Kevin Smith set for Clerks sequel

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."

Never say Never...

[slusich]

Kevin Smith had said that he'd never revisit the world of Jay and Silent Bob after he finished shooting "Strike Back". I'm really glad he reconsidered. This'll be a movie worth seeing. Hopefully Mewes can stay out of rehab/jail long enough to shoot it.

Jay and Silent Bob?!?

[natron 2.0]

I thought Kevin Smith stated the "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" was to be the last time those characters (Jay and Silent Bob) where to be seen in a film. I guess money will make you do funny things. I wonder if this film will be in black and white as well.

Re:Oh, come on!

[Stevyn]

I don't think his films were ever put up on a pedestal by him. He's got a bunch of die hard fans who propped his reputation up. I love his movies and I think he's a great writer and director when it comes to comedy. But you're right, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" was all inside jokes. If I hadn't seen the 4 previous movies he did, I doubt I'd get half the jokes in that movie.

Re:What ever happened to "Jersey Girl"?

[lothar97]

Essentially this happened [fact-index.com]

It did make $25,266,129 source [the-numbers.com], which is better than Gigli (US Gross, $6,087,542, Production Budget $54,000,000). Sure it's not a Kevin Smith movie, but it's got the same goofy actors. source [the-numbers.com]

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back to basics after a flop

[mcguyver]

Usually people will go back to a guaranteed success after a failure. Kevin Smith does Jersey Girl, comes out with Clerks 2. I'm not a big enough movie buff to comment on other examples but I'm sure they exist in movies such as Jurassic Park 3 and the Batman series. This type of thinking is bringing us such greats as the Star Wars prequals and Indiana Jones 4.

Million Dollar Question

[mconeone]

Will it still be in black & white?

So, um

[mcc]

Not to give any spoilers or anything, but does this mean that the Clerks "original ending" (it's provided on the DVD as a deleted scene) is now officially non-canon?

(I'M NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE HERE TODAY...)

Re:Barely Clerkin?

[el-spectre]

True, altho I have heard him say that he toled Mewes that if he got clean, he'd write another movie as a thank you. Mewes has been clean for a coupla years now, so it's time to pay up.

Re:He should rather finish his comics...

[slaker]

At the Chicago Comic-Con he was very apologetic about both. And the mini-posters for J&SSB... He's AWARE of all those things but freely admitted that they aren't at the top of his priority list. As we in the audience for his Q&A reminded him of the old stuff he hadn't finished, he ran off his list of priorities.

What he *DID* say was at the top of his priority list - and I'm not making this shit up - was a two-part guest starring role in "Degrassi: The Next Generation". He said he wanted to direct an episode, but Canadian culture laws forbade a non-Canadian citizen from doing that. I guess he's a big fan.

Snoogins

[BRock97]

Dude, seriously.

It is hard to take your comments seriously when you are so obviously biased against Smith and his films. It's too bad you don't like his work, but give the man credit. He is one of the few responsible for revitalizing the independent movie seen in the early to mid 90's (if you don't believe me, give Down and Dirty Pictures [amazon.com] a read, good stuff).

But, to take some of your comments to point:

• "None of his movies lived up to the expectations that naturally came about as a result of the edginess of the original Clerks..."
  
  I have to say you are wrong here. Chasing Amy was even more edgy than Clerks could have hoped to be. The story line was much better defined, the characters had more depth, and the ending was a great punch in the face. Fantastic story. Dogma, besides having a sh!t monster that really didn't belong, was a great look at faith. Not quite as edgy as Clerks, but great characters and story. In both of these examples, Smith excels in two areas: being able to get his point across and great dialog.
  
• "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was just a series of in-jokes for the rabid Kevin Smith fans."
  
  So the hell what? Smith never said it was going to be his most brilliant work (but it was his funniest, IMHO). In fact, he always said it was going to be for the fans, nothing more. How can you hold that against the movie when even the writer/director said it wasn't going to be any more than somethign for the fans?
  
• "And wasn't that supposed to be the last movie set in the "View Askewniverse""
  
  Yes, it was. But, something occurred that Smith didn't expect. Jersey Girl was a failure. It did OK in the box office, but I expect he was hoping it would be his transition from "dick and fart" movies to something more sophisticated. That didn't happen; the audience didn't show up. For anyone that would be a huge blow, mentally. So, he decides to go back to what he knows he can do best. Most people would do the same in his place. I, for one, won't have a problem with that, either. As for the comparison between him and Lucas, that analogy doesn't fit. Lucas is making huge bucks from the Star Wars franchise, and he will continue to do so even if VII, VIII, and IX aren't made. The fact that he probably will, though, indicates a want to milk his creation. In what I have read from the above book, I believe that Smith isn't like that, he makes the movies to make movies, cause he loves doing it.

As you can imagine, I am a huge Smith fan and my posting was just as biased as yours. But, I think both sides needed to be stated.

Re:I'm very disappointed.

[litesgod]

From the same post that you take your quote from you can see that:

- The characters are the same- not just the cast. It won't be a rehash, it will be a new storyline for the same characters.

-He is doing it on a shoestring budget, under 5mil. The first was cheap because he didn't have to pay salary. Now he feels like being nice to these people.

Clerks Alternate Ending

[Philosinfinity]

It seems odd that Smith would pick up the same characters 10 yesrs later when he has some intention of killing Dante in the alternate ending of the first film.

Re:Clerks Alternate Ending

[SomeGuyFromCA]

a) that was a discarded ending - and it makes sense that it was, because it's *such* a cheap play to kill off your main character in the last scene.

b) Dante shows up "later" in J&SBSB, alive and well. So, if he really was shot in the robbery attempt, it was but a scratch, merely a flesh wound, and he's not dead yet.

Re:Oh, come on!

[dubiousmike]

I wouldn't say that Jay has had his act cleaned up for a year now. There were many of us who saw him in Jerky's in Providence, RI as little as 9 months ago going out to the parking lot to do heroin and then coming back in all fucked up.

That said, he wasn't as much of a jerk as I expected. He had plenty of hot bitches milling around, but looking at him, it was all about "star power" and nothing about presenting himself in a way that someone who didn't know him would give the junkie a second look.

I must be the only person who didn't like it.

[khasim]

Chasing Amy that is. I thought it was trite, badly done and badly acted. I keep wondering if it didn't have a lesbian getting laid, would it be as popular as it is.

Re:Budget

[Rei]

It is strange, but the less budget his films have, the better they seem to do. My favorite film of his major films (Clerks, Mall Rats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) was his second lowest budget one - Chasing Amy. I love that movie. It's budget was only 250k$. And while budget-wise it's no Clerks (28,000$), it is anything but a Lord of the Rings trilogy (190m$), Star Wars Ep 1 (115m$), Titanic (200m$), etc.

Re:Huh

[MrBlackBand]

I just don't find Smiths movies to be all that good, despite all the hype and worship. I never did.

And I find them to be really good, really funny movies, despite all of the hype and worship. If hype and worship ever surrounded his movies, which they don't. In fact, whenever I hear anything about Smith's movies I always hear how awful they are. Perhaps you are confusing people saying that they *gasp* liked his movies (I know, it's a sin!) with hype.

Kill Bill was beyond retarded.

Don't you mean, "in my opinion Kill Bill was beyond retarded." Or are you some sort of movie deity who's word is law? In my opinion, Kill Bill was highly entertaining and enjoyable. It captured the feel of all those old Kung-Fu movies and made me want to watch a bunch of them, marathon-style. Perhaps you just have an aversion to entertainment? Or are you one of those people that only like things that aren't popular? It could suck ass but as long as no-one knows about it it's cool, right? I bet you liked N*SYNC when they were still underground.

Re:Oh, come on!

[deke_kun]

You forgot chasing amy. A movie that, despite tackling romantic issues, was still funny as hell, had incredible dialogue, drama and well developed characters. KS said Chasing Amy was a personal film for him. Jersey girl was supposed to be a return to that personal film style. But wasnt, and sucked for it. If you compare the two films its obvious that KS is either really lazy or is now incapable of writing. Witty intelligent dialogue (with toilet humour, of course) is now replaced by musical montagues that shows peoples smiling faces - just so you KNOW what he's saying is oh-so intelligent.

Fuck The Askewniverse

[Lord Kano]

Seriously. While I find the movies to be funny, The first three of them have one common thread. Man bashing; making men look like unreasonable assholes because they were upset by things that should upset them.

In Clerks, Dante is made to look unreasonable because he gets so upset when he finds out that his girlfriend has sucked 37 dicks.

In Mallrates, TS is made to look unreasonable because he gets upset when his girlfriend calls off their Florida vacation (ON THE DAY that they're supposed to leave)so she can be on a dating game clone.

In Chasing Amy, Holden is made to look unreasonable because he gets upset when he finds out that his girlfriend, who led him to believe that he was the only man she'd ever been with, had the nick name "fingercuffs" when she was younger because she was in the meat in a MFM sandwitch.

All three of these characters had very legitimage reasons to be upset, but in the Askewniverse they're made to look like unreasonable assholes.

LK

Re:Budget

[King_TJ]

IMHO, that's neither "strange" nor is it uncommon in the film industry, overall.

One of the big reasons the second round of Star Wars films sucked so bad compared to the original 3 is the huge budgets they were allowed to spend on them. Lucas dumped it all into computer graphics and effects, expecting that would be enough to "Wow!" everyone -- and in reality, fans just wanted a good, well acted-out story. (Consider the sets in the original Star Wars movie, compared to the extravagant worlds depicted in the second trilogy. Tatooine was a plain old desert.... a bunch of sand and a few simple structures. Very believable and effective without needing much of anything in the way of "special effects".)

I also agree that Clerks and Chasing Amy were probably Smith's best 2 films, and furthermore, I've really enjoyed a few other obviously low budget films I've run across, such as "The Cube".

Kevin Smith movies are all centered around the same basic theme.... the struggles, behaviors, and desires of youth. By its very nature, this isn't something that should require a huge budget to put together. (I mean, his characters aren't sons and daughers of millionaires, right? So he doesn't need extravagant sets and settings.)

I think in some ways, making movies is like software development. There's a time and place for big, powerful systems and code that requires them to run. But there's also a certain elegance only found when you work within tight restrictions, such as coding for a PDA with limited RAM and video capabilities, or the classic games seen on old consoles like the Atari 2600. Most of us expect Kevin Smith movies to be more comparable to the latter....