That was a fair bit ago.
The story of Mewes’ cleanup is on Kevin Smith’s blog:
Start here: My Boring Ass Life » Me and My Shadow, Pt. 1 and work forward. It’s a long read.
I love Kevin Smith movies. They’re not high art or anything but they’re good at what they do. (I didn’t see Jersey Girl, but that was his “I’m not making a Kevin Smith movie” anyway.)
And yeah, Mewes was nodding off all through the J&SBSB commentary. Smith:
During the commentary track record, Mewes continued to catch a nod every few minutes, before excusing himself to hit the bathroom. Any shred of hope I’d been living in that the boy had stayed clean was now dying in despair.
I’m going to rent all of these movies… what order should I watch them in? This is what I’ve found so far. Am I missing any from the series? Should I just watch the theatre version, or are the exteneded version better?
This is off my Blockbuster queue:
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Clerks
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Clerks. X [10th Anniversary Edition] Disc 2- Clerks: Original Unrated Version
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Clerks. X [10th Anniversary Edition] Disc 3- Bonus Features Disc
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Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
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Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - Bonus Disc
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Mallrats [Collector’s Edition]
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Chasing Amy
You haters are just mad because Smith got to work with ben Affleck.
I don’t like Smith’s movies enought to have seen all of the various DVD editions so I can’t comment on the differences between Clerks and Clerks X, and whatnot, but the movies and their order of release is:
Clerks
Mallrats
Chasing Amy
Dogma
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
The main difference between Clerks, and Clerks X is a new ending IIRC. I’d just stick with the theatrical version (as it’s the version most people have seen) and get the unrated version later. And yeah, you’re missing Dogma.
And the alternate ending of clerks doesn’t lead too well to a sequel.
Oh yeah I didn’t connect the dots. Yeah, really doesn’t lead to a Clerks 2 very well, eh?
Okay, give.
Spoiler
Dante gets killed in the alternate ending.
Really interesting read, though. Thanks for the link.
I like Mewes. He was the funniest, best actor in the original Clerks. He should have gotten Randall’s part. Maybe he was playing himself but get in front of a camera, try to play yourself, and then comment on that. He practically saved Dogma, since Smith’s Silent Bob routine was wrung dry but still being pushed in that film, and everyone else (including Alan Rickman, who was as deadpan awesome as usual regardless) was just a talking head for Smith’s Woulda-Been-Better-In-Comic-Form plot points and setting. Without Mewes’ gravelly-voiced interjections of non sequitur filth, all you have is:
Linda Fiorentino: WTF is that?
Whoever: That’s (Judeo-Christian/utterly fictitious Noun)! (Explanation for why he/she/it is relevant to the plot).
(Cheesy combat sequence)
Man, if any film is dying for somebody who doesn’t even look like they belong there to yell out PUSSY or reference his libido or penis, it’s Dogma.
And even though the paying public doesn’t really need filmmakers’ pals/family foisted upon as acting talent (especially if they are fat and ugly GEORGE LUCAS), I appreciate what Smith has been trying to do for his pal. I have difficulty maligning him as harshly as some of you dudes do, for that and other reasons. He’s a comic dork who can’t quite make it out of film auteur status at best. His comics don’t completely suck, and they rank among the better Marvel comics not helmed by ex-Vertigo talent. He sure seems to be trying to be funny harder than Adam Sandler or those SNL douchebags. Kill him!
Joel Siegel has no idea where those puns come from. He has no recollection of writing them, Senator.
He apparently didn’t like the flick much. But the sound clip linked above is the best part of that entry.
Odd, i thought Dogma was the only decent movie of the Joe/Silent Bob series. At least, of those i’ve seen :).
Saying Dogma < Clerks, though, seems rather wrong.
I don’t hate Smith, I just think that once he leaves his core competency of making movies about slackers riffing on Star Wars and comics, and instead, tries to make movies about slackers riffing on religion and relationships, his movies suck ass.
And another thing, I would like Silent Bob a lot better if he actually fucking stayed quiet. Instead he spouts off the moral of the story like some kind of retarded, stoner after-school-special narrator. “Ever since then, I’ve been chasing Amy.” No shit. Hey, moron, shouldn’t the moral come at the end of the movie?
I like Kevin Smith movies a lot (well, ouside of Jersey Girl), but having followed his career for a while, the “If Jay got cleaned up I said I’d let him play his part again” seems like a dodge. To me, it seems like he’s making Clerks 2 because he doesn’t know what else to do - his try at a “serious movie” didn’t do well.
I’ve like all the Smith work I’ve seen (Chasing Amy>Dogma>Jay and Silent Bob>Clerks). They’re just enjoyable comedies, and I tend to think that speaking in mini-polemics is a virtue rather than a flaw.
So I’m looking forward to Clerks 2, but I might wait for the DVD.
This thread made me want to start cutting. The premiere web hangout for video game snobs, the last place you can go for some honest dialogue about the aesthetic quality of games…and one sophisticate repeating that Kevin Smith made “four great movies” before he went downhill. Putting the word “great” in a sentence near “Mallrats” is a fucking insult to everything outside of the Ed Wood catalog.
I saw Clerks in the threater when it came out, and I really enjoyed it. I was also 19 years old and smoking more chronic than Snoop Dogg at the time. Smith took a swipe at serious narrative with Chasing Amy, it was a middling success artistically, he realized that the hard work wasn’t as enjoyable as he thought and he stopped trying. It’s hot and I have no AC, so I may be seeing this in the theater, because it doesn’t cause me some kind of existential crisis to enjoy seeing a movie that’s a 6/10, and I don’t have to call it a 10 just because I saw it at the right moment in my life like the original or whatever.
This is the rest of his work in a nutshell. Those SNL movies cost less than 6 million to make, they spend ten million on marketing, they break even when the movie earns $32M in its domestic box office run (studio only gets half), then earn all their actual profits on euro tickets, DVD sales and Comedy Central repeat airings. The SNL comedy is the box office equivalent of a scratch ticket, sometimes you win enough to buy another ticket, if you get lucky you win $10K. All you need is a little bit of an audience to make the $10M in marketing a good investment: SNL Movies have their 90 minute weekly infomercial, others bring a personality cult guy to the table, like Smith. It’s probably best to credit Woody Allen as the inventor of this low-risk method of sustaining a film career.
Smith doesn’t need the money, he plowed the cash he got from Clerks into Good Will Hunting and his cut of that could buy an entire chain of Quickie Marts. He and the Weinsteins know they can print their own money with the Jay and Silent Bob Intellectual Property as long as they make a new one every few years, so why not snag the low-hanging fruit? I don’t hate this guy for making a buck, but calling anything he’s done “great” is like referring to the Pokemon franchise on Nintendo as “groundbreaking”.
I actually hope he does well with these, eventually he can make enough movie money to buy Marvel Comics altogether. However, I think it’s pretty poor to assign a quality like ‘greatness’ to a guy who’s work showed flashes of potential early on, was never spectacular at any point, and by this point doesn’t even represent “best effort.”
Are you one of those poeple who are convinced comedies can never be truly great films?
Heh, while i wouldn’t call his movies classic by any means, i found them enjoyable. Well some of them, and definitely not ones i would watch over and over.