One of the best anecdotes in Peter Biskind’s (unhappily) dated Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film, comes from Kevin Smith, who recalls being accosted by a woman following an early Sundance screening of Clerks.
She lit into him, declaring his first feature a “hateful little film” that confirmed her belief that reincarnated Nazis live in his native New Jersey. She then handed him her headshot. Another director might have been offended. But from his first, optimistically independent gambit in the film industry, Smith has merrily weathered the slings and arrows, or occasionally come out fighting, but always with a smile on his face.
Just last year when Smith’s He-Man reboot landed on Netflix to a chorus of tedious being too “woke”, the director countered by noting that the original was similarly inclined: “Go back and watch the original. There are girls in every episode.”
“I spent most of my career trying to get everybody, right?” chuckles Smith. “I wanted consensus from everybody. That ain’t the case anymore. F**k man, even Film Twitter hates my guts. They don’t understand me. And that’s okay. I’ll never get 100 per cent consensus. All I have to do is get a hundred per cent consensus from the people who are going to show up. I don’t give a s**t about people from the sidelines. They were never coming anyway. My job is to serve the people that do come out me. At the end of the day, I’ve carved out my own economy just by dealing with my own fanbase. I’ve had my own formula since 1994.”
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He laughs: “I remember talking to Martha Coolidge at Lincoln Centre. We did a screening of her film Valley Girl and she told me this terrifying story. One day the phone stopped ringing. I was like: ‘What do you mean? Why aren’t you directing more?’ She says: ‘They don’t let me.’ You age out of this job. As a 55 or 60-year-old woman, her phone stopped ringing. They want young people. I didn’t like that idea. The idea that I wouldn’t be invited to party one day. And I thought: f**k, that party. I’m going to create my own party and keep it going.”
Back in 1994, Smith gifted the movieverse one of its most beloved Cinderella stories. Inspired by a viewing of Richard Linklater’s lo-fi hit, Slacker, Smith, a New Jersey video store fan, begged, stole, borrowed and maxed out his credit cards to the tune of $27,575.
He shot a script based on his own life as a frustrated shop worker: he had previously worked in six Garden State convenience stores from 1989 to 1993.
Following a screening of the film at Sundance, Miramax executive Harvey Weinstein snapped up the movie. In May 1994, it went to the Cannes International Film Festival, where it won the Prix de la Jeunesse and the International Critics’ Week Prize.
Clerks, the ensuing franchise, has subsequently spawned two sequels, several spin-offs, an animated series, comics, video games, a podcast, and the much-admired movie sequence known as the View Askewniverse. A Gen X landmark, in 2019, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
“I’m still eating out on that Cinderella story,” says Smith. “Not a day of my life goes by where I don’t say the word Clerks in the last . . . for 30 years now. And I had no idea that we were ever going to be seen. Let alone championed. But because like we said, the right thing, at the right time – luck and timing had everything to do with it – it was a movie that connected with an entire generation. I meet people on tour all the time who say things like: I saw Clerks when I was in college with my girlfriend; now we’re married with four kids and it’s all your fault. It’s quite beautiful and nothing I intended. The guy who started this journey wasn’t thinking about the long-term. He just wanted to make a movie.”
Smith has subsequently directed some 14 films, working with Chris Rock, Stan Lee, Alanis Morrissette, Johnny Depp, and Jennifer Lopez along the way.
He has remained faithful, however, to a trusty band of early collaborators, including Ben Affleck and Jason Mewes. Smith and his wife Jennifer have taken Mewes into their home over the years to help keep the actor sober.
Newer additions to the Smith troupe include Lily-Rose Depp and Harley Quinn Smith, the filmmaker’s daughter, who made her first appearance in her dad’s movies aged two, and who, now aged 24, has gone on to appear in two Clerks sequels and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Her father is quite tickled by her fame. For Smith, the movieverse was already a family affair. Raised in a Catholic family by Grace, a homemaker, and Donald E Smith, a postal worker and film buff, Kevin Patrick Smith was an overweight kid who became a classroom comedian and all-purpose culture vulture.
“I was just at a screening in Saint Paul Minnesota, and there’s a 14-year-old girl wearing a photo of my kid on her shirt with the hashtag “goals”, on it,” says Smith. “And we’re doing a Q&A and she gets up to the mic and she asks: ‘How do you feel about a 10-year age difference in relationships?’ And I was like, ‘Well, it’s not for me, but my parents were nine years apart and that worked out.’ And she says: ‘Good, because I want to date your daughter, and I’m nine years younger.’ I said: ‘What irresponsible parent brought you to this thing?’ And then there’s her dad sitting right there, quietly raising his hand and smiling. It’s beautiful, man. Because that’s how we got here in the first place. My old man used to take me to the movies. Watching my father laugh at things, and more importantly, cry at things while we watched movies over the course of our lives together taught me everything I needed to know about life and tacit approval for being emotional about art.”
Harley Quinn Smith inevitably features in Clerks III, the newest addition to the View Askewniverse. The film reunites the original Clerks team, including cynical Dante (Brian O’Halloran), sweary Randal (Jeff Anderson), Jay and Silent Bob, and a constellation of exes, well-wishers, and Smith regulars. The gags and the Star Wars obsession remain, but aged 50 or thereabouts, the main characters struggle with wealth and health problems. What happens when slackers grow up? They don’t. And yet there’s a new tone.
This third heartfelt and uproariously funny instalment of the trilogy was partly inspired by Smith’s own 2018 heart attack. He has subsequently adopted a vegan diet, joined Weight Watchers as a spokesman, and has lost around 100kg.
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” says Smith. “I had to get healthy and go vegan. And it gave me the idea for Clerks III. The majority of the folks that came out to see the first movie in 1994, a lot of them are still around and they’re in their 50s. That’s who I see out there on tour, man. People with faces my age. We’re on a journey together. I’m their quote, unquote guy. One of my favourite compliments is: you are doing it exactly the way I would have done it if I was you.
“Spielberg is a classic filmmaker and an auteur genius. I’m like the guy you went to school with or we might have played hockey together. My stuff’s approachable. It makes you feel a little sorry for it because clearly, this idiot does know how to direct a movie. And he’s from New Jersey, a state that has this working-class identity baked into it by Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi. Their reputation precedes me.”
Circling back to Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures and the thrilling independent sector that Clerks helped define, Smith is better placed than anyone to articulate the shrinking marketplace for films with a budget under $200 million.
Having been attached to box office flops such as Jersey Girl – not to mention ill-starred reboots of Superman, Fletch, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Buckaroo Banzai – Smith has focused on can-do. A self-confessed “filmmaker-grifter” and an excellent raconteur, his stand-up act has sold out the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall. An early-adopter blogger and podcaster, his grassroots approach has continued to grow his audience at a moment when other contemporaneous filmmakers have struggled.
“Indie film used to be the domain of discovery but you know, that was years and years ago,” says Smith. “Now there are many different ways to find something you’ve never seen before. The problem is there are so many different places to do it that it’s tough to find anything other than the loudest, biggest thing. We’re drowning in choice. The things that make the most noise win.
“When I started my career, you could see every movie that came out in a week. Now, that’s impossible. You would have to give up your day job in order to be up to speed with all pop culture. Thankfully I got the ability to make a lot of noise. That’s what I’ve trained to do for the better part of 30 years. I’m part filmmaker and part salesman because I’ve always had to be. One minute, you’re the new indie voice in this emerging world of indie film, but at a certain point, that’s it. Everyone moves on to the next thing. I could have just withered and died. But instead, I’ve been talking to my audience.
“I opened a website in 1995. I can put out movies myself. I’ll go on the road. I’ll do a big Q&A afterwards. I’ll stay in contact with my audience. The beauty of how we’ve been releasing Clerks III is that, normally, when you release a film takes $15-20 million in marketing, to put it into 500 theatres to a thousand theatres. We didn’t spend any marketing money. We never paid for commercials or on TV or anything like that. We’re still gaming the system.”
The second major cultural shift that happened on Smith’s watch is the transition of comic books from subculture to, well, every other beanie hat. A lifelong fan who has written acclaimed cycles for both Marvel and DC is no longer working towards Green Hornet or anything else for the big screen.
“I don’t ever have to make a Marvel movie,” says Smith. “And I can still make money out of them. As soon as a Marvel movie comes out, people ask me what I think. They’ll even pay money to be in an audience with me. Since the beginning, my films are like going to a Marvel movie. That moment when Captain America catches Thor’s hammer and everyone goes ape shit? Because for 10 years, we’ve been watching that story and this means he’s fucking worthy? Holy shit. Same thing happens in my movies. But for a very smaller audience and in a way less expensive film.”
Clerks III is on digital platforms; the film is released on DVD and Blu-Ray on St Stephen’s Day
