forlorn,
that I can remember.
- Nothing's going to take away the uh,
the disappointment that he, that he had
and you could see in him.
♪♪♪
- I don't think people understand what a huge
adjustment that is, to be making a film
with your friends, for no money,
to have people in some other city watching your dailies.
You pay such a price.
- That's where Scott, the magician, came to life.
- I'm the person that people should come to,
to get shit done,
or to even understand what the fuck's going on.
In order to become that person, I had make "Chasing Amy."
- "Chasing Amy" could not have happened
without "Mallrats" in between.
- It was kind of like a, let me see,
do I have another magic trick, and there was one,
and I wouldn't have had that magic trick,
if I hadn't met Joey on "Mallrats."
- I remember getting to know Kevin
and we just had a great banter.
You know, he, he's one of the funniest people I've ever met.
Yeah, hi, somebody told me they make comic books here.
Kevin and I started dating,
and so, a lot of the movie is
in a more cinematic sense,
but like, issues that we were going through.
- "Chasing Amy" came from a place of a guy
who didn't know emotionally how to be a grown up
in a relationship.
He was still a high school kid.
- This kid from New Jersey coming,
and then living in Hollywood with me,
and all my friends,
it was a lot for him.
So, there was just a lot of, I think,
insecurity on his part.
- Thank God I had that relationship.
Like, thank God, you know, Joey was like,
"What's wrong with you?" You know, number one,
"Chasing Amy" came out of it,
that, that movie is about our relationship,
to some degree,
or my inability to process her past, or whatever.
And number two, it, more importantly,
I came away from all that a better person.
Like, you know, at the end of the day,
you hope you could say that about every relationship
of your life, and particularly the ones that end.
- He gave me the opportunity to,
in a really smart and articulate way,
kind of cuss him out about it,
and that exterior hockey rink scene is what that was.
In some of the more emotional scenes,
he surprised me that he could do that, as well.
It was amazing, to be given the opportunity to play a lead role
and for Kevin to see that in me,
um, you know, it was just magical.
- I wrote the script, loved it.
When I got it to a place, I liked it,
I submitted it to Miramax, and I said,
"I wrote it for Ben Affleck, and Joey Adams, and Jason Lee,"
and I was like, "They were in 'Mallrats.'"
And she goes, "Well, Kevin, you know,
the movie business isn't about making movies
with your friends." I said internally,
"Well, I'm gonna spend the rest of my career disproving that."
- Making "Chasing Amy" was really hard, and you know,
the original budget was like a million and a half,
or something like that.
- We were at an impasse for awhile.
Miramax wasn't green-lighting "Chasing Amy"
and Sundance '96,
John Pierson releases his book,
"Spike Mike Slackers & Dykes."
Does a book signing, and stuff.
This is the opportunity. I'm going after John's book,
but I'm also gonna sit down with Miramax
to have a discussion about "Chasing Amy."
- He was like, "I got the budget!
I got the money for the movie!" And I was like,
"Fuckin' awesome." And he's like, I was like,
"You got the one point whatever?"
And he's like, "Well..." he's like, "I got $250,000."
I was like, "To do the whole thing?"
- He goes, "What are you fuckin' crazy?
We can't do that!" And I was like,
"Well, sure we can, man,
we made 'Clerks' for $27,000!"
- That was my fault. I was like,
"Yeah, well, what could you do this for, Kevin, $250,000?
Okay, sold." [Laughs]
Mosier should totally blame me.
Coffee, Rolaids, and cigarettes for that whole movie.
That was not the healthiest I've ever been.
You know, I mean, I was young.
I mean, not to say that I'm like,
"Hey, kids, when you're young,
just fuckin' do stupid things to your body."
♪♪♪
And "Chasing Amy" to me, was accepting that idea
and that budget, was me going like, "All right, well,
I'm gonna, I'll just say yes, and figure it out."
At the time, I was just exhausted, and felt beat up,
and kind of didn't know if it was worth it,
but looking back,
I can say like, I had to do that.
- To bring all those people together and shit,
and actually make it work, like that was his magic.
♪♪♪
- The execution was shock, you know, shockingly good.
You know, I thought it was completely transcended.
- After seeing it for the first time, I was like,
"This one will, will please the people
who weren't happy with 'Mallrats.'"
♪♪♪
- "Chasing Amy" was a delivering upon that promise
that here was a voice, it was real,
it had something to say, it was authentic, um,
and that there was more to come.
- He made a movie that was going to be well received.
Way ahead of its time.
- It's about a guy who comes to this club and [whistles]
hightails it when he finds out...
ready for this?
This girl is gay.
We knew people like that.
Like, you know, it wasn't like,
Kevin created this world that didn't exist.
Kevin captured a world, that, you know,
we knew gay people like that.
- I would definitely say I was probably
the first gay person that Kevin ever met.
His complete acceptance of my life
came out in that movie.
I came to the realization I was gay
when I was in college.
I probably should've figured it out long before then,
but the town we lived in was so small,
that we never knew any other gay people.
When he first started asking me questions, you know,
it was a little on the uncomfortable side,
because I really didn't know how graphically
he wanted to know. You know, I thought it was,
maybe it was feigning interest, you know, to be like,
"Oh, okay, and this is your new life,
well, let's talk about it."
Um, but then I could see, as the conversation was going on,
that you know, no, he was genuinely like,
what to do people do?
And that was his way of going through it
and trying to put it all in perspective that,
okay, well, this is true, or this isn't true.
After you broached the subject,
then you looked at me with kind of funny face,
you went like, "So, you suck dick."
And it was like, "Yeah, I guess I do,
yeah, that's part of it." [Laughs]
It speaks to me in a lot of ways,
just like it did a lot of other people.
Tarantino: "Chasing Amy" is extremely personalized,
extremely good. I'm still shocked that Kevin Smith
turned the corner he took in that movie.
I got a nosebleed, he like, took such a jump. [Laughs]
- Now, at last, we've come what, at least I think,
is the only good movie on this week's show.
It's called "Chasing Amy."
- To feel his start continuing to rise, from like,
"Clerks" to "Chasing Amy" and beyond,
was, was really exciting.
- And the Oscar goes to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon!
[Crowd cheers] - Yeah!
Yahoo!
Damon: Without Kevin and Scott, the movie never,
never would've happened. Couldn't have happened.
We were going to get into turnaround,
we were gonna lose our script, but you read it,
and that's why "Good Will Hunting" got made.
And that's why you're a producer on the movie.
- I do, I get my name on the flick.
- I don't know where we would be without you.
- It's on "Dogma," where suddenly like,
we get to add to the resume, and shit.
Like, "Ladies and gentlemen,
coming off of their Oscar win
for 'Good Will fuckin' Hunting,'
which the fat guy was involved with as well,
him and his buddy,
it's Matt Damon and Ben Affleck!"
So, we had those two dudes at the fuckin'
absolute height of their magic hour power.
Reporter: And Hollywood dish
on Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and their on-screen reunion.
- Damon and pal, Ben Affleck,
playing fallen angels
trying to get back into heaven in "Dogma."
- I remember saying like, "Next movie I wanna make is-
is about the Catholic Church," and uh,
they loved that. Everybody at Miramax, like,
"This is the company for that! Right on!"
- To do "Dogma" was like, just a stupor of bliss,
and that's how it's been for me
every time I worked with Kevin.
♪♪♪
What have I been doing with my life?
The power of his humor is commensurate
with the terror of the times.
- Like, it's bittersweet for me to watch "Dogma"
because it was written by a boy who believed all that.
Like, it wasn't Christian mythology,
that was just what happened.
There are angels, there's a heaven, there's a hell.
You know, it wasn't until on "Dogma"
I worked with George Carlin for the first time.
George Carlin, you know, one of my heroes.
At one point, he goes,
"You really believe this stuff still, huh?"
And I go, "Yeah, you don't?" And he goes,
"No, I'm smarter than that." [Laughs]
- I give you, The Buddy Christ.
[Organ music]
[Shocked murmuring]
[Choir sings] ♪ Halleluiah
♪ Ahhhhaaa
- It was awesome gettin' to work with Chris Rock,
and Ben, and Matt, and everybody.
Alan Rickman, it was crazy, bro.
- There's been, like on "Dogma" like, Alan Rickman.
This guy like, invited me to dinner.
Like, he's like, telling me stories of like, growing up.
Like, I got invited to dinner by this guy.
Like, that's when you go,
I never fucking imagined that.
- I'll see ya.
- So, when I got to "Dogma,"
I did feel like oh, like, I know where my place is.
"Dogma" to me, ends up being like,
trying to make an indie movie
with a lot of big movie problems.
- "Dogma" on paper,
or in theory,
like, sounded like a Miramax dream come true,
where it's like, oh, my God,
we're gonna get so much press.
And then it turned into a Miramax nightmare,
because there was too much press,
and the Catholic League came after the movie.
Catholic League is a self-appointed body.
They're a watchdog group.
That organization went after the movie
in big, bad way.
Reporter: Ben Affleck and Selma Hayek
were greeted by hundreds of Catholic protestors
at the premiere of their film "Dogma."
- We went to the, you know, New York Film Festival
and jumped out of the car,
thousand people or more lined up with rosaries,
protesting the movie.
Holding a giant statue of Mary and shaking placards at us,
and stuff like that. It was crazy.
So, the movie caught some people
in the absolute wrong way -
people who'd never seen it and would never see it.
- We're giving them publicity, but negative publicity.
- It doesn't mock religion.
It's actually very pro-faith and devout.
- Protest against the movie in Eatontown, tonight.
They were joined by this man.
He wouldn't admit it, but he looked and sounded
suspiciously like "Dogma's" writer, director,
co-star, and New Jersey resident, Kevin Smith.
- Lady's like, "You kinda look like the filmmaker."
And I was like, "No, no, no."
I don't think it stands for, for anything positive.
- What does it stand for? - I don't know,
but I've been told not good.
- It was one of these things where read it,
and then flash forward to like,
seeing it in Cannes. - That was very exciting.
That was the first time I ever went to Cannes,
that was to be, I wanted to be part of the "Dogma" entourage.
I was like, really meant a lot.
- Production was quiet. Nobody heard anything,
like, while we were making the movie. There was nothing.
Wasn't until later on.
Wasn't until like, when we were gettin' ready
to start showing the movie in Cannes,
they had to install metal detectors.
400,000 pieces of hate mail.
Three legit death threats.
Like, uh, one said, one of the letters said,
"You Jews better take that money you stole from us
and start investing in flak jackets,
'cause we're coming in there with shotguns."
♪♪♪
It was strange because it was a movie
with a rubber poop monster in it.
Out of that environment, like, you know,
I gotta make a movie after that, and I was just like,
I do not wanna make a movie where anyone gets mad,
or anybody is shoutin' at me,
or, you know, sayin' that I'm gonna go to hell.
I'm gonna make the least offensive movie
I can possibly make,
and that was "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,"
which has one of the highest fuck counts of a movie
ever made.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
[Rapping] ♪ Mother, mother fuck
♪ Mother, mother fuck, fuck
♪ Mother fuck, mother fuck, noise, noise, noise ♪
♪ One, two, one, two, three, four, noise, noise, noise ♪
♪ Shmokin' weed, shmokin' weed ♪
♪ Doin' coke, drinkin' beers♪
♪ Drinkin' beers, beers, beers ♪
He was on fire, like he stole "Dogma."
If he stole "Dogma" out from under like,
movie stars and comedians.
George Carlin, Chris Rock in that movie,
and still, people like, "Oh, Jay."
So, felt like, all right, lean into this.
When all was said and done,
it was like a very dirty version of "The Muppet Movie."
- [Chuckles] - You know,
where two, they're on their way to Hollywood.
- Three days to stop that fuckin' stupid movie
from gettin' made. Come on, Silent Bob,
we're goin' to Hollywood!
[Music crescendos]
- I was surprised, not because that Kevin cast me,
but because I might have
my name in the title of a movie,
leading a movie, so I was a little nervous,
'cause I was, I was a little rusty.
Um, I excited because all,
honestly the greediness in me was like,
"Ooh, how much money, if I'm the lead?"
Shit, yeah, we gots to get paid!
- "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"
is like this victory lap movie, like we made four movies!
Let's talk about 'em in the fifth one!
♪♪♪
Kevin: It's a fan film, and you know,
I was a fan of myself.
It's important to be a fan of yourself.
Proud to be a Kevin Smith fan.
Like, I like Kevin Smith movies. They're fuckin' weird.
It's like they're made for me.
[Ominous music]
- It's not like "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma" weren't fun,
like we always had fun,
it was just the level of stress
makes it less fun.
Now, you go and make "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"
our most expensive movie at that point.
We shoot five-day weeks,
we're shooting in LA, it's really simple.
- I was writing for "USA Today"
and I was assigned to interview him.
I didn't know who he was,
and that's how we met.
We did the interview and within a year, we were married.
[Chuckles]
["Laid" by James plays]
♪ This bed is on fire with passionate love ♪
♪ The neighbours complain about the noises above ♪
♪ But she only cums when she's on top ♪
I had never dreamt of acting.
I'm incredibly awkward and shy
in front of a camera.
I knew that it was not something
that I wanted to pursue and, and make a career out of,
but the experiences that I had
while doing the movies with my family,
were pretty priceless.
Our first real big move for a shoot
was "Jay and Bob Strike Back."
We were in New Jersey
and we all moved to Los Angeles.
[Plane engine roars]
♪♪♪
- I had a blast on Jay and Bob, a hundred percent.
I was just happy I still had the opportunities.
♪♪♪
There was the fun of going out and drinking,
but I feel like there was a lot of camaraderie.
- It was me and him every day,
and everyone else changed.
- Who's the main guy in this movie?
- Some asshole. - That's not true.
I've seen him working hard. - Really?
You think he's a hard worker? - Yeah.
- The shoot was a blast.
- It was like, "How do we do this?"
and then there was some guy would pop up and be like,
"Well, that's my job, I do that.
You want him to have a giant dildo lightsaber? Okay"
[Energy hums]
- There was a spirit of fun
and enjoyment there, and I thought,
you know, you almost forget that that,
that it is fun to perform,
because everyone's so nervous for their jobs,
and the money, and time.
- Kevin has worked hard to make sure that
he has this group of people that are like a family.
It's the Partridge Family bus.
- This is my single favorite shoot, of all of them.
- Really?
- Yeah, this is fun. Great. Well scheduled.
Man: "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" is wrapped.
Thank you all, very, very much.
[Cheering and applause]
- We had a test screening.
And it went well.
We scored higher than we've ever scored
on any of our other movies before.
The early 2000's was nice to see like,
oh wow, the, the characters
from you know, the very first film,
and the View Askew are popping in mainstream kinda culture.
♪♪♪
[Crowd cheers and applauds]
♪♪♪
- We opened up the website,
the View Askew website.
It's a message board where people could post
a subject and inside, they'd write whatever they want.
And then you can answer at your leisure.
I'm like, suddenly you could reach people.
Once we opened the doors, like a community built,
and we were all like-minded individuals.
- Kevin was the first person that I knew, that had,
that set up an internet visibility of you know,
of a known person, to kind of reach his fan base.
- He's like, the first person I knew who had a computer,
and he was in like, already like,
chatting with fans somehow.
And I just thought it was the stupidest thing.
- Kevin and his fans.
Have nothing but admiration
for how that got built up over time.
- They were my audience.
They have a fuck about Kevin Smith, like, fantastic.
And we also had common interests in comics,
and "Star Wars," and hockey.
Suddenly, I was tangentially pulling those things in.
- The web board, I started just posting on that,
just because Kevin was on there.
If you posted a question, Kevin answered it.
Like, now, you know, everybody, that's anybody.
You can do that on Twitter, you can do that anywhere,
but back then, it was just unheard of.
So, I became part of this little community.
♪♪♪
"Mallrats" comes out.
They released the "Mallrats" script book,
and I went to the Staten Island mall to get it,
and the guy's like, "Nah,
he's like we don't carry that Kevin Smith.
Kevin Smith sucks anyway." So, I took my recorder,
and I just started screaming at the guy.
I wrote Kevin an email, and I was like, "Hey man,"
I was like, "...just to let you know..."
I don't know even why I told him, but again,
that's what Kevin fostered, that like,
ability to just reach out, and he was like, "This is amazing."
And then he's like, "Do you wanna come work for me?"
And I was like, "Yeah." It was great.
One of the most defining moments of my life.
- People on the message board were like,
what are you sellin'? I was like,
I'm not really selling anything.
And then I looked around and I said -
this was after "Mallrats" tanked -
and we had boxes and boxes of posters of the movie.
So, I was like, "I guess, I could sign these posters
and sell them," and people were like, "Yes!"
So, I started taggin' the "Mallrats" posters
and sellin' 'em online.
So, people would order stuff.
Brian Quinn, he was the guy
who would put the shirt into an envelope
and send it to you.
- Kevin made View Askew uh,
so welcoming to fans.
I mean, he would throw the Vulgarthon.
We've got a few movies, let's have film festivals.
People from the message board from the website
would come to Redbank you know, from all around the world,
and see movies, and we'd have Q&A's
and bring the actors up.
- And Kevin had no barriers between them.
Like, I'm your friend, let's talk,
let's get to know you. He would listen to everybody;
he would talk to everybody. So, dealing with fans was fun.
- We had fans coming from Australia, from Canada,
and England, Brazil.
People would put that type of an effort to come
and see movies, and meet you,
because it connected with them.
- Oh, my God, these strangers on the internet.
Oh, my God, how did you do that?
I was like, so, oh, my God, they could be like, murderers,
and this is crazy, you know. And we drove down,
because I was like, I had to see this.
All these docile, sweet people from around the world,
went to the store, bought a bunch of stuff,
and then he signed it, all night long.
And I thought, this guy is just brilliant.
- So, this is Redbank, New Jersey.
This has been the home of my office,
the home of uh, the comic book store -
Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash.
We wound up moving the base of operations to Redbank.
View Askew office is still in Redbank, to this day,
and that's where we send all the merchandise out of
when people order stuff.
It's crazy that the merchandise went from like,
"Hey, what are you guys sellin'" to... this.
♪♪♪
I like making loot, don't get me wrong.
I got a mercantile instinct, and stuff,
but more importantly, there's a thousand of that
thing out in the world,
where somebody's walkin' through somebody's house
being like "What is this?" "Oh, that's my Kevin Smith pop."
"Who's Kevin Smith?"
"What? Let me tell you!"
And then, the story goes on.
Some people watch entertainment just to be entertained,
they go, "Oh, that's fuckin' cool."
Some people go deeper than that and become fans,
where they're like, I watch everything I can
of these people. Oh, I fuckin' love what they do,
I love the cut of their jib.
Penn and Teller, back in 1985, I think it was,
when they first did SNL.
That's when they jumped on my radar,
and instantly, I fell in love.
A, they were funny; B, they were subversive.
They were working in their genre
and poking fun at their genre at the same time,
which is something that I would go on to do,
when I had a career. It just sat well with me.
So much so, that I went to see "Penn and Teller Get Killed"
and then bought the VHS
from Choice Video in Middletown.
See my luck.
They gave me a damaged box, those dirty fucks.
- Wait, wait, let me--
- Creased in there.
- Oh, yeah. - Kinda mad, but oh, well.
- My name is Penn Jillette -
J-i-l-l-e-t-t-e.
First name is Pen, like short for Penny,
with two n's, the old abbreviation for Pennsylvania.
Don't put PA Jillette there, it's Penn Jillette.
♪♪♪
I'm removed enough from Kevin, in terms of age,
that it's so flattering to have somebody
that was aware of stuff I was doing when they were young.
Of course, I know that.
I mean, after our show every night, someone mentions it,
but someone who is kind of as important of a culture.
There's a lot of talk about what damage you know,
Twitter, and Facebook,
and, and internet itself,
has done to our culture,
and probably gave us, you know, a, a really shitty president.
But while it gave us that,
it's possible it also gave us Kevin Smith.
- Kevin has successfully kinda created his own world,
his own humor, his own fan base.
You know, you have to really admire it.
- People were voting with their dollars for Kevin Smith stuff.
It was very, very, very obvious.
His fans were ready at that point, were legion.
What he did cultivating that,
you can't understate just how, how amazing that was.
♪♪♪
1996, 1997,
it was about as dark a time as you could imagine in comics.
When we approached Kevin,
Kevin was riding high as hell, right,
as a, as a young director, young filmmaker,
young writer,
and looking at it from his perspective, right,
there was a lot to risk there.
And he said yes.
And when he said yes, and when those books came out,
it changed everything.
He brought a spotlight to comic books.
He brought excitement to comic books.
He has been an advocate for the industry
from his very first day that he could say something publicly.
Not only saved my career, and, and Marvel
but contributed to the saving of comics.
- Kevin has had a great impact on comic books.
Kevin: When I was growing up, you knew Stan's voice
even before you ever heard Stan's voice,
because he would write in the comic books.
He would editorialize.
And he had such a good time with it and made you feel
like you were part of something,
and always treated his fans insanely well.
He's a salesman, at the end of the day.
Like, particularly for Marvel in those eras.
But he taught me how to be a businessman
and do it with class.
- Almost every comic book writer and artist,
has great respect for him,
and great love for him.
- Kevin has had a lot of stories to tell in his life,
a lot of ups and downs.
But one part of his life
has been the resurgence of Marvel and the comics industry.
- Trust me, true believer. Trust me.
[Book rustles]
- When I got to "Entertainment Weekly"
and sort of set up myself as one of the handful of geeks
that they had working on that stuff,
especially in the, in the mid to late 90's,
anytime we would have to do a story about like,
geek culture, Kevin was the guy we all talked to,
because he was the filmmaker who did this stuff.
He was the voice of authority.
♪♪♪
The fact that geek culture caught up with where he was,
you know, 25 years ago,
we're now fully in that sphere,
in the world that he was always evangelizing for,
has made him sort of like, you know, Methuselah.
You know, like, he's the man on the mountain
who's been dispensing this wisdom for a long time.
Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, Kevin Smith!
[Crowd cheers and applauds]
♪♪♪
Kevin: At a certain point,
I, I gave up on the notion of uh,
Kevin Smith filmmaker,
and you know, he's, I still make films,
uh, but like, you know,
maybe it's because the critics were like, "He's no filmmaker,"
I'm like, "All right, they're right."
But I got to a point where I'm like,
yeah, but I think I'm gonna be so much more.
And because of that, I wound up being myself for a living.
Suddenly, I wasn't just like oh, he made "Clerks."
I was able to build myself into the art project.
- I like that Kevin is setting himself up
as just kind of general interesting artist,
uh, that spills in every direction.
- I was aware of Kevin Smith beyond his movies,
but as an idea, you know.
Here was a filmmaker who,
not only did I know his name on a poster,
but here was a guy who was out and he was speaking,
and he was eloquent, and he was funny,
and he could go on stage and talk for an hour.
- I could listen to him talk non-stop all day,
and I think the guy is just this extraordinary storyteller.
- Because of the movies, I was forced kind of out front.
I'd bring Scott up with me.
First of all, he was like my security blanket.
Somebody would say, "What was the budget?"
and I'd be like, "Scott, what was the budget?"
And he was the producer,
so he would then lean into the mic and be like, "$27,575."
And then, I'd go back to talking.
- The first time we do a Q&A,
you, it's like, he wasn't where he is now,
but there was something there already.
- We just basically fed the cat
and didn't let him go near a box for--
That's why you don't see that like,
no animals were harmed in this. [Crowd laughs]
- I was the guy coming in at zero,
but he was up front and figuring out
his relationship to an audience early on.
- The essence of his incredible gift
for doing that was instantly apparent.
- First one of the night, dude.
- All right, first question, what's a Nubian?
I'm sure that's-- - Not for nothin',
but I will do the fuckin' jokes, here.
[Audience laughs, claps]
- I was raised Catholic and I was an altar boy.
And as an altar boy, you're right there with the priest,
where you're the centre of attention.
I thought when I was a kid,
"Oh, maybe I wanna be a priest, you know,
like giving the homily and doing the readings, and stuff."
And then, years later, I realized
oh, no, I just wanna be on stage.
And so, you know, that's why I spend a lot of time
on stages around the world,
because it fills that desire from childhood.
So, I got a taste of that in childhood,
up through like, my teenage years.
[Crowd cheers and applauds]
I had tried stand-up once in my life,
maybe two years prior to "Clerks."
I was like, one day, I wonder if I could,
and blah, blah, blah. I, I think I'm funny,
people do say I'm funny.
And so, one day, I went to an open mic night
and I told absolutely nobody,
and when I got off stage, I was pleased.
I didn't kill but I was like, "You did it!"
One time when we worked at Quick Stop,
he asked if I could bring my guitar to a comedy club
and play, I believe it was "More than Words,"
that Extreme song, because he had a,
a song parody he wanted to sing.
I could not figure out what he was even talking about,
so I didn't know that he had this, this secret life,
running off and telling jokes to strangers.
I wouldn't have approved. [Laughs]
- Well, you get up in front of an audience
and somebody hands you a microphone,
you just got that where Kevin was slightly stepping forward,
like, he was comfortable up there.
- Over time, I learned the Q&A
was the second bite at the apple with the audience.
I used to go to colleges, they'd show a movie of mine,
and then, I'd get up and talk afterwards,
for like, an hour.
And then, I was like, why are we watching the movies?
Like, they're here presumably
because they've seen the movies and stuff,
let's do away with the movies, just do more Q&A.
The "Evening with Kevin Smith" DVD,
it kicked off a personal series.
It also put me on the map as like, a public speaker.
Suddenly, talking became something marketable.
- I loved it. I loved the humor.
- Kevin's so cool.
The stories he tells are always phenomenal.
- It's been the greatest night of my entire life.
- That was never part of the plan, talking for a living,
but it makes sense that it happened
the way that it did.
- He carved his own path through uh,
through movie making,
in a way that I don't think was possible when he started.
[Crowd cheers and applauds]
The movies are a conduit to this moment.
It's the audience telling me that I did a good job,
and they'd put my, my work up on the fridge
with a couple magnets.
[Crowd cheers and applauds]
George Carlin was the guy
I most wanted to be when I grew up.
I wanna be smart, and funny, and curse a lot.
Like, that seems amazing.
What a great person to be.
He's so brutally honest.
He wears his fuckin' truth on his sleeve.
- What's this documentary for? Are you gonna do a making of?
- Making of, yeah.
- And then you're gonna do a making of the documentary.
Isn't there another guy with a camera?
There's somebody following him. - Good.
- You gotta have that bullshit. - He was the first person
who was allowed to curse in my house.
So, I wasn't supposed to listen to George Carlin,
but it was a cool thing for a dad to give his son,
you know, sometimes you see in movies,
like they share a beer and shit, that, that was Dad going,
you can handle this, just don't tell your mother.
And so, getting to work with him, you know,
I did it on "Dogma" and it was fun,
and I got to hang out with him and shit,
you know, that was one thing,
but to do it on "Jersey Girl"
and spend all that time with him.
To like, give him a meaty role,
that like, he could really fuckin' like,
show people what he could do.
That was cool, that was like, payback for like,
you know, you showed me a way to be.
I stand up stages after the movie's done
and I try to be funny because of what you did.
So, thank you, here's a movie role,
that for some reason, I know you'd wanna play.
And he did.
Something more than just jokes to do.
I got to hang out with him on "Jersey Girl."
Like, that was the best use of my time that I could imagine.
- Kevin loves to push,
and he loves to forge new territory,
and he likes to see where the edges are.
- Excuse me.
[Engine rumbles]
If we took all that stuff, you know,
which essentially did in "Jersey Girl."
For him, it might've been the challenge
of making that movie was to do it without that.
- Hmm. [Lighter snicks]
[Clatters on table]
[Inhales]
Some people think "Jersey Girl" is the one that broke me.
You know the one that made me what I am today, and stuff.
Um, because people didn't embrace it the way
I wanted them to, or something.
It was the movie that was supposed to do very well.
It was designed to be that kind of movie
that everybody enjoys.
You know, the first Kevin Smith movie
that wasn't a Kevin Smith movie.
How do you fuckin' sell that?
I wrote the script for "Jersey Girl"
and I gave it to Jen to read,
and you know, I was like, "This is my valentine to you."
- Fucking kills off the wife, in like, you know,
the first 10 minutes. I'm like, am I supposed to
take this as a compliment of some sort?
Narrator: Oliver Trinke was on his way to the top,
'til everything changed. - [Yells]
- "Jersey Girl," I enjoyed this film very much.
- Thank you. - It's very sweet.
It's Ben Affleck, and of course, Jennifer Lopez is in it.
- Jennifer Lopez, as well.
- Now, you must have been going nuts when "Gigli" came out.
You had the next film with them in it.
Were you just going, "Oh, my God, I'm gonna shoot myself!"
- I'm sorry, what movie now? - [Laughter]
- We got hit a little bit by the blowback of Bennifer,
and so, that became not just like,
oh, they're famous people, but like,
people lost their shit.
Reporter: In 2002,
the twosome dubbed Bennifer, exploded.
- Paparazzi would pop out of like,
the bushes and shit like that, and get right up.
They were in a horse and carriage,
and just, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
- With Ben and Jennifer, and all the publicity
and all the rest of it flying around it,
it became really distracting to the, to the process.
- Nobody wants to see it because they think
it's the same thing as "Gigli" and Kevin,
he began to make all these self-deprecating jokes.
- Might've heard already, she dies very early on in the movie.
- Okay, so Ben plays a widower. - Ben plays a widower,
and uh, it was something we tried to keep very quiet
for a long time. And then, after "Gigli"
you know, it became a marketing hook where,
we almost wanted to write it on the poster, you know.
[Audience laughs]
"Jersey Girl" don't worry, she's dead in the first 15.
[Audience laughs]
- That angel girl, Raquel, so good,
so perfectly cast, just genius.
- Your name is Raquel Castro? - Yes.
You are the Jersey Girl of "Jersey Girl?"
- Yes. I was like, this little like,
tiny Puerto Rican-Italian seven-year-old that like,
told everybody what to do, 'cause Kevin would be smoking,
uh, Ben would be smoking,
George would be cursing,
and I'd be yelling at them all.
- First movie you've ever been in? - Yes.
I'll never forget the quality of work
that I got to do with him, it's irreplaceable.
- Who could dislike that movie that was a little valentine
about father-daughter love?
- I wish it had done better because I-I wonder
what other avenues he would've made,
because it seemed to kinda like,
okay, I'm not doing anything like that, ever again.
- Before we started making "Jersey Girl"
or in the middle of it, we'd been working pretty non-stop,
and I was like, I'm gonna take a year off and go travel.
It was a good break for me.
And then he brought up the sequel.
♪♪♪
When he brought it up at first, I was like,
I was like, what's that gonna be?
Like, how do you make, you know?
It's not like "Lethal Weapon" and someone's like,
"We're gonna make 'Lethal Weapon 2.'" You're like,
"Well, what the fuck's that gonna be?"
And then I read the script and I really liked it.
- "Clerks II" is my favorite movie of mine
that I've ever made, um,
because I loved the journey that the characters go on.
- Where "Clerks II" succeeds is by trying to be its own thing.
Day 1.
- This is Day 1.
♪♪♪
The cool thing is Kevin always writes
to the newer version of Jay.
He got a little less obnoxious.
Where I was younger,
I used to get myself in trouble all the time.
Like, I'd pull my ball bag out, and someone would be like,
"What are you doin?" Now, it's like, I'd be like,
"Oh, this guy doesn't wanna see my ball bag."
♪♪♪
- We lived at a very inexpensive Days Inn motel
that was right next to the set.
- We went from room to room.
Toilet papered Jay's room, he got real mad.
Lots and lots of fun.
- It was a really fun movie to make. It was really fun.
- That was pure joy.
I loved making "Clerks II."
I wish they could all be like "Clerks II."
♪♪♪
That's picture wrap on "Clerks II!"
[Cheering, applause]
My favorite moment that I've ever put on film,
and the one that's kind of the most telling
and the one that means the most to me,
is in ""Clerks II"
where I learned who I was through the art,
and that's what you're supposed to do.
Dante and Randall are in jail, and he says like,
"What would the great Randall Graves do,
if he was the master of his own destiny?"
He gets right in his fuckin' face,
all defiant as fuck, and he goes,
"I'd buy the Quick Stop and reopen it myself!"
- And he, in that moment, is laid naked and bare.
The character who has um, worn on his sleeve
this entire journey.
His cynicism,
his disappointment with the world.
For one magic moment, shows you his fuckin' heart
and shows it to the guy least likely.
It changes everything.
That scene is a fucking metaphor.
That scene tells the story of my life.
The day I realized that like,
you can just buy the Quick Stop and reopen it yourself,
that's how you'd be happiest.
That was me going like,
"I'm never going to be
who other cats would like me to be."
The only reason that you liked me in the first place
is because I was me.
So, I'm gonna go and be me
for the rest of my life now.
♪♪♪
[Applause and cheering] - Yeah!
♪♪♪
[Applause]
- There was "Clerks II" which was, what I like to call,
the last good time,
and then "Zack and Miri" which was a much harder shoot.
[Bell tolls, tires crunch, honking]
[Tires squeal, crash!]
- It was a very tough shoot, "Zack and Miri."
I blame the winter, [chuckles]
at the top of the things that went wrong in Pittsburgh.
- Fightin' the weather a little bit.
We want it to look really cold.
You can see my breath right now, so everybody assumes it is.
- "Zack and Miri Make a Porno,"
that was me going, oh shit,
Apatow movies are making movies and Apatow movies
are Kevin Smith movies that are well made.
So, maybe I can go back and make a Kevin Smith movie,
now that Judd Apatow has made that popular.
- Apatow had,
you know, monetized and mainstreamed,
you know, whatever the Kevin Smith breakthrough had been.
- I think "Zack and Miri" is very representative of him,
because it's like, this is a movie about a bunch
of fucking blue collar people in Pittsburgh, shooting pornos.
It has this deep, romantic love story,
and then there's somebody like,
taking a face full of fucking shit.
- "Zack and Miri" worked out,
it just didn't work out the way I had hoped.
I was told like, this is it,
this is the one that makes a hundred million bucks.
- I am bummed out that that movie didn't do as well,
because I think it deserved to do better.
- The notion of "Zack and Miri"
not making a hundred million bucks,
when I had the guy from "Knocked Up,"
who just, you know, that made over a hundred million bucks,
or more.
Um, that, that killed.
That might've broken my brain.
[Machine rumble]
[Loud thuds]
My midlife crisis kicked in, I think, at that point.
Seth Rogan, he was fucking fantastic.
I'll never regret anything I've ever made,
but I'll especially never regret "Zack and Miri"
because just sitting on set
and watching him work was so much fucking fun.
- I was pissed that Seth Rogan introduced him to pot.
I was like, "Fuck!
What did you do that for?
Mother--"
You know, because I thought that it was gonna hurt
Kevin's writing.
♪♪♪
- Wake up in the morning,
put a little shake on that plate,
then it's, it's shake and bake, my friend. Like...
[Lighter snicks]
[Inhales sharply]
Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!
[Exhales sharply]
Let's take on the world, man.
Man: He's been stoned every day since 2008.
Every day since 2008. - That can't be possible.
- That's absolutely true. That can't be possible.
- I see the-- - Nobody does the same thing
every day, for 10 years. Nobody.
This isn't like, we're not like,
not staging an intervention via video, are we?
Both: [Laugh]
- Here's the thing, you know,
I'll, I guess, I'll always wonder,
and I don't need an answer,
so if you figure it out, don't tell me.
Um, was weed a help,
or did weed hurt
these last few years of my career?
Uh, you'll find no shortage of people on the internet
that will point to weed as like where they lost interest.
But here's what I always ask myself,
"How much did you do in the first half of your career?
Like, you made movies and you wrote some comic books.
What have you done in the second half of your career?"
And it's all over the fucking map,
and it's me doing everything that I've never
imagined I'd wind up doing,
and stuff like that.
And that, you know, from "Zack and Miri" forward,
weed has been a factor in all of that.
That one hurt the most
of, of anything that didn't live up to an expectation.
Broke me so much that the next movie,
I was open to suggestion
and I wound up directing somebody else's script
at, at Warner Brothers. I wound up doing "Cop Out."
And so, as a cure for, you know,
my near nervous breakdown
at the failure of "Zack and Miri"
I got the, you know, cure all of Bruce Willis.
There was a period where like, it was, those were dark days.
Very dark days.
♪♪♪
- After "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"
I... I take another hiatus.
I just think I need to try some stuff, you know,
like, writing and directing.
- Scott didn't go to Vancouver Film School
looking to be my producer,
he wanted to be a filmmaker himself.
And then, instead, spent like,
a good part of his 20's and 30's making my stuff.
- Kevin was more driven than I was,
especially in those early, early years.
You know, did "Clerks" and then "Mallrats,"
and then with "Chasing Amy" it was like,
there was thing of like, he, he wasn't gonna stop.
- "Chasing Amy" we were sitting in the editing room.
Scott goes like, you know,
"I think after this movie, I'm gonna get out of film."
And I'm like, "What?!"
- I get so drained at the end of the movies sometime
that I would just be really emotional, and I was like,
I can't do this anymore.
- It broke my heart because I'm like,
what, I couldn't do this without you.
You know, fucking Scott was my everything, my battery.
He dreamed my dreams for me.
That's the most beautiful thing
that anyone could do for another human being,
and he did it while putting his to the side.
♪♪♪
At a certain point, I had to be like,
you know, Scott needs to be Scott
and do what Scott wanted to,
and so, I went from like,
"Scott, we're doing these things," to giving Scott space.
- We, we'd go to what we need,
and I just needed to, I needed to leave.
I left and started writing scripts,
and started producing documentaries,
I started editing documentaries.
I had always sort of wanted to get into animation.
- Scott kinda went off on his journey,
which culminated with him directing like,
a billion dollar fucking cartoon movie.
- Working with Kevin gave me that opportunity.
I got to figure out kinda what I wanted to do,
and see the world,
um, all at the same time.
♪♪♪
- After that, we never made a movie together again.
But it didn't seem like
the end of the world or, or,
you know, like what the fuck,
because we had the podcast.
Before Scott went off, Smodcast happened,
and I always like to think of that as Scott's like,
last gift before he went off to be himself.
Like, we created, you know, the cocktail baby.
The thing that will probably sustain me,
at least on a personal level,
for the rest of my life.
Welcome to Smodcast, I'm Kevin Smith.
- Scott Mosier.
- All right, as established last week, Scott's back,
so enough with the fuckin' ceremony, back to work.
♪♪♪
Here's the part of the story
where everybody goes, oh.
All of those movies were either bought,
or financed by Harvey Weinstein.
All I ever knew about him,
working at Miramax and the Weinstein Company,
was he cheated on his wife.
That was it.
Everybody seemed to know he was a philanderer.
And in the pages of "The New York Times"
I learned about a guy that I had no idea existed,
at all, whatsoever.
You know, if somebody told me like,
everything that you did
over the last 25 years and stuff,
you're gonna do, they laid out my next 25 years,
and they were like, but in order for that to happen,
this shit's gonna happen to,
this horrible shit's gonna happen to other people,
I wouldn't have taken the fuckin' journey.
It's not worth it.
So, I like,
gave all my future royalties,
all my royalties that I get,
uh, to Women in Film.
♪♪♪
- Come on! [Cocks gun]
[Gunshots pop] - [Yelling]
[Gunshots pop repeatedly]
- You know,
Meryl Streep is doing "Mamma Mia!"
Barbra Streisand is doing "The Fockers,"
and I get to "Red State."
I loved "Red State."
- God loves you.
God loves everybody.
[Gun fires repeatedly]
- And he was like, I'm doing a,
a religious movie,
I was just like, "Oh, fuck.
Oh, it's gonna be 'Dogma' all over again."
- You have to take chances. You know,
you can't just do the same thing over and over again.
- I was really impressed with "Red State."
- This was well done.
- He made a horror film.
- If you'd seen his films leading up to that point,
you wouldn't have seen that coming.
- That it was fascinating, that it was a fascinating turn.
- I thought he did a great job at, at building tension,
and working within that genre,
and understanding the genre, and like,
kind of using it to surprise the audience
in terms of disrupt their expectations.
The crazy thing about "Red State"
was that first screening, uh, in Park City.
Reporter: Sundance controversial director,
Kevin Smith, made a scene outside the premiere
of his new horror film, "Red State."
Smith used outrageous signs to steal attention away
from a protest by the Westborough Baptist Church.
That group is well-known for picketing military funerals,
and its extreme anti-gay message.
- Protestors and Kevin's uh,
I think, not-so-great idea,
to sort of fuck with the,
the acquisitions uh, world.
- A lot of people were angry with kind of, the whole,
it's you know, this is for distribution,
well, I'm gonna distribute it myself.
You could feel in the room, people were pissed off, you know.
- It resulted in me standing on a stage in Sundance,
and going like, "Come see an auction!"
- It was the film that was for sale
and everyone was treating it
like this hot acquisitions title.
- And then, when everybody who could possibly buy it,
all the business people were gathered in,
I was like, "Lock the doors.
Light it on fire!
Let's burn this fucker to the ground!"
I went crazy a little bit.
- I'm going to open up the bidding on "Red State."
[Crowd laughs] - I bid $20.
- [Gavel thuds] Sold. - Thank you.
- Kinda gives them all like, the fuck you, you know,
I'm gonna do this on my own.
- Smodcast Pictures is gonna take
"Red State" out on the road.
Uh, just kinda the way
that they used to do with the movies.
Like, "Gone with the Wind" would go play somewhere
for a week, a month, pack up, go someplace else,
play it there, as well.
Pack up, leave. "Roadshow."
We're gonna do the same thing with "Red State."
It's called the Red State USA Tour.
- I actually love the fact that he had that idea
to kinda do the distribution the way he did it,
with this sort of like, going around with it.
- It's pretty great how he did "Red State" and all of that.
Just brilliant and wonderful.
I think that's his best. I-I love that.
Besides being a great movie, also it was just a,
it wasn't like that kind of uh, Soderbergh jive
of this is a new way to put out a movie, and it isn't.
You know, a fine movie,
but I think the way Kevin does it really is different.
- So, I rented a bus and I went to do some gigs,
Q&A gigs, and I loved it!
I was alone on the bus, though.
I was like, this would be so much better
if I was hanging out with Scott.
Like, if me and Scott had a band,
and we were like, The Partridge Family.
♪♪♪
[Laughter]
- It was kinda cool.
We got on a bus and did the first Smodcast tour.
After doing Smodcast for like, two fuckin' years.
From the jump, it was just,
let's just fuckin' have the conversations
that we always fuckin' have in the car,
or fuckin' while we're doing this,
or while we were fucking hanging out in film school,
let's just put a microphone on it.
And that was revolutionary, at least for me,
because nobody-nobody ever tells you
to hold on to somebody's voice.
My father's voice, I don't quite have anymore.
It's been, what, 13, 14, 15 years
since he's been gone.
You wanna get to the essence of a human being,
core of who they are?
You wanna understand who they were,
if they're no longer here anymore?
Listen to a conversation they have.
Uh, that's what it is. We just put conversate--
mics on the conversations.
We used to live in a world where technology was expensive,
so the idea of like, I'm gonna rent out a studio
and just talk to myself, of course, that seems lunacy.
But you know we don't live in that world anymore.
You can literally open this up,
and there's your fuckin' studio.
It helped that I had the movies, though,
because it's one thing to talk the talk,
but clearly, I could walk the walk.
And whether or not you liked the movies,
it's like, you couldn't deny, he made movies,
and they had movie stars in 'em, and they had budgets,
and they played in movie theaters,
and stuff like that.
So, that was good for everything else.
Like on "Fatman on Batman," the podcast,
I just talk about like, oh, I saw "The Avengers".
♪♪♪
- For the first year of the podcast,
it was audio only.
It was, it was my voice and Kevin's voice,
and nobody knew for better or worse,
who I was, where I came from,
or what I looked like.
And so, Kev's fan base,
while almost entirely made of lovely, lovely people,
are do not, by and large, look like me.
And so, then when we put cameras up,
there was like, a half beat of like,
three or four weeks, where it was like,
Marc is Black? Huh!
Now understand why I talk about things like diversity
and inclusion, and they were just like,
I guess this is a really woke white guy.
And for every one person that's like,
"I don't care! Donald Trump forever!"
There is another 100 people like, "You know what, dude,
I just never thought about it that way.
I'm, I'm coming to the world differently
because we talked."
And we talked about it on our recent podcast.
I'm like, I know you don't think that you are some
like beacon for diversity,
but in the podcast that you do,
like, you've got me standing next to you,
you've got Malcolm standing next to you,
you're exposing people to influences
they never would have had ordinarily.
You're broadening horizons.
- Whenever I see young people, I'm always baffled.
Chances are, it has very little to do with the old stuff,
and has everything to do with the new stuff.
They're podcast fans.
I always figure the podcasts were my way
to shine a light on the people
that I thought were like, talented,
you know, and never mind me, here are my fucking friends.
Here's Brian and Walter.
♪♪♪
- So out of everything that I've done,
Tell 'em Steve-Dave is still my favorite, by far.
- Doing Tell 'em Steve-Dave
and turning it into like, you know, that we made movies,
and we made albums.
- When they spun off Tell 'em Steve-Dave out of Smodcast,
that made me feel really smart,
'cause I'm like, right on,
I knew those boys were funny and original.
What I didn't know was
I was paving the way for our eventual TV show.
Without Tell 'em Steve-Dave,
you don't get to "Comic Book Men."
- I had always talked to Kev about like,
I would love to run a comic book store;
I think it would be, how awesome would it be
to go to work every day and turn the key,
and for the next seven hours, just sell comics?
And I guess that resonated with him.
He was like, "I'm gonna buy that comic book store
and I want you to run it."
♪♪♪
- This is Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash -
what I like to think of, and what I've, many times,
claimed as the world's most famous comic book store.
This place is still thriving.
Now, it helped that we had a TV show,
but the only reason we had a TV show is
because Walter built a really solid, interesting business.
- This is really the best decision I ever made.
- What comes out of the podcasting
is endless potential - the TV show, touring,
then the hockey.
You're the new son of Brantford, now.
- I know. I wanna see the Brian Johnson Parkway.
Fuck this Wayne Gretzky shit.
- I'm from New Jersey, that's where I came from
to get up here this weekend.
We're up in Brantford, Ontario, playin' hockey.
♪♪♪
- We're in Brantford for the 12th annual
Walter Gretzky street hockey tournament,
and this is the 10th official year that the VASHL League
has been playing in this tournament.
VASHL stands for View Askew Street Hockey League.
- View Askew Street Hockey League is a group
of Kevin Smith fans.
- It's all around him, and everything he does,
that's the basis of our community.
He will always be something
that we build the league around.
- We grew now to 14 teams over the past 10 years.
We just keep growin' and growin'.
[Hockey arena music]
- The community has let him do
most of the things he's wanted to do,
because he was able to energize and tap into that community.
- If film was the only thing I did,
I'd be done,
I'd be out of this business a long time ago.
But because I could do other things,
because I could be like well, I'm gonna go talk for a while.
- I think that sustained him
in times when film had failed him.
Gonna podcast a lot, and you know what,
podcast is leading me back into movies.
- If you ask people uh, who know film
and know that I've been a part of the film community,
they'd probably tell you that
the earliest work of mine is the best.
I wasn't even confident in my voice at that point.
It's weird, to me, now I'm like,
oh, I'm confident enough in my voice and my material,
that even if it's bat shit fuckin' crazy,
I'm gonna make it work. Watch this. "Tusk."
- [Screams loudly]
- My name's Justin Long. My name's Justin Long.
I'm Justin Long. Hi, my name's Justin Long.
Too casual.
I'm Justin Long. [Laughs]
♪♪♪
I get a lot of people who say versions of this,
which is like a dude,
I saw "Tusk." What the fuck?
♪ Build me a boat
- My parents hated that.
My Mom, she went even beyond like, don't work with him.
She was like, don't go near that guy. [Laughs]
I did tell Kevin that, I was like,
my Mom doesn't want me hanging out with you.
We can't play together.
I'm such a fan of his that like,
I-I was, I was like, I would've done it,
even if it was, as I did.
[Screams] [Tusk pierce, man grunts]
I would've done it if it was a human walrus movie.
We were talking about it, and it was great,
and we were like, getting into it,
and getting into the weeds, and the next day,
later that night, I was like,
I have no idea what we talked about.
Uh, and what a waste of time.
It was fun, but a waste of time,
because Kevin wasn't writing it down or recording it.
And I don't know if it was the next day, or like,
maybe two days later, he sent me a script
that so like, beautifully,
so eloquently incorporated all the things that we talked about
when we were, I thought, out of our minds,
but I guess I was just, I was the only one out of,
out of my mind. Um, and he did it like that.
People are like, "Well, maybe you shouldn't have smoked
when you wrote that movie.
Maybe next time, do that sober." Um...
- You couldn't do that sober. - You can't, yeah.
- Some people are like, "Weed ruined his filmmaking,"
or whatever. Weed brought me back to filmmaking.
I quit like, after "Red State" I was like, oh, fuck it,
and took three years off.
And then it was sittin' around in this very room
recording a podcast,
a ridiculous episode of Smodcast.
Smodcast 259.
And I was kept in companionship with a walrus,
whom I named Gregory.
[Laughing]
- Good, good, right.
- That led to "Tusk"
what for me, is the defining moment of my career.
For most other people it's just like,
"Well, that was the beginning of the end."
- I tend to go along with the flow
because things generally work out.
Like, it's sort of a tried and true method
where he's like,
"Okay, well, I'm gonna make a movie
about a fuckin' walrus."
I'm like, "All right."
- "Tusk" I mean, I love, I mean, it was just so fuckin' bizarre.
- It is like the best episode
of "Tales from the Dark Side" I've ever seen.
I was like, I loved it. How the monster looked.
Man, I was so into it.
- It's not for everyone, but it's,
but I love that it exists.
Kevin: Thanks for being here on day one of "Tusk" everybody.
[Applause]
"Tusk" to me,
is the closest I ever came to doing "Clerks" again.
I wasn't thinkin' about like fuckin like,
oh, my God, what if people react to this poorly?
I was just like, I just gotta see it.
And that's how "Clerks" was made.
- Yeah, the kids here at the convenience store
are tellin' me that it's aboot two hours away.
- I hate American guys.
- Ahhhh!
This is, she doesn't do this a lot.
Man: Really?
- You're really capturing like, gold right now.
Man: This is the gold right now?
- Hi! Whenever friends come over, I'm always like,
uh, before you come in,
I just want you to know that this is here,
uh, prepare yourself.
I don't know if when I look at it, I see myself.
I can't really tell.
♪♪♪
Ladies and gentlemen,
introducing my Dad, Kevin Smith.
[Crowd cheers and applauds]
["Pulp Fiction" theme song plays]
♪♪♪
- I'm such a fan of Tarantino,
and when I put that up, my Dad,
I felt like he was jealous. [Laughs]
'Cause he was like, "You know like 'Clerks'
came out around that time, right?"
It's like, "Do you, do you want me to put
a 'Clerks' poster on my wall?
Like, what do you want from me?
Like, stop getting jealous."
So many of the things that I listen to, or watch,
or the people I admire were,
were during that time that "Clerks" was made.
[Audience applauds]
- You have never seen "Clerks" up until now,
is that correct? - Never.
- All right, let's talk about this movie.
- So, it was weird to see how my dad contributed to that time.
But it was really cool, like--
I've had so many people tell me that
that movie has changed their life, and I'm always like,
"Okay, whatever,"
but then it really makes, it really makes sense.
- What's your favorite of your dad's movies?
- "Yoga Hosers,"
I'm gonna say "Yoga Hosers."
♪♪♪
It was like, oh, you wanna act,
here's a movie written for you.
That was a really beautiful thing
to be able to have my first lead role
working with my dad and my best friend.
- Warrior Three! Ah!
- It's like "Clerks" but with two 15-year-old girls
and the only difference is that
basically we found out that there's a dormant Nazi
living under our convenience store,
and that he has all these little mini um,
Nazis made of bratwurst
that are kind of taking over our store,
and we have to fight them to uh,
basically save the world. [Laughs]
- It's the weirdest thing you're probably ever gonna see?
It's so fucking bizarre,
but I'm honored.
- Yeah! - Oh, my God!
[Indistinct]
- Kevin's so much fun, and he's so sweet,
and he's so um, uplifting,
that I feel like his whole set has that same energy.
[Both scream]
- You piece of shit!
- [Laughs] Cut! - Cut.
- That's my girl.
You remember ever going to a Q&A here,
or any of the Hall H's?
- I, unfortunately, do remember uh,
last year, I came for a second
and you were talking about Batman,
and I was like, this is, this is cool,
I'll come and watch him all the time.
And then, you started talking about
you and mom having sex. [Audience laughs]
- Kevin Smith is the man!
He is a God among nerds!
- Who doesn't know who Kevin Smith is?
- He's good! Good director, big nerd.
I like him. - I love Kevin Smith.
- I'm a big comic book nerd, so, I can relate.
- Uh, love him. Awesome, dude.
- He continues to be a great dude.
He's an inspiration to artists. Beacon of hope, man,
who needs Superman? I got Kevin Smith.
Kevin: This is Mecca for any pop culture enthusiast,
but it's grown well beyond comic books.
I've been coming to this show since 1995.
♪♪♪
I love coming to San Diego Comic Con.
I used to come as just a passionate enthusiast,
somebody who likes the culture.
Now, I come with IMDB
and I interview people.
♪♪♪
- [Indistinct] - Yeah, totally.
- Well done. Thank you. See ya later.
- Nice seeing you. - Thanks.
Nice seeing you, Nelson. See you next year.
- Yes, sir. Next year, it is!
- Hi, Kevin! - Bye, bye!
[Cheering, indistinct chatter]
- Thank you so much! - Bye, bye!
- Off to the next thing, man.
Hall H.
First thing, go smoke a joint, then Hall H.
Whenever you hear about the Comic Con,
you're hearing about things that happened at Hall H.
It's where pop culture comes to unveil
what's gonna happen to you for the next year.
Man: It is my pleasure to bring out Kevin Smith.
[Audience applauds and cheers]
♪♪♪
Now, I just wanna be Kevin Smith.
I wanna be the Kevin Smithiest Kevin Smith I could fuckin' be,
from now until the end of time,
because that's all I'll have going for me.
That's all I've ever had going for me,
and that's all they'll remember about me when I'm gone.
They'll remember the Kevin Smithiest moments of it all.
[Audience applauds]
♪♪♪
[Door slams shut]
♪♪♪
[Sirens wail in the distance]
♪♪♪
[Sirens wail]
♪♪♪
- Hey, kids.
Reporter: Really close call for director
and writer, Kevin Smith.
Reporter: He suffered a massive heart attack last night.
He's already posting on social media about it.
- It's me, and I'm fine. Kinda.
I had a heart attack, a massive heart attack,
and very nearly died.
I am terrified of dying,
and always have been,
up until when I almost died.
[Engine roars]
At the end of the show, "Silent but Deadly,"
you know, I'm tellin' people like, live your dreams,
go out and you know,
say, say what you wanna say, you know uh,
before you leave this world,
and then I literally got off stage and almost fuckin' died.
Over the course of your life,
you've listened to people talk on the radio,
or seen people talk on TV, and you've said to yourself,
or thought to yourself, "I'm smarter than these people,
I'm funnier than this person."
You're probably thinking that shit right now.
[Audience laughs]
And you're probably right, man, but nobody's gonna know
unless you kinda go out there and express yourself
in some way, shape, or form.
That's where I almost died. Could you imagine
if at the end of the day,
like, that's, that's where my life ended?
♪♪♪
They put me in the ambulance; they took me to the hospital,
brought me into the ER,
and Dr. Ladenon, he goes, okay, well,
"Pain, give me an idea,
0 to 10, how much pain are you in right now?"
And I said, "Negative three."
And he goes, "Boy, you're doin' this all wrong, man.
That's not the way you're supposed to feel
when you're having a massive heart attack."
All of a sudden, I was hit with the information like,
I'm having a heart attack. Like, it's impossible.
No, clearly, no. He's, this guy's an idiot.
He's gonna find out that I'm just way too high right now.
- I got a call saying you need, you know,
Kevin's in the hospital.
I almost fainted when I got there,
because one of the first questions that they ask is,
do you know if he has a will?
So, I thought that he had died.
- I was upset because you, but then,
I was upset too because your wife was there,
and she was hysterical.
- So, I sort of collapsed into a chair.
- What if they came out and said this happened?
Like, I don't if I, if like, my brain could handle it.
Like, literally, it's dramatic, but I feel like I couldn't--
- What if a doctor came out and was like,
"He died, and you didn't save him!"
[Laughs] - I'd be like,
"It's not my fault!"
- Jay wasn't there for Silent Bob!
- What if I like, push him out of the way, I was like,
"But I can save him!" I go in,
I just put your dick in my mouth, I'm like...
- That might've pulled me out of the heart attack.
- Yeah, you're like, "The light!"
- "What's goin', what the!"
- I wait to make sure he gets out of,
you know, the surgery,
look at him, everything's okay.
- He's alive, you know,
so I was like, okay. I'm like, now I can move forward.
- Ugh, [chuckles]
that heart attack scared the hell outta everybody.
- As soon as I got to a place where they're like,
"All right, you recover here."
I was like, "And now, it's time to alert the world."
And so, I Instagrammed and Tweeted,
because that seemed like the easiest,
quickest way to disseminate the information.
- I will admit, I will admit that I did go
to Instagram before calling.
- It made me feel a lot better that he was posting things.
- When I saw him posting photos from the hospital,
or whatever, I was like, Kevin's all right.
- Like, I started thinking about my life
and how lucky I was, and all the cool shit I did.
I thought about my parents.
- It's like, 3:00, and I looked, and I said,
wonder why he's calling me,
something must be wrong with Harley. So, I said,
"Kevin, why are you calling me at 3:00 in the morning,
what's the matter?" And he said,
"Well, you and I are the same now, Mom."
And I go, "What do you mean, we're the same?"
He said, "Well, I just had an LAD put in
because I almost died; I had an hour to live."
I go, "Kevin, that's a terrible joke at 3:00 in the morning."
You know, 'cause that's what happened to me.
- I was like, "Oh, my God, I actually got to do that thing,
like I got to be a parent as well."
It wasn't just me, you know,
"Oh, I had a great job." I had a personal life, as well.
- Well, his heart attack was the worst thing
that has ever happened to me.
- I felt a little bit like Mighty Mouse,
you know, the call kind of went out far and wide to,
on Twitter. People just saying,
"Why don't you save Kevin Smith's life?"
I figured, ah, what the hell.
So, I got in touch with him and said, you know um,
there are ways that you can um, you can not die from this.
I don't really care very much
whether it's my exact system, which of course,
is completely correct, or whether it's Weight Watchers,
or whatever it's gonna be,
um, I just wanted his commitment to be unbelievable.
Just, the same as making a movie.
And I love the fact that his daughter is vegan.
- I have been trying to get my Dad to go vegan for so long,
and his doctor has been like, you don't need to go vegan.
I mean, I am thankful he saved his life, but I'm also like,
how could you, how could you say this?
And it just, oh, my God, it was so frustrating to me,
and it still frustrates me so much.
But thankfully my Dad did listen to me
and not, not his doctor.
- That was the thing that came from the heart attack.
Like, it never would've happened otherwise.
Fear of fucking dying
like, made me go, okay, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna commit to losing weight.
- And the fact of the matter is, he lost a,
an awful lot of weight.
And um,
that's not only good for him,
but it's really good because a lot of health stuff,
even on the positive side,
follows the patterns of contagion.
Lives will be prolonged,
very likely by Kevin Smith.
- He's lost 50 pounds, and it's so crazy,
and once he did lose 50 pounds, I was like,
you should go to your doctor and let him know
and let him know that it was the vegan diet. [Laughs]
- The heart attack saved my life in many fuckin' ways.
Part of the journey is the end,
so, we're at the end and stuff,
and I was okay. I was at peace.
And then, all of a sudden, I was like, "Wait a second,
oh, my God, if I die tonight,
'Yoga Hosers' is the last movie I ever made.
Fuck! That's not what to go out on."
I told the doc, I was like, "You gotta save my life,
because I wanna make 'Jay and Silent Bob Reboot,'"
and he goes, "There's better reasons to save your life."
♪♪♪
- February 26,
was when we started the flick,
on the anniversary of my heart attack,
as a big fuck you to death.
The original joke is like,
what if I just made the exact same movie over again,
and see if anybody fuckin' noticed,
'cause that's like, we're in reboot culture.
The idea is you could get away with that fuckin' sorta thing.
Jay: We got three days to get to Hollywood
and stop this reboot from ever happening.
- I'd call up people and be like,
"Hey, man, you wanna come down to New Orleans
and be in the movie?" They'd be like,
"I don't know, New Orleans is far." I'd be like,
"You do remember I almost fucking died, right?"
♪♪♪
- One of the most common things people still say to me,
in my life, as I go around on the streets,
is that I was the bomb in Phantoms, yo,
which is a line that Jay had in an earlier movie,
and it haunts me.
- Affleck, you're the bomb in Phantoms, yo!
- I don't know why they're still so appealing.
I wish they weren't.
I wish I didn't have to hear that so much,
but I do, that's just part of my cross to bear.
- Word, bitch. Phantoms like a mall, fucker!
- Kevin was the first person to give me, to offer me like,
a lead role, you know,
to sort of like believe in me for a movie
that was actually gonna be distributed,
that someone was gonna do,
and really leveraged a lot of his personal credibility.
It was the first time I really felt like a director,
you know, really believed in me and took a chance on me,
and I've always been grateful to him for that.
- In the 90's when Ben was doing all these movies
with Kevin, like, I'd just try to get in them,
any way I could.
And then, after Kevin executive produced "Good Will Hunting"
I remember we were on the set of "Good Will Hunting"
and Kevin offered me Loki,
so it was the first time he offered me a real,
a real job, a big job.
- Lion face! Ah! - Lemon face. Ooh!
- I have no idea what Jay and Silent Bob,
I didn't have any idea what Jay was doing when,
when I was hangin' out with him.
- What are we gonna do?
- Jackie? - Yeah?
- It's hunting season.
[Gun blasts]
Despite their best efforts, they couldn't help growing up,
and, and gaining wisdom, and deepening.
And like, you see that in Jay's performance.
- I just found out I have a kid,
but I don't know how to be a father.
- You know, Jay and Bob movies can be
just like sort of broad, or funnier, or slapsticky,
or like, dick and fart jokes, you know.
All that belies a sort of a deep feeling from Kevin;
he's got a lot of heart. That comes out in his writing,
so I think it was natural that he would write about
having children, since obviously
he's done such a great job uh, raising his own.
- I got to work with the kid again.
It was really sweet because the kid had gone off
to work with Quentin Tarantino.
She got a part as one of the Manson kids
in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."
That was great for us,
on any number of levels.
Number one, she steps on to our set with confidence,
not like, my father's the only person that fucking hires me.
You know what I'm saying, she walked onto a set coming off,
almost like, you know,
"I just came from a real director's set!"
You know, just with authority, with pride,
and shit like that.
- Yo, meth heads, let's do this!
I'm Jay, and this is hetero life mate, Silent Bob!
- It's my whole life, it's my big old open,
broken heart, you know, with fuckin' a stent in it,
and shit like that, projected for the audience.
[Audience cheers]
Jay and I took the movie on tour.
While we'd go intro, Jay would go backstage
and play fuckin' Fortnite,
you know, while the movie's playing.
But I'd sit there with the audience, man,
and just like, soak it up.
I look out in the audience and a good section of it
are a bunch of teenagers.
I'd be like, "What fuckin' irresponsible parent
let somebody like you watch movies at age eight?"
And then, a proud parent will stand up and be like,
"I'm that parent." Then, I see my old man in the audience,
like, for one brief shining moment,
like, same fucking thing.
[Audience applauds]
♪♪♪
[Audience cheers and applauds]
[Chanting] Kevin! Kevin! Jay!
My old man took me, and my Mom,
my brother and sister in Virginia,
to the courtyard, 1979,
because I was like, the "Star Wars" footprint is here.
There was Darth Vader, and C3P0 and R2D2,
and he knew that I liked Hollywood and shit.
So, the old man was like, maybe one day, you'll be here.
And then, 40 years later.
Ben: They've been hangin' around the Quick Stop
for 25 years, but today,
Jay and Silent Bob start hangin' around
the TCL Chinese Theater Courtyard forever,
ensconced in cement,
with all the other Hollywood legends.
Right where they belong.
- [Emotional] I don't think I ever loved
Jason Mewes more in my life
because that's how we got there.
Like, it wasn't like, "Hey, Silent Bob,
put your shit in the ground!"
It was Jay and Silent Bob,
and there's something really poetic about
being right next to him, forever.
- I think if people ever saw that VHS
that he recorded for us,
you'd get emotional, you'd cry,
you know, as parents do.
His father laughed, too, he said,
"Well, at least he feels like he's gonna be famous,
so, that's good.
That is gonna help him get through a lot of things."
But you look, and you say, "Wow, this kid really made it."
- I can't thank you enough for having me
and let me, putting me on the path and the journey.
- Well, a lot of it came from you.
You had to have that instinct inside ya, honey.
- Not really. - That was it, really.
- I love you to death.
I love this woman. - I love you, too, honey.
- When "Clerks" was clearly going to make
some impact in the world,
leave an impression of some sort, he said,
"I didn't, I just didn't wanna be a footnote." [Laughs]
- So, Kevin, the way this works is,
the influence talks about the influencer.
You don't talk to the influencer about that.
The only reason I'm doing this interview
is because you almost fuckin' died of a heart attack,
so uh... [Laughs]
- I'm really interested in the, in the people
that will learn from him, that will,
people that are going to see his Q&A's,
who are 16, 17, 18 years old,
and are gonna learn that this is a way
that you can have a career in movies.
- I am very impressed by him,
because he has managed to change
and evolve in so many different ways,
to keep himself relevant.
- I was kind of like, how is this possible
that he can work at this pace, unrelenting?
- Kevin is really one of the,
I think, most talented people in the business.
- A lot of resurrections in his career,
to the point where I'm sitting here,
still talking about him, and-and...
he is as relevant today and he's ever been.
And actually funnier.
- He became a cultural touchstone
beyond the movies that he made.
- It's just mind-blowing that people
really embrace Kevin's world that he's created.
- Walking with that dude through an airport is a,
is an object lesson in generosity.
But he always takes the time. It's like, "Hey, man, sure,
you want a picture? Come on, let's do this."
- Oh man, the dude just gives everybody like,
if you feel like you, like you had a moment with him,
if you're talking to him.
- There's no arguing what his, he's created, is like,
indelible in American culture.
25 years later, people are still talking about "Clerks."
It's affected so many people, on so many different levels.
- To step up to the plate at your first time at bat
and hit a home run like he did with "Clerks"
makes a movie that is still beloved to this today,
how many people do that.
- There's been people who have been around for 25 years,
and they've passed the movies on to other uh,
to the next generation.
It's really touching to see how many people
that have been touched by my dad.
That's a really beautiful thing.
- He will never retire; he will never give up.
He will find a way to keep going, and going, and going.
[Cheering]
- Where he is now, the podcasts,
the stage shows,
the hosting, making movies, making TV, like...
I feel like he sort of let go of some shit
and just got real free.
I do actually think like, he got where he wanted to be.
♪♪♪
- What one memory sums up "Clerks" best for me?
And there are so many, right,
because it literally gave me a fuckin' career,
changed my life, and it's just like, wishing on a star.
There's a beautiful line in uh,
oh, my God, I'm not gonna get through it
without fuckin' tearing up.
There's a beautiful line in a song by Bruce Springsteen uh,
I think it's called "The Wish"
and it's a song for his mother.
And uh, the line is devastating,
I think, if you've lived like, the life that I've lived.
And he says, "It's a funny old world, ma,
where a little boy's wishes come true."
And like, that's what "Clerks" was.
It was a little boy's wish coming true
over, and over, and over again.
Like, it was nuts.
It shouldn't have happened,
and it fuckin' did, and like,
cracked open the fuckin' universe.
["The Wish" by Bruce Springsteen plays]
♪ And it's a funny old world, ma, ♪
♪ Where a little boy's wishes come true ♪
♪ Well, I got a few left in my pocket ♪
♪ And a special one just for you ♪
♪ It ain't no phone call on Sunday ♪
♪ Flowers or a Mother's Day card ♪
♪♪♪
♪ It ain't no house on a hill
♪ With a garden and a nice little yard ♪
♪♪♪
♪ I got my hot rod down on Bond Street ♪
♪ I'm older but you'll know me in a glance ♪
♪ We'll find us a little rock 'n roll bar ♪
♪ And baby we'll go out and dance ♪
Do it right now! Come in!
[Eclectic guitar riff plays]
♪♪♪
♪ Well, it was me in my Beatle boots ♪
♪ You in pink curlers and matador pants ♪
♪ Pullin' me up of the couch
♪ To do the twist for my uncles and aunts ♪
♪ Well, I found a girl of my own now, ma, ♪
♪ I popped the question on your birthday ♪
♪ She stood waiting on the front porch ♪
♪ while you were telling me to get out there ♪
♪ And say what it was that I had to say ♪
♪ Last night we all sat around ♪
♪ Laughing at the things that guitar brought us ♪
♪ And I laid awake thinking
♪ 'bout the other things it's brought us ♪
♪ Well, tonight I'm takin's requests here in the kitchen ♪
♪ This one's for you, ma,
♪ Let me come right out and say it ♪
♪ It's overdue
♪ But baby, if you're looking or a sad song ♪
♪ Well, I ain't gonna play it
Come on now!
♪♪♪
Woo!
♪♪♪
All right now! Let's do it.
♪♪♪