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Kevin Patrick Smith was born on August 2, 1970; he is an American screenwriter, film director and the founder of View Askew Productions. He has also enjoyed some success as a comic book writer and actor. Smith's films are often set in his home state of New Jersey, and while not strictly sequential, do feature crossover plot elements, character references, and a shared canon.
Smith was born in Red Bank, New Jersey to Grace, a homemaker, and Donald Smith, a postal worker. He has an older sister, Virginia, and an older brother, Donald Jr. Smith. He was raised in the Catholic religion and attended Henry Hudson Regional High School in Highlands, The New School for Social Research in New York and the Vancouver Film School. He majored in film, but dropped out halfway through the program he was in, electing to take a partial tuition reimbursement in order to help finance his first film. Smith is married to Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, with whom he has a daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, born in 1999. He named his daughter after the character from Batman: The Animated Series. Smith regularly attends Roman Catholic mass. He never smoked until his debut film, Clerks where he used the cigarettes as a prop, but never actually inhaled. In fact, he has said that prior to filming Clerks he was a staunch non-smoker. Afterwards, he became a two-pack-a-day smoker.
Smith's films often feature the same actors (which are also some of his closest friends), including Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams (for whom he wrote the lead role in Chasing Amy), Jason Mewes, and Matt Damon. Other well-known performers featured in more than one Smith film include Chris Rock, Shannen Doherty, George Carlin, Ethan Suplee, Joe Quesada, Jason Biggs and Alanis Morissette. Some lesser known regulars in Smith's films include Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Scott Mosier, Ernest O'Donnell, John Willyung, Carmen Lee, Jeff Anderson, Brian O'Halloran, Dwight Ewell, Kimberly Loughran, Casey Affleck and Vincent Pereira. Also, he casts himself in nearly all of his movies.
Clerks. is a 1994 film written and directed by Kevin Smith (who also appears in the film in a minor role). Starring Brian O'Halloran as Dante Hicks and Jeff Anderson as Randal Graves, it presents a day in the lives of two shop clerks and their acquaintances. Clerks was the first of Smith's "View Askewniverse" films. It introduces several characters, notably Jay and Silent Bob, who reappear in his later works.
I personally think that this is my second favorite Kevin Smith Film, though it is hard to choose, they are all so good. I like it because of the Black and white and the pure rawness of the copy. How they made it was amazing too. I listen to all the comentary tracks on Clerks X all the time. Kevin can always make me laugh, no matter what he's say and/or doing.
Mallrats is a 1995 film written and directed by Kevin Smith. It is the second to be set in Smith's "View Askewniverse" series of interlocking films set mostly in New Jersey, although the movie was filmed in the Eden Prairie Center Mall, which is located in Minnesota, not New Jersey. As in the other View Askewniverse movies, the characters Jay and Silent Bob figure prominently, and characters and events from other films are discussed. Several cast members, including Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, and Joey Lauren Adams, have gone on to work in several other Smith films. Comic book icon Stan Lee made a cameo appearance, as did Brian O'Halloran, the star of Smith's breakout feature Clerks.
Mallrats was the subject of much critical derision when it was released, with many critics comparing it unfavorably to Smith's first film, Clerks. In his negative review of the film, critic Roger Ebert said "Before Mallrats was released, I chaired a panel that Smith participated in and Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking."
Kevin Smith responded by apologizing for Mallrats at the 1996 Independent Spirit Awards, though he later stated that the apology was made in jest. Nevertheless, the film developed a strong cult following after it was released on video.
Chasing Amy is a 1997 romantic comedy written and directed by Kevin Smith about two comic book artists: Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), a heterosexual male, and Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams), a lesbian-identified woman.
The movie contains frank sexual dialogue, and was originally inspired by a brief scene from an early movie by a friend of Smith's, Guin Turner's Go Fish, wherein one of the lesbian characters imagines her friends passing judgment on her for "selling out" by sleeping with a man. Kevin Smith was dating Joey Lauren Adams while he wrote the script, which was also partly inspired by her.
The film won two awards at the 1998 Independent Spirit Awards (Best Screenplay for Smith and Best Supporting Actor for Jason Lee) and Joey Lauren Adams was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical.
Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum was the Musical Consultant/Producer on this film and wrote music for it.
Dogma is a 1999 comedy film, written and directed by Kevin Smith, who stars in the film along with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman, Bud Cort, Salma Hayek, Chris Rock, Jason Lee, Jason Mewes, George Carlin, Janeane Garofalo, and Alanis Morissette.
Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson, the stars of Smith's debut film Clerks, have cameo roles, as do Smith regulars Scott Mosier, Dwight Ewell, Walt Flanagan and Bryan Johnson.
The religious satire of the Catholic Church throughout the film caused organized protests and much controversy in many countries, which resulted in long delays in releasing it and also at least three serious death threats against Smith.
Aside from some scenes filmed on the New Jersey shore, most of the film was shot in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay as well as a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America honor for Best Screenplay.
This film was rated R by the MPAA “for strong language including sex-related dialogue, violence, crude humor and some drug content”.
Like many of Smith's films, the movie is noted for its heavy use of profanity; The word "fuck" is used 106 times in the film, for a rough average of 0.82 "fuck"s per minute, and the word "shit" is used 38 times in the film, a rough average of about once every 3.34 minutes.
Clerks: The Animated Series
In 2000, Smith and Mosier teamed up with television writer David Mandel (Seinfeld and SNL) to develop an animated television show based on Clerks. This was an idea Smith had been kicking around since the production of Mallrats and, after pitching it to nearly every major television network, ABC TV picked it up for airing in March 2000.
After being delayed to May, Clerks: The Animated Series aired only two episodes, out of order, before being cancelled as a result of poor ratings. The six produced episodes were released on DVD in 2001, marking one of the first occasions in which a very short-lived TV series found success in the DVD format.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) is a film written by, directed and starring Kevin Smith, the fifth to be set in his View Askewniverse, a growing collection of characters and settings that developed out of his cult favorite Clerks. While centered around the two title characters, portrayed by Jason Mewes and Smith, the film features a variety of celebrity cameos, such as Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, Matt Damon, Carrie Fisher, Wes Craven, Joey Lauren Adams, Jeff Anderson, Scott Mosier, Brian O'Halloran, Will Ferrell, Jon Stewart, Shannon Elizabeth, Ali Larter, Mark Hamill, Chris Rock, Eliza Dushku, Sean William Scott, Marc Blucas and Jason Biggs.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is a prime example of the phenomenon of "fanservice" - while maintaining its own plot, the movie has nearly constant in-jokes referencing Smith's previous four films. It also pays tribute to other prominent cult classics, most notably the Star Wars trilogy. The title and logo for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, in particular, are direct references to the second-released Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back.
Smith originally intended this to be the last film to utilize his View Askewniverse, or feature Jay and Silent Bob. Five years later Smith changed his mind and decided to close out the series with Clerks II, resurrecting Jay and Silent Bob in supporting roles. In the end credits for that film, however, it states "Jay and Silent Bob may return one day, but for now they're taking it easy."
The film made $30,085,147 in the domestic market, and an additional $3,703,014 overseas, for a total of $33,788,161 gross in theaters.
Jersey Girl is a 2004 film written and directed by Kevin Smith, and starring Ben Affleck. At $35 million it was Smith's biggest-budget project to date ($10 million of which was Ben Affleck's salary, $4 million to Jennifer Lopez's salary ), but ended up underperforming at the box office while receiving many negative reviews. Only a select few prominent critics reacted favorably, for instance Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars.
Clerks II is the sequel to Kevin Smith's 1994 movie Clerks, and his sixth feature film to be set in the View Askewniverse. The film was released on July 21, 2006; it screened out of competition at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the 2006 Edinburgh International Film Festival.
The film opened in 2,150 theaters on July 21, 2006 and grossed $10,061,132 domestically in its first weekend. As of November 9, 2006 the film's theatrical gross was $24,148,068 domestically, plus an additional $2,668,875 foreign with a budget of $5,000,000. Although it was received with mixed reviews by critics, the View Askewniverse's cult fan base has been fairly positive about the film.
In March of 2006, he first announced he was working on a new, non-Askewniverse comedy. In June of 2007, the name of the comedy was released in an LA Times article as Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Smith announced at the Wizard World Chicago 2006 convention that his next project would be a horror movie as he stated that he wanted to move in a different direction. In April 2007, Smith revealed the title of the horror movie to be Red State and inspired by preacher Fred Phelps or as Smith claimed "very much about that subject matter, that point of view and that position taken to the absolute extreme. It's certainly not Phelps himself but it's very much inspired by a Phelps figure." He plans to shoot Red State back-to-back with Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It has been recently posted on Kevin Smith's website that he has finished the script for Zack and Miri Make a Porno and will soon start on the script for Red State.
Another planned project for Smith is Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers. He has described the project as "My stab at a comic-book/sci-fi movie. It's in the vein of Flash Gordon, something I've noodled with a couple of years. Now I feel we are mature enough filmmakers to tackle it". In an April 2007 post on his blog, he mentioned that he's "planning something special" for his tenth movie. It has been widely speculated that this "special" movie could indeed be Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers.
Another project that has long been in the works is Clerks: Sell Out, the feature-length animated film done in the Clerks: The Animated Series style. The fate of this project is currently unknown.
I hold every single Kevin Smith movie close to my heart. I love all of his films so much and I own all of them. But I agree so much with almost anything he says. He just seems so knowledgeable. His films speak to me. He even inspired me to make films and now I write constantaly trying to hit what I'm trying to get out there. Me and my friends might be putting together a short film this year. During the school year. I really want to do this, I know it'll be hard, but I'll have fun doing what I want to do. I'd love to do make movies with my buddies. Because like I've heard, Misery loves company.
