Slacker superheroes Jay and Silent Bob make their farewell appearance in the writer/director’s latest, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Scruffy and disheveled, ever anti-establishment, indie filmmaker Kevin Smith enters the W Hotel room humming the “Imperial March” from The Empire Strikes Back to greet a pack of gushing, eager journalists.
That the reporters are acting more like fans doesn’t matter a bit to the affable director, who takes a seat, lights up the first of many cigarettes and starts chatting like he was everyone’s old friend. He’s as happy regaling the rapt audience with stories about working as a Jersey quickie mart clerk as he is talking about Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, his latest movie to feature the characters inspired by that long-ago job.
For those of you folks who missed the slacker years of the ’90s, here’s the deal: in 1994, Smith hit the big time–and became a hero to film school students everywhere–with the success of his first indie, Clerks. The comedy, about a couple of aimless losers (the mute-by-choice Bob, played by Smith, and his stoner buddy Jay, played by Smith’s real-life buddy Jason Mewes) who hang out at a convenience store all day, launched his career. Over the next half-decade the filmmaker managed to carve out a decidedly irreverent niche for himself with his subsequent flicks Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma, which met with varying degrees of success.
A nearly NC-17 road comedy, follows the less-than-dynamic duo to Hollywood after they’ve discovered a comic book based on themselves is being made into a movie–and they’ve been cut out of the rights. Along the way Strike Back manages to parody everything from its own distributor, Miramax, to Scooby Doo to Good Will Hunting. The movie also stars Shannon Elizabeth and Eliza Dushku with cameos by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell and–would you believe–Mark Hamill.
So how did you convince Miramax execs to let you parody them when they were so sensitive about other subjects?
Kevin Smith: I said, “Remember that movie of ours that you dropped last year?” [Everyone laughs at the reference to Smith’s twisted take on Catholicism, Dogma, which Miramax execs deemed “inappropriate.”] “This is payback, and payback’s a bitch!” Harvey [Weinstein] called me and was just like, “What did I ever do to you? Why are you attacking me?” But the jokes are definitely jabs, but they’re playful jabs, so I guess they figured rather than anyone else, let’s have somebody in the family say it. At least he’s not taking the picture over to Lions Gate and making Miramax jokes.
Dogma caused you more than a few problems. Where were you trying to go with this one?
Smith: The only aim I truly had was to make a balls-to-the-wall comedy. It was really nice to make something that I didn’t worry about whatsoever. Nobody was gonna come down on us, unless it was Harvey Weinstein, but he was in on the joke, so we were OK. Ben [Affleck] and Matt [Damon], too. It’s not like they’d send the Ben ‘n Matt Mafia to kick our ass because they were actually playing themselves making jokes about themselves. So there’s no controversy; there’s no fear of how we’re gonna sell this to the world. It’s like, people are gonna go, or they’re not gonna go.
Given that swearing, skirt-chasing pot-smoker Jay and his pal Silent Bob aren’t the most wholesome pair on the planet, were you concerned about the rating J&SB Strike Back would get?
Smith: I don’t really feel the movie’s NC-17. We went through an NC-17 battle on [Clerks] and there was a movie that had nothing objectionable in it except for language. This is kind of the same case, so we’re hoping history doesn’t repeat itself. I’m not really worried about them trying to sell it to kids; they can’t. I think our audience will show up to see it, and that’s just f—–‘ peachy-creamy with me.
The characters always pop up in somewhere in your movies. Have Jay and Silent Bob grown up at all over the years?
Smith: Oh, this is a f—–‘ quantum leap backwards. We’ve not matured; we’ve just gotten so much worse. We got right down in the mud with this picture.
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Why keep bringing them back?
Smith: I kept wanting to bring Mewes back because I love him–I think he’s really funny–and I just kept coming back with him; you can’t really split up the team. And so every movie it just kind of progressed, and with this one, it felt like, you know, you can’t make a movie Jay Strikes Back; people’d be like, “Where’s Silent Bob?”–because oddly enough, Silent Bob is the favorite of the two characters.
But Jay’s got all the lines!
Smith: I think it really has a lot to do with the fact that Jay is a very offensive character. Jay says something outlandish, and I’m rolling my eyes, and they’re like, “I identify with the fat guy. I would roll my eyes at this bullshit too.” So I think that’s why I score a little higher, but I also like to think it’s because I’m a better actor, but I know that’s not the truth!
So you’re more of a director than an actor?
Smith: I’d much prefer to just direct. Thankfully I don’t have to memorize much dialogue in the movie except for one or two moments, which were hell. I don’t really act, I just have three faces: the wide-eyed, the rolling the eyes, and one other one that’s kind of nebulous. So I spend most of that time going through Look 1, 2, or 3, and listening to make sure that Mewes is giving the performance that I’m hoping he gives.
Why take on the part of Silent Bob in the first place?
Smith: When I wrote Clerks, I wanted somebody to stand next to Jay just so that he could have somebody there as a sounding board, so he didn’t look psychotic just standing outside the store talking his shit. I at least wanted to be in the movie, and so, boom, I looked through the script, and I was like, “You know what? Silent Bob has no lines; I can absolutely do that. I’ll look good standing next to Mewes–I’m the diametric opposite: he’s very thin, wiry, and always chattering; I’m just big, I don’t move and I don’t have to say a f—–‘ word.
This movie has an eclectic cast, to say the least. How was it to work with people like Shannon Elizabeth, who had never seen any of your films?
Smith: The way I interact with actors is like, “F—–‘ DO IT!” and then walk away. And then they [go], “All right; all right,” and then they do it.
In Strike Back, you seemed to give Will Ferrell quite a bit of ad-lib leeway, although you didn’t like Ben Affleck’s ad-libbing on Mallrats.
Smith: Well, the difference between Will Ferrell and Affleck improvising is Will Ferrell is very funny. [Laughter]
You’ve said Strike Back is the last we’ll see of Jay and Silent Bob. Are you going to pull a Scary Movie 2 on us and bring them back someday?
Smith: No, I think this is it. I’d rather just get out while the getting’s good, before they grow tired. You know, it’s time to leave the party before we’re the last guys there going like, “You have any records I can listen to?”
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back opens Aug. 24.
