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AN INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN SMITH. AN ARTICLE BY: MATHEW TSCHIRGI Kevin Smith is a director, writer, and actor that the average movie watcher might not recognize. None of his four movies have ever made a ton of money in the box office: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. Smith not only writes and directs his movies, he also acts as the part of Silent Bob. His latest movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, has just completed production. Instead of asking many questions about Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I asked one question about that film and a few about more obscure stuff he's either worked on or is in works right now. Time was very tight, as more than the usual number of interviewers were on the conference call. SIGNAL: Why did you pick the title "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?" for this latest movie? KEVIN SMITH: Um, what do you think? I don't know, it's kind of a tongue in cheek reference to another smaller movie I once saw in the 80's. SIGNAL: What's the status on the Preacher movie? I read somewhere that you were kinda involved as a producer on that, and then, what happened with that? KEVIN SMITH: Uh, we were exec producers on the flick. We told Garth that, Scott Mosier and I, my producer, "Hey, if it helps get the movie made, then definitely throw our names around." It really didn't help get the movie made, so, apparently, we absolutely have no juice in the business. I think it comes down to our names kinda became a detriment on the flick. I mean, we did Dogma, and people saw what happened with the religious right on that movie so, people tend to shy away from Preacher. It's probably only a matter of time before somebody's smart enough to go, like, "Hey, this movie could work." But right now people are kinda shying away from the idea of doing another religious movie, or somewhat religious movie… A movie that appears to be about religion that the religious right gets all up in arms about. But, Garth wrote the script probably from his first eight issues of the Preacher story arc and it was really great. SIGNAL: Is the Dogma documentary gonna be on the Dogma "special edition" DVD? KEVIN SMITH: No, it's off. Apparently, Disney and Columbia Tri-Star-Columbia Tri-Star released the movie, Disney sold the movie to Columbia Tri-Star for home video. Um, Columbia Tri-Star had this agreement with Disney where Disney said we could approve the content of any DVD or video that you put out. They were sent a "check disc" and when we were going to press with this Special Edition and they really kinda lost it over the documentary. They said it was incendiary, I didn't think it was incendiary at all, really-it just kinda told the story of what happened with the movie. But, basically, they were unwilling, they said, to see that whole subject re-opened with the Catholic League even though, you know, they had nothing to do with the movie any more. They kinda divested themselves of anything that had to do with Dogma. But, still, according to their terms of their agreement with Columbia Tri-Star Home Video, they were allowed to say something like, "Yank it off," and they did and they enforced it. And, finally, Columbia Tri-Star yanked it off. SIGNAL: Any chance the documentary might show up in some form again? KEVIN SMITH: We're going to pop it out on-line. SIGNAL: All right, thank you. KEVIN SMITH: No problem. [Editor's Note. - Mat was going to include a retrospect on Kevin Smith's four movies, but we already have Mat's reviews in the movie reviews section of the website. Instead, I've added this list of all of Kevin Smith's projects.] Movies: Television: Comics: (Kevin Smith really, always wanted to write
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