Kevin Smith Movies

[percussion]

Chasing amy has some dialogue that really resonates with me. Its hilarious and thought provoking at the same time. The last page of the fake chasing amy comic book (you will know what im talking about once you see the movie) hangs on my wall back home. It really had an impression! go see it!

[What_Exit]

@Declan

That reminded me , did KS have to get permission to do that star wars stuff , especially with Mark Hamel (not again) lol , or does George Lucas have no special qualms about people lifting material.

Declan

KS got permission of the stuff in Jay & Bob Strike Back, but apparently Lucas was amused by the little bit of fan boy celebration by Smith in Mallrats and his other movies where it snuck in.

This is a paraphrase of something Kevin actually said, please do not ask for a cite as it was verbal in a Kevin Smith Red Bank Q&A.

Jim

[Rachael_Rage]

@Wee Bairn

Jersey Girl is his sell out attempt to get a hit movie, and luckily it bombed.

Uh, cite? Are you suggesting that KS was deliberately selling out by making a shitty movie? :rolleyes: Yes, he sometimes apologizes for JG, but if you pay attention, he is really saying that he’s sorry the circumstances (ie. Bennifer, Gigli) came together in such a way as to prejudice people against the movie because of its stars and wouldn’t judge it on its own merits. All I’ve read or heard indicates that he is actually proud of the movie.

In truth, **Jersey Girl **fits perfectly well into the KS filmography. It’s a movie for people who loved **Clerks **and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and the rest, and have had real relationships and possibly families. Grown-ups, in other words. Teenage boys need not apply. Go see AVP-R.

JG is not a perfect movie, but a smart and perfectly serviceable romantic comedy which is a thousand times better than any of the other craptastic, interchangeable “romantic” “comedies” that H’wood churns out by the dozen and I could not be dragged to if it were my dying best friend’s last wish. How many romantic comedies feature George Carlin being filthy and boozy? How many romantic comedies end with a full-on salute to Sweeney Todd? How many romantic comedies feature the line “mark my words, you’re going to give her the crotch-rot?” It is unfair to **Jersey Girl **to compare it to the Fool’s Golds and Over Her Dead Bodys that relentlessly smother our multiplexes. JG is about love and family and all that cheesy stuff, but is actually funny, sometimes dirty and a genuinely good time.

And, by the way, though J-Lo is fine, she is actually not in it very much and Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler are terrific, touching and funny. And the kid isn’t even annoying. She’s legitimately cool.

As for the others, I like all of his films (apparently I’m one of the few who do), they serve somewhat different audiences, but are all distinguished by humor that can be simultaneously smart and juvenile. He doesn’t have that many movies - it is well worth seeing them all.

[askeptic]

Damn, thanks Rachael, now I guess I will have to go rent it…

[control-z]

@askeptic

Damn, thanks Rachael, now I guess I will have to go rent it…

Don’t believe her…

I warned you!

[Cisco]

To paraphrase Kevin Smith himself, “Every Kevin Smith fan knows that 'Rats is the only movie I’ve ever made that’s worth a damn.”

My personal opinion:

Mallrats it’s an ok movie that gets a little better every time you watch it. I’ve seen it so many times it’s up there with Citizen Kane.

Chasing Amy is a great movie that gets a little worse every time you watch it. I’ve seen it so many times it was hard for me to sit through the last time.

There is a long story behind Jersey Girl. It’s not the movie he wanted to make. I strongly (though respectfully) disagree with Rachael Rage’s assessment of it, and I think Smith would too.

[Equipoise]

I like all of Smith’s movies though I’d say Dogma is my favorite, followed closely by Chasing Amy and then Clerks. I’d put Mallrats last, but I still like it a lot.

@Cisco

There is a long story behind Jersey Girl. It’s not the movie he wanted to make. I strongly (though respectfully) disagree with Rachael Rage’s assessment of it, and I think Smith would too.

Cite? As a reader of Smith’s blog at the time he was making it, he “fucking loved it.”

I was going to post about the sweet and funny Jersey Girl, but Rachael said all that I would have said, only much much better (and not anywhere near as rude). It’s a romcom with heart and soul, and it’s just not going to appeal to a certain demographic, especially a certain demographic of Smith fans.

[Cisco]

@Equipoise

Cite? As a reader of Smith’s blog at the time he was making it, he “fucking loved it.”

Of course he said that. What was he going to do, say it sucked? I doubt the Weinsteins would’ve been very happy about that.

It was supposed to be a movie about meeting his wife and how they fell in love and had their daughter. It had to be recut because of all the “Bennifer” backlash.
January, 2003

[Jennifer Schwalbach] was a 27-year-old USA Today reporter assigned to interview Smith in 1998 as he was beginning to film “Dogma,” his effort to come to grips with eight years of Catholic school and the contradictions of his faith. Within a year they were married, and two months later Harley Quinn was born. A few months after that, Smith had an idle fantasy that occurs to most every new dad (to reveal it would spoil the story) and began writing the script that became “Jersey Girl.”

Within the next year, Affleck, coming off the cartoonish “Pearl Harbor,” told Smith he craved something more human in the mold of “Chasing Amy.” Smith showed him 40 pages. Affleck signed on and eventually suggested Lopez, someone he’d met while shooting the yet-to-be-released mob comedy “Gigli,” to play his wife.

Smith wanted to make “Jersey Girl” in 1999 right after “Dogma,” but there was the Jay and Silent Bob problem. The duo — neighborhood friend Jason Mewes as foulmouthed, id-dominated Jay and Smith as the taciturn Bob — had been effective slacker characters in each of his movies. There was no room for them in “Jersey Girl,” which, as Smith says, “stopped being ‘a Kevin Smith movie’ and became a ‘Jen and Ben movie,’ or a ‘Bennifer movie,’ as we call it now.”

With that, Smith, wife and toddler headed East last August to shoot “Jersey Girl,” using the Philadelphia suburb of Paulsboro, N.J., as a stand-in for Highlands, the town where Smith was raised as the middle-class son of a postal worker.

The cult was able to keep close watch on all this because Smith recorded a diary on his Web site. It ranged from prideful gushing about the film (”Outside of marrying Schwalbach and being too lazy to rip open a prophylactic that apparently had Harley’s name written all over it, though not necessarily in that order, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done’‘) to observations of craft (”If you’re ever shooting a movie about two people falling in love, I can’t urge you strongly enough to cast a pair of people who are actually falling in love’').

That is simply the reality of what happened. Any attempts to spin it otherwise now are, as geeks would say, retconning.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

Clerks II was wonderful, enough to convince me that all the other movies he’d made after Clerks never really happened.

[Siam_Sam]

@Rachael Rage

Uh, cite? Are you suggesting that KS was deliberately selling out by making a shitty movie? :rolleyes: Yes, he sometimes apologizes for JG, but if you pay attention, he is really saying that he’s sorry the circumstances (ie. Bennifer, Gigli) came together in such a way as to prejudice people against the movie because of its stars and wouldn’t judge it on its own merits. All I’ve read or heard indicates that he is actually proud of the movie.

In truth, **Jersey Girl **fits perfectly well into the KS filmography. It’s a movie for people who loved **Clerks **and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and the rest, and have had real relationships and possibly families. Grown-ups, in other words. Teenage boys need not apply. Go see AVP-R.

We liked Jersey Girl, too. In fact, the ONLY KS movie we actively dislike is Mallrats.

[Rachael_Rage]

@Cisco

That is simply the reality of what happened. Any attempts to spin it otherwise now are, as geeks would say, retconning.

What reconning? I don’t see anything there that indicates that Jersey Girl is not the movie he wanted to make, or that Kevin Smith thinks anything negatively about it (though I’m sure he isn’t happy about the poor reception it got from his fan base). So, I’m not sure what that quote was supposed to prove.

Hey, I accept that the movie is not for everyone, but it gets way more of a bad rap than it deserves. Frankly I think most of the people who bad-mouth **Jersey Girl **most vehemently have never seen it.
Oh, and thanks, Equipoise

[Equipoise]

@Cisco

Of course he said that. What was he going to do, say it sucked? I doubt the Weinsteins would’ve been very happy about that.

The blogs I read were written before the movie came out and before the Bennifer frenzy and before Gigli, and he fucking loved Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck and his movie.

He did say he would like to “forget about it” but only in context of the fact that it came out AFTER the Bennifer nonsense the tabloids rammed down our throats, and AFTER Gigli came out which got creamed because of the Bennifer nonsese the tabloids rammed down our throats. I haven’t seen Gigli, but as much shit as Jersey Girl got, I can’t help but think that it’s not anywhere near as bad as it’s made out to be. It may not be a great movie, it may not even be that good, but it it was a target, with a big old red X on it, as was Jersey Girl (as is, very obviously, Ben Affleck still), so I take “it sucked balls” with a grain of salt.

@Cisco

It was supposed to be a movie about meeting his wife and how they fell in love and had their daughter. It had to be recut because of all the “Bennifer” backlash.

Recut? Um, cite? What would Bennifer have to do with the movie being recut? Jennifer Lopez’s part was always very small. Jesus, she DIES in the first 5 minutes. If the (maybe) trimmed some flashback scenes (which I would need a cite for) that’s hardly enough to say it was “recut” due to Bennifer.

@Cisco

That is simply the reality of what happened. Any attempts to spin it otherwise now are, as geeks would say, retconning.

Well, again, I’m with Rachael. That doesn’t say anything to indicate that Smith was unhappy with the final film.

[Cisco]

@Equipoise

Recut? Um, cite? What would Bennifer have to do with the movie being recut? Jennifer Lopez’s part was always very small. Jesus, she DIES in the first 5 minutes.

You’re kidding, right? Did you read post #28? She dies because the movie was redone to minimize her role because of Bennifer backlash. It was supposed to be the story of Kevin Smith and his wife and daughter, with Affleck in the Smith role and J-Lo as Smith’s wife.

Frankly I’m baffled that you didn’t grasp this but go back and read the bolded quotes again and see if that helps.

@the article I cited

Smith had an idle fantasy that occurs to most every new dad

I don’t know what his idle fantasy was but it’s safe to assume it wasn’t the death of his freaking wife.

[Sage_Rat]

@Cisco

That is simply the reality of what happened. Any attempts to spin it otherwise now are, as geeks would say, retconning.

I don’t see anything negative in your quoted text. If you see something that equates to “Kevin Smith thinks the movie sucks balls” in there, I’m sure missing it.

[Cisco]

@Sage Rat

I don’t see anything negative in your quoted text. If you see something that equates to “Kevin Smith thinks the movie sucks balls” in there, I’m sure missing it.

He has alternately bashed it and praised it. My personal opinion is that he probably doesn’t like it but either way it could be argued. What I was responding to was the fact that it isn’t the movie he wanted to make. The article clearly illustrates that.

[Sage_Rat]

@Cisco

He has alternately bashed it and praised it. My personal opinion is that he probably doesn’t like it but either way it could be argued. What I was responding to was the fact that it isn’t the movie he wanted to make. The article clearly illustrates that.

I don’t see that in there anywhere either.

[Cisco]

@Sage Rat

I don’t see that in there anywhere either.

Well then I can’t help you. Perhaps your local community college offers a course in reading comprehension.

[Sage_Rat]

@Cisco

Well then I can’t help you. Perhaps your local community college offers a course in reading comprehension.

I was throwing in a vote of support with Equipoise and Rachael. So of four people who read your quote…

[Cisco]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22995408/

the failure of “Gigli” led writer-director Kevin Smith to radically pare down Lopez’s role opposite Affleck in “Jersey Girl,” but the couple play off each other brilliantly in the rarely screened original cut of that film, which Smith plans to one day release on DVD.

Bolding mine. Note the word radically. It was supposed to be a more or less autobiographical film. Last I checked Kevin Smith’s wife is not dead.

[Cisco]

This is from the early days of production . . .

http://www.newsaskew.com/2002/08/

…Even Kevin Smith, king of the slacker flick, is changing his stripes with the upcoming “Jersey Girl,” starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, about a workaholic publicist who decides to get married and have kids when he meets the right woman.

“It’s not about subject matter [my fans] can all identify with,” Smith said about “Jersey Girl.” “But we all think about marriage and want it, even if we’re not going for the white picket fence.”

“I wanted to marry the woman who rocked my head and my heart and rocked me physically. I hope she feels the same,” Smith said.

He’s obviously describing a different movie in this and the earlier article I posted. You’d think he’d mention something about J-Lo’s character dying in the first few minutes if he knew it was going to happen.

What the movie was about and how and why it was changed was well-known at the time. I don’t know why you guys are arguing so passionately against it now.