By Christina Radish
|
|
|
Kevin Smith with his wife Jennifer Schwalbach and their daughter Harley | Twelve years ago, writer-director Kevin Smith made a mark on pop culture with his first comedy hit Clerks. Following the lives of mini-mart clerks Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson), the
New Jersey
masters of the minimum-wage lifestyle, the film was a raunchy, razor-sharp, black-and-white comedy that spawned an animated television show, a comic book series and legions of devoted fans.
Going on to direct such films as Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Jersey Girl, Smith often wondered, over the years, what had become of Dante and Randal. In Clerks II, the two best friends, now both 30-something, find themselves working at a fast food restaurant, named Mooby’s, after the convenience store they worked in burns to the ground. Before writing the sequel, the 36-year-old
New Jersey
native knew that he would have to discuss the prospect with both O’Halloran and Anderson to see if they would even be willing to revisit their slacker characters.
“It was a 50/50 proposition,” Smith tells MediaBlvd Magazine, about whether Clerks II would even happen. “I knew that Brian would be on board, but after 12 years, Jeff finally had come to peace with the fact that he is Randal. Jeff was not a dude that was like, ‘I want to be an actor.’ He was a dude that I knew in high school. Suddenly, he’s in this movie and the movie had a modicum of success, but for the next few years people were like, ‘You were in Clerks, man. How come you don’t act in movies?’ The first year, it’s easy to be like, ‘That’s just something I did. It was fun to do, but I’m not really into acting.’ But, after 10 years of that question, it became, ‘Fuck Randal Graves! That’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me!’”
{quote_top}“So, when I went to him and said, ‘I want to do Clerks II,’ he was like, ‘You’re out of your fucking mind. Why would you want to do that?,’” continues Smith. “He was the lone hold-out, so I did want to talk to him before I started writing because if he said, ‘Never, never, never,’ there wouldn’t have been any point in writing it. He said, ‘People seemed to like that movie, for whatever reason, but why would you want to fuck with that? What if the movie sucks and then people retroactively go back and hate the original one?’ I said, ‘Let me write it first. Read it, and if you really hate it, we won’t do it, and I won’t bring it up ever again.’ So, I wrote the script and gave it to him, and then waited for him to call me. He made me wait a day, and then called and said, ‘I have to tell you, man, I think it’s funny. It’s way funnier than I thought it was going to be. The nice thing is that there is some touching stuff in it, and it’s kind of heart-warming, in a weird way.’ But, he was just like, ‘Look, I’m in, but I’ll ask you one last time, are you sure that you want to do this because you seem to be on a career path? You can do Green Hornet. Why do you want to do this?’ I said, ‘Well, you read the script. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about figuring out how much you can remain the person you’ve always been and actually grow at the same time. It’s me working issues out.’ He was like, ‘Can’t you just hire a therapist and deal with this shit, and then work on movies separately?,’ and I said, ‘The two are intertwined, as far as I’m concerned.’”
Since Clerks was essentially about what it felt like for Smith in his 20's, he wanted Clerks II to be what it felt like to be in his 30's. “I tried to do that with Jersey Girl, and to some extent succeeded, but at the same time, it is sort of a conventional mainstream film. I wanted to tell the story about what it felt like to be in my 30's, and do it down and dirty, and closer to the edge of reality. So, I was thinking about new characters and new situations, and how I was going to get that thought across, and then I was like, ‘Wait a second, I can use Dante and Randal again, as a way into that story.’ Suddenly, it all just clicked.”
|
|
|
Kevin Smith & Jason Mewes | When he made Clerks in 1994, Smith says he was better able to identify with Dante. These days, he feels he is more akin to Randal. “In the first one, I was more Dante, wishing that I was Randal. This time around, I’m definitely more Randal than Dante, in terms of not wanting things to change. I’m a guy and so, naturally, change comes very hard to me and it’s a weird struggle all the time to remain the person that you were, and still grow at the same time.”
After the cameo-filled Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Smith says that he originally decided that he didn’t want any cameos in Clerks II. However, his intentions changed when he went to cast the smaller, quick roles. “You can cast complete unknowns for those roles, or you can cast some cats that you know. Ben Affleck and Jason Lee were no-brainers to me. Of the seven movies I’ve made, they’ve been in six, so it’s weird to do something without them, at this point, although we came close with Affleck. I called him up and asked him if he wanted to do it and he was like, ‘Dude, I’m trying to lay low right now. It hasn’t been a good two years. I don’t know if I want to be in a movie right now.’ He was preparing to direct a movie, so he was concentrating on that. I said, ‘I totally understand, but it’s weird that this will be the first movie in 10 years that I’ve made that you’re not involved with, in some way.’ He said, ‘That is weird. Alright, I’m going to come down, but I just want to be a guy in the restaurant, eating. I want no lines, but the camera can go past me.’ I said, ‘That’s fine, but you know when you get here, you’re going to want to do dialogue.’ So, we shot his two reaction shots, and he rushed over to the monitor and said, ‘I just feel like I should say something,’ and I gave him a line.”
{quote_middle}“With Jason Lee, we got lucky because Jason was able to make time in his very busy My Name Is Earl schedule for his scene, which Matt Damon was originally going to do. Matt was off shooting a Robert DeNiro movie, so Jason stepped in and, thankfully, pulled it off.”
Even Smith’s wife, Jennifer Schwalbach, and the couple’s 7-year-old daughter, Harley, appear in the film. “We put the kid in the last three flicks. The first time she popped up was in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. She was in Jersey Girl, and I tell her she’s the reason that flopped. I figure she’s going to be on a therapist’s couch years from now going, ‘Silent Bob was my dad.’ I put her in the films because it’s nice to chart her growth on camera, and it’s cheaper than taking her to a Sears portrait sitting.”
{quote_bottom}Although Smith’s films don’t generate huge box office, he can rely on the loyalty of his fans. “I’ve been really lucky in the fact that we built ourselves a little audience. It’s not a big audience, but it’s enough of an audience where it’s kind of easy to get the stuff we do financed. But, make no bones about it, this is a business. We can talk art and storytelling all we want, but it’s a fucking business. When someone else is paying for it, no one gives you money unless they’re assured some kind of a return on their investment. Historically, we’ve done that. Our movies have never grossed more than $30 million theatrically, but our DVD sales are very strong. Even though you can’t build a studio system on the movies that we’ve made, someone is making a profit and that’s why they keep giving us money to make flicks. For that reason, I’m beholden to the audience. I love my audience almost more than I love myself, which isn’t that difficult. Because of them, I continue to work.”
When it comes down to it, Smith is still as excited about film now, as he was when he made Clerks all those years ago. “I still love what I do. It’s a career now and I’m kind of used to it, but there is still a part of me that’s just like, ‘I can’t fucking believe that this is my job. This is awesome.’ I keep expecting that day where I wake up and I’m like, ‘I knew it was all a dream. I knew that I was still working at the Quick Stop.’ I still have that feeling that this is the last film that I’m going to get to do because something is going to happen and they’re going to pull the rug out from under me.” |
