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Was Kevin Smith Always Shit, Or Was He Not?

Started by DukeDeMondo, March 23, 2019, 12:23:33 AM

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DukeDeMondo

I used to be a terrible man for Kevin Smith. Och. House was coming down with Buddy Christs and Bluntmens and Chronics and comics that all took place between the trailer for Chasing Amy and the second act of Dogma and soundtracks and things that said about how I wasn't even supposed to be wherever I was at that particular time and all sorts of stuff. Loved the man.

I loved Clerks unreservedly. Sacrosanct sort of stuff. Mallrats I loved despite the fact that the last twenty minutes were garbage. Chasing Amy I loved despite the fact that it's utterly fucking rank at its core. The ups and downs of how rank it is have all been discussed elsewhere and there's little point rehearsing it all here. But despite everything, it was largely funny and touching and I liked it.

Dogma was bollocks for the most part. Complete bin. Terrible waste of both a cracking old notion and a spectacular eruption of proper A+ Last Temptation level controversy. Two hours of folk sitting about explaining the plot to each other.

Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back is embarrassing beyond measure, but it's not without the the odd LOL. "You are the ones who are the ball lickers" still makes me laugh sometimes if I think of it when I'm walking to this place or the next.

I liked Jersey Girl. I think it's sad that the foul reviews convinced him it was worthless, because it's not. It's perfectly fine.

Clerks 2 was really rather affecting at the time and it had a genuine warmth about it and as these things go I'd take it in over Trainspotting 2 any day that the both of them arrived at the door looking to come in and sit down for a while.

I tolerated the Zack and Miri even though it was a blatant case of the teacher sucking off the student, or poking their fingers up inside of them, whatever way it worked, and even though it has one of the worst lines I've ever heard uttered in a film that wasn't written by Richard Curtis.

Red State was a really pleasant surprise. Genuinely strange picture that still holds up, I reckon. Maybe the only one worth holding onto, Clerks aside.

I've seen nothing since. No Tusks nor Yoga Whatsits nor whatever other nonsense he's been coming up with lately, these wacky old ideas germinating across these legions of podcasts that intersect at a moment's notice and all last for three or four hours and all seem to culminate in films with titles like fucking Captain Bianco Versus The Two-Toothed-Tits Of Wild Old Octopus Pete or whatever the fuck. I dunno. I know there's a new Jay And Bob picture in production. I'll probably see it. I do enjoy his lecture / stand-up things. They're good fun, those.

Anyway a week or so ago I decided to introduce my partner to Mallrats. I'd mentioned it before for there were are certain comedies from the 1990s that she enjoys and that have a sort of surface similarity – Empire Records and the like – and I figured she'd probably enjoy this too. Then we went to see Captain Marvel and the wee Mallrats reference in that brought a wee glow to my bones and poured a load more fuel on this "We're gon' watch Mallrats shortly" thing I had going on in my head and before long we were sat down with this Mallrats, and I was confident enough that good times were about to be had. Because Mallrats is good, like. This is what I believed away deep down into my atoms. Mallrats is really tight and really funny until it isn't, until it falls to shit but it's ok because it only falls to shit for a bit at the end. Rest of it's fantastic. That's how I remembered it. Got a kicking at the time because it wasn't Clerks, but that wasn't really fair, it does what it does really well. Leave it alone.

Well. It's fucking awful. Awful. I sat there cringing and clutching at the cushions till there was more of the sofa was part of me than I was. Fucking abysmal. Not just because of all the weird, creepy shit that I'd forgot about and that he'd never get away with nowadays: the crashing into the changing rooms every so often, the 15 year old nymph, all that muck. It was just absolute fucking pish. Ropes and ropes of pish streaming every which way. The timing of every joke was off by a quarter of a mile. The script is nowhere near as sharp as I remembered it being. Jason Lee does good yack, but that's it. That's all it has going for it.

And "Brenda?" was pretty funny. I laughed at that.

But it is fucking garbage.

And I once loved it. Loved it dearly. Watched it over and over.

I also discovered, because my DVD is in storage, that the version that's now most widely available and easiest to obtain is this two hour plus "Director's Cut" that's filled with all the fucking old diseased old duck that Smith admitted in the commentary to the original release that he was a madman for thinking was ever any use to anyone and that he was absolutely right to fling to fuck. And now this seems to be the definitive version, the version with all this crap back in.

We sourced the proper one eventually but I really wish we hadn't bothered.

I dread to think what would happen if I were to sit down with Clerks another time. I mean, something in me tells me that no, Clerks would still be pretty magical, it would still glow in all the right sorts of ways, but I dunno. It's a chance I'm not prepared to take.

As an aside, shortly after I moved to London I was wandering about the Waterstones near Piccadilly Circus and I looked to my left and who was standing there but Kevin Smith himself. Nobody near him. He'd just completed this huge big book signing that had been going on most of the evening and was just chilling out for a bit before heading back to his hotel or wherever. And I looked at him and thought "three, four years ago I'd have been on my knees sucking the sweat out of your fucking trousers. And now I couldn't care less that you're standing there. You might as well be standing on Mount Vesuvius. You might as well be Andy Crane. Or even just a bit of Andy Crane. His shoulders or whatever. Could not give a fuck."

I felt a bit sad, that I'd felt like that. That's how I felt after suffering through Mallrats the other Sunday, there, too. Sad.

"The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger."

I'm holding on my way, them old ways are ways behind, but my hands remain fucking minging so I dunno what's going on.

I thought those films were fucking good. The good ones, I mean. They were good. Really good.

And if Mallrats is any indication, they were not good. They were fucking horrible.

Red State, though. Excellent, still. Red State. Although I wish it had ended without pulling that Psycho at the end all "Here's what really happened, if you want to know the truth of it." I didn't want to know the truth of it. I'd rather they'd have left it that what seemed to happen had happened or it hadn't, who knows. It could have been filed away with something like Michael Tolkin's The Rapture or something like this but they fucked it up, the whole thing.

Kevin Smith anyway.

We were arguing about fucking Jackie Brown a couple nights ago. Marilyn Manson a few nights before. If we can argue about Jackie Brown and talk about Marilyn Manson in 2019 we can talk about Kevin Smith. That's what I think.

Kelvin

His shit films are almost worth it for that one post.

St_Eddie

#2
Clerks still holds up as a snapshot of a generation, even though I have little interest in watching it now that I hurtle towards middle-age.  I absolutely adored Mallrats when I was a teenager but kinda cringe at it now. Chasing Amy is very good, albeit sullied with some extremely dubious views on the gay community and homosexuality in general.  Dogma is excellent and quite possibly Smith's best film.  Everything after that... eehhhhh.

His worst film is easily Yoga Hosers.  It's absolutely dreadful.  I'd go into details but it's also very forgettable.  There were little sausage nazi men, played by Kevin Smith and a golem.  That's about all that I can recall of it, other than the fact that the entire thing was an exercise in nepotism, given that it stars Kevin Smith's daughter (and her real life friend; Johnny Depp's daughter).

Jay & Silent Bob Strikes Back is an embarrassment.  I'm ashamed to say that I loved it as a teenager.  The jewel theif subplot is total bullshit and the humour is real scraping the bottom of the barrel stuff (fart gags, sheep shagging and cock knocking ahoy).  Kevin Smith is currently filming the sequel that no-one ever asked for.

Red State is fairly good for the first two acts and a bit but ruined by the lack of budget required to film the intended ending.  That ending (the four horsemen of the apocalypse) would have made the film a cult classic but alas, it was not to be.  It also doesn't help that John Goodman gives a career worst performance in it.  I'm surprised that his character wasn't a literal phone, with Goodman's disinterested voice reciting lines through the speaker.

Clerks II is a betrayal of the first film.  Not only in terms of humour (a donkey sex show is the nadir) but also with the fucking song and dance number in the middle of the movie.  That would have never happened in the universe of the first film.  The pussy troll scene almost makes the terrible new character's inclusion worthwhile.  Almost.

Clerks: The Animated Series is bloomin' marvelous though, it has to be said.  Like Clerks II, it's not a bit like the first film but that's easier to accept given that it's a cartoon with cartoon logic.  I love that the second episode is a clip show, which only shows clips from the first episode.  That's inspired.  Also, the line "who's driving?  Oh my God, bear's driving!  How can that be?!" is immortal.

Zack & Miri Make a Porno is surprisingly decent.  Better than a movie titled Zack & Miri Make a Porno has any right to be, at any rate.  It's surprisingly heartfelt.  In actuality, Kevin Smith wasn't even a user of pot until the latter half of filming Zack and Miri Make a Porno (thanks to Seth Rogen's influence). That's right; the stoner icon wasn't even a stoner when he made those Jay and Silent Bob movies! Ironically, many feel (and I'd agree) that his filmmaking standards have fallen ever since he started habitually toking.  You know how when you get absolutely baked on green, you might sometimes write something down (for example; a poem, an idea for a story or a joke) and think that it's brilliant?  You also know how when you sober up, you look at what you wrote down the previous day and you immediately realise that it's a load of bollocks?  Yeah, Kevin Smith takes what he wrote down when stoned and films it, whilst also being stoned.  Weed killed Kevin Smith's talent.  Well, actually that's a little like saying guns kill people.  Seth Rogen was the gunman.  Weed was the bullet.

Still, I should be thankful to Stoner-era Kevin because without him and his bong, we never would have gotten Tusk.  It's a bad film but I saw real potential within it and it inspired me to make a fan edit and I now feel a strange kind of ownership of Tusk.  Anyone who's ever spent any amount of significant time editing a specific film will know that due to the sheer amount of time it takes, you end up developing a bond with the film that you're editing.  You come to know it like the back of your hand and at the end of the process, you have a version of the film which is tailored specifically to your tastes.  To use a terrible analogy, it's akin to a sweaty passionate liaison with a heavily flawed woman that ends with her getting pregnant and giving birth to a baby whom you adore.

Obligatory link to my fan edit of Tusk (which turns it into a half hour short film) - Tusk - Shortened, Sharpened and Polished.

Yes, this entire post has been one great big excuse to plug my shitty fan edit.

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 23, 2019, 01:54:57 AM

Obligatory link to my fan edit of Tusk (which turns it into a half hour short film) - Tusk - Shortened, Sharpened and Polished.

Yes, this entire post has been one great big excuse to plug my shitty fan edit.

Got a "Not Found - 404 Error." Which is indeed better than the actual film.

St_Eddie

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on March 23, 2019, 12:23:33 AM
And "Brenda?" was pretty funny. I laughed at that.

I never got that joke.  I'm assuming that it was a reference to another film that the actress was in?

chveik


McChesney Duntz

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 23, 2019, 02:16:17 AM
I never got that joke.  I'm assuming that it was a reference to another film that the actress was in?

Shannen Doherty was most famous for playing a character named Brenda on the US teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 in the early nineties.

St_Eddie

Quote from: McChesney Duntz on March 23, 2019, 02:15:32 AM
Got a "Not Found - 404 Error." Which is indeed better than the actual film.


Thanks for letting me know.  I guess that Google must have deleted it for copyright infringement at some point.  I'm currently re-uploading it, packaged in a rar to hopefully stop it from getting flagged again.  It'll mean that anyone who wants to watch it will have to download it, I'm afraid, as streaming it won't be an option.  I'll post again within this thread once it's finished uploading (a couple of hours or so).

Quote from: McChesney Duntz on March 23, 2019, 02:22:02 AM
Shannen Doherty was most famous for playing a character named Brenda on the US teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 in the early nineties.

Ah, I thought that it would be something like that.  Ta.

St_Eddie

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on March 23, 2019, 12:23:33 AM
I tolerated the Zack and Miri even though it was a blatant case of the teacher sucking off the student, or poking their fingers up inside of them, whatever way it worked, and even though it has one of the worst lines I've ever heard uttered in a film that wasn't written by Richard Curtis.

I'll bite.  What was the line?

The first Kevin Smith film I watched was Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and I hated it. I placed it alongside Half Baked and Pick of Destiny, in that category of 'stoner films' for people who have never actually smoked weed but have a cartoonish conception of what it would be like. Which turns out to be fairly accurate, because Smith says he didn't smoke until he was introduced to it by Seth Rogen on the set of Zack and Miri.

I didn't see Clerks until about 2008. Well after its moment, but I actually liked it. I  thought it held up good enough, if you go into it knowing that it's something made on a shoestring budget with amateur actors, etc.

So then I watched Clerks 2 and that was mostly okay. Apart from the 'donkey show' at the end, which seemed like Kevin was trying to jump on a gross-out comedy bandwagon that had passed and died maybe four or five years prior.

Red State was genuinely good and I would watch more of his films if I thought they were in that mold.

Have not seen the other ones. I've seen some of his Evenings Withs, and they were pretty good, but I think he has told all of his best stories by now. I found his 'walking up the ramp to the Millennium Falcon' story tortuously slow, and too much of an advert for a not-great film.

DukeDeMondo

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 23, 2019, 02:30:48 AM
I'll bite.  What was the line?

It was - oh Jesus I can barely bring myself to type it...

"We were supposed to fuck... but we ended up making love."

Christ! That might not be it exactly, I can't find the exact quote online, but it's near enough. Aw GOD. God in his Heaven. Fuck me. Obviously the delivery had a lot to do with it too.

2nd worst line I've ever heard in anything ever. Well, in anything that was otherwise pretty decent. Just a notch below Andie MacDowell's "Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed" in Four Weddings

Quote from: Kelvin on March 23, 2019, 12:57:00 AM
His shit films are almost worth it for that one post.

Ach thank you, Kelvin.

I should have read Eddie's post properly before making my own, because I said similiar things. However, I take issue with him on this:

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 23, 2019, 01:54:57 AM
That's right; the stoner icon wasn't even a stoner when he made those Jay and Silent Bob movies!

Stoner icon? I don't think so. No one suggests putting on a Kevin Smith film when they are stoned.

He's a godbothering, highly-strung stress monkey who always makes this 'funny' face in photos:



He might affect a slacker image but he is the exact opposite of relaxed. You can see that in his book, where he's always stropping and bitching about how his failures are someone's else's fault. Cop Out failed because Bruce Willis was being a knob - but everything else about it was brilliant! Bruce sabotaged my comedy gold. And Zack and Miri was a guaranteed success with a big SNL star, but they didn't give it the proper promotion.

He's not chill at all.

St_Eddie

I've finished uploading my fan edit of Tusk to Google Drive.   Hopefully it'll work this time (please let me know if there are any problems).  Simply download and unzip the rar...



Quote from: Default to the negative on March 23, 2019, 03:08:46 AM
Stoner icon? I don't think so. No one suggests putting on a Kevin Smith film when they are stoned.

Are you sure about that?  I don't think that it's crazy to say that the characters of Jay & Silent Bob are stoner icons, in the same vein as Cheech & Chong.  I used to get high and put on Jay & Silent Bob movies whilst hanging out with my friends.  A lot.  So there's at least one person who suggested putting on a Kevin Smith film when they were stoned.

Quote from: Default to the negative on March 23, 2019, 03:08:46 AM
He might affect a slacker image but he is the exact opposite of relaxed. You can see that in his book, where he's always stropping and bitching about how his failures are someone's else's fault. Cop Out failed because Bruce Willis was being a knob - but everything else about it was brilliant! Bruce sabotaged my comedy gold. And Zack and Miri was a guaranteed success with a big SNL star, but they didn't give it the proper promotion.

He's not chill at all.

Ah, come on now.  He is a pretty chill dude by all accounts.  I'll grant you that he's got a very thin skin and doesn't take criticism well but we've all got our faults.

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on March 23, 2019, 12:23:33 AM
Clerks 2 was really rather affecting at the time and it had a genuine warmth about it and as these things go I'd take it in over Trainspotting 2 any day that the both of them arrived at the door looking to come in and sit down for a while.

Great post. And I too found Clerks 2 really decent and heartfelt.

SavageHedgehog

I think his stuff is very of its time. I've never been a huge fan, but I bought Clerks: The Animated Series in a Charity Shop last year knowing it's fairly rare in the UK. It was enjoyable, but I wouldn't say it's aged very well. For a start there's the wall-to-wall gay jokes. They aren't especially vicious or anything, but they are relentless. But the crux for me is that doing an episode which parodies Temple of Doom via The Last Starfighter and Bad News Bears probably felt real exciting in 2000, like a secret handshake enjoyed by yourself and a select few. Now, it's pretty dime-a-dozen, even hackneyed. A lot of his early stuff feels a bit like that.

St_Eddie

Quote from: SavageHedgehog on March 23, 2019, 08:09:21 AM
...the crux for me is that doing an episode which parodies Temple of Doom via The Last Starfighter and Bad News Bears probably felt real exciting in 2000, like a secret handshake enjoyed by yourself and a select few. Now, it's pretty dime-a-dozen, even hackneyed.

But, but, but... the poncho that's my favourite episode.  Michael McKean as the Mola Ram figure and the phrase "Sexy Randal the Pharaoh Wizard!"  What more could one possibly ask for?!

Gregory Torso

Tusk remains perhaps the worst film I've ever sat through - and I've spent countless wasted hours drunk watching shitty zero effort horror films on Amazon Prime and Netflix. It's just a massive waste of everyone's time, not least the fucking viewer - it isn't funny, it isn't creepy, it isn't creative or interesting, in any way, and was the final bit of sellotape on the fridge that consolidated my hatred for Johnny Depp.

Clerks, I liked when I saw it as a teenager, when any grainy low budget American film filled with pseudo-intellectual nonsense and cool music was extremely my thing (hi, Richard Linklater's Slacker!*), but I doubt I'd get much from it now.

The other Kevin Smith stuff I've seen has ranged from OK, watchable but with extremely naive/questionable moral and or philosophical points (Dogma, Chasing Amy) to utter self-indulgent embarrassing shite (Jay And Silent Bob, Mallrats). Eh.



*I mean, that's vastly superier to Clerks, but it's a good refrence for the kind of films I thought were cool.

SavageHedgehog

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 23, 2019, 09:04:43 AM
But, but, but... the poncho that's my favourite episode.  Michael McKean as the Mola Ram figure and the phrase "Sexy Randal the Pharaoh Wizard!"  What more could one possibly ask for?!

Not saying it wasn't enjoyable, just dated, in a way that seems to me like a microcosm of his wider legacy. The excitement of the Death Star/contractors conversation has been replaced with the tedious inevitability of the themed Ready Player One promo posters.

The Culture Bunker

Starting my university at the arse-end of the 1990s (20 years this Autumn, where did that go?), I do agree his films held an appeal to the lads I knew who liked nothing better than to get stoned off their tits. I saw a fair few Clerks/Mallrats posters in that time, but as someone with zero interest in weed, I never quite saw the appeal, so it's a tad surprising to find out the guy behind him wasn't partaking either. Huh.

I did quite like Dogma, but that may have been the Salma Hayek factor.  I agree with the "Jay and Silent Bob..." was just embarrassing and I've seen nothing he's made since. And his comic book store in LA was (maybe still is) shit too.

Shaky

Dogma was where the rot set in for me. I remember reading a leak of an earlier version of the script back then and wondering how on earth the director of Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy was going to pull all that off. Not terribly well, as it turned out. A real curate's egg but certainly embarrassing as fuck even back in 1999.

I must stick up for Clerks 2 as well. While it was nowhere near as funny as the original, it did catch up with the aging characters in a very believable way which was a pleasant surprise. Randall's speech in the prison scene is some of Smith's finest writing. For as little as I care for what Kev's up to now, I do genuinely think the recently aborted Clerks 3 could've been good. Shame Anderson doesn't want to do it.

St_Eddie

I forgot to say; for those of you with the DVD of Clerks: The Animated Series, be sure to listen to the commentary track.  It's one of my all time favourites.  It's Kevin and the cast being jovial but also getting into the nitty gritty of why the show failed, in a very humorous way.  It's as entertaining as it is candid and insightful.

undeliberated

This thread made me curious enough to watch Mallrats. So bad it made me think of Derek.

DukeDeMondo

Quote from: undeliberated on March 23, 2019, 01:00:21 PM
This thread made me curious enough to watch Mallrats. So bad it made me think of Derek.

What version did you watch, though? The real 90 minute version that starts with T.S. getting dumped by his girlfriend in his - or her - front yard, or the horrible "Director's Cut" that seems to be everywhere now and that opens with a bunch of shit about some gala dinner that goes on for fucking ages and some nonsense with a gun on a roof. I mean, it turns out neither are any good, but the 90 minute version is certainly a fuck of a lot better than that 2 hour plus thing that seems now to have superseded it.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on March 23, 2019, 12:23:33 AM
Captain Bianco Versus The Two-Toothed-Tits Of Wild Old Octopus Pete

I'm genuinely annoyed that this film doesn't exist, and the only way I'll ever forgive you is if you make it for me.

Like you I used to really like his work, but haven't bothered with any of his films in ages, and the only thing I've seen of Smith's recently is his tv pilot Hollyweed. It's kind of okay, there's way too many porn related jokes and he's tediously weed obsessed in it but there's the odd decent line, Adam Brody plays an obnoxious producer type well and I guess it's amiable enough stuff, though it's definitely no tragedy that a full series wasn't commissioned.

Red State would have been a legit great film if he had the budget to film the rapture ending instead of John Goodman spewing exposition for 10 minutes. I think people put up with Kevin Smith's mediocrity in film making for the same reason they put up with Keanu Reeves' terrible acting - they seem like nice guys?

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Default to the negative on March 23, 2019, 03:08:46 AM
Stoner icon? I don't think so. No one suggests putting on a Kevin Smith film when they are stoned.

He's a godbothering, highly-strung stress monkey who always makes this 'funny' face in photos:





&, lest we forget, his 'warlock', stay-at-home-&-off-the-grid "hacker" in "die hard 4 the umpteenth time". fuck's sake.   

DukeDeMondo

Quote from: Carpool Dragon on March 23, 2019, 02:16:48 PM
Red State would have been a legit great film if he had the budget to film the rapture ending instead of John Goodman spewing exposition for 10 minutes. I think people put up with Kevin Smith's mediocrity in film making for the same reason they put up with Keanu Reeves' terrible acting - they seem like nice guys?

He didn't even have to go Full Rapture. All he needed were the trumpets, and he had those. That was eerie as fuck, and totally unexpected. That's where it should have ended. John Goodman wondering what the fuck was happening and what the fuck was about to happen. Then it pulled the Psycho and sucked all of the weird magic and the wonder out of the whole fucking thing. Absolutely terrible decision.

That's something for Eddie to sort out maybe. Fix Red State. Never worry about these bloody Tusks. Make Red State end like it should

Sin Agog

Last time I watched it, I got the distinct impression that Clerks was made to fill in a void later filled by reddit, facebook groups, aintitcool, discussion forums, blogs and the like.  Unless you happened to stumble across others who were the victims of the same passion for regressive nerdy shite, you were forced to just make do with bits and pieces of peripherally geeky chat here and there.  Now that all of those things do exist, Clerks feels pretty redundant.

greenman

I'm with Eddie on thinking Dogma is probably his best film, not sure I would call it classic cinema but I think its mostly well made with some substance which makes the Jay/Bob stuff much easier to tolerate.

St_Eddie

Is nobody arsed to watch my Tusk fan edit?  Come on, folks.  Don't make me beg!  Because you know that I will.  I'm shameless like that.

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on March 23, 2019, 02:31:58 PM
That's something for Eddie to sort out maybe. Fix Red State. Never worry about these bloody Tusks. Make Red State end like it should

Eh, I really feel that it needs to end with the avenging angel and the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  However, just for you, I'll do this at some point.  Watch this space...