transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Nerd of Mouth. Snoochie boochie, Jakey noochies. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 2:
[00:23] We're snoochin all the way to the pooch?

Speaker 1:
[00:26] We're snoochin the pooch.

Speaker 3:
[00:28] And I'm Silent Mike.

Speaker 2:
[00:31] motherfuck, noice, noice, noice. Smokin weed, drinkin beers, doin coke, drink my beer.

Speaker 1:
[00:36] Wow, I feel seen watching this movie as a fuckin shitty kid in high school.

Speaker 2:
[00:42] Okay, folks, it's Kevin Smith Week here.

Speaker 1:
[00:45] Yes, it's Kevin Smith Week here.

Speaker 2:
[00:47] Let's just get this out of the way. This has been fuckin me up. I knew this week would be a reckoning, but I didn't think how far.

Speaker 1:
[00:54] One of those Dandora's Box is episodes, I've had this before, where you go in being like, oh yeah, I'll revisit his work, and then you're like, my life, my childhood and my life and creating.

Speaker 2:
[01:08] Just all of a sudden, cats in the cradle of the silver spoon starts playing over everything. I did not know what to think. I've always had a positive impression of the guy, even with his, all right. I never thought he was a great filmmaker, but I respected him so much. Is that a common thought?

Speaker 3:
[01:28] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[01:30] All right. Here's where I'll frame this. Initially, we were going to make this a trials episode, and then in getting feedback from people-

Speaker 3:
[01:38] Let me just say, it was that, to set it up, we were talking episode ideas, and was it you that said it?

Speaker 1:
[01:46] Maybe.

Speaker 3:
[01:47] You just said, the trial of Kevin Smith.

Speaker 2:
[01:49] Oh, it was-

Speaker 1:
[01:50] Initially, I think I said, Kevin Smith's allegedly a pedophile, and we were like, whoa, what the fuck, dude?

Speaker 2:
[01:55] You say that about everybody. And you're true alarmingly alive.

Speaker 3:
[02:01] I mean, we're gonna learn about how we touched a lot of people as a child. But, you know, and so it started as a trial, and we were excited just the name of that as an episode, like, ooh, the trial of Kevin Smith, but then yeah, Holden, what happened?

Speaker 1:
[02:16] Well, this is what happened. I realized that the trial of Kevin Smith could only, really would have only been an episode, like, a decade or so ago, back when I remember a certain point in my life where I, like, rejected Kevin Smith. Like, he was, like, my dude for the first, you know, several years of his career. And then around that, Jersey Girl time will really get more into it later, but really turned my back in this, and along with my group of friends in a substantial way, I was like, he's lost it. He's done. And then realizing, like, over all of this time, no, people have continued to enjoy his work. He's continued to put movies out. He's had different phases of his career. And when polling the audience, you know, people were like, love the guy.

Speaker 3:
[03:03] That was a big thing for me and kind of a revelation, but a really positive one. Like, this has actually been one of my favorite weeks.

Speaker 1:
[03:11] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[03:12] You know, it's because it ultimately hinges on the joy of just making things. Yeah. You know, and the guy made a thing. Whatever you want to say about the things he's made, he did it. You know, he did the thing that so many people wish they could do, say they could do. And he did it in a time when it was a lot harder, just in terms of access to equipment and things like that. But just, you know, what was interesting was, yeah, we polled, we just asked Facebook, because this is what we do every trial usually, when we plan them in advance, the Mr. Beast was an impromptu one. But normally we, you know, I'll ask Facebook and the Discord and stuff, hey, what do you guys think of this person? And this was, like, overwhelmingly positive. Like, Nintendo was like, these people fucked me.

Speaker 1:
[04:05] Yeah, Mario fucked me.

Speaker 3:
[04:07] I think we need to drop another bomb on Japan.

Speaker 1:
[04:09] Yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy shit.

Speaker 3:
[04:11] Yeah, that was, like, a lot of anger.

Speaker 1:
[04:12] They're allegedly all pedophiles. I was like, that's an insane thing to say about an entire group of people.

Speaker 2:
[04:18] I mean, not about the Japanese, but that's not the topic right now.

Speaker 3:
[04:21] No, and you know, Stan Lee, you know, he's a thief, you know, George R.

Speaker 1:
[04:25] R.

Speaker 3:
[04:25] Martin, Fatty finished the books. You know, and it generally does help, it generally does help a trial episode when some of the first responses are the ones you're most used to hearing because it shows that they're out there.

Speaker 1:
[04:39] Right.

Speaker 3:
[04:39] But it's like when there isn't, I feel like the people that left Kevin Smith, which is a lot of people, and you know, you talk about turning your back and all that, was that a time that you turned your back on a lot of things from childhood? Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[04:54] Rejected, it was like a coming of age, a thing, a passage thing to reject stuff from your high school years or whatever.

Speaker 3:
[05:02] And so what it really came down to for a lot of people, it seemed, and then I think, you know, me having to admit it to myself, and maybe you guys too, of like, whatever movies he made after a certain time, it's like, the ones that meant something to you still really mean something to you. Like, I think the most important thing about Kevin Smith as we get into all of it is, he really was a generation's first introduction to independent film. And also, with a lot of help, thanks to Harvey Weinstein.

Speaker 1:
[05:37] Yes, indeed.

Speaker 3:
[05:39] And also, it's okay to talk about nerd stuff. That's a big thing.

Speaker 1:
[05:46] Yeah, it's kind of like what's said of Velvet Underground and the Pixies. When people hear that Velvet Underground album or listen to Pixies, entire generations go, I should start a band. I think I could do it.

Speaker 2:
[06:01] No, that's the thing is like not a lot of people's, that's the line. Not a lot of people saw the Velvet Underground, but everyone who did started a band at the time.

Speaker 1:
[06:07] Yeah, or bought that album when it first came out. But yeah, it is this formative experience, like seeing Clerks when I was young and Maul Rats and Chasing Amy, and alongside a bunch of other filmmakers that were burgeoning that were, it was a hot time for making movies, that specific era of the 90s, largely thanks to Harvey Weinstein, unfortunately. But it was Tarantino, PT. Anderson.

Speaker 2:
[06:35] That Miramax logo now hits like a fucking bullet every time. I wanna watch The Matrix again. Or like, I wanna watch, yeah, any time you're like, a beloved Indie film, and there's that little city with the lights and the logo, and you're just like, oh fuck.

Speaker 3:
[06:50] I named after their parents, Miramax.

Speaker 1:
[06:53] Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[06:54] And it's funny to do it, it's just like, you know, Harvey Weinstein is awful, but when he forced other people onto us, we loved it.

Speaker 2:
[07:02] Oh my God. Okay, this is the thing that I've been dealing with, and it's that for more time than the prime of when I was like an honest to God Kevin Smith man. Kevin Smith for me right now is the Sonic the Hedgehog of movies.

Speaker 1:
[07:15] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[07:16] Every time I like he's there's like a cycle, he's doing something new, he's doing something different, and I think to myself, oh, he's figured it out. This one's going to be the one that makes me feel like that love again. And it's always just a little disappointing. It's always just like, crude, the budget, like it's just it never quite works out. And I'm like, fuck.

Speaker 1:
[07:37] Does that make Tarantino Mario? I'm sorry, I'm just trying to figure this out.

Speaker 3:
[07:40] You know, it makes both Italian and, you know.

Speaker 2:
[07:43] It makes Edgar-

Speaker 3:
[07:43] It's a me, I love feet.

Speaker 2:
[07:45] In this analogy, Edgar Wright is the Mario. But that's neither, if we're talking about slacker comedy with rich pop culture history and witty dialogue, but actually understanding how a visual camera helps with storytelling.

Speaker 1:
[08:00] In my headcanon, Bowser is Soderbergh. Is that okay?

Speaker 2:
[08:03] Oh, yeah, yeah. And I guess that makes Soderbergh-

Speaker 3:
[08:07] I mean, I guess Soderbergh's sex lies in Koopa Troopas. That's an episode title I've never done.

Speaker 1:
[08:12] Yeah, yeah, by the way, we now have to do a weird entire episode on the Koopa Troopas, by the way, which I'm here for.

Speaker 2:
[08:20] Richard Linkletter is Pong. This is just how this works.

Speaker 3:
[08:25] To Kevin Smith, he sure is.

Speaker 1:
[08:26] Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2:
[08:28] And so, like, it's just been this fascinating journey because nobody else is doing what he's doing. Like, this current thing where he has this, like, cult of, it's not a cult of personality, but, like, you go to the Kevin Smith Comics Bookstore, you go to the Kevin Smith Movie Theater. He toured, like...

Speaker 1:
[08:45] Well, the Viewisc Universe, he created this whole, like, kind of reality, you know?

Speaker 2:
[08:51] Like, his movies aren't released in theaters. They, like, he travels the country with them, and you pay to, like, engage with him as this personality. It's such a bizarre thing, and initially, that level of access, that level of communication, you know, what was that DVD, like Kevin Smith Talks?

Speaker 3:
[09:09] An Evening with Kevin Smith. Just an evening.

Speaker 2:
[09:13] We were at 20 years with Kevin Smith.

Speaker 3:
[09:15] But those stories are, you know, obviously, the Superman, you know, lives, like, that's...

Speaker 2:
[09:19] The big spider.

Speaker 3:
[09:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[09:21] Well, that was kind of this, okay, for going back to kind of the retrospective here in terms of our personal relationship, right? I mean, you had those early films, loved him. He was like, the dude, one of the dudes back in the day. Then this whole downturn, these dark years. But then all of a sudden it was like, hey, Kevin Smith's actually like, he's going around telling all these like stories at colleges. And it's actually like really cool. Like he's really personable. And then podcasts happened. And the weird thing is, is like, oh, right. I have a second whole relationship with him as one of the first dudes. It was like him, Mark Maron, shit. I was listening to the fucking Corolla podcast back in the day.

Speaker 2:
[10:02] Oh, we all were. It's fine. It was Maria.

Speaker 3:
[10:05] I'm better than you. I was on the Adam Corolla podcast.

Speaker 1:
[10:09] But there were only like a few big top dog, like kind of comedy or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[10:15] Back when the iTunes charts was like the only way anybody learned about anything.

Speaker 1:
[10:19] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[10:19] When Fat Man on Batman, I'm like, I like both those things.

Speaker 1:
[10:22] Yeah, yeah. It was, it was, you know, and I remember getting really into, and another testament to him, getting really into his like Jay and Silent Bob podcast or whatever, which was created just to keep Jason Mewes sober and talk about his sobriety journey. And I got really into that for a while. It was one of those where you put out so much. I burnt out on Kevin Smith, like I burnt out on Corolla and all those guys. It was like, oh wait, I've heard this story for the fifth time now. I think I need to take a break from the show while I was working shitty desk jobs. We had this whole other era of respect and looking at him as like, wow, he's really doing it in this interesting way with the podcast.

Speaker 2:
[11:08] It was another, he became a revolutionary DIY figure in a whole new meaning.

Speaker 1:
[11:14] And then, as we'll get into, that's how he manages to, varying degrees of success, reject the studio system and the advertising system within the studio system and everything, and just be like, I've got my audience. And what you said, I'm going to tour these films and make it an experience and do this grassroots thing. But it's just been-

Speaker 2:
[11:37] Or release as an NFT, but that's just, you're never going to bat a thousand.

Speaker 1:
[11:43] Yeah, yeah. So it's just an interesting ride I've gone on. I feel like ending it all with his most recent film is actually a really strong place to jump into this episode on. It's been interesting.

Speaker 3:
[11:56] I, you know, my history with him is a bit different in all the comic book side of things.

Speaker 1:
[12:02] Oh yeah.

Speaker 3:
[12:03] You know, he really, the future of the Marvel universe, like, you know, the last 25 years of it and how he was pivotal in shaping that needs to be talked about. Because what he was in movies, he was 10 times that in comic books to somebody like me because I worshiped at the altar of Wizard Magazine. And to the point where, like, Wizard Magazine is in Jay and Silent, Bob Strikes Back, and Pat McCollum, no, sorry, Jim McLaughlin, who was the Letters Page guy, he's in the movie, and Paul Dini's in the movie, and, you know, it was like, it's just seeing those guys and Wizard always, you know, reporting being on the sets and all of that. But, you know, he writes Daredevil and then Green Arrow, and, you know, he does some other comics work. But that was massive. That, the idea that an outsider, more of a fan and someone who, you know, and Wizard also, it chronicled the entire Superman thing. And we were all excited. Like, remember how they always did those casting calls? They did one where Kevin Smith picks the cast of Superman and all this stuff. And we were like, oh my god. I mean, you know, it's funny in the flash, you see Nicolas Cage as Superman. But like, you know, we were growing up in real time where that was going to happen. And Kevin Smith was gonna write that script and Tim Burton was gonna direct it. And he was such like, you couldn't, at a certain point, it's interesting in the early 90s, it was all Todd McFarland and Jim Lee and stuff. And then in like around 97, everything in Wizard became Kevin Smith. They would have him write articles and stuff. It was just so massive. And like I said, I mean, the beginning of Marvel nights and what that led to with Marvel is huge. And, you know, we'll get there. But yeah.

Speaker 2:
[14:07] He definitely was like, especially for an impressionable like young nerd, like you're looking for role models, you're looking for figures that like reach the heights that you want to reach. And here's this guy. He's overweight. He's like a slacker. He grew up in the suburbs. He loves comic books. He loves sci-fi movies. He like is putting that in his passion. He's unapologetic about it. He's, you know, got the gift of gab. He can hold people, an audience. And like, you know, you're just like you're in the same boat that he was. I mean, his revelations about his like childhood trauma, he's just like, Jesus Christ. Like, of course he's who he is now. And I, you know, there's, who else in the entire like modern pop culture pantheon of the 90s and early 2000s is like any, like there's no one else to look up to. He becomes an avatar for your own aspirations and your own dreams.

Speaker 1:
[15:00] Why look up to someone when you can look up to advertisements?

Speaker 2:
[15:04] What?

Speaker 1:
[15:08] Please enjoy. Welcome back.

Speaker 3:
[15:11] I, yeah, I also, you know, I think the commercial for Snoochie's was great, but the Boochie's commercial, we phone that one in.

Speaker 2:
[15:18] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[15:19] So Mr. Boochie's, let me do Mr. Beast Boochie's. I wanted to jump on that too, Mike, because I feel like I got really into collecting comic books at a certain time in like elementary school. And then I kind of rejected comic books trying to fit in with some friends who were kind of more into music stuff. But and then Mallrats happened. And for the first time, I was like seeing people on screen be, in my opinion, both like cool and into comic books. And I think it was like one of the first experiences of that. And then Chasing Amy comes out. And again, I mean, Ben Affleck is like-

Speaker 2:
[15:58] I mean, we have to acknowledge it.

Speaker 1:
[15:59] We have to acknowledge it. We'll get into it. But again-

Speaker 3:
[16:02] He gets into it, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[16:03] Yeah, he gets into it.

Speaker 2:
[16:04] No, I'm just saying the character's name. Speaking as like an impressionable child in that moment. And here's Ben Affleck.

Speaker 1:
[16:12] I'm already all in on Kevin Smith. I'm obsessed with Mallrats.

Speaker 2:
[16:15] Just on a name basis.

Speaker 1:
[16:17] Chasing Amy comes out. The main character's name is Holden McNeely. We can't get over it. My brother and I both, because he's also kind of getting into Kevin Smith movies. And then if you know about what happens to me later in life, it is very funny. People like to bring it up a lot with my own romantic, personal romantic situation.

Speaker 2:
[16:35] But you broke up with Lexi because you couldn't handle her.

Speaker 3:
[16:38] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[16:38] I was so jealous about how many dudes she, but I will say, I mean, we're talking trains, guys.

Speaker 3:
[16:45] I mean, I'll be honest, just knowing you, if you had to live the life of a, of a Kevin Smith movie, I'd rather be chasing Amy and for Winnie's sake, not Jersey girl.

Speaker 1:
[16:57] Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[16:58] But yeah, I, you know, hell, I take tusk over Jersey girl.

Speaker 3:
[17:04] You have.

Speaker 1:
[17:05] Oh no.

Speaker 3:
[17:06] I, I, it was, it's right there. Or, or, or. I feel bad, but it's like, you know, I'm also, I'm writing on a roast right now.

Speaker 1:
[17:13] I understand.

Speaker 2:
[17:15] You're in the, you're in the burn zone. Let me at him.

Speaker 3:
[17:17] Yeah, I apologize.

Speaker 1:
[17:20] But, you know.

Speaker 3:
[17:21] Your life is a much better movie.

Speaker 1:
[17:23] Thank you. He's a, he's a cool guy with a cool comic book job that works with his friend. And, you know, it just was something to like look up to and aspire to, which was never the thing when it came to comic books. Comic books for me was a source of like shame, you know, like the thing to be embarrassed about and to see it embraced in this way. And even see people actually like make a living doing it in a movie really was impactful to me as a kid.

Speaker 3:
[17:52] And let's talk about something else that like is contextually like in the time means a lot more than when you look back on it, right? Like his love of Star Wars. And you know, obviously the Death Star conversation in Clerks.

Speaker 2:
[18:09] Iconic, like pretty much defined his career.

Speaker 3:
[18:13] And it's amazing because, you know, in Clerks, it's like 10% nerdy, 90% sexual. But I think especially for our younger listeners, Star Wars had this very dry period. I mean, there were obviously people that were fans of it and there were the books and all of that stuff. But not until like when they did the special edition re-releases and Kenner did the new figures and the power of the four stuff and all of that, that you really got it back into the mainstream and of course the prequels. So it was like when he was talking about it, now we're so used to that.

Speaker 2:
[19:03] You're right.

Speaker 3:
[19:03] But it wasn't, it was special at the time.

Speaker 2:
[19:08] It was a really like intimate and real moment for like Gen X nerds to like hear a conversation that like was never really portrayed in movies. Like even down to the fact that it's about the minutiae.

Speaker 1:
[19:21] Tarantino was kind of doing this too with Pulp Fiction. People were really like bowled over. Because I was thinking about this a lot. And Rest of Our Dogs where it's like, oh wow, you can just have characters talking about like a pop culture reference in a movie in this like snappy way. And it's really like engaging.

Speaker 3:
[19:35] And Seinfeld was doing it with his love of Superman and the Superman references. But it was that idea of presenting a monoculture and people that grew up in it together.

Speaker 1:
[19:47] It feels surreal to have your movie characters doing it. You're like, oh weird, like wow, you could do this.

Speaker 3:
[19:53] Well, it gets closer to the, they are living in the world that I am. And I mean, if you look at like the Stan Lee cameo and Mallrats and then it goes full circle to Stan Lee reading the Mallrats script in the Captain Marvel movie.

Speaker 1:
[20:06] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[20:08] And then also though, it is weird, because like he was defined, or at least like his one of his hallmarks was nostalgia. And now what's keeping him afloat in many ways is nostalgia to his own career.

Speaker 1:
[20:20] And then on top of that, like the Jay and Silent Bob thing, it was a lot of, oh, you can do that. It's like, oh, you can just do that. You can just like take these silly characters and have them just appear in like each movie. You can just kind of create like the Blunt Man and Chronic comic book thing. And again, we were seeing this with Tarantino with the apple cigarettes and stuff. Like these things that-

Speaker 2:
[20:41] Oh, movies. Yeah, these Chooley gum.

Speaker 1:
[20:44] The things that like connect the movie and put it all in one universe.

Speaker 3:
[20:47] Well, the guys in Clerks were the guys who did Finger Cuffs.

Speaker 1:
[20:50] Yeah. That was also like this kind of interesting, unique thing that was really exciting to have these same characters. And also, this had been done before, but this kind of stable of actors that you were excited to see again and again in each movie, you know?

Speaker 2:
[21:07] Well, that was, for them, a blessing and a curse.

Speaker 1:
[21:09] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[21:10] It's funny, though, because I could watch Mallrats and Chasing Amy a thousand times, and you can't tell me that Jason Lee isn't playing the same character. I know he's not, but he is.

Speaker 1:
[21:23] He is, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[21:24] And as we talk about this journey, I think, I watched the whole filmography, more than half of it, I hadn't seen. This really did make me appreciate Jason Lee.

Speaker 1:
[21:37] Yeah, really.

Speaker 3:
[21:38] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[21:39] Yeah, I love Jason Lee.

Speaker 3:
[21:41] I thought he was great as a kid, but Randall is the proto version of his characters, and how much more life he gets.

Speaker 2:
[21:52] Well, he was originally supposed to play that character in the original script.

Speaker 3:
[21:57] But how much more life he gives just as a performer?

Speaker 2:
[22:01] Kevin Smith was supposed to be.

Speaker 3:
[22:02] Kevin Smith was, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[22:03] When you're saying, it's like Randall is the proto Kevin Smith character.

Speaker 3:
[22:06] Yeah. Like how Woody Allen always is, the proxy.

Speaker 1:
[22:10] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[22:10] But it is amazing. I think he won an independent spirit award for Chasing Amy. I don't think anyone says Kevin Smith dialogue better than that guy. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:24] He does such a good job. The kid is stuck on the escalator again.

Speaker 3:
[22:28] Yeah. That was like one of his first movies. He was fucking skateboarding legend. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:35] I really connected with him and his performance back in the day. I think you can see the influence on me a lot, especially if you're going to watch these movies all in one succession, and just how much sex fueled comedy there is in every single one of them.

Speaker 3:
[22:51] Did you do it chronologically?

Speaker 1:
[22:53] I went all over the place. In fact, I even did a watch along on my Twitch stream of double feature Tusk and Mallrats, which we called Wallrats, which was super fun. So we did. Yeah. And that was like a great double feature for a Kevin Smith one too.

Speaker 2:
[23:10] I mean, it's a weird sandwich of two very distinct parts of his career.

Speaker 1:
[23:14] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[23:14] You were going to do yoga hosers, but you wanted to make money.

Speaker 1:
[23:17] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So shall we? Shall we kind of get into it? A little bit of this research and stuff and kind of then we can kind of get a little deeper into each individual movie as we go through. All right, cool. Let's fucking bang it out, guys. I don't have a ton. And yeah, this isn't like super comprehensive.

Speaker 3:
[23:35] He's such a public, you know, you know.

Speaker 1:
[23:37] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[23:37] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[23:38] Need not go very far. Just check out all of his giant body of podcast work and you'll hear every little detail. But Kevin Smith, born in Red Bank, New Jersey, grew up in Highlands, New Jersey. His mother, a homemaker and his father, a postal worker. He also has an older sister and older brother. The big thing for him when it comes to like trauma stuff, when he was in the fourth grade, the teacher made fun of the size of his gut in front of the class. Smith said, I felt disgusting, like I didn't matter. That's when the other guys started to appear. I decided to be entertaining and make people love me before they noticed I was fat. He refers to the other guy quite a bit, this person that he hid behind for many, many years leading to a mental break even, recentish.

Speaker 3:
[24:25] Which the kids called silent blob.

Speaker 2:
[24:29] Don't make fun. Every child that was made fun of because of their weight, you are valid, you are real, you are loved. It's okay. It's going to be okay.

Speaker 1:
[24:37] You're turning into Tusk as you say this.

Speaker 3:
[24:42] Never said this before on a podcast, but I was anorexic as a teenager, and I lost like 30 pounds because of weight issues.

Speaker 1:
[24:48] No shit.

Speaker 3:
[24:49] All that shit fucks you up.

Speaker 1:
[24:50] Yeah, it's super funny. And he even talks about, he's like, I feel ridiculous talking about this as one of my major traumas. He also had a molesty thing happen, but he was like, especially referring to this, he's like, it took him a long time just to be able to be like, no, no, this was trauma. This matters in my life, even though like comparatively to other traumas, it feels maybe silly, but it doesn't matter, trauma is trauma.

Speaker 2:
[25:15] Yeah, I mean, it's watching Clerks 3, it's like very, post his mental health break, post heart attack, post weight loss. He's a very different guy now, and it's very fascinating to watch this version.

Speaker 1:
[25:31] Well, that's just the layer of that stuff. Then there's the other career layer. I feel like he goes through so many changes when it comes to how he feels about movie making, how we feed, you know what I mean? It gets really intense. So, he saw his dad hate his job as opposed to worker, really inspires him to pursue a passion, something that he loves. And in high school, he would videotape school basketball games and make comedy sketches, which is another way for him to gain social acceptance. But it is, and also this is just documented in so many of the movies I saw. A lot of his movies are about making Clerks. Not a lot, but a few. Zachamere, Make a Porto, Clerks 3. 430 movie gets there at the end.

Speaker 3:
[26:15] Both Jay and Silent Bob movies are about filmmaking.

Speaker 1:
[26:17] Yes. It's definitely this formative moment when at the age of 21, he sees the Richard Linklater film Slacker, which I love. Have you seen Slacker, Mike?

Speaker 3:
[26:27] Years ago.

Speaker 1:
[26:28] I used to watch it, Jake. It's awesome. It's just weirdos in Austin, Texas, back when Austin, Texas was actually a weird-ass place to be.

Speaker 3:
[26:37] That guy is still making movie, Oscar nominated movie this year with the Blue Moon.

Speaker 1:
[26:42] Yeah, totally. Love Linklater. Instead, he attends the Vancouver Film School, which had an eight-month program, but he drops out after four months. Instead, he just gets his job back at the convenience store he was working at, and got to writing about working at a convenience store. And then, while working the job, after closing, he would set up the equipment, he would use the space to film. I mean, if you've seen Zack and Miri, this is the exact same deal. He would close up the shop, and then they'd film all night, and he wouldn't sleep, and just get right back to work. He was sleeping like one to two hours a night.

Speaker 2:
[27:20] And it was like, besides, I think O'Halloran as Dante, that was the only person that auditioned as an actor, because he was working in theater at the time. All the other cast members are just like friends from like his various social circles, people he knew from high school, people he knew from just comic book fandom. Jason Mewes, weirdly enough, was just this like weird younger kid that he knew from like the local rec center, that he was just obsessed with, because he just had all this like, that one crazy kid, you know, that you're just like obsessed with, because they're just so dynamic, and just brought them all in.

Speaker 1:
[27:55] And he takes out 10 credit cards, he maxes them all out, he sells his beloved comic book collection, so that he can raise just over $25,000 to make clerks. They film every night from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. for 21 straight days.

Speaker 3:
[28:10] I think he says it's like $27,550. Maybe I'm off a dollar or two there, but it's, and this is, you know, this was legend. This is something that every white person who doesn't realize that they also have maxed out privilege. No, but that we all, you know, anyone who made a thing like, and it was just that you could do that.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[28:39] That, and then it could lead to something in that. I mean, look, like a moment of silence and pour one out for all the people that did this, and didn't make clerks.

Speaker 1:
[28:49] How many, how many not clerks got made?

Speaker 3:
[28:52] There's a place in LA called Skid Row.

Speaker 2:
[28:56] I remember there was like, when the iPhone first got a camera, there were like 19 different Indie movies, all being like, no, you don't understand, it's the first movie made with a phone. As if that was like, we, look how poor the production quality is, isn't that cool? And it's like, no, you're not gonna go to Sundance. This is not the way.

Speaker 1:
[29:17] After several screenings of the movie, word spread enough to get him invited to the Sundance Film Festival, where he gets picked up by Mira Max, huh guys? For Mira and Max, before a theatrical release.

Speaker 3:
[29:32] It gets hit on by Mira Max. It gets dragged behind a potted plant by Mira Max.

Speaker 1:
[29:37] And it goes on to make a $3 million profit.

Speaker 3:
[29:41] And then, 27.

Speaker 1:
[29:42] Yeah, which is.

Speaker 2:
[29:43] And that's not counting video sales. That's not where I feel like it got even more.

Speaker 1:
[29:47] And even more so, it puts him right up there with all these like hot young filmmakers that are making moves. And then he says, when the Clerks began my career, Mallrats killed my career. And this is kind of interesting because I love Mallrats so much. Upon a rewatch with a more critical eye, I will say, you know, it's got pacing issues. I think the first half of that movie is a lot stronger once they kind of like go to the topless lady. And even a little before that, it kind of slows down. There's there's there's problem. And just in general, it sometimes like doesn't know what it wants to be, maybe, or something back when I first saw it. I just thought it was the funniest thing. And I will at least say too, because I don't want to be too critical here. On a rewatch, I was laughing out loud multiple times. I love so many of the bits in that movie. They genuinely make me laugh. It's probably my favorite version of J. The whole thing, like so many moments cracked me up in that film and so many moments like really stand out. Like I love the Stan Lee cameo in that movie and all that good stuff.

Speaker 2:
[30:50] Even though that whole story about the Hulk was a complete lie.

Speaker 1:
[30:54] But it was this weird kind of Pinkerton for him, but it was kind of the opposite, whereas Rivers Cuomo was like really putting himself out there for Pinkerton. And then like that vulnerability ended up being like the bane of his existence.

Speaker 3:
[31:07] The movie ends on a Weezer song.

Speaker 1:
[31:09] Yeah, it's on Suzanne, which is like one of my favorite Weezer songs growing up. But, you know, it was kind of like that, but it was the opposite. He kind of made like an sort of evolved version of Clerks in a certain way.

Speaker 2:
[31:22] It was an evolved version of Clerks, which isn't the kind of like wacky stoner comedy that it was marketed as. So a lot of like critics and teenagers were just like, this isn't quite what we want.

Speaker 1:
[31:35] Right, right. And it did force him to, I think, like search for a deeper movie than, you know, where this is like a fun romp, romantic comedy-ish dude bro movie, you know, whereas Chasing Amy, you know, and again, you can be critical towards it, but you have to at least admit, it goes for something, I think, a bit more complex and interesting.

Speaker 2:
[31:57] He famously turned, he was like offered like millions of dollars to make Chasing Amy, but it was going to, Miramax was gonna control casting, gonna control like a lot of things. And he took, this is insane to me, it's a $250,000 budget on Chasing Amy that he took in order to maintain creative control. Like they weren't gonna cast Joey Lauren Adams, they weren't gonna cast Ben Affleck. Like it was gonna be a completely different movie. And he just was like, no, no, no, I believe in this, I think this is gonna work.

Speaker 1:
[32:27] And it puts him back on top, it really does. You know?

Speaker 3:
[32:31] Can I give thoughts on Clerks and Mallrats, if we're jumping into Chasing Amy?

Speaker 1:
[32:36] Sure, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[32:38] You know, it was interesting rewatching both of these and seeing the clunkiness, but the humanity also. It was fascinating how many characters Walt Flanagan plays in Clerks. You know, it really does have that energy of people just having fun together, making a thing, like I said. And there is something so endearing about it. I mean, I don't think this is blasphemous to say, yeah, O'Halloran and Anderson are not great actors. And then you get to Mallrats. Jeremy London is awful in this movie. Shannon Doherty, rest in peace. Not the best.

Speaker 1:
[33:32] Really, I like Shannon Doherty in the movie.

Speaker 3:
[33:34] I think the part of the problem, and maybe this is more just a writer thing, is, and you know, people will give this criticism of Kevin Smith, right? That all the characters sound like Kevin Smith.

Speaker 1:
[33:45] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[33:45] And I do, like I said, where Jason Lee, I think, really shines with that dialogue, especially the longer a monologue goes on. I think Doherty, like, in the, when she's yelling at Banky in the dressing room and all of that, like, that monologue, like, just felt clunky to me. You know, there wasn't enough, like, editing, and, you know, some people, like I said, like, can really nail what he's doing. I mean, you know, and I think Dogma is such a step ahead because of a lot of the incredible performers in that. But those, those, those first two movies, like, they are charming. And, and you look at, like, like, Chasing Amy probably should have been the second one, you know, to go from 27,000 to 250,000, as opposed to going 27,000 to five million. Because the thing is, if you, I mean, clerks didn't even make five million, right? So now you're giving this guy who is still unknown that much money to hopefully recoup it and...

Speaker 2:
[34:55] In the exact same scale that you imagined, like, the clerks ratio to be.

Speaker 3:
[34:59] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[34:59] Yeah. And whatever scale we're getting from these advertisements.

Speaker 2:
[35:03] Promo codes, baby, use them.

Speaker 3:
[35:05] It's a sailboat.

Speaker 1:
[35:08] A scooter is a sailboat, stupid head.

Speaker 3:
[35:11] Yeah. But, you know, it's this thing, like, yeah, there is this charm to them. And then it is funny. And then the leap that Chasing Amy even makes from those first two, although, you know, yours was interesting to me was that I think Ben Affleck's best role in the Kevin Smith movie.

Speaker 1:
[35:32] Are you about to say Mallrats?

Speaker 3:
[35:33] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[35:33] Dude, I love Ben Affleck's fucking stuff in that movie. I love how over the top he is. All the villains in that movie are wonderful. LaFors, the dad is so funny. I love the over the top, Kevin Smith villain and played by Ben Affleck is perfect. He's so good at it.

Speaker 3:
[35:54] And LaFors, that's the guy that does Fenn. He's the original running man. He was Arnold Schwarzenegger's stunt double for years.

Speaker 1:
[36:01] Very cool.

Speaker 3:
[36:02] So it's cool you got an on screen thing.

Speaker 1:
[36:03] But yeah, Mallrats has a certain kind of charm that I really love. I love the cartoonishness of it. And there's no way for me to divorce the nostalgia from this one. This was, I was telling you this, this was one of four tapes I had on VHS on my TV VCR upstairs in my room. It was Mallrats, Money Python, the Holy Grail, Reservoir Dogs and Dazing Infused. And I wore those fuckers out. But shout out to my brother who had that double VHS set. And it was Animal House and Blues Brothers, which is one hell of a twofer. But yeah, I wore those fucking tapes out. So even on a rewatch after all these years, because I don't think I'd watched Mallrats a long time because of how much I had watched it at one point.

Speaker 3:
[36:47] What was interesting was, Ben Affleck is so good in that movie. But then it kind of hurts Chasing Amy and Jersey Girl a bit because in some ways, we still see him as that guy.

Speaker 1:
[37:00] As the guy, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[37:01] Yeah, he's so likably unlikable.

Speaker 2:
[37:05] Ben Affleck is such a bizarre, to be Kevin Smith's muse in so many of these movies is so weird because Ben Affleck has always had this, he's not quite a Tom Hanks level movie star where just seeing him on screen is enough. He will have flashes of greatness and then this flat Affleck affectation, if you will, takes you out of the movie in a lot of ways as well. He's like never quite there.

Speaker 3:
[37:34] The thing is that I really like him in Dogma, but he is an antagonist in that. So it's a thing of, he is very easy to hate. And yeah, there is that thing of Chasing Amy where I just, yeah, there's that part of me like, man, I kind of wish it was recast a little bit. You know, and I feel like it was important though for Kevin Smith to have a guy. And the Goodwill hunting of it all, that was the rumor, that which was never clarified, right? That Kevin Smith did a lot of the writing on Goodwill hunting.

Speaker 1:
[38:21] Yeah, I didn't know. Well, I mean, I know he's done a lot of punch up.

Speaker 3:
[38:25] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[38:25] Yeah, but I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[38:26] I'm going to say after watching all of his movies, I don't think that's true. He has a very specific style and a very specific charm that's great for what he does. I don't know how it transfers over to other people's work.

Speaker 2:
[38:43] I think it's more that while Matt Damon was of the Goodwill Hunting Boys, had the higher trajectory, Kevin Smith, especially with Chasing Amy, wrote the role for Affleck and really wanted to give him a platform to be a star and a serious actor, and Affleck appreciated that.

Speaker 3:
[39:03] And he was dating Joey Lauren Adams at the time.

Speaker 1:
[39:05] Yes, which gets us towards Chasing Amy.

Speaker 3:
[39:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, bring it back.

Speaker 2:
[39:10] Yeah, Amy Dogma, I feel like, is an amazing one-two punch.

Speaker 1:
[39:13] Yeah, I think the big thing I wanted to address with Chasing Amy was when Chasing Amy, when Kevin Smith got to a certain point, and this is after Dogma, Jay and Son Bob Strike Back was probably the last moment of that first career block, right? And then he has the downturn. So from the downturn perspective, with a little bit of time perspective as well, and some evolution and LGBTQ stuff, one very popular take too, was to look at Chasing Amy at a glance, and just immediately dismiss it in hindsight, and go, no, this is a straight guy making a, you know, cis straight dude making that annoying story about the straight guy that gets the lesbian.

Speaker 2:
[39:55] I'm dumb, she's a lesbian.

Speaker 1:
[39:57] The movie. Yeah, exactly, Pink Triangle, the movie. And sure, you can dismiss it like right off the bat if you want, but actually, and this was the real interesting revelation when I was on my, with my chat, talking about Kevin Smith movies. And I will say another thing, you bring up Kevin Smith movies, people really wanna engage and talk about that. Because I think there is so much to talk about, right?

Speaker 3:
[40:20] And it's so formative.

Speaker 1:
[40:21] Yeah, and so many people have, and if you're a horror fan, you're familiar with his movies. If you're, some of his movies. If you're from that era of indie movies, you love his stuff, all throughout the years. So, I think the interesting one for me was people being like, actually, it's a lot more woke, or whatever you wanna call it, than people gave it credit for.

Speaker 2:
[40:43] At the time, it was revolutionary. Having queer characters presented in their own community, in dealing with those issues amongst themselves, was like, nobody was even, especially at this level of infamy, was like, touching this.

Speaker 1:
[41:00] Yeah, and dealing with issues, like Holden having a huge issue with Alyssa, having been with two guys before him, but not caring about the many women she's been with, being a toxic trait and a big issue, when it comes to how straight men, in particular, view bi or pan women, when it, in relationships together, was like a really mature, interesting thing to tackle in a movie. Banky, Holden's friend, played by Jason Lee, being a bigot on the surface, but actually being closeted and jealously in love with Holden behind the exterior. Holden attempting to have a threesome happen at the end with Banky and Alyssa, and both Alyssa and Banky's reaction to that. All of this stuff was actually way more, I think, evolved and interesting than just simply like, fuck this male fantasy bullshit movie, and even queer people in my chat were all about that. We're like, yeah, it's actually pretty solid.

Speaker 2:
[41:56] To be fair, it's a very elder millennial chat. I'm sure there's criticisms are extremely, I mean, even in the Jane Silent Bob reboot, they have Joey Lauren Adams on camera just be like, probably should have been a story told by a queer woman.

Speaker 1:
[42:11] But still, it was very surprising because I definitely, my community can be very aggro about this kind of subject matter. They were like, no, it's actually a lot better than you remember. It's funny.

Speaker 3:
[42:24] I thought that the character of Hooper was really fun. That he pretends to be this black militant, two cell comics.

Speaker 1:
[42:36] Yeah, that was also a really fascinating.

Speaker 3:
[42:38] I mean, the inking community has never forgiven this movie. Fucking tracers. But yeah, it was interesting that that character and how he evolves in it, I thought was fun. And I will say about Chasing Amy, what I think really does make it like indoor. And yeah, and it has problems. And if you see problems I don't see in it, that's totally valid too. I think the ending was meaningful. Just that it does have the structure of a romantic comedy, but they don't get back together.

Speaker 1:
[43:20] And I was such a fucking huge fan of that in a romantic comedy at this time, by the way. You have like Annie Hall was another one, where I would seek them out, and I didn't like romantic comedies that had a happy ending. It was like a very like, I'm not like the other boys situation. But I loved this movie for that. And I loved that it had something more to explore than just like, will they, won't they? You know what I mean? It was just way, way more interesting.

Speaker 2:
[43:49] The failed threesome is an incredible take on the third act misunderstanding.

Speaker 3:
[43:55] And that he doesn't recover from it, I think is this amazing thing. Remember, I worked on a show. I'd written this episode where it was, this older white man is going to go out with a trans woman. And the whole thing is that, he has every, like, they're perfect soulmates, everything in common, except for the fact that she's trans and he can't get over that. Right? And I didn't even realize how, like, in some ways this is like Chasing Amy. But what was fascinating when we were, it was a cartoon and we were recording, the trans woman told us, asked us to rewrite the script a little bit because we purposely made the guy an asshole. And she was like, if anyone treated me that way, I would just walk away. I wouldn't allow someone to do that. So we had to rewrite on the day of. And it made it better. It definitely helped. And seeing the end of Chasing Amy when he's proposing the threesome, I like that. I think most queer people, most people would be like, hey, anyone who's, even if they think it's a good, the fact that they think it's a good idea means I can't be with this person. Like you just see Holden in that the movie Holden breaking down. And I mean, and that's where Affleck kind of works in that he is unlikable and you're okay with him not getting the girl.

Speaker 1:
[45:27] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[45:27] It's just, it's very real and very raw in a way that behind the irony, behind the other guy, behind the nostalgia references that Kevin Smith puts in these movies, without fail, every single one of them has this moment of like, radical, brutal honesty and like, Kevin Smith kind of coming to terms with the way his own sexual hangups like, sabotage his relationship.

Speaker 1:
[45:50] This was just an apology movie to Joey Adams, Joey Lauren Adams.

Speaker 3:
[45:55] This was also, you know.

Speaker 2:
[45:58] I mean, he literally in the movie, as Silent Bob talks about, wow, this movie is about his own sexual hangups and regrets.

Speaker 3:
[46:05] But, you know, there's clearly still lots of homophobia, but the amount of homophobic slurs in all of Kevin Smith's work, including Clerks, the animated series.

Speaker 2:
[46:17] Oh, I wanted to talk about this. Six episodes. They do not age great, but they're still so fucking good. It's such a tragedy that ABC that show over. It's one of the best things he's been responsible for. Part of it is because it's a great lineup of writers.

Speaker 3:
[46:36] Dave Mandel, who goes on to do Veep. Dave Mandel is one of my heroes, in that this guy has, he collects a lot of original comic book art. He has the cover of the issue where Elektra dies. He has Giant Size X-Men number one, the cover. He basically, he bought the apartment he first moved to in LA and made it into a comic book museum of original art. Well, he does this with Kevin Smith, and he was a Seinfeld guy. He's an incredible writer.

Speaker 2:
[47:03] Paul Dini's in the crew as well.

Speaker 3:
[47:05] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[47:07] It's so many great, why are we walking like this? Bear is driving, how could that be? It's such a great platform for Kevin Smith's characters in the universe, and having extra writers and having this great animation team that went on to do great stuff as well, it's, who knows what could have been, but this predates like Family Guy in its prime, it predates.

Speaker 3:
[47:31] Yeah, it was 2000, Family Guy was 99.

Speaker 2:
[47:33] But Family Guy was still like-

Speaker 3:
[47:34] Oh, in its prime, okay.

Speaker 2:
[47:35] Yeah, you know, predates American Dad, it like, there's so much that it did ahead of its time. And it's just like, I remember being a kid, or teenager, I guess, watching the first two episodes on ABC, desperately trying to figure out when the next ones will air, and just like, when I finally got that DVD and getting to see the missing episodes, it's just like, fucking Leonardo, Leonardo.

Speaker 3:
[48:01] And I mean, that's kind of, you know, that's Alec Baldwin, and it's a proto-30 rock in some ways. Exactly. It's interesting too, that ABC, like, this is a quick tangent, ABC, any time they wanted to be more than ABC and get a little weird, it never worked. First season of The Critic, the Dana Carvey Show, Clerks. We can branch out, now people just wanna watch your dumb family shit.

Speaker 2:
[48:29] All that being said, the amount of gay jokes per episode is obscene.

Speaker 1:
[48:33] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[48:33] Yeah, and that they say the slurs, like, and this is like network TV.

Speaker 1:
[48:39] Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 3:
[48:40] It was crazy, and yeah, right, like, the second episode has a lot of clips from the first episode. They aired that one, but not the first episode.

Speaker 1:
[48:50] That's always the best pitch for it. It's like, it's a great series. The first, after the first episode, they do a clip show, and it's just clips from the first episode. It was always like kind of the elevator pitch to watch it.

Speaker 3:
[49:03] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[49:03] You know, but yeah.

Speaker 2:
[49:05] We jumped ahead there. Can we talk about Dogma, which is a fantastic-

Speaker 1:
[49:08] Sure, yeah, I think you got the one-two punch with Dogma, and Jay and Silent Bob strike back. This would probably be also kind of the peak, I think many would say, of Kevin Smith, at least his career through this large era before maybe his later years. But someone else would probably just say this is the peak. I mean, yeah, Dogma. I didn't even examine Dogma too much because it's just the one that people look at as like, this one is probably the culmination of everything and his strongest body of work, up definitely to this point in his career. It just is, I think, incredible ensemble cast, a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:
[49:51] I don't even think a movie since has taken all these biblical concepts and figures that any kid that grew up with a religious upbringing will have. Every kid who grows up with a religious background thinks of these concepts and thinks of these characters in the same way they think about Star Wars or superheroes.

Speaker 1:
[50:11] I think about Good Omens. Good Omens is the one that really comes to mind. But yes, but that also did a great job at doing that thing, which was just, yeah, give us a really fun, modern day action comedy.

Speaker 2:
[50:28] Selma Hayek, Alan Rickman, Chris Rock. Alanis Morissette is perfect as God. She literally carries this bizarre ethereal energy. She literally closes the book on the Viewest Universe after the credits. It's a bizarre thing. And it's crude, it's rude. Jay and Simon Bob are fantastic in that movie. They are perfect comic foils. And Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are incredible as these weirdly sympathetic but threatening villains. It's just fascinating because the movie was in rights hell because in a weird bit of backroom dealing, the Weinstein brothers bought the rights to the movie so that it wasn't Disney who was in trouble for angering Catholic groups because of the weird network of ownership. And that despite years of begging and pleading to get the rights back, the Weinsteins just held on to it. And it wasn't until some weird financial company got a tranche of assets from the lawsuit fallout that the movie is now finally available. You can buy it online. They did a tour, another road show for it. But you can't rent it online. It's still in this weird gray zone.

Speaker 3:
[51:42] And they could never make a sequel. The rights are still owned by Weinstein. I think one of the standouts of this movie doesn't get enough credit is Linda Fuentino. She grounds the movie in a way that, and it's interesting because I don't think she pops up at any other Kevin Smith stuff ever again. But I think that her having this basically in the straight man role with Jay and Silent Bob and how she takes it all seriously, really makes it feel like the Stakes never leave the movie in a way that I think a lot more of his goofy romps like there is real catastrophe in this movie and real violence. The movie's boardroom seat and all of that stuff. I think this is one of Chris Rock's best performances in a movie. I mean, Alan Rickman is great in everything. I know Kevin Smith, he's openly talked about how they were friends till he passed away anytime he was in England. Come by, you know.

Speaker 2:
[52:52] So that's a 50% hit rate with Die Hard cast members.

Speaker 3:
[52:57] We don't know how he feels about Reginald Vel Johnson.

Speaker 1:
[53:02] Yeah, I mean, what else is there to say? I think Dogma is great. Jane's on Bob's just, Strike Back's just a lot of fun. Maybe flying too close to the sun with the View-esque universe at that point.

Speaker 2:
[53:15] It felt like a great victory lap, and it was the first time this emergent con culture and superhero media thing that was happening was kind of acknowledged in a mainstream film.

Speaker 1:
[53:27] I'll always take a Pee-wee Herman-style romp through studio, to chase sequence through studios, and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:
[53:34] Mark Hamill bringing back his trickster persona as the cock knocker, I believe.

Speaker 1:
[53:39] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[53:40] And Kevin Smith talks about how he really didn't like doing Star Wars stuff, and he said that he had to tell, he had to keep a secret from both Cary Fisher, who's the nun in the movie, and Mark Hamill that they were in it, because he said they would have said no. They're like, oh, now this is just a fucking Star Wars thing? Are you doing another holiday special?

Speaker 1:
[54:02] Yeah, it kind of felt like, I even wrote down, it kind of felt like an end game of sorts. It was like this kind of wrapping up of where we are at for now, which really ended up being that way, because what I really wanted to get to is this downturn. I think this is when things get a little more interesting.

Speaker 3:
[54:16] I just, comic book sidebar for just two minutes. This is, I think, really important in the history of Marvel and everything, is Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti, they get Marvel Knights. And Marvel Knights is, basically Marvel takes some of their lesser selling properties. They did this in 96 with Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, with Heroes Were Born, and it didn't work that well. But with Marvel Knights, they get Daredevil, they get Black Panther, they get Black Widow.

Speaker 2:
[54:47] The ugliest Doctor Strange you've ever seen.

Speaker 3:
[54:49] Yeah. Angel Punisher.

Speaker 2:
[54:51] Angel Punisher. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[54:52] It's weird. But Daredevil is written by Kevin Smith. And this is his first mainstream comic work. And of course, Joe Quesada, if you remember our Spider-Man episode, goes on to be Editor-in-Chief of Marvel. I don't think that happens without Kevin Smith.

Speaker 2:
[55:12] I mean, it was a massive book for the company. I remember waiting for each issue to come out. It was a huge deal.

Speaker 3:
[55:18] Yeah. And then he does Green Arrow Quiver. There's a thing that ends up happening pretty quickly with Kevin Smith and comic books, which is massive delays. He does Batman Cacophony with... He never forgets his friends, right? And then it is a sweet thing like Walt Flanagan, who ends up starring in Comic Book Men. He's the artist of that. Then there's the whitening gyre. Walt Flanagan is the artist. It ends on the biggest cliffhanger. Which I'll just say, Batman befriends this new superhero. And at the last page, you see that it's actually a villain and Batman had brought this guy into the Batcave and he slits the throat of Batman's girlfriend. And this is 2010. Bellicosity was supposed to be the sequel. It never happens. There are moments in this book that have angered fans. Pissed off, literally, I don't know if you know this.

Speaker 2:
[56:18] I was hoping you would bring this up.

Speaker 3:
[56:19] If anyone was going to. You know Batman year one, right?

Speaker 1:
[56:23] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[56:23] The iconic scene when Batman shows up with the mobsters and says like, you know, your days of eating, you know, plenty of time.

Speaker 2:
[56:31] You've eaten well, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[56:32] Yeah, you've eaten well and all of that. Well, so Batman, there's this other new hero's name is Basfamit. Batman is telling Basfamit about that moment. And what he says is, what you don't realize is that I actually peed myself.

Speaker 2:
[56:49] Because I was so scared.

Speaker 3:
[56:51] I was so scared. And the smoke in all that caused me to have a urinal spasm. And people were like, why did you take this amazing moment?

Speaker 2:
[57:00] Iconic moment of badassery.

Speaker 3:
[57:02] And then the other one, and then we'll land on the comic book stuff. You know, he does, and I think it's well intentioned, but you read it now and I just did again, you know, and it's very clunky. Spider-Man and Black Cat, the evil that men do is all about, it ends up being about sexual assault. And he retcons Black Cat to have been assaulted in college. And it's very heavy and it's, you know, and she starts saying statistics, you know, this many people go through this and this many people don't report. And I think, you know, it goes to Chasing Amy, it goes to a lot of the stuff that even when he, he does get it wrong, there is good intentions.

Speaker 2:
[57:50] Yeah, the heart is always in the right place.

Speaker 1:
[57:52] Yeah, but yeah, he gets wrong. He gets wrong. So Smith pushes further into larger scale filmmaking and he starts to have some issues. And the first big miss is of course Jersey Girl starring Ben Affleck with Jennifer Lopez in a supporting role. And it was shit on so hard by critics. Kevin Smith himself referred to it as G Lee too, because it was just a bad time to put Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in a movie.

Speaker 2:
[58:21] Benifer fatigue had fully kicked in. People were sick of the relationship. It had been on the front page of every tabloid, every website. And like, if anything, it seems like the movie went out of its way to like make, like, the first 30 minutes of the movie is just like Ben Affleck and JLo just like.

Speaker 3:
[58:40] 12 minutes.

Speaker 2:
[58:41] What? No, no, I was, I was pausing.

Speaker 3:
[58:43] It's pretty short.

Speaker 2:
[58:44] No, it is not.

Speaker 3:
[58:45] Okay, I'm gonna look, I'm gonna look, let's see.

Speaker 2:
[58:47] It's like a ton of this movie that like, in any other romcom.

Speaker 3:
[58:49] I know after Hanging Mr. Cooper Gate.

Speaker 2:
[58:51] In any other romcom, it would have been just like, oh, that was his tragic past, maybe a flashback. And like, he's a widower, but like their whole arc is just this like, is told, and I think it's cause like, oh, we got JLo, we gotta like make use of her. And the kid in this movie is like, they found like a JLo mini-me. It is like weirdly, it's like distracting.

Speaker 3:
[59:13] She ends up on The Voice, Raquel Castro.

Speaker 2:
[59:15] Oh, good for her.

Speaker 3:
[59:16] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[59:17] But it's George Carlin as his dad, Liv Tyler as his adorkable, sex positive new beau. There's this great scene where the kind of crux of the movie is down to is Ben Affleck's character going to take his fancy job in the city or is he going to attend his daughter's parents' student musical review? And the joke is every single other family does memory from Cats, which again, years before the movie, years before any of that. And it's even funnier how every family does their weird version of the yak fur.

Speaker 3:
[59:58] This is the last scene JLo is in. She dies on the hospital bed.

Speaker 2:
[60:01] But then it's all about his.

Speaker 3:
[60:03] 1151, but JLo is not in the movie for 30 minutes.

Speaker 2:
[60:07] She's not in the movie, but her arc is for 30 minutes. I'm saying anything that would have just been backstory in another rom-com.

Speaker 3:
[60:14] Because they did, I'm just saying, they did heavily edit her out of a lot of the movie because of G. Lee.

Speaker 2:
[60:21] Okay, I'll be honest.

Speaker 1:
[60:22] They were getting like, there was a-

Speaker 3:
[60:23] She was originally in the film a lot longer.

Speaker 1:
[60:25] There was a wedding scene as well that they cut out to-

Speaker 3:
[60:28] There's a bunch of stuff. But you're right, you don't see the present of the film with the girl being born, I mean, with the girl being like seven until 30 minutes in.

Speaker 2:
[60:39] But Ben Affleck makes the right choice. He chooses family over a personal career, and they perform a song from Sweeney Todd, which again, decades before Stephen Soderbergh died, and there was this, not Stephen Soderbergh, but Stephen Sondheim, edit that. Decades before Stephen Sondheim died.

Speaker 3:
[60:58] Wait, are you afraid of the Broadway fans? Is there anything from having you?

Speaker 2:
[61:02] I'm going home to the Broadway fans. Yes. I am, my fate and the theater, the comic book boy and the theater lady are two habs of the same beautiful hole.

Speaker 3:
[61:15] What we're saying is Jake is gonna be a meat pie.

Speaker 1:
[61:17] Beautiful hole.

Speaker 2:
[61:19] Yeah, the beautiful hole. And it's like just so like weirdly ahead of its time in that respect. And a lot of the things that Kevin Smith gets dinged on, you know, very static shots, a lot of like just two people talking. He's like doing camera whips. He's doing like fun things. The movie has a very interesting, like there's a better, like good cinematography kind of above what we're used to seeing. And it's like competent and funny and heartbreaking. George Carlin is amazing as the dad. There's a beautiful line at the end where he's like, oh, come on, you can finally live on your own again. He's like, yeah, but I don't want to die on my own. For this to be his like white whale, for this to be the movie that he in interviews, in his own movies will shit on, for Jersey Girl to be this cross he has to bear is so absurd because it is decent.

Speaker 1:
[62:16] It is not this like dog water thing. What I was gonna say too is like, I got the memo we all got, that Kevis Smith was no longer cool or someone whose movies I need to watch anymore. I don't see anything from him until, I don't even know, until I went back to these movies. I'm trying to think. I stopped watching his movies at this point and just immediately disregard him. It's crazy.

Speaker 3:
[62:44] It's interesting, Jake, that you mention how the film looks. The cinematography was Vilmos Zygmunt, an Academy Award-

Speaker 2:
[62:52] That's a fancy cinematographer name.

Speaker 3:
[62:54] Yeah, you're damn right. He won for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, an Oscar. He did the Deer Hunter. This guy was a legend and apparently they did not get along at all.

Speaker 1:
[63:07] He's not getting along right now with a lot of the people he's in the business with.

Speaker 3:
[63:13] There's a reason he goes back to his friends. I don't even think it's his fault a lot of the time, in the sense that I think he has his way of doing things and an energy to his sets that I think people either get or they don't and some people probably don't. I'm sure that this dude was like an old Hungarian guy. What the fuck are we doing? Why are we talking so much about feelings?

Speaker 1:
[63:42] So yeah, I'm out at this point. Clerks 2 comes out. I remember just seeing the cover of it and being like, why? I don't even know what my problem was.

Speaker 2:
[63:49] Because it looked like Julie 2.

Speaker 1:
[63:51] Yeah. I was like, what is this? I don't think I'm into this at all.

Speaker 3:
[63:55] The rooftop dancing scene, I saw Clerks 2 in the theater and that was my this show ain't no good. Yeah. Moment of like, I don't know what this is.

Speaker 2:
[64:04] Clerks 2 is an ugly film. It is not like, it is bitter.

Speaker 3:
[64:08] Well, that's because Vlemo Sigmund said, fuck off.

Speaker 2:
[64:14] Yeah. I remember watching Clerks 2 and being like really disappointed by just-

Speaker 1:
[64:18] I mean, if you go back to the original Clerks, like Clerks is dark too, and has a lot of like attitude in it and angst and stuff. But yeah, I watched it for the first time like this week. I thought there were some redeeming qualities, but yeah, and it has the dubious racism bit just really super doesn't work anymore in the way that it was trying to work back then. Then you have the first movie I think in this run where people were like, actually, I kind of enjoyed it, but I still never watched it, and it was absolutely still part of the downturn of his career is Zack and Mary Make a Porno, which I do think that people now have a lot more appreciation for. If I bring that movie up, people are like, I really enjoyed that. I get more of that than anything else in terms of reaction, but he was just on this crazy downturn that even-

Speaker 2:
[65:12] This is another thing where I feel like his unique place and how it was marketed just kind of really boned him because it's Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks off of the success of the-

Speaker 3:
[65:26] It feels very Apatow.

Speaker 1:
[65:28] Yeah, it's a very Apatow. I need to try to insert myself into this really successful comedy scene that's happening in film and it doesn't work. Smith said, I was depressed, man. I wanted that movie to do so much better. I'm sitting there thinking, that's it. That's it. I'm gone. I'm out. The movie didn't do well and I killed Seth Rogen's career. This dude was on a roll until he got in with the likes of me. I'm a career killer. Judd Apatow is going to be pissed. The whole Internet is going to be pissed because they all like Seth. The only reason they like me anymore is because I was involved with Seth. Now I fucking ruin that. It was like high school. I was like, I'm a dead man. I'll be a laughing stock.

Speaker 2:
[66:05] Supposedly, it was Seth Rogan that smoked out Kevin Smith for the first time in years on set, and that led to his big stone. Yeah, I'm a weed guy.

Speaker 3:
[66:16] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[66:16] It was such a... It's so funny, too, talking about the podcasting things. I remember it was like Joe Rogan and him, I remember exploding at the same time, and they were both like, guess what I do? I'm a modern man and I smoke weed all the time. People talk about how much I smoke weed. And it was all this big moment. I saw in an interview he did, he was just like, yeah, I smoke them joints like cigarettes now. I probably already had three joints today. And it was late morning, you know what I mean? Which is so not good. As a person who smokes weed, that is not good.

Speaker 2:
[66:49] I saw Zack and Mary in the theaters because I was like, I still like Kevin Smith. I love Joe D'Apatow. This is the perfect movie for me.

Speaker 3:
[66:55] Did you say Joe D'Apatow?

Speaker 2:
[66:57] I'm drunk. And not because I'm an alcoholic. I got that weird thing where every carb I eat is digested by yeast in my system. But there's one scene in Zack and Mary, which I will stick with me forever, where it's Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, who are like been close friends for a while. They never got together.

Speaker 3:
[67:16] For years, like since school, because they go to a high school reunion.

Speaker 2:
[67:19] And because of circumstances, they have to like have sex to fill in for this porno they're making. And like the sex scene is shot, like really intimate. There's like music playing. You just focus on their faces, as like all this affection is finally made physical. And it's like very well done. And you're like, and it's like kind of this beautiful moment between two people. And then immediately cuts back to the porno set, and all like the actors and the camera guy. And they're just like, that fucking sucked. That is the worst sex we've ever seen on screen. And it just was like a beautiful moment that really highlights how the reality of porno and actual romance can wildly diverge.

Speaker 1:
[68:02] Yeah, again, I watched this movie for the first time. I did enjoy it quite a bit. My biggest hang up, and it really took me back to this time in comedies, was Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks standing side by side. It was the most jarring, challenging thing to actually have to, the mental gymnastics I had to do to try to ship these two.

Speaker 2:
[68:24] They lampshaded that in an early viral video. Maybe it was Funny or Die. It's like Funny or Die era, where Elizabeth Banks just goes like, I'm fucking Seth Rogen. That was like the joke.

Speaker 1:
[68:34] Yeah, and it just was like, Seth Rogen, I think, was at his absolute shlubbiest. And it just, it was like, man, cause also, I think Elizabeth Banks does a great job acting in that movie. It's just the, she's just so classically beautiful and he's just so shlubby. And it made me just so annoyed at the shlubbi guy.

Speaker 2:
[68:58] Holden, I don't know how to break this to you. No, I know. People, you might want to, okay, I know you're already sitting.

Speaker 1:
[69:04] People brought this up with me, Alexi.

Speaker 2:
[69:05] You're already sitting. But you might want to stand up and then sit down again.

Speaker 1:
[69:09] I still just, it's Elizabeth Banks.

Speaker 3:
[69:11] It's all of us. That we're not alone is amazing.

Speaker 1:
[69:15] Yeah. I don't know. It just made it so difficult for, just like, could you just have gotten either an actress that just looks more real and artistic in this situation, or just kind of dressed her down a little bit? Like she's just so, like, it's just, it just is so hard to believe. I guess the difference too is she's the one like fiending for him. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3:
[69:37] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[69:37] She's, she's, she's the one.

Speaker 3:
[69:40] I have that, just, you know, that Canadian chemistry.

Speaker 1:
[69:43] Yeah, she's the one that's chasing Amy. And I think that's maybe what makes it hard for me.

Speaker 3:
[69:48] I want to, I want to talk Box Office in this time.

Speaker 1:
[69:52] Oh, no, go for it.

Speaker 3:
[69:53] All right. So we have Jersey Girl costs 35 million. It makes 35 million. So that's a bomb. Then we have clerks to cost 5 million makes 26 million. So people are a little bit like stay in your lane, buddy. And then you go to Zach and Mary 24 million budget. Yeah, 42.8 million. And I had never seen this movie before. I really enjoyed it. It does feel like a hybrid of the Apatow style. It does feel a little more improvised, which was Apatow style more than Kevin Smith. Very script heavy, it feels like.

Speaker 2:
[70:41] He did like let them improvise this movie.

Speaker 3:
[70:44] And it's interesting because you have Jeff Anderson and Jason Meuse in this with Craig Robinson. And I don't know. Yeah, I found it charming. But what was interesting was that while I was watching this, while I was watching Jersey Girl, I didn't hate Jersey Girl either. And there was a sweetness to it. I mean, there was a formula to it. But there was that part of me that I was like, I miss the guy who made the rom-com where he doesn't get the girl.

Speaker 1:
[71:16] Yeah, yeah, totally. Also, the part where he is upset that it didn't sell well is so crazy to me. It's such a raunchy sex comedy that would-

Speaker 2:
[71:26] It was impossible to market. Porno is in the title.

Speaker 1:
[71:29] Porno is in the title. That he was making a movie that he thought was going to be like Step Brothers or something, kind of blows me away because it really is that RRR-rated. I mean, there's nudity, there's sex happening. I mean, there's just all the time is like kind of a backdrop. It's just, I don't think you're ever going to have the comedy of the summer doing that. Like you have to accept that.

Speaker 2:
[71:55] I would also like to take this moment because it's around this time that Kevin Smith's radical sincerity and bombastic persona as the other guy, and very much GenX elder millennial coded humor began to backfire on his public persona with a tweet from 2009, one that will forever live in infamy, one that I think about all the time. April, if you can play some very like, maybe like some classical music behind me, that would be great. This is from July 9th, 2009 about his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach. 10 years in and we bone like we're cheating on each other with each other. A decade plus and her clit slash brown slash taint area still pones my dick.

Speaker 1:
[72:44] In a 2019 Instagram post, he wrote, it's the 10 year anniversary of this tweet, a tweet that was posted 10 years into my marriage. This is my Dorian Gray cocoon tweet. As long as I don't delete it, I'll never get older and I'll never die. There's a story behind the words that I posted on my Facebook page from the five year anniversary, but for the curious, her clit slash brown slash tain area still pones my dick. Hashtag Kevin Smith, hashtag Twitter. At the five anniversary, I had to go digging for that Facebook post. He tells the tale of how this came about. According to him, and we can definitely speculate here, his wife would get riled up at him writing tweets about their sexy times and ended up challenging him. She was like, I bet I could write a tweet that would make you as uncomfortable as your tweets about our sex lives make me uncomfortable. And he said, there's no fucking way you could write a single thing that would possibly ever make me uncomfortable. I'm like, Mr. Dirty Sex Comedy Guy. And so she apparently worked with friends and they wrote, they came up with the worst tweet they could come up with and put it on his Twitter and with the promise that he could never delete it. And so he since has not.

Speaker 2:
[73:54] I never knew that story.

Speaker 1:
[73:55] That is what he claims. Do you believe it?

Speaker 2:
[73:59] I mean, the poem, it really is, it's the poem's my dick.

Speaker 1:
[74:02] He said that he thought no one would believe it was actually him because of the misspelling of poem because you don't put the O in the...

Speaker 2:
[74:08] It's a zero, yes.

Speaker 3:
[74:09] I will say every... This tweet was very helpful every time she was on screen in one of his films. I was like, oh yeah, that's why. And you know, but thankfully that was the only family member he would put on screen in his films.

Speaker 1:
[74:25] Yeah, the only one. He never put another one in.

Speaker 3:
[74:27] We're going to get there.

Speaker 1:
[74:28] And to cap it all off of his downturn, you've got cop out. Kevin Smith's last ever time working with the major studio.

Speaker 3:
[74:36] And the only script he did not write.

Speaker 1:
[74:38] It was this notorious story, I feel like we all... And it was filmed in my friend's neighbor. It was filmed in Ridgewood. So I remember while we were like, while my friends were living out there, well, like a bunch of murderous people were living out there. But yeah, it starred Bruce Wilson, Tracy Morgan. Smith said, were it not for Tracy, I might have killed myself or someone else in the making of that movie. Smith blamed the awful result on Bruce Willis. It was difficult. I've never been involved in a situation like that where one component is not in the box at all. It was fucking soul crushing. I mean, a lot of people are gonna be like, oh, you're just trying to blame the movie on him. No, but I had no fucking help from this dude whatsoever. So it was just the culmination of big studio, Kevin Smith clashing.

Speaker 2:
[75:21] The story I heard was at one point while they were setting up the camera, Bruce Willis asked about the lenses being used in the scene and Kevin Smith said that he had no fucking clue what they were for or what they were doing. And Bruce Willis berated him in front of the whole crew over that.

Speaker 3:
[75:38] Well, here's, you know, getting into it. So David Klein was Kevin Smith's original cinematographer that did Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy. You know, he's not there for Jersey Girl. He's not even there for Dogma, it seems, but he does this. So this is like an old buddy. He also did, you know, Clerks 2, Zach and Mary, you know, but it is that thing of like, if you're a professional like Bruce Willis, you're like, you just fuck it around with your friends. I bet there's some of that there. But the story of this movie is also that, you guys know what the blacklist is?

Speaker 2:
[76:17] Like the anti-communist thing from the 1960s?

Speaker 3:
[76:21] The blacklist, that is the thing also. But the blacklist is a list of the best unpublished screenplays out there.

Speaker 1:
[76:28] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[76:29] And so, Kevin saw this script called A Couple of Dicks by Rob and Mark Cullen, brothers, and he really was into it, because yeah, he never makes stuff that he doesn't write. But he was like, I think I can do this one. And of course, even the name Cop Out is a joke, because the studio was like, we can't release a movie called Cop Out, especially after Zack and Mary make a porno backfired. So the title, Cop Out, is a literal cop out. And this movie, the budget is $30 million, box office is $55.6 million. The thing that I remember about this is it being totally eclipsed by the other guys. They felt very similar to me.

Speaker 1:
[77:17] Yeah, Barry's someone they both came out. And other guys was pretty solid.

Speaker 3:
[77:20] I really enjoyed that. And that felt like a much bigger, and oh yeah, that movie was, yeah, a way bigger movie.

Speaker 1:
[77:28] Was that Apatow, it still feels in the same-

Speaker 2:
[77:31] I think that was like woke, I mean, not like woke, but like enlightened Apatow out.

Speaker 3:
[77:35] That was Adam McKay.

Speaker 2:
[77:36] Oh, that was Adam McKay.

Speaker 1:
[77:37] Kevin Smith was kinda getting beaten at his own game a little bit for a while there.

Speaker 2:
[77:42] This is kind of unfortunately what I walked away from from all of this is that if you want slacker dude, stoner comedies, we have Apatow, we have Adam McKay, we have like that and it was done better in a more market-friendly way.

Speaker 1:
[77:57] Yeah, and Kevin Smith does it in like a John Waters-y way.

Speaker 2:
[78:01] And if you want like, rye pop culture, like homage and pastiche done to the height of, with love and abilities, we have Edgar Wright, we have like the Cornetto trilogy.

Speaker 3:
[78:12] I'm going to say it, if you like religious epic comedy, I think Trey and Matt did it.

Speaker 2:
[78:20] Oh, yeah, yeah. Book of Mormon.

Speaker 1:
[78:21] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[78:22] I mean, just even the South Park movie and all of the episodes that they do about religion.

Speaker 2:
[78:28] Like, it's, Kevin Smith is like not the best at what Kevin Smith does, and that's like a little tragic.

Speaker 1:
[78:35] But you, so you kind of have to get into the family aspect of it. Like, I think what's nice about his stuff and enjoying his movies this past couple of weeks was more so like, oh, I'm coming back to this group and hanging out with this group for a little bit longer.

Speaker 2:
[78:49] I mean, we'd be hypocrites to not talk about the value of maybe dragging along your less successful friends, if not for the grace of a much more successful and charismatic.

Speaker 1:
[79:04] So now, Kevin Smith is-

Speaker 3:
[79:05] We've all been someone's muse.

Speaker 1:
[79:07] You know what we're saying? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[79:09] Oh my God, I never put that together. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[79:12] So now, he's angry and he does this crazy thing I didn't even know about this when he's going into his next film, Red State, which he decides to put out himself with zero help from the studio. And he does this by like trolling a bunch of studios. He invites them to a screening under the guise that he's going to hold an auction for the rights. And then, he comes out and he buys the rights himself for $20, and he gives this pretty grumpy speech. It's clear he's very disillusioned with the whole movie industry. And Smith said this about why, because it clearly wasn't for the people in the room. He said, we needed to launch with a fucking rocket. The message was meant for the very few people in the room who snuck a ticket because they were working the festival. Or it was meant for motherfuckers who downloaded it on YouTube the moment somebody posted it up. It was meant for everyone else. I was talking to the kids, man. And when you stand on that stage and go punk rock filmmaking, fucking you take 20 years off your shelf life in a good way because the kids are like, this dude can do it the other way and he's choosing to do it with us the smart way. I didn't want to see Red State go the way that every film I've done is gone, which is I make it for as cheaply as I can and somebody spends way too much money marketing it. I always wanted to see if I could sell a movie to the public without doing any marketing because my philosophy was like, man, I'm reaching my audience every day. I'm Twittering with them. I'm in direct contact with them on the podcast. So at that point, if I'm like, I'm already talking directly to the audience. There's no need in spending money to get to the audience. I once did a Q&A that lasted seven fucking hours, dude. There's a weird Kevin Smith brand that's like, you like these dopey movies he makes that some people don't like or get. And then he's got this whole other stand here, there and talk to the audience business. Then add to that smodcast. That was like the missing linchpin that kind of kickstarted the direct to fan relationship. I figured out that you can live in the nooks and crannies of people's lives with these podcasts. And he goes on to talk about other stuff like how it was advertising for, I think, J. Ancel and Bob Strike Back. And his mom called him up and was like, oh, I saw a trailer for your movie on this like lifetime TV show. And he's like, why the fuck are they advertising J. Ancel and Bob Strike Back on a lifetime television? And just seeing, in his opinion, money get wasted on the studio advertising model.

Speaker 2:
[81:37] It's also his own family and community of people that worked with him were constantly getting fucked over on residuals and royalties because studio bookmaking was always like, oh, yeah, no, this movie made a profit and you guys have day jobs. It's like any residuals would be life changing for you. But we spent $20 million on marketing, so technically the movies didn't earn any money and you don't get anything.

Speaker 3:
[81:58] But to be fair, there were a good amount of his movies that didn't make a profit.

Speaker 1:
[82:02] Now we're in the final stretch here. What I'll say about Red Stainless.

Speaker 3:
[82:07] We're in the Sonic 2006 stretch, but we're not making it two episodes. Look, like I said before, this is a guy who talks about every aspect of his life. There is so much out there and if we didn't get to something, we're talking about someone's entire 30 plus year career.

Speaker 1:
[82:27] They've made a lot of movies, man. They've had a steady, and I love that the 430 movie came out in 2024 and then it's like, yeah, he's still doing stuff. So let's talk about this final run of stuff. We're starting with Red State, which I saw, and I'll just say in general of this horror stuff, I enjoyed definitely Tusk a lot more than Mike did, for sure, we could get into that.

Speaker 3:
[82:48] You got paid to watch it. You watched it with people. If you watched it alone, you would not have enjoyed it as much.

Speaker 1:
[82:53] I was about to say, I think the huge, huge difference is I watched it with a bunch of people in my chat, hanging out. Way better way to watch it.

Speaker 3:
[83:01] You're the only person who's made money from Tusk.

Speaker 1:
[83:04] So Red State and Tusk, though, I will say, I think with his horror stuff, I think he does a fine job of doing a horror movie to a certain point, but in both instances, I kind of want more. Tusk is a little different. Let's just focus on Red State. I think as a horror movie watcher, seen this kind of thing before, right? Fun premise, though, love doing a premise based on Westboro Baptist Church.

Speaker 2:
[83:29] John Goodman's fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[83:30] John Goodman's fantastic. I think there's a lot to like about this movie and the high points are very high, but I also think that I just, I think there could have been more to it, maybe. It just could have been more to it. And one of my big things was the shootout, the whole shootout part, it turned into an old school type of movie where I'm just watching people shoot guns out of windows, not seeing the cause and the effect of any of that.

Speaker 2:
[83:54] He's never been good at action.

Speaker 1:
[83:55] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[83:55] I mean, that's the thing with cop out also.

Speaker 1:
[83:57] So I'm not like stressed out at all because I don't even know, it just seems like they're just firing bullets into an abyss and nothing. I think I saw one guy get shot once and I was like, wow, that'd be interesting if you made it more of a, this shot happens, then this shot happens.

Speaker 2:
[84:10] Again, this is something like, and Edgar Wright does better, where every shot fired, you see the effect, it matters and it draws you into the scene.

Speaker 1:
[84:17] But I think we can move pretty quickly past where I'd say, cause I do think it's a fun one. If you're a horror fan, you should definitely check it out.

Speaker 2:
[84:23] If you're a Westboro Baptist Church member, maybe this will finally be the thing that snaps you out of it.

Speaker 3:
[84:27] I think this was him trying to get that dogma heat again, and he's not as popular. And it's also, you know, when we're talking about these movies now, Red Satan Forward, we're talking about like, this is the podcasting era, everything is under the microscope. He's talking about making these movies on the podcast as they're being made. And then when they come out, the podcasts are non-stop hype machines.

Speaker 1:
[84:54] And then Andy's touring with the movie.

Speaker 3:
[84:55] And he's touring with the movie.

Speaker 1:
[84:57] So you're getting a whole night with him, not just going to see the movie, which is brilliant.

Speaker 2:
[85:00] People are paying $200 to hang out with Kevin Smith, not necessarily to watch the movies.

Speaker 3:
[85:04] And I don't think a lot of these movies merit that amount of attention. And that kind of hurts them as well.

Speaker 1:
[85:13] I would say too, one interesting thing about Red State was that for the first time, I had people in chat not realizing that was like Kevin Smith or at least the same Kevin Smith, which was fascinating. That people didn't even know, oh, I didn't realize that was directed by Kevin Smith.

Speaker 2:
[85:29] Interesting.

Speaker 1:
[85:31] Or being like, this was the younger people. I had one person being like, I know Red State, but I've never heard of Kevin Smith.

Speaker 2:
[85:37] That's bizarre as.

Speaker 1:
[85:38] And didn't know any of the movies we were referencing.

Speaker 3:
[85:40] And Tusk spins out from a story that he tells on the podcast.

Speaker 1:
[85:45] Which you hear in the credits.

Speaker 3:
[85:47] And this is a person that we have left out of the narrative that at least deserves to be mentioned, Scott Moser.

Speaker 2:
[85:53] Very true.

Speaker 3:
[85:53] Who's his producer and they did everything together.

Speaker 2:
[85:58] He was holding the boom mics and clerks. He's been there from...

Speaker 3:
[86:01] And he's in a lot of the films, but mainly he's the guy who... You need someone to actually help get the shit done. And he's that guy. There's a director, producers do a lot that you don't know about. But Tusk, the thing that didn't work with me about Tusk is that being turned into a Walrus man is still not as weird as what puberty did to Haley Joel Osment.

Speaker 2:
[86:28] Listen, we all have larger than normal heads in this room.

Speaker 1:
[86:31] I wasn't surprised it wasn't him. I initially saw the two of them and I'm like, well, of course the Walrus shaped man will be turned into a Walrus. And this very much did not happen, which I was surprised at.

Speaker 3:
[86:42] Justin Wong ends up being a guy that's in a lot of his stuff and is really fun and funny a lot of his stuff.

Speaker 1:
[86:47] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[86:48] And he's good in it. And Michael Parks, who's in RedState and this, it's a good performance.

Speaker 1:
[86:52] What do you hate it? Yeah, so what do you loathe so much about Taz?

Speaker 3:
[86:55] Once you get to where it is, there's nothing else. It's not, it feels like, and he did, there's a holiday movie where he does a Halloween story for an anthology thing. This felt like an anthology.

Speaker 1:
[87:11] It should have been a shorter thing.

Speaker 3:
[87:12] It doesn't have feature length in it. And you're, this is supposed to be a part of a trilogy with yoga hosers. And then once again, he doesn't finish Moose Jaws. It's supposed to be the third one.

Speaker 1:
[87:26] Moose Jaws.

Speaker 3:
[87:26] But yeah, when you get to-

Speaker 1:
[87:27] Which is Jaws but with a moose.

Speaker 3:
[87:28] Yeah, but when you get to the yoga hosers girls, and when you get to Johnny Depp's inspector character.

Speaker 1:
[87:34] That's the thing, as I continue to ruminate on Tusk, I continue to go back to and really just dislike is the Johnny Depp thing. I think it was fun for a moment, and then he drew it. I think he again tried to do a Tarantino thing with his monologue. It was very reminiscent of the pocket watch from Pulp Fiction.

Speaker 3:
[87:53] Well, then you even look at Ryan Johnson and what Daniel Craig is able to accomplish as Benoit Blank, and how much more entertaining that is. This feels like the bad version of that.

Speaker 1:
[88:06] It just felt so unnecessary and bloated. His daughter's in the movie. Like a walrus, yeah. His daughter's in the movie. He's just having fun. He's clearly over the studio system.

Speaker 3:
[88:15] She was a Nepo hire. She's like, can my dad be in this, please? I guess so.

Speaker 1:
[88:18] Yeah, oh, totally, yeah. And so.

Speaker 2:
[88:21] That's Johnny Depp as the Nepo buddy. Like Lily Rhodes is very bad.

Speaker 1:
[88:24] And you said, I didn't even watch Yoga Hosers. You said you fully tapped on Yoga Hosers.

Speaker 3:
[88:29] Yeah, this was the one I couldn't finish. It's just.

Speaker 1:
[88:32] Isn't it kind of a kids movie?

Speaker 2:
[88:34] No, no.

Speaker 1:
[88:35] Somebody said it was like, well, it's made for kids. Yeah, really?

Speaker 3:
[88:38] It's a movie made with this kid. And look, I'm just gonna say, I, Harley Quinn Smith and how cool is it that, as someone with a son named Logan, I had to give props to Harley Quinn Smith.

Speaker 2:
[88:51] Half this episode is us being a little bit critical than being like, to be fair, we do the exact same thing in every aspect of our lives.

Speaker 3:
[88:58] No, and it's just, she's not a great actress. And it's tough, it really hurts Jane Silent Bob Reboot when she has a pivotal emotional role. And look, but I get it, you have the power, you have the money, you want to be with your family. I see the noble intentions of it. I was talking to our producer, Adam, about this before we got on. In some ways, the Kevin Smith trajectory is the Adam Sandler trajectory of putting your whole family in it, putting your friends in it.

Speaker 2:
[89:33] Yeah, it's a paid vacation sometimes.

Speaker 3:
[89:35] Yeah, and that's the thing, is you watch these movies, and they're like, that looks like it was fun to be on. But most of the things that she's been in are his things and not outside of that. And look, my thing on Nipple Babies in general is I think it's a case by case basis. There are some incredible performers that come from famous, successful parents. I just don't think that these two kids are them. And it's very clear that they're, it feels like they're trying to make something a thing that isn't a thing. And it feels that way in Tusk. And then for it to then become its own movie, it's like, this is too much.

Speaker 1:
[90:16] Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3:
[90:17] But that's me. And for anyone who enjoys it, and yeah, like I said, I get the merits of it. It's just, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[90:24] People either love or despise Tusk. That is another thing I will say, which is another reason why it was very fun to watch it in a group setting.

Speaker 3:
[90:32] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[90:32] People either like really think it's a lot of fun or are like, well, I guess that was a movie. And there's no in between. It's really interesting that way. I know.

Speaker 2:
[90:41] The mythology of it being the result of like a stoner conversation, like wouldn't it be funny if we made this movie? And actually hearing the conversation, it is just two stoners.

Speaker 1:
[90:50] That was in the credits. It's in the credits.

Speaker 2:
[90:51] Oh, I didn't end up watching it.

Speaker 1:
[90:53] But it's long enough in the credits, they do the audio from the podcast where they like come up with it and it's interesting.

Speaker 3:
[90:59] And even, you know, one thing in the movie that was again is pressing in is the, where we've gotten with the internet of bullying people and Logan Pauls and Mr. Beast and all of that. He's going to Canada to essentially ridicule someone for his podcast. Yeah, like, and so that part of it is fascinating. It's just one thing that really didn't work in this movie. For me is the actual video of the kid who they're going to film. The CGI is so bad when he cuts his leg that it just looks like something someone would have made on YouTube in 2014 that it's hard to buy is real.

Speaker 1:
[91:39] It was funny that people were like, oh, man, brace yourself for this one. And then I watched, I was, I kept being like, I've seen a lot of like body horror movies, guys, like, I'm pretty sure this isn't gonna get me, but it had me a little on my toes. And then I was like, yeah, this is totally what I thought it was gonna be. I am not at all charred by this. I've seen so many different body horror films. I know we gotta wrap it up soon. So I just want to talk about this kind of final stretch where he really just returns to his roots, whole hog.

Speaker 2:
[92:06] Cause he had the Widowmaker, massive heart attack.

Speaker 1:
[92:10] Massive heart attack.

Speaker 2:
[92:11] Lost a lot of weight.

Speaker 3:
[92:12] And he makes the joke, I had to make Jade Silent Balleriboo because I couldn't die knowing the last thing I made was yoga hosers. And that's as honest as he's gonna be as a father.

Speaker 2:
[92:24] And it was also like a very touching thing of like, I mean, touching and codependent, however you want to say it, but to keep his friend Jason Mew sober, he was like, we'll do this if you can do this for us. After he lost, there's so many photos of him like being like, I just watched Black Panther and his eyes are like bloodshot and tears are like running in his face.

Speaker 3:
[92:46] He cries a lot on the podcast. I mean, yeah, in the 2010s, too fat to fly.

Speaker 1:
[92:51] Yes, yeah, I was about to bring that up. We didn't even talk about how, yeah, he had to leave an airplane because he was too big for the seat, which was this very public thing that led to his ongoing weight loss journey, weight loss gain. He's fluctuated throughout the years.

Speaker 3:
[93:06] And the Widowmaker, which they say in Clerks 3, this is a heart attack that 80% of people do not, like a total blockage of your left ventricle.

Speaker 1:
[93:16] So yeah.

Speaker 3:
[93:17] And his dad had died of a heart attack. And just also, just since it's of the time, his mom has recently passed, and it seemed like they had a great relationship.

Speaker 1:
[93:27] Clerks 3 ends up being a lot heavier than you might think, especially based on Clerks 1 and 2. And I do think it's a very interesting.

Speaker 2:
[93:35] I liked it.

Speaker 1:
[93:36] Yeah. I think his last two movies, I felt pretty good about the landing here with Clerks 3, and especially the 430 movie, which really charmed me. Like, I just, man, if that movie had come out when I was a kid, it would have really fucking, I would have been like, I'm seeing, this is incredible. Like always at the movie theater. I wonder if I would be like that in 2026 as a kid, but always at the movie theater, having lofty goals, trying to just do everything you can to just hang out with this one girl, you know, and going through hell and high water to make it happen. All that kind of stuff was great for me. I mean, it's a real interesting one-two punch. Was it good? I, you know what, I said, I was like, I will watch this movie again. I will watch this movie again. I enjoyed this enough to watch it another time.

Speaker 3:
[94:28] I'd say it's his best movie in years.

Speaker 1:
[94:31] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[94:32] I think watching this movie to me, this was, in a way, this is what this guy should have been doing. Like, this is what Jersey Girl was trying to be. He hits the sentimentality, but he doesn't lose himself in it. There are problems in it. I, Ken Jeong does not feel like he belongs in this movie.

Speaker 1:
[94:54] I had fun with him. I like him as a villain.

Speaker 2:
[94:56] I've seen people where are like, oh, he's a highlight of this.

Speaker 1:
[94:59] Yeah, I had fun with him. You know, he was a, it's that summer movie thing. Like, I don't know how to describe it. Like, I give a lot more leeway to a lot of stuff.

Speaker 3:
[95:09] His volume is so much higher than it, and maybe that's what you like about it.

Speaker 1:
[95:13] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[95:13] I just thought there was a real sweetness to this, and I was, you know, I remember movie hopping. Like, that was a fun thing, and it really did, and like, it was cool, the coming age of this, instead of just, you know, guys talking about when they, you know, saw Star Wars or whatever, let's just make, you know, put them in the age of, you know, when they were teenagers going to these movies.

Speaker 1:
[95:41] And that's what the movie is, but we should even explain, the 430 movie was the movie I didn't even hadn't heard about until we did this episode, and it's about kids over the summer going to see, you know, movies, and the main character is like trying to meet a girl there, and they're like getting kicked out of the movie theater, and all these shenanigans are happening. And it's one of those that, I didn't even mention this either, that Kevin Smith loves to do, and I love this, when the movie happens all in one day, like in generally one location. I really like that structure for me personally as well, and he does that a ton, and he does that here, I think, to great effect. And the ending of the movie as like a lead up to like his own life and stuff we know about his own career just really worked for me. I just think, you're right, I think that this was like such a good way to make a movie that doesn't have the like, necessarily like the view askew family, all doing it as older people or whatever, and instead was just like, no, this is about kids growing up, and Kevin Smith can do that very effectively.

Speaker 2:
[96:40] It's back to nostalgia.

Speaker 1:
[96:41] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[96:42] Like he really, the reviews for 430 movie were like, we get it, it was a magical time, I think it was cool.

Speaker 1:
[96:49] Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2:
[96:50] I tried watching this movie, and then my internet went out, and I couldn't finish it, but the first 10 minutes was so grounded on nailing the physical reality of that era, the lingering shots of the touch tone phone, the Rolodex, everything really putting you in that time and place.

Speaker 3:
[97:07] Yeah, I was gonna say, budget three million, box office $2,389.

Speaker 1:
[97:14] No one knows about this movie, and I think it's actually good.

Speaker 2:
[97:18] I mean, that means there was one screening yesterday.

Speaker 1:
[97:21] But hopefully, I don't know, he's getting money from it whichever way with his tours or whatever, because I really appreciated the 430 movie more than I think most of the movies I've seen this week.

Speaker 3:
[97:31] And there is, in a way, a NEPO star, but I thought it worked. Austin Zejor, I think that's how you say it, is Harley Quinn Smiths. It says they were engaged in 2025, so maybe they're married now. Is he the main character?

Speaker 1:
[97:48] He's the main character. Yeah, he's also in Clerks III. He plays a big part. Yeah, I thought he was great. I just love seeing a pretty realistic stand-in for Kevin Smith. He's schlubby, but he's got charm. I don't know, it worked.

Speaker 3:
[98:03] Well, it is the small stakes that work. The guy who made Dogma can also, this is when he's at his best, can make not going to a movie with the girl you love feel as world-ending.

Speaker 1:
[98:19] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[98:20] You know, and yeah, I like the quaintness of this. One thing I'm also gonna give credit to him as we wrap up, a lot of short movies, God bless it. For all these people that make all these long ass movies, most of them are and 430 movie is. And yeah, he, I mean, the fact that this guy, we talked about it, bought his childhood, he bought his comic shop. This is, he filmed this at the movie theater that he did movie hop at and he bought it. And it's so cool in that way. It is the dream of a lot of us to have, like, you know, we have comic books from when we were kids. We have video games from when we were kids. We don't have the video game stores.

Speaker 1:
[99:05] Yeah, that's awesome. And I think that's why this is not a trial of Kevin Smith. This is very much so, sure, a critique, but also a great appreciation. And I think if you cannot walk away, at least a little bit inspired after seeing all these movies and-

Speaker 2:
[99:21] He's a good guy.

Speaker 1:
[99:22] You know, and yeah, you get the heart, you sense the heart, you can hear all about so many of his issues. We didn't get into so many things. There was a while there where he was driving so recklessly, no one would ride in a car with him. Is he just had such like a death wish for himself? And he worked on all that stuff and he fucking is back out there, and he's always working on the original ending of Clerks where Dante gets murdered. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[99:45] Oh, yeah. Talked into. Yeah. I mean, like I said, this is scratching the surface in many ways, but an appreciation for sure. I think so. Yeah. That's we realize trial is this is more a celebration because part of it, let's be honest, we've lost a lot of our nerd heroes that are alive.

Speaker 2:
[100:08] And that this guy's some and we have in game and his worst thing is talking about how much he loves his wife.

Speaker 1:
[100:18] That's the worst thing that he's ever done.

Speaker 2:
[100:21] And the last thing I wanted to say was, let's say who have not had their dick pwn throw the first stone.

Speaker 1:
[100:26] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3:
[100:27] But the last thing I wanted to say was that there was a documentary, Chasing Chasing Amy, and it's a queer study of the film from a queer person. And Smith is honest. Like I like that he is open and says, look, some mistakes were made, you know, I tried my best. Things were this at the time. And then when you even look at Jane Silent Reboot and Clerks 3, that some of those problematic elements aren't there, that he was able to grow up and mature, but that the stuff still works, the fundamental basics of the characters are there, that Dante and Randall can still be Dante and Randall without being homophobic, is all of this kind of sweet stuff. Like, I think we've watched this guy grow up with us, and to, I think, thousands of people, certainly a lot of our listeners, he was the older brother that, he made you want to read a Green Arrow comic, you know?

Speaker 2:
[101:43] Well, some of us are just Phil Hester fans, but that's not a green arrow comic.

Speaker 3:
[101:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, that he was able to inspire so many people to, even if we like the stuff already, it meant so much to have someone say, it's okay that you like the stuff, and you can make a career liking this stuff.

Speaker 1:
[102:02] Yeah, yeah, for sure. So that's it, not our trial, our celebration of Kevin Smith.

Speaker 3:
[102:07] And Comic Book Man, I mean, to have that many ugly people on TV at once.

Speaker 1:
[102:11] It's incredible.

Speaker 3:
[102:13] I mean, more zombies on that show than The Walking Dead.

Speaker 2:
[102:15] Holy shit.

Speaker 1:
[102:16] Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed it. patreon.com/nerd of mouth, patreon.com/nerd of mouth.

Speaker 3:
[102:26] Mike Zabcic made me think I could be on TV.

Speaker 1:
[102:29] Also, check me out on twitch.tv/holdenaidershoe. That's right. I'm also on TV sort of. twitch.tv/holdenaidershoe. I'm about to run out of the room as I have to piss so bad.

Speaker 3:
[102:41] Jake. Like Batman fighting crime. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[102:45] Holden is literally getting up to go piss himself. Follow me on Twitch, twitch.tv/puppetjared. The flagship stream is the Cartoon Dumpster, Thursday, 7 p.m. Eastern. We watch some of the most bizarre animated oddities of the 70s, 80s and 90s. It is a grand old time. If you like the podcast, I guarantee you will have a fun time on the stream. twitch.tv/puppetjared, Thursday, 7 p.m. Eastern. Mike?

Speaker 3:
[103:09] I'd say the flagship stream is coming out of Holden's dick in the bathroom right now. And that's a joke Kevin Smith would approve of. Yeah, Facebook, Patreon, please support us. Tell us what you think. And once again, thank you to all the people that reached out and certainly enlightened me about how awesome this guy is. And anytime we could take a negative seeming episode and make it positive, that's fucking good shit. The world needs more positivity. And thank you, Kevin Smith, for being you.

Speaker 2:
[103:46] I couldn't have said it better myself. See you next time, everybody.

Speaker 1:
[103:58] This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors. You can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.