The great thing about posting an interview with Kevin Smith isâ¦he needs no introduction. As the writer/director behind such classics as Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and now Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Kevin is known the world over as a geek thatâs made it.
Again, not many people are so honest, and no matter what you think of Kevin Smith as a filmmaker, youâve got to respect him.
But letsâ get to the reason youâre here. Opening this weekend is Kevinâs new movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The film stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as two best friends that live together and after they run out of money and optionsâ¦wellâ¦I figure you know what happens based on the title. While I havenât been that impressed with Kevinâs recent films, I have to say I really enjoyed Zack and Miri and laughed a lot. Itâs definitely worth checking out.
Anyway, I was recently able to participate in a roundtable interview with Kevin and the transcript is below. As you might imagine, we talked about everythingâ¦
If youâre a fan of Kevinâs, youâll really enjoy the interview. As always, you can either read the transcript below or listen to the audio by clicking here. Finally, you can watch some movie clips from Zack and Miri by clicking here. And
Question: This is your best film.
KS: Well, good, this is already getting better.
When you were making it, did you feel like there was something extraâ
KS: Not really, not really. It was all when people started seeing it and saying, this is the best film youâve ever made. Iâm like, what? The weird one is when people go, This is the best one youâve made since Chasing Amy. I know. So that was kind of weird. Itâs a weird compliment to receive, but, on the other hand, Iâm like, fuck, maybe I ruined the other three. Or the rest of them besides this one. But itâs cool, as long as theyâre saying nice things. Really, I donât even care if they say nice things. As long as theyâre laughing and copping to it. Cause I feel like, you sit in the audience and laugh and have a good time. Then, when you actually have to write a review, you get a lot of people who are more circumspect. Like, itâs funny if youâre into this kind of thing. Itâs like, motherfucker, I know you were laughing. I was there in the back, watching.
But itâs funny. Even as a woman, the raunchy stuff is funny.
KS: Right on, thank you very much. Well, thatâs all due to the cast, man. Itâs one thing to just have a bunch of dirty words on the page, but they made it all spring to life.
Because it has the romance element to it, was it made intentionally maybe to draw more female audiences to your film?
KS: Only as much as one of the titular characters is a woman, but itâs not like Iâm, Iâve got to bring more chicks in. I donât really think like that. If could honestly plan on how to bring more people to a movie, I wouldâve been way more successful than Iâve ever been. For me, itâs the luck of the draw because ultimately I just make the flicks I know how to make. Nine out of ten, itâs not mass screening. In fact, ten out of ten. Wait, what is this? Eight movies? Seven times out of ten, itâs not been a vastly commercial film. So I didnât go into it thinking, Iâm going to get chicks in it this time around. But I figured with a chick in the title, some chicks might be curious. Although most people donât seem to know itâs a womanâs name.
Like Chasing Amy, itâs sort of got that romantic comedy structure underneath.
KS: Mm-hm.
With all the Kevin Smith dialogue, was that something you were thinking of?
KS: When I was making it, I thought it was as close to Chasing Amy as anything Iâve ever done before in terms of structure and whatnot. I mean, weâre definitely a lot less serious than we were in Chasing Amy. Chasing Amy is a very earnest movie. Funny, but very earnest at the same time. This movie is more funny than I think Chasing Amy is, but it does this weird shift in the third act where it becomes kind of emotional. It catches people off guard, but, I donât know, it works for me. Itâs the kind of movie I enjoy watching. I love romantic comedies. I love rom-coms. I just canât stand it when theyâre sanitized and cleaned up, and it ends with a kiss. I like mine to have the fucking happen, and then everything falls apart. And I like people to speak candidly and frankly and use harsh language. Not to be a show-off, but because everyone I know speaks like that. When I see something like Made of Honor, Iâm sitting there thinking, why am I watching this? And my wife is going, yeah, why are you watching this?
Q: Why are you watching it?
KS: I like romantic comedies and I like Patrick Dempsey. Iâve loved him since Loverboy. He was awesome in Loverboy. And he was awesome in Canât Buy Me Love when he was doing the dance and shit.
Q: Do you like porn as much as romantic comedies?
KS: No, I like romantic comedies more, but I do like porn very much. Not so much for titillation anymore. I mean now⦠Iâve been married for ten years, so sex is built in and free. So porn isnât something I use as a tool anymore. I havenât jerked off to a porn in I canât tell you how many fucking years. But I look at porn every morning. Every morning I wake up, I do Google news, Guardian
How cool was it to merge Star Wars and porn?
KS: That was awesome. For me, when I wrote the script, and thereâs the moment in the script where it says, like, the flap opens on R2D2 and you see a ball sack â that made me laugh so hard while I was writing it, I couldnât wait to get to the set. But I was like, You know what? Itâll never be as good as when I wrote it so letâs just face the fact it will never live up here. It went beyond my expectations. When the flap opened, I was the one leading the laughter. I was like, How fucking hysterical! His nameâs R2-TBag and heâs got a big set of nuts. It was kind of cool. It was really cool. There was some part of me, after shooting the sequence, thought, Maybe the porn shouldâve been Star Wars and maybe we shouldâve followed it all the way though. But that wouldnât have made much sense.
Can you talk about Justin Longâs character and how you knew he could play that?
KS: Justin Longâs character was funny on the page, but all credit goes to Justin Long for turning it into a performance for the ages. I think people will forget about this movie and still remember Justin Long in the movie. It was a brilliantly insightful portrayal that almost happened accidentally. He came to us with the worst chest cold Iâd ever heard of. When he landed in
Iâm interested in why you continue to push the visuals in your movies. You havenât wanted to just be the dialogue guy, even though thatâs what people like about them.
KS: Only recently, I think right before Clerks II, I started thinking maybe we should kind of beef up the visual aspect. It is a visual medium. So maybe I should try a little harder visually. So Clerks II and the Reaper pilot were really [garbled] for me and Dave. We were working on Reaper and I was like, Wow, man, this looks better than any movie we ever shot. Cinematically speaking, itâs more visually interesting. By the time we go to Zack and Miri, we were ready for bear. I was like, alright, now itâs time to compete at that normal level everyone competes at in terms of making a visually interesting movie. I donât know. It took me 15, 14, 13 years to figure out, but Iâm like, Maybe a movie can look as good as it sounds.
For your next movie, youâre doing a drama, right?
KS: Yeah, itâs not a comedy. I donât know what to call it yet. Itâs called
Youâre known as a screenwriter. Do you have a lot of scripts at your place for down the road?
KS: This one wouldâve definitely sat in the drawer had Seth not wanted to do it. Seth was the lynchpin for me. Seth was the reason I wrote the movie. Saw him in 40 Year Old Virgin and said, Iâve got to write this dude a movie. If Seth had said, No, I wouldâve just stuck this in a drawer and not done it cause he was the whole reason it worked for me. Weinstein Company was like, do you have a backup if Seth says no and Iâm like, No, itâs Seth or no. Luckily he said yes. Thatâs pretty much happened across the board with my stuff. I donât have any scripts just sitting there or waiting to go with the exception of
Will
KS: Oh yeah, it still works. I mean, look, Obama is going to win. I donât think itâs if at this point. But it still works. Itâs not about George Bush or George Bushâs presidency or the last eight years under Republicans. Itâs more about the climate of the country itself, regardless of whoâs in the White House.
Thereâs an article in Variety recently about how youâre going to do a sci-fi film.
KS: That was a weird article because I sat down to do a Q&A with the dude and we were talking about things on the horizon and that was one of them. But I talked about that far down the line a number of times. Then it ended up on the cover of
Is that script together or ready to go?
KS: Right now, Iâm at the halfway point, at 60 pages, but I havenât touched it since because I got involved in promoting the movie and stuff like that. When Zack and Miri is done, I can concentrate on writing again, probably in mid-November. But itâs not going to happen for a while. Look, I want to do it with Seth and Sethâs schedule is so fucking cluttered. Iâll be waiting for that dude for a year if I have to make it with him â if he even wants to make it.
Youâve written comic books, you have a comics store, you know the world. Now is the best time to be making a comic-book movie.
KS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is that something thatâs in your head?
KS: Not really. For me, itâs the best time in the world to be a comic-book fan because the movies have just taken a jump. It was always cool when anybody made any comic-book movie, but now theyâre making them really good. Dark Knight, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk I felt were really good comic-book movies this summer, Dark Knight being the clear leader by transcending comic-book movie into just a great film. So Iâm happy to watch those movies. I just donât think I got it in me to pull one of those off. And I think if I do make one, I give up the right to make fun of other people who do make them and make them poorly. Right now, nobodyâs making them poorly.
Right now, you have, I believe, seen the two biggest films of 2009.
KS: Watchmen and Star Trek â theyâre awesome. Both are fantastic.
Some have been saying the ending is slightly different.
KS: Itâs a little different. While it is a slight departure, it actually makes sense in the context of the story because it brings the characters back into it. It kind of makes the movie more about them by the end of it because of the switch they made. I would never say that Alan Moore fucked it up or something. I love the ending of the Watchmen comic book, but I think this ending works just as well.
Dark Knight, itâs been argued, could be up for a Best Picture and a lot of other awards. Do you think Watchmen is on par with that? That it could be an awards kind of film?
KS: I feel like Watchmen, when I saw it â and Iâve seen it twice nowâ
I hate you.
KS: Yeah, sorry. I saw it once when they had out of something like 500 visual FX shots, they only had 10% done. Next time I saw it, I think they had 15% done. Thatâs the one think I havenât really said. I watched that movie without all the FX shots done. Through most of the movie, Billy Crudup â even as Dr. Manhattan â looks like Billy Crudup. And still that movie works like gangbusters, even though itâs not completely fleshed out and finished visually speaking with the digital FX. That being said, when I watched the movie, the biggest impression I walked away with was, This could totally be Pulp Fiction to some degree. For the mainstream audience, when Pulp Fiction came along, they said, Okay, I know crime thrillers. I know the genre, kind of. But this is a movie that spins it with this left of center view. With Watchmen, youâve got people very familiar with the comic-book format of the movie, but it takes this left of center view of it. People who love the comic book are definitely going to go in droves, but I think theyâre going to get a lot of people who would never see this movie â based on the buzz factor. Itâs the goods, man. Itâs a really smart, intelligent film. Itâs just like reading the book, but a movie.
When Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen came out in the 80s, they were so cool and so post-modern that it was hard to do comics after them. Are these movies setting up that same situation?
KS: I think what it does is forces studios to be more honest and hone closer to the source material because the three movies that came out this summer: Iron Man looks and feels like Iron Man; Dark Knight looks like Batman, feels like Batman. Incredible Hulk, the same thing.
Why does Star Trek work?
KS: Star Trek works in a way where youâre sitting there going, I canât believe this works. I remember when they announced it, I felt like look, itâs one thing to introduce a whole new cast of characters. Itâs another thing if youâre going to take the original characters, have other people play them, and do a Muppet Babies version of Star Trek. But it fucking works like gangbusters. The credit goes to JJ and his writers, but definitely to the cast. They pull it off. Chris Pine, who plays Captain Kirk in the movie, does not do a William Shatner impression, but, at the same time, heâs unmistakably Captain Kirk. He just brings all the brio, the gusto, everything about Kirk except Shatnerâs deliver to bear on the character. It doesnât disavow anything thatâs gone before. It lives side by side with everything thatâs gone before in Star Trek lore, in the movies, and the TV show. He did a great, great job. Itâs totally a fun movie.
How was Simon Pegg as Scotty?
KS: Simon Pegg was good. I donât want to spoil too much because they made me sign an NDA as well. But heâs not right front and center right away. He comes into the movie later. Iâm not going to compare it to Blues Brothers, but itâs definitely a bringing the band back together even though theyâve never been together movie. So the characters come in slowly. Slowly they bring in character by character. And Scottyâs the last one they bring in. But heâs pitch perfect.
Howâs his accent?
KS: Heâs pitch perfect. He sounds just like him.
What environment did you watch it in? Was it a screening room?
KS: It was
Do you, as a fan, debate not seeing it in that condition?
KS: No, no, shit no. Iâve got to see it. I remember, we were at