Kevin Smith set for Clerks sequel 406
bckrispi writes "Director Kevin Smith has announced an official sequel to his indie cult classic, Clerks. Currently titled "The Passion of the Clerks", the film will pick up with Dante and Randal ten years after the original as our two heroes trudge through the malaise of their thirties. Jason Mewes, now out of rehab, is back on deck to play Jay across Smith's Silent Bob."
Oh, come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
Barely Clerkin? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of one of Kevin Smith's movies, it stated that the title of the Clerks sequel would be Clerks 2: Barely Clerkin'. Guess they decided not to stick with that.
I really enjoyed the format and bad acting in the original Clerks ("You ever notice that all the prices end in nine? Damn, that's eerie."). I hope the sequel returns to Smith's roots a bit, instead of being some highly-produced lets-see-how-many-stars-we-can-put-in-this-flick movie like his recent ones.
What ever happened to "Jersey Girl"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Clerks is a great movie for anyone who hasn't already seen it. If you've ever worked in a convenience or video store, you'll laugh your ass off.
I'm very disappointed. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bad enough that we have 5 or 6 different DVDs for every movie ever made (Digitally Enhanced, Collectors Edition, Gold Edition, Platinum Edition, Boxed Platinum, ad nauseum) but do we really need to make a fucking sequel of every god damn movie that found even partial success either in the theatre or cult/home markets? Baby Geniuses 2 (I didn't even know this movie had a first installment but I was informed that the first one was terrible) comes out and they wonder why a movie shelved for two years (Hero) rakes in unexpected dollars and a lame fucking sequel sucks it up with 3.3 million total?
Let me guess the pirates are to blame for the theft of money AND decent movies. They are the reasons we have to make duplicate copies of everything playing off the same old lines that the first one had and only adding jokes relating to their ages in the next? Baby Geniuses 4, BG's Grandchildren go to Montessori?
I loved Clerks and it was the first movie I seriously remember being sore from laughter after seeing. I think I have watched it more than any other movie I don't own. Do we really need its status as a cult classic scarred by some overpriced, overhyped, overaged wannabe sequel? If he really loves the fanbase he created he would listen to us on this one. It's a bad idea for all those involved, seriously.
How relevent (Score:1, Insightful)
pigs : manned flight
I for one personally welcome our new clerk overlords.
He should rather finish his comics... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Barely Clerkin? (Score:2, Insightful)
And I thought it was Clerks 2: Hardly Clerkin'?
I feel a bit sorry for him really - he will never escape Jay & Bob. Just look what happens when he tries (and after he swore to never make another one in the Jersey series..)
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)
In a row?
"Quick buck"?! (Score:5, Insightful)
A good example of making quick money in movies is the new AvP movie. You start with a movie that made lots of money. You then create a cheap sequel. Fans of the first will see it even though they know it'll be crap. And because it was made cheaply, it will profit regardless.
Making a sequel out of Clerks is a HUGE monetary risk. Considering that hardly anyone has seen the original, the sequel will have to make money on is own merit.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of a Clerks sequal is both cool and scary at the same time.
Huh (Score:4, Insightful)
Kevin Smith is a one-trick pony whos films get less and less impressive each time out.
Clerks wasn't a great movie, IMO, it just sort of struck one of those cult chords. I know a lot of my friends were going on about it like it was genious or something, myself I thought it was just a cheap indy film with a handful of funny moments.
I'd imagine those who were so in love with it 10 years ago feelings have faded somewhat. Kind of like the Star Wars movies. The fans grew up, got too old to give a shit about SW anymore, and the younger kids couldn't give a shit or get into it at all.
I wouldn't call Rocky Horror Picture Show a great movie either, but it's obviously a cult hit with a lot of legs left in it. But going to the show in drag on Hallowe'en and throwing toast at the bride is one thing. Paying 10 bucks to see the 10-year-delayed (cash grab) sequel is another.
I dunno. Smith, Damon and Affleck, these guys are supposed to be so young and hip and scary talented that they're going to take over Hollywood and change cinema forever. I really don't see where all the talent is, myself. Throw Tarantino on that list too. Pulp Fiction was his only flick I can say I really enjoyed watching.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever. It's not like Kevin Smith (or most of the other folks that get this criticism) ever pretended to anything other than hackdom. He wanted to make movies that entertained people, & he wants to get paid. I swear, someday someone's going to say that Adam Sandler, or Affleck & Damon "sold out" and I'm going to spontaneously combust in frustration. It can't be "selling out" if their original goal was popular success & money.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Are you wanting to make fuck... BERZERKER!!!!"
Common.. Kevin Smith's work is toilet humor and mixed in with social commentary. Jersey Girl was different. It was meant to be a cute movie. It's a bloody romantic comedy/drama. Don't be bitter because you watched the movie expecting mall rats, and got a "cute" movie.
I get annoyed when people bitch about how people like George Lucas keeps on peddeling old shit over and over again, but when he does something different, IE. Jersey Girl. People then still bitch.
Personally my favourite movie of Kevin Smith's is Dogma. I love it how he plays with Catholicisim. What's cool about Dogma was that Kevin Smith was presenting the Human side of the bible. The main idea behind it was that Jesus at one point in time turned to one of his disciples and said "Hey Buddy, pull my finger!"
As a Catholic who has parents that are kinda nutty about religion, I really liked the movie. So maybe he made that movie for me and not you. I always appreciated the Golgotha monster.
When you boil down Clerks, Mall Rats, Dogma, and Jay and Silent Bob strike back. They are all based on dick and fart jokes, plain and simple. So it really erks me when people put Clerks on this pedistal. The movies all use the same formula.
If you consider this the final plunge into "hackdom". Then I would say that clerks was his final plunge into hackdom, and he's only been swimming around in it for 10 years.
-Derek
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:2, Insightful)
At the time, Clerks really was edgy. Clerks were was revolutionary because it was crude and vulgar unlike the movies of the time. It ushered in a wave of vulgar pop culture referencing movies. The big studios have adopted the formula and there are 20 movies like this every year. Looking at it with 2004 eyes Clerks is kind of crappy.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because the hype around Clerks was insane. The reason why Clerks worked was because we were sitting around a low-point in movie-making. Everything was big-budget and no one bothered to write a script. Clerks, on the other hand, was nothing but a script. The movie had no budget and the acting stank. Part of the charm was specifically that the poor production values lead to a feeling of sincerity and fun.
So you take the guy who made that movie, throw him in a spotlight, and give him a huge budget, and, what?... you think the goodness of his movies is supposed to be proportionate to his budget?
Clerks was never a filmmaking masterpiece. It's more of a fun footnote in filmmaking history than a chapter unto itself. So he goes from making a charming funny little movie that's kinda crappy but pretty funny to making bigger-budget movies that are still only pretty funny, and you complain like he's a sellout because he didn't stick to what he was good at. He tries to go back to his roots, to do something that he might actually be good at, and you complain that he's a sellout again, because he's just trying to recreate his earlier success.
Get over it. He's just a regular guy trying to make movies, and if you had the opportunity, you'd do it too. Clerks was not Star Wars, so even if he destroys the legacy of Clerks, he hasn't done the cultural damage Lucas has. I doubt he even thinks he's making masterpieces, so I'm not sure what the bellyaching is about.
Re:Huh (Score:4, Insightful)
Throw Tarantino on that list too.
This is a bit OT, but not if we're talking about overhyped, super "macho," directors. Tarantino is a directorial null device. The only film of his worth a damn is Reservoir Dogs. The writing, the acting, and the grit of the film come together in a way they do not in any of Tarantino's other films. The recent Kill Bill films are a travesty, though mildly interesting from a cinematic perspective (i.e. millions of dollars jettisoned on the whims of an undertalented first-film-was-a-hit director). Tarantino's single virute (and not one to be sneeze at) is that despite being unable to write and direct a proper film, he has perfect cinematic taste.
He understands John Woo like no other American director. He knows that violence can be ultra sexy in a way that only the Wachowski brothers did in The Matrix (forget Reloaded and Revolutions which are interesting for different reasons). Tarantino did something amazing with Reservoir Dogs and has since been unable to equal that effort. Pulp Fiction is somewhat interesting, ending as it does with an superb and enigmatic subplot. Pure narrative beauty, reminiscent of the Coen Brothers (at their best) and Lynch. (My big question is whatever happened to Atom Egoyan? Soderbergh lost his edge.)
Swerving somewhat back on topic. Smith's work is somewhat a one-trick pony, sure. His stuff feels the same, but he is much more skilled a story-teller than Tarantino has proven himself to be.
Re:Barely Clerkin? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Budget (Score:4, Insightful)
He probably knows he'll take in around X amount of money whether he spends $250k or $50 million. But somehow we're supposed to like him more because he's going to low ball the production and increase his profits. At least high production movies typically put more people to work creating them. If he really cared he'd take all the production money he's saving and offer half price rebates to see his movie in the cinemas.
Jersey Girl *WAS* spectacular... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem Kevin has is that he can't possibly be as "successful" dealing with fare other people have dealt with before (Mallrats (teen mall movie)/J&SBSB(road trip movie)/Jersey Girl(romantic comedy)) as he can be with dealing with stuff no one has done before. There was no other movie like Clerks when Clerks was made, as there was no movie like Dogma or Chasing Amy either. It's not that some of the movies are "better" than the others, they're just more "successful" because they're not compared to other similar successful movies that happened to have come first.
People like me, in their 20's to early 30's, appreciate what Kevin makes, "unique" or not, as being more appropriate for our age group. That's not good for box office success, and it's often not good for great critical acclaim, but it's nice to have generation-specific fare for those of us in that age range.
It's not like the video clerk would give a customer a pity screw in a romantic comedy your parents would go see, is it?
Great movies can be quite "unsuccessful", especially if you're not trying to make a movie that is only going to be great for a certain group of people. It's sad that so many people only measure a movie's success against the opinion of the general population.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:3, Insightful)
Adam Sandler sold out!
(happy now?)
Seriously, I hated Adam Sandler until I saw his performance in Punch Drunk Love [imdb.com]. Everything else I've ever seen him: Waterboy, Big Daddy, Little Nicky; make me feel like gnawing off my own limbs.
Maybe he's made other good movies, but I'm not going to invest a huge amount of time trying to find out what they are.
Clerks II - Even Dumberer (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:So, um (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm very disappointed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or was it the death of Spock?
Some second installments are really good.
Re:Snoogins (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he has that Python-esque talent of taking a joke too far, then taking farther and farther until it finally wraps around to funny again. An example is the profanity of Jay. He's SO profane I think you start to realize it's just words and the words don't mean anything once they are so over-used. Additionally, the inside Hollywood pandering is evident in all his films, taken to extremes just for the fans in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I think the humor works because he KNOWS he's being shameless. It's raw, unpretentious, lamblasting.
To quote Homer, "It's true. It's true, it's funny because it's true!"
Re:Never say Never... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a shame, he's got a good sense of humor and a novel approach to movie making. Here's hoping he can get back into the groove.
Ironic. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find this supremely funny. Kevin Smith, God bless him, has done nothing but revisit the same characters, gags, and environments for the past 10 years. So is this movie about "growing up" supposed to be prescient in some fashion? Because I see no evidence of Smith doing anything of the sort in his body of work thus far.
Dissecting pop culture and talking about sex is what's made Kevin Smith his fortune, and now, apparently, he's too good for it? What did I miss?
Don't get me wrong. I love Kevin Smith's movies, and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, arguably his worst film, is actually my favorite. I have no quarrel with being preoccupied with sex, drugs, pop culture, and extremely over-tired Star Wars jokes. But at least be honest about your tastes.
It will be interesting to see what he does with this material -- I don't care if he makes a buck off it or not (more power too him), but Smith could come off as something of a hypocritical ass if he's not careful. (Not that he will care what critics have to say about him, of course -- another thing I like about Smith.)
Re:Clerks II - Even Dumberer (Score:1, Insightful)
Okay, it's not Shakespeare. Its not a "great" movie in the sense that Lawrence of Arabia was a great movie. But it is what it is and a lot of us really like it. And tell you what, it was really damn original, and some of us give it bonus points for that.
Re:Budget (Score:5, Insightful)
If he does Clerks 2 the low-budget way he wants to, the studios will leave him alone and let him do whatever he wants. He can do any damn thing and its okay. This is a good thing.
As for whether we are supposed to respect him or not, I don't remember him saying "respect me now because of my l337 l0w-budget skillz." He just announced the movie.
And he doesn't really "know" he will make any particular amount of money. If he spends peanuts on this movie he has lessened the risk, not guaranteed huge profits.
Re:Budget (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at the Indiana Jones 4 project (or what's left of it at the moment). Spielberg has already stated that they'll be minimizing CGI and using old-fashioned stuntwork to make the next Jones film. Why? They specifically want to have to work around stunt apparatus - something about how it makes them more creative.
It's already proven that Smith gets more creative when he's got less money to spend. And, as someone else already pointed out, when you're spending less money, you're guaranteed to make it back on Kevin Smith's name alone. If he keeps it on the cheap, Miramax is going to let him do whatever he wants. And that's exactly what I want to see.
The Flying Car (Score:2, Insightful)