Kevin Smith
strikes back

Wearing his trademark baggy shorts and extra-large baseball jersey and smoking a cigarette, Kevin Smith, director of the cult classic Clerks and the critically acclaimed Chasing Amy, walked into the room full of eager young reporters waiting to pepper him with questions about his new film, Clerks II.

Smith, however, had other plans. “So, what should we talk about? Superman?” He said, before launching into a 5-minute diatribe about the just-released superhero film. “I just wanted to see him hit something,” he said. “He was a very reactive Superman. But still, any Superman movie is better than no Superman movie at all.”

Smith, the comic book nerd turned hero to thirtysomething hipsters has always had a reputation for being good with the press and down to earth. After a few minutes, it is evident that it isn't merely an image he portrays. He really is just a guy who makes films and wants to talk about them.

He is self-effacing and articulate. Twelve years ago at the Sundance Film Festival, Smith's comedic, improvisational style was as effective at selling Clerks a hit as the movie itself. He emerged from the festival the darling of the indie film circuit.

Smith commented on the poetic symmetry of the release of Clerks II at Cannes. “I wanted to go to Sundance because that, to me, would have been truly symmetrical,” he said, “But to go to Cannes and receive an eight-minute standing ovation… I mean, Michael Moore still has the record at 14 minutes, but that's a very important movie. Ours' is a very unimportant movie.”

Making unimportant movies have become Smith's stock and trade. In fact, it was Smith's attempt at making a heartfelt movie with a moral, Jersey Girl, that led to the worst critical response of his career. Upon announcing that the sequel to the iconic Clerks was in the works, there were those who were skeptical of his motives. “There was a very vocal minority that was like, 'He's just doing this because Jersey Girl tanked. He's retreating to familiar territory.' I don't see it like that because it's actually more risky to go after the sacred cow of the first movie,” he said.

Despite its failure, Smith hasn't run away from Jersey Girl. In fact, it helped him make Clerks II. “I think Jersey Girl informed the making of Clerks II on many different levels,” he responded. “I remember reading reviews of Jersey Girl and a lot of people came at me for being overly sentimental. I look at Jersey Girl and then I look at Clerks II and I think they have equal amounts of sentiment.”

It's Clerks II's ribald humor that makes it different, according to Smith. “I guess people like their sentiment balanced with, at least in my case, edge.”

The result is a film that doesn't try to overcome its legendary predecessor, but uses the same characters to explore new territory. “It would have been way easier for me to write 90 minutes of Dante saying, 'I'm STILL not even supposed to be here today,' but I felt like it was enough to know the guys, and know that they had been in the first one but that everything else was going to be different,” he said.

Although he felt comfortable going back to the well, Smith readily admits that the chances of a Clerks III are slim. “It feels like a really nice bookend, Clerks and Clerks II,” he said. “If Harvey Weinstein called me up and said, 'You need to start tomorrow,' I don't think I could do it.”

But, he won't completely rule it out. “Who knows? If I'm in my 40s and feel like exploring it, maybe Dante and Randal are just the guys to help me do it.”

— For the rest of the News-Register's interview with Kevin Smith, go to the Journalism Club's blog, The Blazer Online, at: http://theblazeronline.com