worst Kevin Smith movie

I have seen all but Cop Out, and it really has to be Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

Mallrats

haven't seen the latest 4

I haven't seen Cop Out or Zack and Miri, but the latter is such an astonishingly unappealing premise that I gotta vote for it.

Jersey Girl, but I (alone in the universe) like 'em all.

I can't believe how much me and my friends liked this guy in the 90s. Maybe it's a high school thing. I was working at a music/DVD shop over Christmas a few years ago, and the staff there were obsessed with him. They were quoting Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back constantly. Even though I didn't know anybody but understood the references and could have used it as an icebreaker to bro down at work, I couldn't bring myself to laugh or comment. It was grim.

imo the worst is Clerks II - really speaks to KS's cluelessness that he thought what people liked about Clerks to begin with was that 'Dante' and 'Randall' are such indelible characters played by such charismatic actors that people would like to revisit them a decade later and see how they're doing. but Zack And Miri is close and Chasing Amy is pretty horrible, especially considering how many people i knew who thought it was his 'good' movie at the time.

I'll rep for Clerks II actually. It does draw a lot on nostalgia, but it's probably got some of his best stuff.

Jersey Girl was kinda decent imo, think most of the stigma against it came from Bennifer backlash

I liked Clerks II, because i think it aged the characters from like sad 20something fuckups to REALLY SAD thirtysomething fuckups.

yeah i didn't mind jersey girl but i was expecting it to be horrible.

i think the answer is obv Cop Out

I dunno. Shacking up with Rosario Dawson kind of limits how sad someone can really be.

xpost

of the ones I've seen, Dogma

this is a v difficult question

Cop Out. I like all of Kevin Smith's stuff, so maybe that precludes me from this but Cop Out was straight unwatchable.

thread partially inspired by watching Cop Out and thinking it was okay and that he's done much much worse

dogma is dumb and boring and faux-deep, but chasing amy is intolerable, so i'm leaning toward the latter

Mallrats

haven't seen the latest 4

― a nan, a bal, an anal ― (abanana), Monday, January 17, 2011 2:25 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

mallrats is my favorite!

im kind of interested in how these films break down in terms of 'ideologically bad' vs. 'just plain terrible filmmaking'

yeah i think mallrats is prob the last one id vote for too

p sure I've not seen the worst of this man's oeuvre

tho i hated dogma, so I'll vote for that

underlying philosophy is objectionable vs. man this dude doesnt know how to edit

Most of em bring the lols imo

I haven't seen Zack And Miri Make A Porno or Cop Out but from the others it has to be Clerks II, I think. The only good part about that movie was the Jay doing Goodbye Horses bit.

I actually think I'd rate the others:

Mallrats
Clerks
Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back
Jersey Girl
Chasing Amy
Dogma

Jay and Silent Bob saved by the parts with Suzanne the Orangutan imo

wtf is "cop out"

i think what makes chasing amy so bad is the profound level of pretense it has abt saying something *true* about *lyfe*

and that joey lauren adams is really gd irritating

Cop Out is a Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan buddy cop movie released last year

yeah also all the dramatic shouty scenes about what a slut joey lauren adams is and the totally overwrought let's have a threesome then maybe i can accept what a dirty whore you are scene

that movie is gross

so gross

Cop Out is a Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan buddy cop movie released last year

seem to recall that the working title for this was Just a Couple of Dicks or something similiar

yah chasing amy is bad but i think dogma is just as bad in smith apparently thinking he has something new and interesting and insightful to say about religion

Haven't seen Cop Out yet, so I'm going to have to go with Zach and Miri. Pretty awful stuff. Clerks II had moments. Jersey Girl was redeemed by some genuine moments of sweetness (the same stuff that saved Chasing Amy imho) and Carlin. Mallrats will forever be my favorite.

guys what if god is ... a woman?

Dogma is pretty ridiculous but i think it's up there w/ Mallrats as his funniest movie anyway

mallrats def the one i can still watch without feeling weird about having loved it 10 yrs ago

prince loves dogma, dunno if that changes anything for anyone

he has something new and interesting and insightful to say about religion

fwiw, this really isn't the impression he gave off in interviews about the film, it was more "I'm trying to point these out to my core audience who probably couldn't be bothered to care about the inconsistencies wrt to religion" than "this is NEW and INSIGHTFUL".

Max otm re Mallrats. I still think it's p good.

i only saw dogma the one time...maybe i was too distracted by being irritated by its pretensions to theological significance but i didn't think it was that funny. matt damon is kind of funny, i guess.

the whole thing about ass-to-mouth in clerks 2 was probably the moment where i was like "jesus f-ing christ what is wrong with this dude" and then all of a sudden every other movie he made seemed similarly gross

except mallrats and to some extent clerks

guys what if god is ... a woman?

or a stranger on a bus

i love mallrats; you just have to fast forward all the jason london/claire forlani scenes. jason lee and shannen doherty are a++

http://wondermark.com/c/2008-06-10-415night.gif

thread needs shakey mo

for me it's like
guilty pleasure movie, will lol when it's on tv: Mallrats, Dogma, J&S Strike Back
thought were decent but don't need to see again: Clerks, Jersey Girl, Cop Out
wrong on so many levels: Clerks II, Zack & Miri, Chasing Amy

what 90s movies would one describe as being similar to kevin smith's. im trying to think of comparable stuff

i love mallrats; you just have to fast forward all the jason london/claire forlani scenes. jason lee and shannen doherty are a++

tempted to agree w this, but Claire Forlani is so g-d hot in this movie

she is like andie mcdowell-level wtf is wrong with you why can't you talk/act like a human being annoying to me

she is v pretty i guess

Dogma was funny as hell but hampered by obvious jokes and eye-rolly dramatic moments. Pace suffers heavily in the middle, and there's also way too many characters but that's synonymous with Smith.

But still funny if not exhausting

shes british, is the thing

xp[

Its weird, I've found her "pretty" but not much more in everything else, but in Mallrats she is like all-time ws. Must be the glasses.

totally in love with her in that 3 hour film where she and Brad Pitt had well-lit sex.

imdb tells me that claire forlani starred opposite toby keith in the 2008 film beer for my horses

I saw Clerks II in a theater and remember laughing a fair amount. Would I watch it again? Probably not.

Zack and MIri is so tone-deaf and inept. What's killed Smith is his total incompetence as a director, so there's nothing there to salvage his excesses as a writer. Like, his movies are just so poorly blocked, shot, lit, edited, etc. that it just destroys any timing that might have helped such otherwise DOA gags as, say, Z&M's porn star taking a huge shit on that guy's head. I don't know if that ever would have been funny, but man, it couldn't be any worse.

He's a great talker, though, which is why I'd take any of his stand-up DVDs over any of his movies.

clerks 2

^^^ otm

Which is why his recent comments about giving up movie-making (after his upcoming horror and hockey flicks) and sticking with "talking" (podcasts and live appearances) don't bother me at all.

(xpost)

I have seen all but Cop Out, and it really has to be Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

this. and i'm afraid Cop Out is going to be worse... ;_;

don't know why people expect the worst of Cop Out, if anyone's Hollywood paycheck movie is likely to be no worse than his passion projects it's Kevin Smith

What's killed Smith is his total incompetence as a director

Yeah, you'd think he'd have picked up the basics by now.

xp fair point and i sort of liked Jersey Girl, but you could also argue that his movies have steadily declined in quality since the beginning. (that seems like a feat in itself, how could every movie possible be worse than the one preceding)

Well I think part of the problem is that his lack of directorial knowledge and skill really served his first couple of movies, but the more ambitious he became the more the lack of "basics" has come back to bite him in the ass. I'm still pretty anxious to see Red State though, maybe a complete change of pace and tone will inject his work with something exciting.

yeah i'm not holding my breath but on the surface Red State seems like a somewhat promising change of direction for him

Yeah, I'm 80% sure it will be terrible, but there's something about how passionately he is tackling this project that has given me a little more hope. Same goes for Hit Somebody, the hockey flick that is coming up after that.

My computer downloaded the latest episode of Marc Marron's WTF today but when I saw that it was 95 minutes of Kevin Smith talking about weed, I couldn't face listening to it and pressed stop.

Yeah, his weed obsession of late is the least interesting thing to hear him talk about, but I typically enjoy 95 minutes of him spouting off about random bullshit. His Harry Potter recapts with Mosier are great listening.

yeah cop out was really bad, though not in the "kevin smith" way that say clerks 2 is. in fact i didnt recall that kevin smith directed cop out until his name came up at the end

this thread is basically TS: bowl of vomit vs. pile of shit

imdb tells me that claire forlani starred opposite toby keith in the 2008 film beer for my horses

― horseshoe, Monday, January 17, 2011 2:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

haha this post is killing me for some reason

this thread is basically TS: bowl of vomit vs. pile of shit

I'm so glad you bothered to click on this thread.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTgzMDExNDU5NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNDI3NzA4MQ@@._V1._SX598_SY400_.jpg

to be fair someone said "thread needs shakey mo" before he showed up

http://img1.cbimg.cdn.celebuzz.com/cb/assets/users16/celebuzz/default/gallery-msg-12366488194-3.jpg

tried to watch mallrats on nflixWI the other night and it pretty much sucked.

sweet stonewash jnkos dawg

;_;

omg giant jorts and tiny little feet

yes his ankles look so dainty!

oh ha ha we've reached the hilarious "kevin smith is fat and wears ugly clothes" part of the thread

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS2pPy0VMRAuTvypwfFCnXWyjItbqw4DQPT4j-wLZjYEYldaWj2Tg

what 90s movies would one describe as being similar to kevin smith's. im trying to think of comparable stuff

tbf the "fat" and "ugly clothes" issues are the least of his problems

Then why does every single thread about him have to devolve into image posts about that? I mean, lets contain this one thread to shitting on his movies, can we?

He's like a soccer-dad Juggalo.

I don't hate Zack and Miri - beyond the gross-out stuff, it was more endearing than an average Apatow movie. (made the mistake of watching it with my girlfriend, who already had some questions about my female best friend, though).
Chasing Amy's gender politics didn't seem that gross when I was 15, probably would now. 15-year old me though "down on both knees getting filled out like an application" was hilarious.
J&SBSB was saved by Affleck and Damon.
Ditto Dogma.
Mallrats filmmaking incompetence is shocking.

I've seen

Clerks
Dogma
Zack and Miri
and parts of Chasing Amy

they all suffer from the same things, are bad for the same basic reasons

he dresses basically like i did when i was 13 & it was the 90s -- fat kid hiding dumpy figure in baggy hoodies & jeans. its weirdly comforting to know ppl still dress like that imo

in retrospect i wasnt even that fat but its the self consciousness that counts

i loved chasing amy when i was 13, ie. when i knew nothing about relationships but a lot about comics. i havent seen anything by this guy since dogma (or watched any of the other stuff since i was 15ish), but i cant front like his movies werent god-tier to me when i was 13-14. Cop-Out is clearly the worst of all possible worlds - directing someone else's hacky script, and it's a white/black cop buddy movie to boot. there's a funny story from the set of Cop-Out where he was trying to explain in a handwavy sort of way to his DP what kind of lens he wanted to use for a scene, but couldn't specify because he didnt know the names of his lenses, and a mortified Bruce Willis pulled him aside and told him he couldn't let people know that he didn't know his shit like that. Smith's widely resented in the industry, not just for being a tremendously unpleasant person but because he basically won the lottery with Clerks and spent the next 15 years not exerting the tiniest bit of effort to improve his craft.

Red State looks crappy to me, but it's got a nice cast.

"...and Chasing Amy is pretty horrible, especially considering how many people i knew who thought it was his 'good' movie at the time"

ditto. it's also kind of boring - maybe not for anyone accustomed to Kevin Smith's shtick though

clerks II & zack/miri are in the top 5 worst in theater movie experiences of my life

if you like more than two kevin smith movies you should stop watching movies altogether

i hope kevin smith himself chokes on a big mac, what an insufferable asshole

Cop Out is a perfectly adequate tribute to John Badham cop movies like The Hard Way or Stakeout... much better than Smith's usual garbage

if you like more than two kevin smith movies you should stop watching movies altogether

oh fuck off dude, like your taste is impeccable enough to offer this kind of judgement

When I judge his movies I subtract the dirty talk/actions that sometimes has a "wow" factor because it fails to wow me at all these days. I still judge a dirty joke just like any other joke though.

I think a lot of people enjoy the risky talk/actions a lot more than me

it's no wonder I don't care at all for Chasing Amy

oh fuck off dude, like your taste is impeccable enough to offer this kind of judgement

― one pretty obvious guy in the obvious (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, January 17, 2011 3:35 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest

kevin smith is the worst! sorry \(o_O)/

http://www.baggystyleus.com/store/images/baggy_shorts/P8310017.jpg

He's a great talker, though, which is why I'd take any of his stand-up DVDs over any of his movies.

I think I hate Kevin Smith because the first thing I was made to watch of his was some "Jorts Live" DVD of him being self-important in front of college kids.

he's better than fuckin apatow at least

kevin smith is the worst! sorry \(o_O)/

So its cool that I wish death on you for being pretty much the worst too?

lol cool out, jon

he's better than fuckin apatow at least

― domo genesis p-orridge (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, January 17, 2011 3:42 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

o man here we go

which movie would be worse? "zack & miri make a porno" or "kevin smith & jorts make a porno" -- there's nowhere to go but up right?

can i just pt out that nothing ksmith has done touches 'freaks & geeks' alone

(except for off of a southwest airlines flight for being a fat insufferable asshole. you can also go there.)

ok, i'll give you freaks & geeks

deej otm

and lo-fucking-l at Whiney telling me to chill out, i'm not the one popping in the thread just to wish death on someone

i didn't wish death on him!

i just wished that he would choke on a hamburger

I'll put Clerks and Mallrats over any movie that Apatow's made. And Dogma over everything but Forgetting Sarah Marshall

jorte

i might have to watch dogma tonight to try to figure out why on earth people like it. thanks, ilx.

i kinda liked cop out, at least the stuff with stifler and tracy morgan

can i just pt out that nothing ksmith has done touches 'freaks & geeks' alone

― *gets the power* (deej), Monday, January 17, 2011 4:44 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

f&g was paul feig's baby, wasnt it

judd was a writer/producer on larry sanders!

he's better than fuckin apatow at least

lol straight trollin

Larry Sanders
Freaks & Geeks

are all time great just on an acting/writing level that Smith can't even begin to imagine approaching

f&g was paul feig's baby, wasnt it

― Princess TamTam, Monday, January 17, 2011 3:49 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a collaborative effort iirc

cool I already said not counting the tv shows

id still take 40 yr old virgin & FSM over the ksmith oeuvre i think? i have to see mallrats again tho. i guess if u are feeling nostalgic for 90s nerdstyle you might prefer those

Apatow is pretty harmless/kosher - hard to dislike the guy. His work is mehhhhhh

Also he did this
http://thezaz.nationallampoon.com/files/2010/02/heavyweights-dvd.jpg

i mean, i was like 15 when Mallrats dropped so obv its in my wheelhouse

saying Smith's movies are better than Apatow's are just wrong from a technical standpoint, Smith barely even knows where to point the camera, how to block a scene, how to edit a joke

x-post Yeah, F&F was Feig, but Apatow was of course a huge part of it. Apatow also worked on Ben Stiller show, The Critic, Larry Sanders. Factor in the films he's produced, flops and all, and it's no contest compared to Smith, whose shit trail is inexcusable.

i wonder if affleck's directing style is influenced by kevin smith.

I take Forgetting Sarah Marshall over any Kevin Smith movie. Not that you can credit Apatow as a writer for that (and he only helped on the story, not the script, for Pineapple Express.)

Like, whenever I read about a troubled production that lists Kevin Smith as among the many to take a stab at it, I think, jeez, those producers really dodged a bullet there. Would anyone make a worse big-budget superhero film than Smith?

Keep in mind I'm glad he keeps trying, because it gets him the material to spin stories like the Jon Peters/Batman/giant spider anecdote, which is golden. That and his behind the scenes Prince depiction.

i wonder if affleck's directing style is influenced by kevin smith.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, January 17, 2011 4:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

what

(You can be pretty sure that anything with Apatow's name on it he's had a hand in the writing, credit or no)

there are some like problematic aspects to esp. 'knocked up' but nothing on the level of the ideological o_O that is chasing amy's final few scenes

i wonder if affleck's directing style is influenced by kevin smith.

Doubtful because even with the weaknesses The Town had, it was still competently shot throughout.

In his best work (Clerks/Mallrats/Dogma) Smith has kind of a weird Simpsons-meets-Linklater mind for weird tangents and unexpected gags that emerge from otherwise dry social encounters. In his best (movie) work, Apatow is like American Pie for people who are just a few IQ points higher

american pie is awesome

stiffler's one of the greatest characters ever

Obv Apatow has a better grasp of what to do with a camera, but prime Smith is better with things that go beyond R-rated Wonder Years yuks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYhLIThTvk

wonder years owned too... idg these criticisms @ all

"it was still competently shot throughout."

how much of this is attributable to a DP, though?

how much of this is attributable to a DP, though?

― Philip Nunez, Monday, January 17, 2011 5:04 PM (48 seconds ago) Bookmark

watch a kevin smith movie for your answer

Watch Chasing Amy if you want to learn more about DP

donkey punching?

smh

I need to learn just not to read these Kevin Smith threads. I always get supremely bummed out by how mean they get.

Kinda think that not mentioning Jorts™ on a Kevin Smith thread would be like not mentioning helicopters on a John Landis C/D.

the serious kevin smith HATE is just super weird to me. i think a lot of his shit is funny \o_O/

This board like Bad Santa and Venture Brothers and Wondermark so be sure to consider that, VegemiteGrrl

Whats more disheartening to me than the general Kevin Smith hatred is how lazy it all is. Its pretty depressing to think that a board populated with so many otherwise intelligent people still can't be beyond "lol Kevin Smith is fat and wears jorts". I mean, jesus, there are so many legitimate complaints about the guy, do we always need to pick out the easiest target?

"american pie is awesome"

i'm amazed at the amount of christian-right subtext a movie about humping a pie could have.

This board like Bad Santa and Venture Brothers and Wondermark so be sure to consider that, VegemiteGrrl

― domo genesis p-orridge (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, January 17, 2011 4:13 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont know wondermark but the first two things are awesome, prosecution against whiney rests

xxposts lol thanks Whiney, I feel better.

I've always liked his movies. I mean, I'm not precious about it and I can totally see where people could easily hate his stuff, but just how quickly it descends into "lol disgusting fatty weed smoker lameo DIAF AHAHAHA" just baffles me.

Pretty sure that there have been plenty of legitimate complaints listed here. Consider the Jorts™ thing just a little "gravy" for an otherwise already fulfilling thread.

no kevin smith film touches bad santa. john ritter / bernie mac scenes have better dialogue than the best parts of clerks

^kevin smh

love that even a kevin smith poll can stir up whiney/deej beef at this point

Kevin Smith IS funny, but his films are not, probably because he overwrites and under-directs them. It's the worst of both worlds, since he undersells his own jokes.

love that even a kevin smith poll can stir up whiney/deej beef at this point

― one pretty obvious guy in the obvious (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, January 17, 2011 4:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there is no whiney deej 'beef' itt so far -- its just been 2 dudes disagreeing -- no ad homs etc -- yall pretend u dont want it then why do u keep bringing it up?

fair play, but yeah sarcasm doesn't read at all

i mean, me thinking whiney is wrong about stuff, that will prob never change -- the issue is how we deal w/ it. i think hes wrong about like 100% of stuff

lol 'pretend u dont want it'

u got us, we all want u dillweeds to spread your sick ILM disease to regular ppl threads

that was a joke

your soul is wretched and black, and so is whiney's

no more meta -- someone else can defend bad santa i guess -- boggling anyone could think that compares poorly to clerks but w/e

because he overwrites and under-directs them

this is kind of exactly why I like Kevin Smith movies! Whereas ILX-endorsed hipster "comedy" like Tim & Eric and is totally under-written and over-directed

gotta admit i just loled pretty hard at that youtube superman lecture

Whiney you're making some very strange comparissons in this thread tbh. I'm mostly on your side tbh. I mean, despite all his shortcomings I still like a lot of Smith's stuff as I mentioned earlier but some of the stuff you're knocking (wonder years? bad santa?) I mean, c'mon.

err comparisons one "s"

tbh i don't mind some of whiney's more boggling opinions, its just the way he comes across as if he just can't possibly fathom why the rest of the world doesn't agree

also, i like a couple of kevin smith movies fine but he's no richard linklater

on the other hand this discussion has become exhausting somehow

clerks is the worst because it allowed him to make other movies

OTOH dogma is one of the worst movies I have ever seen

still pretty lol that whiney's a fan

I really can't imagine combining kevin smith and tim & eric will cancel each other's faults symmetrically.

HS otm although who was comparing him to Linklater?

"kevin smith movies fine but he's no richard linklater"

i'll cop to liking clerks more than slacker.

whiney said:

In his best work (Clerks/Mallrats/Dogma) Smith has kind of a weird Simpsons-meets-Linklater mind for weird tangents and unexpected gags that emerge from otherwise dry social encounters.

i sort of agree if you leave the simpsons and linklater out of it

I hated Chasing Amy at the time but it was so long ago I've got to go for Zack and Miri. Gukbe and I shared a head-in-hands experience at the cinema with it. I think I felt worse because it was my suggestion to go.

x-post lol

missed that

Zack and Miri was one of the worst cinema-going experiences in recent memory. It was painfully unfunny from the start, but somewhere around the sub-Braffian speed ramping to the Pixies "Hey" I wanted to flee the theater.

lol

Richard Linklater & Kevin Smith

But don't feel bad, Alba. I would have seen it anyway, such is my devotion to Elizabeth Banks. xposts

how does he get money to keep making movies? are any of these actually successful?

Clerks II was successful for its modest budget. But Zack and Miri, Cop Out, and Jersey Girl were bombs. For a while he was cruising on his fanbase, and the Weinsteins knew there was a certain amount of ROI they could guarantee and they gave him budgets accordingly.

^^^things i wonder about ed burns every day

xp

There was a thread recently about people who think they're awesome but really suck or something to that effect and someone posted Ed Burns and I immediately thought of you.

haha that person otm <3

I'm pretty sure Zack & Miri ended up in the black. They just had higher aspirations because Rogen was in it.

whiney it's hysterical to think of all the things you've popped a vein over and then you're like "jeez what do people have against kevin smith what a bro"

trying to align all the things i remember whiney disparaging as "things ilxors like": the wonder years, judd apatow, bad santa, the jonathan franzen novel the corrections, zoolander

Hope he won't mind my reposting this here but ILX poster Easy was an extra in Mallrats:

My previous extra work (I'm in the yellow coat at 0:05):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ct3Co-ghEc&feature=player_embedded

― would like a calmer set (Eazy), Thursday, December 9, 2010 11:43 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i wasnt trying to say anything bad about the wonder years, btw

x-post - I haven't read the Franzen book but all those other things are at least OK - very good.

Maybe watching them backwards and in another language would make his movies more enjoyable.

I actually totally think most of the criticisms in this thread are 100% valid! Even J0rdan's Jabba The Jort whatever.

I just think it's a little weird that dude is hated more than chillwave since he made me laff many times in my life and Clerks is an all time top 10 fave for me. I just figured he'd have more defenders than me and Veggie Girl

Quick look at IMDB (grain of salt, obv) and it appears Mallrats and Jersey Girl the only movies not to gross (US receipts only) more than budget. That surprised me.

i think jon via is the biggest save-a-jort in here and there are way more than a couple people admitting to liking at least one or two of his movies

smith's written some of the worst comics i've ever read, by a huge margin - his Green Arrow book basically made me throw up my hands and go 'welp, im done with funnybooks.' the stories he wants to tell are just flat out UGLY and horrible, and he has no feel for dramatic storytelling of any kind - or really, he has no discipline to do anything besides string together some crappy ideas and fart jokes.

he's also had a devastating effect on independent film - what do you think it says to investors when they see this guy with his crazy fanbase put out flop after flop?

its funny how whiney cant watch most tv animation because it doesnt look like vintage Disney or something but he can happily gobble up the most incompetently staged movies to ever get wide theatrical release in this country. as a director its almost impossible to understate how bad he is, and it's not just that he cant shoot action or drama - kevin smith cannot muster up the bare minimum necessary to effectively depict slackers talking about star wars at their minimum wage jobs. composition, camera movement, lighting, all completely arbitrary. his half-assedness just permeates everything that he touches, and it's galling.

I like his movies for the most part. Haven't seen Zack & Miri, but the others range from competent to good. Like Whiney, I'd rather watch his stuff than any of the non-tv Apatow work.

there's a part in jay & silent bob strikes back where mark hamill is in a costume that makes him unrecognizable as mark hamill, which ruins the joke, so smith's solution is to make a giant graphic overlay pointing him out, and this is really the only instance where I feel like given the same resources, someone with more chops than him could have done a better job.

i mean, has he ever really ruined a movie that wasn't already ruined by its premise? (granted he is responsible for the premise a lot of the time)

haha tamtam otm. overall he just seems like someone who really shouldn't be where he is in life, like he's just some normal dude off the street who was granted a wish by a genie or something.

smith's solution is to make a giant graphic overlay pointing him out, and this is really the only instance where I feel like given the same resources, someone with more chops than him could have done a better job.

iirc correctly, this "joke" was more about being a comic book reference than anything else, not sure that made it any less lazy though

I remember a lot of fight scenes from Dogma where the actors seemed to just be jumping back and forth over the camera.

Maybe it was supposed to look like the Adam West Batman, but it also looked like someone who didn't know how to direct or edit a movie.

Dogma's really bad.

I think I've seen his worst stuff, is why I don't like the guy – the college lecture thing, and then the Clerks animated series, or at least the first four or so episodes. That cartoon made me feel like an ass every time I said "ice planet Hoth" for a good five years. And I was still in high school at the height of his career. I think having to be around high school boys saying "smootchie nootchie" (or whatever that catchpharse was) and "a Jedi craves not these things" etc etc all day every fucking day – you now that shit will put you off of a thing.
I also saw "Dogma," all I remember from it is Salma Hayek saying it was not her fault that Home Alone got made. iirc it was neither good nor bad.

re: botched hamill joke
the joke was hamill was the guy from star wars and he's got a light saber and yells something about being a jedi master, but it doesn't work if you don't know that it's hamill, so they have to point it out to you, because they couldn't have thought to put him in a costume that makes it more obvious that he's mark hamill, like a costume that doesn't cover his face, for instance.

would awesome fight scenes have made dogma great?

my brother made me watch the Clerks animated series and iirc it was pretty decent, or at least way better than i expected it to be.

would awesome fight scenes have made dogma great?

no.

I haven't seen it in a long time but I think the only parts i liked were those with Damon/Affleck but they're often the best parts of his movies anyway.

haha not to pour gasoline on the ksmith hate-be-que but wasn't smith instrumental in getting good will hunting made?

Kevin Smith must be the biggest taste-related 180 I've ever made. Seeing Clerks as a 15-year-old pretty much cemented my desire to be a filmmaker, and I was a FAN fan for years there, and then round about 20, after taking film classes and, y'know, dating human women, I just started loathing his filmography in its entirety. I don't dislike him personally, though. My little brother, who's 17, will watch the lecture stuff when I'm back home and I'll laugh, but also make sure he knows that he should in no way emulate this unskilled accidental success's lifestyle.

Well, yeah, as much as I'll defend the guy, anyone that models their lifestyle after him pretty much deserves whatever basement they are still living in at 42.

I am blanking on this but what was the movie where he had a small role as some programming dork who lived in a basement (or something similar).

http://www.epimundo.com/wp-content/upLoads/vlcsnap-2010-07-01-01h37m38s169.png

a cautionary tale

smith as basement nerd was die hard with a 4gence, i thnk.

I keep getting that Smith confused with the fishing one with Mrs. Affleck and her dead boyfriend.

I listened to the Smodcast for a while, but I can't do it anymore. When he's unfiltered and just formlessy going on and on, it gets a little much.

Clerks II is probably my favorite of recent Smith movies. Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma my favorite of the early stuff. Everything else is medium okay to me, like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is kind of 'meh' to me...it makes me laugh but I don't really have any connection to it. Jersey Shore I like the little girl's obsession with Sweeney Todd, and Carlin, but I haven't seen it since it came out. Zack and Miri was better than I expected, but sort of felt like a long way around to get to what was kind of a nice punchline.

But Cop Out just flatout stank to me.

lol gubke - it was live free or die hard

I like things about Clerks II, but got to admit that Dante's reflecting on his life and where he's headed montage set to "1979" was prime mid-90s fan bait.

oh shit and did that movie end with Soul Asylum's "Misery"?

I think he's a big fan. Isn't Dave Pirner in Clerks? Maybe it was Dan Murphy I don't remember.

I think the whole band was in Clerks as the team they played roller hockey against on the roof.

Smith's supporting roles in Live Free Or Die and Catch And Release and the way he's always popping up on Leno make me think about how even his vague indie film nerd subculture image is probably kind of accidental and he's just a total MOR corndog

And yeah Clerks and Clerks II both end with Soul Asylum. OK now I'm admitting to knowing too much about K Smith and Soul Asylum.

Yes, the hockey on the roof scene is what I was thinking of.

ah, okay. i was worried that he was just doubling up on the nostalgic "hey remember when all ya'll fucking LOVED the first one when you were teenagers?" xpost

"make sure he knows that he should in no way emulate this unskilled accidental success's lifestyle."

I've been thinking about this -- didn't he do exactly what you should do to make it as a filmmaker despite (or especially) being unskilled?

you keep asking weird questions

ha ha haha

why is the "Time for Cookies" sign in the Mallrats youtube w/Eazy upthread backwards?

presumably to foil copyright infringement robots... i have no idea how they can flip scripts without flipping people though.

these questions aren't weird! the premises are weird. like if someone says, "I won't eat bananas bunched in threes" and a waiter asks, "would a banana originally bunched in threes but with the third banana removed be acceptable, or would that violate the integrity of the banana bunch?" like the waiter is just trying to figure it out.

I've been thinking about this -- didn't he do exactly what you should do to make it as a filmmaker despite (or especially) being unskilled?

― Philip Nunez, Monday, January 17, 2011 6:43 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

well what do you mean by this

the story around clerks was that he maxed out his credit cards and sold his comic books etc.. which might seem like a dicey move, but he'd gotten deals with kodak, networked with a bunch of indie people, found a kind of lorne michaels-y benefactor in john pierson. it seemed like there was a lot of deliberate hustling going on, and the sort of thing that maybe you ought to emulate if you want to make a small movie, especially if you haven't gone to film school etc...

i mean it might very well be that this is terrible advice and will put you on a course towards airplane pariah pot fiend lifestyle, but how else would a guy like him have made it?

prob wouldn't have, but that's the point sorta

Smith's supporting roles in Live Free Or Die and Catch And Release and the way he's always popping up on Leno make me think about how even his vague indie film nerd subculture image is probably kind of accidental and he's just a total MOR corndog

― some dude, Monday, January 17, 2011 11:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this is the thing really. movie-wise his tastes aren't subcultural at all. i guess people nerd out over star wars but i don't get the impression he's a nerd the way tarantino is.

how else would a guy like him have made it?

i even read pierson's book but can't remember. it's kind of a one-off career.

love ksmith's awkward turn as a convenience store clerk in veronica mars

ftr I meant lifestyle, not career choices. My brother is going to be an engineer/physicist/science guy, which prob won't work out too well if he's constantly high, despite what Mssr. Smith's cameos might suggest.

Clerks II by a mile

Anyone who likes that thing can eat music montages

Admittedly I haven't seen Cop Out, Jersey Girl or Strikes Back, but there's no way any of those could inspire as much bile as Clerks II did.

I have to say Clerks II was the absolute worst. I liked the first one, because everyone had jobs like that in their teenage years or early 20's. That whole movie was basically them complaining about their job. Then to suggest that hey, they actually STAYED at the Quick Stop for 10 more years, and that these lazy, unmotivated 30-somethings are now worthy of being the main characters of another movie?? I mean the whole movie was about "stay in Jersey and chill with your bro and Rosario Dawson" vs. "live a normal life and work a normal job with a normal girl", with is an okay angle, then they reveal that Dawson is pregnant, which makes the decision pretty fucking easy. I mean that movie was a misfire from pretty much all angles, including the dorky character which you'd think would be Kevin Smith's strong suit. "Don't just make him a dork, make him uncoordinated and mentally handicapped as well!"

But Zack and Miri was plenty disappointing too and it had a better premise. I mean, I can get behind the basic idea, since yes I do believe everyone you went to school with would buy it, but whatever. The movie is more like "Zack and Miri are roommates who make a porno but only have sex with each other with their clothes on and oh yeah this is a romantic comedy that spends a third of the plot manufacturing circumstances that would allow Kevin Smith to make Star Wars porno jokes, the same ones you heard when you were 12"

Oh yeah but the Clerks animated series was really funny

i'd be fine never seeing another kevin smith movie

you don't have to see them, iirc

well, i'm not suggesting that he should be killed...

Then to suggest that hey, they actually STAYED at the Quick Stop for 10 more years, and that these lazy, unmotivated 30-somethings are now worthy of being the main characters of another movie??

I actually would have been fine with this if Kevin Smith had even the slightest bit of worthwhile observational humor about lazy, unmotivated 30-somethings at a fast food restaurant. Instead we have sub-National Lampoon's Dorm Daze sex humor from an apparent total staff of FOUR (there's even a group photo!) working a fast food restaurant never populated by more than six customers, and closes at dinner time (how else can you explain Dante's evening drive and the following donkey show)? I was hoping the desolated landscape would be explained by some Omega Man shit once it got dark.

Clerks is wo a doubt the best Kevin Smith film, and while Mallrats was fun when i was a teenager, yeah even then i noticed the huge drop in quality started there. Havent seen the last 2 movies listed here but am kinda curious but also dont want to spend 3 hours of my life on horrible movies.

Special Features

* Commentary by director Kevin Smith, producer Scott Mosier, and director of photography David Klein
* Commentary by director Kevin Smith and producer Scott Mosier with actors Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Trevor Fehrman, Jennifer Schwalbach, and Jason Mewes
* Podcast commentary director Kevin Smith, producer Scott Mosier, and actor Jeff Anderson
* Deleted Scenes with introduction by Kevin Smith
* "Back To The Well: Clerks II" 90-minute making-of documentary
* "A Closer Look at Interspecies Erotica" featurette
* Bloopers
* 10 Train Wrecks: Video Production Diaries

The making-of documentary is by Smith's wife (whom Dante can't decide whether or not to dump for Rosario Dawson in the film) and only seven minutes shorter than the actual film. Haven't seen it so I can't say whether it works in a Burden Of Dreams kind of way.

haven't seen the last 4 or Mallrats, so Chasing Amy of the rest

(abstaining)

woops, Smith's wife didn't direct "Back To The Well" - she directed a 3-hour documentary about the making of Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. My bad.

how is it you guys never get bored w/ bad filmmakers who have a fanboy following?

ha, morbius otm

how is it you never get bored with us, morbz?

about his pick i mean, why "you guys" talk about this, eh, because it's tuesday?

xp :)

The worst thing about Clerks II is that THEY'RE NOT EVEN FUCKING CLERKS ANY MORE FFS.

It's like if George Lucas decided to make some new Star Wars movies where Darth Vader isn't a badass oh wai

morbin' before noon

Oh yeah but the Clerks animated series was really funny

― frogbs, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:05 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

stupid cartoon sitcom really might've been his niche after all, next time FOX is desperately trying to fill a timeslot between McFarlane shows they should give KS a shot

likewise the Reaper pilot would probably be one of Kevin Smith's best movies if it qualified

"But Zack and Miri was plenty disappointing too and it had a better premise."

haven't seen it but the premise sounded pretty unworkable. rogen & banks are not a credible pair. maybe if banks was already a porn star and rogen and co. hatch a scheme to shoot a movie with her unwitting involvement, and her double is more suitably schlubby as rogen, like say kristen schall, so kristen schall goes around wearing an elizabeth banks mask for the humping scenes, but this is another movie entirely. In fact, i think this movie is bowfinger!

if "the female lead is implausibly pretty" is the most distracting fiction you found in that movie you must not be able to stand many movies

i dunno -- "the female lead is implausibly pretty" seems like an interesting shitty movie heuristic.

<zing>you know what's a better shitty movie heuristic? "directed by kevin smith"</zing>

The only movie where I really thought that was a distraction was Knocked Up. Not really a knock on Seth Rogan but "everyman" types never get to pull a woman like that.

to me it wasnt the unrealisticness of them together, just that her falling for him in the end seemed both unlikely & more than that, unexplained

Also re: Clerks: the Animated Series - I dunno what it was about the show but it had a lot of neat meta-humor that kind of satirized sitcoms in a neat way. Like, there was a standard "trapped in a small space" episode that turned into a clip show, but the twist was that it was the 2nd episode of the show. They basically kept flashing back to the same sight gag over and over. It definitely had the sharp Family Guy-style writing but without all the cringe-worthy deadpanning. I really wish it had gone on longer.

kinda bizarre to think that mallrats may actually be my favorite from this list

Dogma was the one where I went "okay, I will never watch another movie by this guy" and I have stuck to that principle.

it's not so much that it's distracting/unrealistic that scuttles the thing, it's that it feels like there's some lazy calculus in play like
schlubby dude + hot wife = instant audience.
c.f.
http://www.heartlessdoll.com/jim.jpg

i mean smith can counter the realism complaint with:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1RaJb2xGPh8/SIZDzIpXk9I/AAAAAAAAAvQ/jOACmay_JaU/s400/3.jpg

Is that his wife? She looks different there. Maybe it's just the hair color.

I listened to Kevin Smith on the WTF podcast last night. He recently took up smoking weed as a hobby and just smokes weed all day. But I guess he never smoked weed when he was younger. He was asking Maron what coke is like.

Did anyone choose him for the 2011 Dead Pool?

True story (I think): The Mallrats commentary track is the reason all DVDs now have disclaimers on their special features.

While Kevin's wife may be a relative catch for him, he didn't do her any favors putting her next to Shannon Elizabeth, Eliza Dushku and Ali Larter in Strike Back

someone post his wife's playboy pictures that he shot

"Dogma" was hilarious

An opinion is voiced.

He recently took up smoking weed as a hobby and just smokes weed all day.

Recently? Kinda hard to believe Mallrats wasn't made in a constant cloud of heavenly cheese.

to me it wasnt the unrealisticness of them together, just that her falling for him in the end seemed both unlikely & more than that, unexplained

rogen should end up with the quasi-hermaphroditic band geek in each movie for maximum plausibility.

I can't believe Kevin Smith stole Dennis Kucinich's wife!

KS might write a good movie if he does all the writing while he is high.. assuming that his last movie wasn't written this way

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/735658/kevin_smith_lifts_lid_on_working_with_bruce_willis_soul_crushing.html

"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."

When pressed to identity the name of the person concerned, he replied that "Everyone knows who it is. Put it this way, remember the really funny guy in the movie? It ain't him. He's a fucking dream. Tracy Morgan, I would lay down in traffic for. Were it not for Tracy, I might've killed myself or someone else in the making of that movie."

It becomes clear that Smith is talking about Bruce Willis.

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/writing.gif

lol

mna, too bad that tracy was around

kinda weird that Smith had all these unexpected problems directing Willis considering that they shared a bunch of scenes in Live Free Or Die Hard and presumably had a rapport or at least logged a lot of hours around each other.

Film i enjoyed least was zack and miri.'objectively' worst probably jay and silent bob.imagine seeing that having never watched a smith film,you'd b so nonplussed.

can anyone think of some "bruce willis is horrible to work with" stories? bc i feel like i have seen this hinted at many times but i can't recall anything specific

i posted one in this thread!

Bruce Willis did a meta "Bruce Willis is a horrible prima donna" thing playing himself in the movie What Just Happened, which was based on an experience the screenwriter had working with Alec Baldwin.

going w/ clerks

It'll be interesting to see the buzz on Red State coming out of Sundance. Both Neil Gaiman and Richard Kelly have enthused about it, but Neil and Kevin have become like best friends, so grain of salt there I suppose.

even though that's totally rong i respect that on some level, it is pretty overrated and doesn't deserve its status as the most inoffensive pick for his 'best' movie

Richard Kelly likes it? Kiss of death. (Check his production credits.)

"Red State is the kind of thing I can get behind!" - Richard Kelly, Producer of "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell"

jay & silent bob was so awful i vowed never to see any more of his movies (saw clerks 2 on a plane, tho, and it was pretty rub). mallrats is endearingly bad, i guess - loved it as a teen, but now, it drags and it grates. dogma's a mess. clerks was godhead to me when i saw it on release, but has aged really badly.

but chasing amy is straight out offensively bad and awful.

"Tracy Morgan, I would lay down in traffic for. Were it not for Tracy, I might've killed myself or someone else in the making of that movie."

I wish Tracy hadn't done this movie.

you may have noticed J0rdan make that exact same joke 12 posts up

going w/ clerks

― maybe i'm just gay (Tape Store), Monday, January 24, 2011 2:45 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

hmm, figures

i still haven't seen Inception but i have a hunch it's better than Clerks so maybe let's not do this

you may have noticed J0rdan make that exact same joke 12 posts up

It bears repeating.

ok well nobody else wish on Kevin Smith itt until Shakey gets his turn in, if anyone's earned the right to threepeat it's him

Too late, I already threw him in a fountain.

Zack and Miri and Cop Out couldn't be worse than Clerks 2, could they?

no-one has seen 'cop out'. and no 'z&m' wasn't worse, but i think it actually *turns into* 'clerks 2' at the ending? like they both literally end the same? i could be making that up. 'z&m' ends horribly anyway.

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-captured/posts/sundance-review-kevin-smiths-red-state-fails-onscreen-and-off-at-its-world-premiere

Snootchie bootchies.

That's a pretty good article, brings up a lot of the valid criticism of recent Smith. Probably a pretty accurate review of the film too, but, ending your article with:

"And on that note, I've written my last word about Kevin Smith.

So we both win. Hallelujah, hallelujah."

doesn't really help because it makes it sound like you've an axe to grind with the guy from the outset.

per my posts upthread, i have seen Cop Out and it and Z&M are not worse than Clerks 2 (although not by a huge margin or anything

Nothing is worse than Clerks 2.

exactly

It might even be in the running for the worst movie of all time.

I've only seen the first four and they get progressively worse.

Red State sounds about as appealing a movie as Vulgar the Clown...

oh man now he's sullied Michael Parks too? ugh

did Jon Peters ever respond to what Smith had to say about him? i'm amazed he could get away with that kind of insider tittle tattle.

Jon Peters tried to sell a massive tell-all about every woman who's ever been within two feet of his dick a year or so ago, so I don't think he's one to complain when someone else talks out of turn.

I stopped reading when he said "Has anyone done this better? I DID."

Can't wait to read an Ebert review that goes "You call this a movie about tits?"

I stopped reading when he said "Has anyone done this better? I DID."

― Pleasant Plains, Monday, January 24, 2011 12:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

tbh he was being modest by mentioning his work on the shitty "pro-life" and neglecting to mention that he also wrote the best MoH episode, "cigarette burns" - that's a pretty classy way of rebuking smith

turns out Jon Peters produced An American Werewolf In London so he's alright by me. sounds like a nutter mind.

xp -- the "WELL IF YOU'RE SO SMART SHOW ME WHERE YOU MADE A BETTER MOVIE, YOU PARASITE" thing is so common and so annoying i totally forgive him for getting a little giddy about being handed the opportunity to head it off.

neglecting to mention that he also wrote the best MoH episode, "cigarette burns"

If that was the best one I definitely don't need to watch any of the ones I haven't, because it was a cornucopia of mishandled ideas.

xp -- the "WELL IF YOU'RE SO SMART SHOW ME WHERE YOU MADE A BETTER MOVIE, YOU PARASITE" thing is so common and so annoying i totally forgive him for getting a little giddy about being handed the opportunity to head it off.

― difficult listening hour, Monday, January 24, 2011 12:39 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

plus smith always makes a big deal about only listening to criticism from other filmmakers - so bam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXN7vLPsDSM

"i still haven't seen Inception but i have a hunch it's better than Clerks so maybe let's not do this"

inception is more like clerks2 than clerks, but it's not the worst kevin smith movie.

Melissa Leo nooooooooooooooooooooo

I know, right? So disappointed she deigned to even be in the presence of Kevin Smith.

Melissa Leo's current film trashes blue-state goons, so...

http://www.deadline.com/2011/01/sundance-watching-kevin-smith-implode/
http://www.badassdigest.com/2011/01/24/kevin-smith-isnt-saving-indie-film-hes-spitting-in-its-face

Zack and Miri and Cop Out couldn't be worse than Clerks 2, could they?

Zack and Miri isn't, it's low-key enough, and the internal "let's put on a show!" vibe translates enough to on-screen, that it's totally hang-out-with-able for the first hour or so, before people start getting diarrhoea in the face and there is suddenly stupid CONFLICT just so there's something to resolve hurriedly at the end.

Cop Out I saw on a tiny screen on a plane, and it was very very very bad and lumpen and the opening scene should have been an outtake hidden so well on the DVD that you couldn't find it, BUT Stifler is p lol in it.

I do feel like it was worse than Clerks 2 just for the clunkiness, but then the only good thing I can remember from C2 was Rosario Damnson dancing without a bra so

A: the one that's on

^^^OTM

just read the Drew McWeeney piece above, first I've heard anything about what this film's about - can't imagine what any filmmaker would think they could possibly tell about the Phelpses in fiction that Louis Theroux didn't show in his piece

the real A may actually be Jersey Girl tbh

okay so that "badassdigest" link says, in criticising Smith's claims for his new distribution model

Great Kevin, you sold out the Sydney Opera House twice without doing any advertising

is he really claiming this? "I sold this out without taking out any advertisements out of my own pocket! The promoter took out months of full-page ads in street press and mainstream newspapers, did radio advertising and partnerships, printed glossy magazine-size brochures and paid people to distribute them, did print mailouts, did weekly email mailouts, and put up posters around the city a couple of times a week, but I didn't pay for them. Unlike when Cop Out came out, because I bought $10 million of TV ads myself for that studio movie."

where were you when Kevin Smith changed film distribution forever?

In the Tweet that launched a thousand angry bloggers, I VERY specifically said " ... I plan to pick my distributor in the room — auction style..." Then, EVERYONE ELSE said I was selling the movie. But I never said that. Very specific wording.

How the fuck is he parsing this. There was no auction.

OTM. What a fucking douche-bag. Full twitter rant here:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/kevin-smith-responds-to-sundance-backlash-with-mar,50558/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=avclub_rss_daily

lol @ invocation of 'angry bloggers' from kevin smith

he's a bit of a div

There was no auction.

Well, there was, but his was the opening and closing bid.

yeah this is the biggest 10-year-old "NUH-UH" technicality ever.

J&SBSB was mildly entertaining if i recall

For years, I've read "He's no filmmaker." Turns out they were right: I'm more of an entertainer.

http://marketingassassin.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/david-brent.jpg

tbh i feel like the 'outrage' over his stunt is just as dumb as his 2-hr twitter rant

don't understand this particular conflagration at all but then industry machinations tend to make my eyes glaze over... so basically a bunch of investors thought they were going to get to bid to distribute his new movie and he said "nah, I'm gonna distribute it myself, fuck you guys"? eh. whatever. anybody who wants to invest in this guy is a moron imho

what is happening is that Kevin Smith is CHANGING THE GAME

i don't think anyone really cares that he's distributing it himself, it's that he arranged this whole bizarre spectacle and it almost feels like he at least subconsciously wants to annoy people and piss people off and waste people's time because then they'll complain about him and then he can feel like jello biafra instead of like an indie filmmaker who never quite made the jump the other miramax kids did but is still rich enough to buy artistic freedom, and it's just like SHUT UP KEVIN SMITH. but obv you're right nobody should be like really seething about this.

lol @ "Askewniverse"

more like "thatmovieblewniverse"

this is more like a fascinating trainwreck. He's the b. M1chael Payne of film.

Christ, THERE'S a comparison point.

oh man i'm just gonna read all future missives from smith in the voice of david brent

There was a Tweet last night that called SModcastPictures and the RedStateTour "punk rock filmmaking". I LOVED that. I co-opted Jello Biafra's "Don't hate the media; become the media" for our RedStatement. But what I dug most about the sentiment? It made me feel like I was 23 again. Folks can write what they like, but as an artist, I'm cosmically invigorated & full of piss & vinegar. THAT'S where bold art comes from.

tbh i feel like the 'outrage' over his stunt is just as dumb as his 2-hr twitter rant

― max, Tuesday, 25 January 2011 00:13 (1 hour ago)

seriously. anybody getting worked up about this is just playing his game.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Kevin Smith thinks he makes bold art

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

God is the winner.

wow, Dogma, really? did it beat out the later ones by virtue of being seen by more people?

imdb tells me that claire forlani starred opposite toby keith in the 2008 film beer for my horses

― horseshoe, Monday, January 17, 2011 2:59 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is on TV right now!

wow, Dogma, really? did it beat out the later ones by virtue of being seen by more people?

^ yeah, i mean it's not good but damn

poll went down too soon

Yeah, where does Red State figure in? I was in the room kind of watching it the other night and, while it didn't seem particularly good, I will at least say that it didn't look or sound (over-verbosity aside) like a Kevin Smith movie, for whatever that's worth. And he did manage to pull some pretty decent actors this time 'round, at least.

clerks is the worst because it allowed him to make other movies

OTOH dogma is one of the worst movies I have ever seen

still pretty lol that whiney's a fan

― iatee

agree on first and last points
assume 2nd one is also correct but i haven't seen it

I still haven't seen Red State but I've talked to quite a few people that loathed Kevin Smith but really liked that one.

Now I need to find a Cop Out thread. I also need sleep, but right now this seems more important.

I know this will be some folks' idea of hell, but he and Adam Carolla argue over their recent beef on Carolla's podcast this week.

Yeah, where does Red State figure in?

well, it's easily the best looking and most competently acted kevin smith movie i've ever seen. otoh, it elevates the - let's charitably say "questionable" - sexual politics of something like chasing amy to hideously squirmy extremes. hated it with a passion, but was fascinated nonetheless.

if i knew there was gonna be a Clerks 3 i would've waited to do this thread!

no fucking way

http://i652.photobucket.com/albums/uu241/dnvnoo/kevin_smith_way.jpg

if I knew there was gonna be a clerks 3, I'm gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes

lol los blue jeans that was tight

Paulsboro High School--Home of The Fighting Jorts

slocki otm

i probably like clerks 2 more than clerks at this point so good for him

in a "if he keeps doing clerks movies he'll stop trying new things" kind of way

The jorts are not shorts, of course, of course
And no one should wear some jorts of course
That is, of course, unless those jorts are worn by the famous Mr. Kev

lol

I probably won't ever watch it, but Tusk at least sounds awful in a kinda interesting way.

https://twitter.com/granitetide/status/513827545989791744

Kevin Smith might actually be a stack of children hiding inside a coat.

would explain a lot

Tusk apparently made, like, $800K opening weekend. That's pretty shitty, even for a smug "Human Centipede" retread.

Not that I want to defend this terrible looking movie, but it did only open in 600 theaters, so according to Boxofficemojo it's average was actually better than Let's Be Cops and TMNT this weekend.

Those movies opened, what, a month and a half ago? Youch.

While only on 602 screens, A24’s Kevin Smith film “Tusk” was a gigantic flop, taking in a pitiful $886,000. So much for Smith’s comeback, and one has to be at least slightly worried about A24, a smart indie company who also flopped earlier in the year with “The Rover” in expansion. “Tusk” is now Smith’s biggest financial national release flop.

I hadn't heard a thing about this. lol @ there being two more films

Dogma seems to be one of the top favorite films of people I know who should know better.

Those movies opened, what, a month and a half ago? Youch.

otm, "a theater showing tusk in its first weekend had slightly more people in it than TMNT in its seventh" would be a pitiful way to frame it even if tmnt wasn't also still showing at four times as many theaters

tusk did have a higher per-screen average than the new terry gilliam movie, though

Smith makes his money on DVD/Bluray sales anyway.

of other movies

other, more than a decade old, movies

Smith makes his money on DVD/Bluray sales anyway.

― You and Dad's Army? (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, September 23, 2014 12:04 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he's a top eBay seller

he has his own line of shorts-that-make-you-look-like-you're-on-stilts-but-also-still-really-short-probably-shorter-than-you-actually-are shorts

Don't want to pile on to the dude here, as I loved Clerks when it came out. But I recently read Spike Mike Slackers And Dykes by John Pierson, the guy who helped produce/distribute Roger & Me, She's Gotta Have It and so on, and each chapter is preceded by dialogue between Pierson and Smith, whose Clerks he helped usher to success, and - and I think Pierson did this on purpose - it rapidly becomes clear that Smith's knowledge of cinema is woefully poorer than all Pierson's other discoveries, and that he has no real curiosity about cinema beyond Hollywood blockbusters and so on. I mean, watching his movies it's no big surprise, but he comes across supremely badly and vapid in the book.

Even rewatching the KS movies that I originally liked, what originally came off as quirky or charming now just feels clumsy and inept. I think that was the most disappointing part of Zack & Miri or Clerks II, it's like...you've directed a half-dozen movies, you should know how pacing and framing and humor work by now.

This thread just reminded me of this, which will never not be funny (especially the fact that it inspired Kevin Smith to go on a tirade against SomethingAwful). After seeing J&SBSB I totally believed this, by the way:
http://www.somethingawful.com/truth-media-reviews/truthmedia-review-clerks/

"only" 600 theaters, what a world

J&SBSB was where I got off the Smith train forever, but on reflection Dogma is a terrible joyless mess, and Chasing Amy is hateful garbage with no recognisable characters

Recently saw him and the employees of his J+SB comic book store being all over the top enthusiastic like a bunch of 14-year olds (there's a TV series on Discovery I think) and I was all "oh ffs, grow up, they're only comic books" but then I realized he's always been 14.

The Tell'em Steve Dave podcast is easily the funniest thing he's ever been part of, which makes sense since, all the Clerks characters are based on Walt and Bryan.

This ****in' guy...

http://comicbook.com/2014/09/29/kevin-smith-reveals-clerks-iii-now-has-financing-due-to-tusk/

And honestly, that would not have happened. A year and change ago I was trying to ****ing desperately get Clerks III made for the 20th anniversary. And that desperation, I must have reeked of it, because I couldn’t ****ing find money and s***. But it was Tusk, it was people going ‘Holy F***! What else do you have?’ And I was like, ‘Clerks III’, done. So everybody that’s like, ‘He failed, he failed,’ thank you I failed into Clerks III. So, never trust anybody when they tell you how your story goes, man. You know your story. You write your own story.”

I literally don't understand this. How did making "Tusk" get him the greenlight for "Clerks III?"

He made Tusk on a teeny budget which was recouped on a advanced sales, and someone was impressed.

I wonder if he's gonna make one every ten years, like a Before Sunrise but with ugly people and umpteen comic & Star Wars refs.

I liked Clerks II, so I'm part of the problem. But Tusk, dear lord!!

I honestly wish more things I like would have wacky check-ins on the characters every ten years

Honestly wish all popular culture would be reduced to fan service tbh

He made Tusk on a teeny budget which was recouped on a advanced sales, and someone was impressed.

Sure, but when was this not the case with Kevin Smith? He's had a couple of bigger budget turds, but most of his shit is cheap, fast and I imagine ultimately recoups. So why there would be any resistance to a sequel to one of his most surefire shit-brands "Clerks" ? This is the dude who has somehow gotten funding for almost a dozen shitty movies, the most recent being another horror movie before Tusk. Amazing to me that Tusk could get made and distributed before a Clerks III.

Anyway, this guy is a chump, but I love his anecdotes.

"Yoga Hosers:"

The film centers on 15-year-old yoga nuts Colleen Collette (Lily-Rose Depp) and Colleen McKenzie (Harley Quinn Smith), who have an after-school job at a Manitoba convenience store called Eh-2-Zed. When an ancient evil rises from beneath Canada’s crust and threatens their big invitation to a Grade 12 party, the Colleens join forces with a legendary man-hunter from Montreal named Guy Lapointe (Depp).

According to Kevin Smith, the third and final film in his True North Trilogy will be entitled Moose Jaws which he credits the film as "Jaws with a moose". Last heard, Kevin Smith mentioned the script was half-way done, and he plans for it to be his next film, hoping for production to start in 2015, along with Clerks III.

Recently saw him and the employees of his J+SB comic book store being all over the top enthusiastic like a bunch of 14-year olds (there's a TV series on Discovery I think) and I was all "oh ffs, grow up, they're only comic books" but then I realized he's always been 14.

Yeah, it's so weird that dudes that get paid for a TV show would be overly enthusiastic to promote that show.

HE NAMED HIS DAUGHTER HARLEY QUINN

Clerks III actually happening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_lFOqQDRx0

for those who don't wanna watch the trailer, Randall has a heart attack (like Kevin Smith did) and decides to make a movie about the Quick Stop, starring him and Dante

half of the film will be characters winking at the camera and talking about how meta the whole thing is

gonna go out on a limb and say this will be worse than Dogma

I like how there's a reference to the alternate ending of the original. I remember watching Siskel & Ebert when they reviewed the LaserDisc release where that scene premiered and they actually played the whole clip prefaced with a warning that it was terrible and Smith was right to have deleted it.

That was appalling

They all look so old

Surely this is beneath Rosario

They all look so old

I saw Clerks the first weekend it was on in London, at the end of a shitty shift working at a shitty WH Smith's, and when Randall spat in the customer's face I felt euphoric. I loved the movie then, but I know I'd probably hate it if I saw it now. I'd begun to hate it when I saw Clerks II on a work trip in the US and did not laugh once (or was it the Jay And Silent Bob movie?). This new one just looks sad and terrible, like hanging out with friends you don't fit with any more and having to grimace a smile during every revisited in-joke.

At least we can all agree that Dogma was total shit.

The idea of watching a Kevin Smith film in 2022 is so uniquely depressing. The only way I can imagine it is in a bed made on a velour couch, unshowered for weeks, having eaten nothing but Chex Mix for god knows how long.

of all the songs to use in the trailer

know I'd probably hate (Clerks) if I saw it now

Caught it starting on TV a few weeks ago, surprised myself (pleasantly) by leaving it on all the way through.

I'll be honest I will probably wind up seeing this out of morbid curiosity. most likely it'll be on streaming in two years when I'm wickedly hungover but I'm sure I'll see it eventually

fwiw I do like Kevin Smith, he's not really a great talent and I don't think any of his movies are particularly good (in fact most of them are flat out awful) but I think he's a genuine guy and an entertaining speaker. also I will go to the mat for Clerks: the Animated Series, which I still think is mostly as clever as the Simpsons ever got

I still remember seeing Clerks for the first time; I think it was out for a few years by the time I was old enough to see it but it still felt like a game changer, the first time I ever saw a movie and thought "my friends and I could've made that over the summer". I mean that in a good way of course. very much one of those "who cares what the critics think, this is awesome" sorta things. also still the only movie I've seen that actually captures what working retail is like

Clerks 2 otoh was awful. in fact there are several scenes that I had to look up later on because I can't believe they actually happened - the one where they leave work during a rush to go go-karting, which even in comedy movie logic makes zero sense, and the "porch monkey" scene where Wanda Sykes walks in, god it's all so embarrassing and stupid. but on the plus side it made me appreciate how hard it must be to actually film funny scenes, because this movie sure as hell couldn't do it (maybe most of this was funny on paper). that said it did kinda hit a touching note at the end, I'm not sure how many other movies explore this idea of turning 30 and drifting away from the people you used to spend all your time with. that of course is a very real thing and was the thing which prevented me from thinking it was the worst movie I'd ever seen.

this movie looks like it could be even worse, none of the characters look right (is it age or just a ton of makeup?) and Kevin Smith is notoriously hamfisted with meta humor. I agree with Stevie's take, it reminds me of seeing old friends from high school who you just have nothing to say to anymore. but I'm sure I'll still see it.

Kinda envy these characters for living in a world where Kevin Smith never made a movie.

Chasing Amy should have walked this.

Dogma was funny and fought above it's weight class. CA was offensive

god I just remembered that the central plot of Clerks 2 revolved around whether or not Dante would move away to live a "normal" life with his girlfriend or stay with Randall and his new flame played by Rosario Dawson. while he agonizes over this it becomes revealed that Dawson's character is pregnant, essentially making the decision for him. and her pregnancy was revealed in the trailer!! it's just sloppy, practically Tommy Wiseauian filmmaking

I recall liking "Clerks" when it came out, and Smith the raconteur can be pretty great. But Smith the filmmaker is terrible, and, begging disbelief, Smith the writer is even worse.

all of the characters in kevin smith movies are kevin smith

Kinda envy these characters for living in a world where Kevin Smith never made a movie.

idk I kinda picture Randall constantly making references to the titles of other Kevin Smith movies then looking straight at the camera

Dogma was pretty funny to me at the time, though I remember it also has a lot of awful moralizing speeches. A several people on reddit were saying they don't have high hopes for Clerks 3 because all his movies after Clerks 2 have been bad. It's like, first, I can't believe Clerks 2 isn't lumped in with those bad movies, and second, it's hard to imagine what the worse movies than it would be like

"I like your jersey, girl" *stares at camera for 10 seconds*

"oh, we're just Clerks? well you're Clerks 2!!"

Out of all these titles the only one I've seen was Dogma, at home on a DVD checked out from my public library, so I didn't pay a cent to see it. I appreciated it in the same spirit that I'd appreciate a goofy novelty song on the radio, like hearing an Alvin & the Chipmunks Christmas Album. Or to draw a closer analogy, like a movie that got made just so a bunch of Hollywood chums could get together and have a good time making a movie on someone else's dime, like Smokey and the Bandit II. On that level, it was fitfully amusing and hard to get angry about. I even liked the stupid Catholic theology plot.

i saw dogma in the theater when it was released with my cool fun cousins and we had a decent time. we may have had a couple of beers. haven’t seen it since, but I fully believe it’s probably p bad.

I really only liked Clerks and parts of Mallrats. def a time/ place thing for me.

I seem to remember thinking Dogma was good at the time, but now all I remember is a guy in the cinema proposing to his gf near the start of the film, her turning him down, and him seething next to her for the next half hour before shouting something at her and walking out of the auditorium.

Chasing Amy is downright offensive. Mallrats... I really wanted it to be funny. But in retrospect it's just a bunch of weak anal sex jokes, and most of the actors in it can't act (that London kid... jeez.)

lol proposing in a theater as a Kevin Smith movie begins wtf

At the Camden Town Odeon, too.

"Will you snoochie my boochies til death do us part?"

get this what if jay and silent bob smoked a really big blunt

always forget that mallrats guy is the twin brother of the dazed & confused guy and not just the same guy

and by “always” I mean the 3 times it’s crossed my mind since 1996

Has anyone, even his fans/defenders, seen those “Hockey Hosers” movies with his daughter?

Huge LOL at the moment when, after the entire trailer has been the same 4 actors actors reenacting the same old scenes from the same old Kevin Smith movies, the text appears: "WELCOME TO A NEW ERA"

"Yes, I will feed the dog, Ma!" [Gives camera a "see what I did there" look]

always forget that mallrats guy is the twin brother of the dazed & confused guy and not just the same guy

today I learned

Or to draw a closer analogy, like a movie that got made just so a bunch of Hollywood chums could get together and have a good time making a movie on someone else's dime, like Smokey and the Bandit II. On that level, it was fitfully amusing and hard to get angry about.

yeah this is what it kinda boils down to for me, Kevin Smith's early movies worked because they seemed like a lot of fun to make. they're like those shitty SNL sketches that eventually devolve into the actors just trying to make each other laugh. Clerks 1 worked because all four of those guys seemed like they probably did spend a lot of time together, plus most of it was just Smith appropriating stories from his own life. By Clerks 2 it felt like the guys hadn't seen each other in years, Clerks 3 will probably somehow be ever worse

"I loved the movie then, but I know I'd probably hate it if I saw it now."

I remember an old Judge Dredd story in which there was a leak at a chemical plant that causes hundreds of deaths. And then there's a riot - not because people are angry at the leak, but because the deaths mean there are job vacancies at the chemical plant and in the grim world of Mega-City One everybody wants a job. Not so much for the money but for the sense of having something to live for. And recently there have been protests in India because the armed forces want to get rid of jobs-for-life-plus-a-pension and bring in fixed four-year terms. Quoting the BBC:

Young people in India's smaller towns and villages prepare for years to become soldiers in the armed forces as the job brings prestige, a regular income and for some, a way out of poverty. The new Agnipath scheme is aimed at people aged between 17.5 and 21 years. It says that successful candidates will join the armed services for four years, after which only 25% of them will be retained. The soldiers will go through training for six months and then will be deployed for three and a half years. During this period, they will get a monthly starting salary of 30,000 rupees ($384; £316), along with additional benefits which will go up to 40,000 rupees by the end of the four-year service.

Imagine young people rioting because they want to be in the armed forces. That's what I think of when I think of films like Clerks and Reality Bites etc from the 1990s. To a much lesser extent Clerks because the characters were aware that they were failures and were trying to cover it up, but they were self-aware. And of course Kevin Smith himself tried to be a success. He tried to steer his own path. I can admire that. It's just that his films attracted a certain kind of person who didn't get the characters' self-awareness.

It's the same with On the Road. They all feel like period pieces from a time when everybody dreamed of working in a record store forever.

This poll's winner is coming back? Unless it was an April fools thing.

Prepare Thyself for the Second Coming!
DOGMA returns to theaters everywhere on June 5th! But first, I’m touring it across America, starting 4/20, Easter Sunday!
Get tickets at https://t.co/xHLDVU848Z pic.twitter.com/TuEqvz28Uf

— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) April 1, 2025

ok it wasn't a joke, there's real tickets for sale etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs58-U4Ys_g

can't believe Dogma won this poll, not saying it's good but it's definitely not worse than Chasing Amy/Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back/Clerks II

You really haven’t seen the poop monster until you’ve seen it in 4K.

only 10 people saw Clerks II, but they all went out and voted in a poll about it