Written by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub

The neat thing about posting an interview with Kevin Smith is…he needs no introduction. As the author/director behind such classics every bit Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and now Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Kevin is known the globe over as a geek that'southward fabricated it.

The other thing Kevin's known for is…his ability to talk about annihilation and everything. Seriously. Unlike some movie stars or directors that shy away from saying what they think or revealing what really went on backside the scenes, what I dear almost Kevin is the way he tells you everything. If someone was an asshole on set…he says it. If some studio executive gave horrible notes that made no sense, Kevin will tell you who did it and why it was bad.

Once more, not many people are so honest, and no thing what you think of Kevin Smith as a filmmaker, you've got to respect him.

But lets' become to the reason you're here. Opening this weekend is Kevin's new motion-picture show Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The film stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks equally ii all-time friends that live together and later they run out of money and options…well…I figure you know what happens based on the title. While I haven't been that impressed with Kevin'south recent films, I take to say I really enjoyed Zack and Miri and laughed a lot. Information technology's definitely worth checking out.

Anyway, I was recently able to participate in a roundtable interview with Kevin and the transcript is below. As you might imagine, we talked nearly everything…

If you're a fan of Kevin's, y'all'll really savour the interview. Equally e'er, you can either read the transcript below or heed to the audio past clicking here . Finally, you can scout some picture clips from Zack and Miri by clicking here . And hither's a link to the interview I did with Elizabeth Banks.

Kevin Smith: Is anyone a not-smoker? Well, y'all're about to be converted. How's everyone doing? Thanks for coming out. I know information technology's a tough trip to make, but it's squeamish seeing you. I know I'd much rather be at home watching TV. Let's try to make this as painless as possible for yous.

Question: This is your best moving picture.

KS: Well, good, this is already getting better.

When you were making information technology, did you lot experience like there was something extra—

KS: Non really, not really. It was all when people started seeing it and saying, this is the best picture show you've e'er made. I'm like, what? The weird 1 is when people become, This is the best one y'all've made since Chasing Amy. I know. Then that was kind of weird. It's a weird compliment to receive, only, on the other hand, I'thousand similar, fuck, maybe I ruined the other three. Or the rest of them besides this one. But it'due south cool, every bit long as they're proverb nice things. Really, I don't even care if they say nice things. As long as they're laughing and copping to it. Crusade I feel like, you lot sit in the audience and express joy and have a good time. So, when you actually accept to write a review, you go a lot of people who are more attentive. Like, it's funny if y'all're into this kind of thing. It's like, motherfucker, I know you were laughing. I was in that location in the back, watching.

But it's funny. Even as a woman, the raunchy stuff is funny.


KS: Right on, thank you very much. Well, that's all due to the bandage, man. It's one thing to only have a bunch of muddied words on the page, but they made it all leap to life.

Because information technology has the romance element to it, was it fabricated intentionally maybe to draw more female audiences to your moving picture?

KS: Only as much as ane of the titular characters is a woman, but information technology's non similar I'm, I've got to bring more chicks in. I don't really call back like that. If could honestly plan on how to bring more people to a movie, I would've been manner more successful than I've e'er been. For me, it'southward the luck of the describe because ultimately I but make the flicks I know how to brand. Nine out of ten, it's not mass screening. In fact, ten out of 10. Expect, what is this? Eight movies? Vii times out of ten, it's not been a vastly commercial moving-picture show. So I didn't go into it thinking, I'm going to get chicks in it this fourth dimension around. Simply I figured with a chick in the title, some chicks might exist curious. Although most people don't seem to know it's a adult female's name.

Like Chasing Amy, it's sort of got that romantic comedy structure underneath.


KS: Mm-hm.

With all the Kevin Smith dialogue, was that something you were thinking of?

KS: When I was making it, I idea it was as close to Chasing Amy as anything I've e'er done before in terms of construction and whatnot. I mean, we're definitely a lot less serious than nosotros were in Chasing Amy. Chasing Amy is a very earnest movie. Funny, but very earnest at the same time. This movie is more than funny than I recollect Chasing Amy is, simply information technology does this weird shift in the third act where it becomes kind of emotional. It catches people off baby-sit, but, I don't know, it works for me. It's the kind of flick I bask watching. I honey romantic comedies. I love rom-coms. I just can't stand it when they're sanitized and cleaned upwards, and it ends with a buss. I like mine to have the fucking happen, so everything falls apart. And I like people to speak candidly and frankly and use harsh language. Non to exist a show-off, just considering everyone I know speaks like that. When I see something like Made of Award, I'chiliad sitting at that place thinking, why am I watching this? And my married woman is going, yep, why are you watching this?

Q: Why are you watching it?

KS: I like romantic comedies and I like Patrick Dempsey. I've loved him since Loverboy. He was awesome in Loverboy. And he was awesome in Tin't Buy Me Beloved when he was doing the dance and shit.

Q: Practice you like porn as much as romantic comedies?


KS: No, I like romantic comedies more, but I do like porn very much. Not and then much for titillation anymore. I hateful at present… I've been married for ten years, so sex is built in and free. And so porn isn't something I use equally a tool anymore. I oasis't jerked off to a porn in I can't tell you how many fucking years. Only I wait at porn every morning. Every morning I wake upward, I do Google news, Guardian United kingdom , and so I go to the free porn sites – any of the numerous ones I've bookmarked. Merely by virtue of the fact that it shocks me that every fourth dimension I click on it, I never meet the aforementioned face twice. Always different people, always. It merely makes you feel like the whole world is taking naked pictures of themselves. And I'm always looking for that i person I know because, past sheer process of elimination, I'1000 going to run across someone I know. But recently I realized I'yard looking at the wrong pages. Anybody I know is, like, xxx, then I accept to kickoff looking at cougar-like sites. I'chiliad telling you, porn now is – it's not fifty-fifty well-lit settings with a congenital background. Now information technology's just like every porn picture show or video I see takes identify in a college dorm. Information technology's all existent now. Now it's people sending in pictures or stuff. Or this revenge porn shit, which creeps me out because it's this weirdly intimate look into someone's life like, Oh, human being, this was not meant to exist seen by me. That's the only porn right at present I tin can't really dig on. That and violent porn. I don't like people punching each other or spitting at each other. It's merely weird to me.

How cool was it to merge Star Wars and porn?

KS: That was awesome. For me, when I wrote the script, and in that location's the moment in the script where it says, similar, the flap opens on R2D2 and you see a ball sack – that fabricated me laugh and then hard while I was writing it, I couldn't wait to get to the set up. Only I was like, Y'all know what? It'll never be every bit good equally when I wrote it so allow's simply confront the fact information technology volition never live up here. It went beyond my expectations. When the flap opened, I was the ane leading the laughter. I was like, How fucking hysterical! His name'south R2-TBag and he'southward got a big set of nuts. It was kind of cool. It was really absurd. There was some part of me, after shooting the sequence, thought, Possibly the porn should've been Star Wars and maybe we should've followed information technology all the way though. But that wouldn't take made much sense.

Can you lot talk near Justin Long'south character and how you knew he could play that?


KS: Justin Long's grapheme was funny on the page, but all credit goes to Justin Long for turning it into a performance for the ages. I recollect people will forget near this movie and however remember Justin Long in the flick. It was a brilliantly insightful portrayal that nigh happened accidentally. He came to us with the worst chest cold I'd ever heard of. When he landed in Pittsburgh , we had to get him to a doctor immediately. We had one twenty-four hour period to shoot with him, otherwise we were going to fuck up the whole schedule. And so he was like, Look man, I'm so sorry, but I can't help it. Would yous mind if this was my phonation? Let me tell you why I feel it would work. I borrowed some gay porn from a friend of mine. I was like, Yep, y'all borrowed it. We've all borrowed information technology, my friend. He's like…they all talk from down here similar this. Dude, I retrieve it'due south genius. I don't know if anyone else will go it, but I get it. Do it. And it was totally memorable, it totally worked.

I'm interested in why you continue to push the visuals in your movies. Y'all haven't wanted to just be the dialogue guy, even though that's what people similar almost them.

KS: Only recently, I think right earlier Clerks Two, I started thinking maybe nosotros should kind of beef up the visual attribute. It is a visual medium. So maybe I should try a fiddling harder visually. So Clerks II and the Reaper pilot were really [garbled] for me and Dave. We were working on Reaper and I was like, Wow, man, this looks better than whatsoever movie we ever shot. Cinematically speaking, it's more visually interesting. Past the time we go to Zack and Miri, we were ready for bear. I was similar, alright, now information technology's time to compete at that normal level everyone competes at in terms of making a visually interesting movie. I don't know. It took me 15, 14, 13 years to effigy out, only I'm like, Perchance a motion picture can look as skillful every bit it sounds.

For your next movie, you lot're doing a drama, correct?


KS: Yeah, it's non a comedy. I don't know what to telephone call it yet. It'due south called Ruddy State . I call it a horror movie, but nearly people are like; this is not a horror movie. Information technology'due south non a traditional horror movie in terms of a slasher running around in a hockey mask or some such shit. However people ascertain a horror motion-picture show. But for me, it'due south horrifying subject area matter, and then that, past de factor, makes it a horror movie. Just very straight forwards, very dour, very dramatic. So it's a big departure. As well, the script is 89 pages and information technology's the first script I've ever written where there's more than descriptive narrative text than there is dialogue. A lot of it has to be carried with visuals and mood.

You're known as a screenwriter. Practise you have a lot of scripts at your identify for down the road?

KS: This ane would've definitely sat in the drawer had Seth non wanted to do it. Seth was the lynchpin for me. Seth was the reason I wrote the picture show. Saw him in 40 Year Old Virgin and said, I've got to write this dude a flick. If Seth had said, No, I would've merely stuck this in a drawer and non done it cause he was the whole reason it worked for me. Weinstein Company was like, exercise you take a backup if Seth says no and I'm like, No, it'southward Seth or no. Luckily he said yes. That's pretty much happened beyond the board with my stuff. I don't have any scripts only sitting there or waiting to go with the exception of Red State . I wrote Zack and Miri and was in such a writing mood that I decided to switch gears and go right into Red Land . And then I wrote these 2 scripts back to back in a span of like two weeks, 2 and a one-half weeks, something similar that. And then that's the but one simply sitting there waiting to happen. But I generally don't write to shop stuff. I'm a manufacture for use kind of guy.

Will Crimson State play if Obama wins?


KS: Oh aye, it withal works. I mean, expect, Obama is going to win. I don't call up it's if at this bespeak. But information technology still works. It's not about George Bush or George Bush-league's presidency or the final viii years under Republicans. Information technology's more near the climate of the country itself, regardless of who'due south in the White House.

At that place's an commodity in Diverseness recently about how you're going to do a sci-fi pic.

KS: That was a weird article because I sat down to do a Q&A with the dude and nosotros were talking about things on the horizon and that was one of them. But I talked about that far down the line a number of times. Then it ended up on the comprehend of Hollywood Reporter like it was an announcement. I'm like, I'k not announcing shit. I don't fifty-fifty have a title however. It's just something I'yard working on for down the road. But yeah, I am eventually going to go to that after Red Land .

Is that script together or ready to become?

KS: Correct now, I'g at the halfway point, at 60 pages, just I oasis't touched it since because I got involved in promoting the movie and stuff like that. When Zack and Miri is done, I can concentrate on writing once again, probably in mid-November. But it'south non going to happen for a while. Look, I desire to do information technology with Seth and Seth's schedule is and then fucking cluttered. I'll be waiting for that dude for a year if I have to brand information technology with him – if he even wants to make information technology.

You've written comic books, you lot have a comics shop, you lot know the globe. Now is the all-time time to be making a comic-book movie.

KS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is that something that'south in your head?

KS: Not really. For me, it'southward the best time in the world to be a comic-book fan because the movies take simply taken a jump. Information technology was always absurd when anybody made any comic-book movie, but now they're making them really good. Night Knight, Fe Man, Incredible Hulk I felt were really adept comic-book movies this summer, Dark Knight being the clear leader by transcending comic-book movie into just a great film. So I'm happy to watch those movies. I but don't think I got it in me to pull ane of those off. And I think if I do make one, I give up the correct to make fun of other people who practice make them and make them poorly. Right now, nobody's making them poorly.

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Right now, you have, I believe, seen the ii biggest films of 2009.

KS: Watchmen and Star Expedition – they're awesome. Both are fantastic.

Some have been saying the ending is slightly different.

KS: It'southward a trivial different. While it is a slight departure, information technology actually makes sense in the context of the story considering information technology brings the characters back into it. It kind of makes the moving picture more virtually them by the end of it because of the switch they fabricated. I would never say that Alan Moore fucked information technology up or something. I dear the ending of the Watchmen comic book, merely I retrieve this ending works just too.

Dark Knight, it's been argued, could be up for a Best Moving-picture show and a lot of other awards. Exercise y'all retrieve Watchmen is on par with that? That it could be an awards kind of moving picture?

KS: I feel similar Watchmen, when I saw it – and I've seen it twice now—

I hate you lot.

KS: Yes, lamentable. I saw it once when they had out of something like 500 visual FX shots, they only had 10% done. Next time I saw it, I call up they had 15% done. That's the 1 call up I haven't really said. I watched that pic without all the FX shots washed. Through most of the movie, Billy Crudup – even every bit Dr. Manhattan – looks like Billy Crudup. And still that pic works similar gangbusters, even though it's not completely fleshed out and finished visually speaking with the digital FX. That being said, when I watched the movie, the biggest impression I walked abroad with was, This could totally be Lurid Fiction to some degree. For the mainstream audience, when Pulp Fiction came along, they said, Okay, I know law-breaking thrillers. I know the genre, kind of. But this is a moving-picture show that spins it with this left of center view. With Watchmen, you've got people very familiar with the comic-book format of the movie, but information technology takes this left of center view of it. People who love the comic book are definitely going to go in droves, but I think they're going to get a lot of people who would never encounter this movie – based on the buzz factor. It's the goods, human being. Information technology's a actually smart, intelligent picture show. It'southward just similar reading the book, but a movie.

When Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen came out in the 80s, they were so cool and and then mail-modern that it was hard to exercise comics after them. Are these movies setting up that aforementioned situation?

KS: I think what information technology does is forces studios to exist more than honest and hone closer to the source material because the three movies that came out this summertime: Iron Man looks and feels like Iron Man; Dark Knight looks like Batman, feels like Batman. Incredible Hulk, the same thing. Bryan Vocaliser did it very well with the X-Men movies, as well. They've proven now you don't have to take this vast departure, you don't have to modify their outfits, you don't accept to change the villains to make them more believable or realistic. So I call back it raises the bar, simply I don't retrieve it means no comic-volume movie is watchable after Dark Knight. If I stood past that logic, I'd never watch some other moving picture after Godfather. They might not all exist Dark Knight, but they're going to try harder and make stuff more in keeping with the source material – which I would capeesh.

Why does Star Expedition piece of work?

KS: Star Trek works in a manner where you're sitting there going, I tin can't believe this works. I remember when they announced information technology, I felt similar look, it's i thing to introduce a whole new cast of characters. Information technology's another thing if yous're going to take the original characters, have other people play them, and exercise a Muppet Babies version of Star Trek. Only information technology fucking works like gangbusters. The credit goes to JJ and his writers, only definitely to the cast. They pull it off. Chris Pine, who plays Captain Kirk in the movie, does not do a William Shatner impression, simply, at the same fourth dimension, he's unmistakably Helm Kirk. He only brings all the panache, the gusto, everything almost Kirk except Shatner'south deliver to bear upon the grapheme. It doesn't disavow annihilation that'due south gone before. It lives side past side with everything that'south gone before in Star Expedition lore, in the movies, and the Goggle box prove. He did a great, nifty job. It's totally a fun movie.

How was Simon Pegg as Scotty?

KS: Simon Pegg was expert. I don't desire to spoil too much because they made me sign an NDA every bit well. But he's not right front end and middle right away. He comes into the motion picture afterwards. I'm non going to compare it to Blues Brothers, only it'due south definitely a bringing the band back together even though they've never been together motion picture. Then the characters come in slowly. Slowly they bring in grapheme past character. And Scotty'south the terminal one they bring in. But he's pitch perfect.


How'southward his accent?


KS: He'due south pitch perfect. He sounds just similar him.

What environment did yous watch it in? Was it a screening room?

KS: Information technology was Paramount , on the lot, and JJ had pulled together a family and friends screening just to throw information technology upwardly at that place and see how it played. That'southward another movie where he's like, We don't even have a 10th of our FX shots done. Some places your mind has to fill it in. Only it nonetheless works even though all the FX shots aren't done.

Do you lot, every bit a fan, argue not seeing it in that condition?

KS: No, no, shit no. I've got to see it. I recollect, we were at San Diego Comic-Con and that's where I met Zack Snyder for the first time. He invited me. He was like, you gotta come over and watch the picture show. And I was like, Oh, I gotta! You tin't continue me out of that screening room. He was like, it ain't finished. I was like, Dude, I don't care. The fanboy in me needs me to see information technology. I've been around the cake long plenty to fill in the blocks in terms of what's missing. Or this is a wire-frame FX shot that's going to exist a very smoothed out, flesh FX shot when it's done.

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Steve Weintraub (9746 Articles Published)

Steven Weintraub launched Collider in the summer of 2005. Every bit Editor-in-main, he has taken the site from a small bedroom operation to having millions of readers effectually the world. If you'd like to follow Steven on Twitter or Instagram, you can expect plenty of breaking news, exclusive interviews, and pictures of cats doing stupid things.

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