Kevin Smith
Kevin Patrick Smith is an American writer, director, producer, film editor, and actor. He came to prominence with the low-budget comedy film Clerks, which he wrote, directed, co-produced, co-edited, and acted in as the character Silent Bob of stoner duo Jay and Silent Bob. These characters also appeared in Smith's later films Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks II, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, and Clerks III, which are set primarily in his home state of New Jersey. While not strictly sequential, the films have crossover plot elements, character references, and a shared canon known as the "View Askewniverse", named after Smith's production company View Askew Productions, which he co-founded with Scott Mosier.
He is a supporting actor in film, his most prominent role playing a rogue computer hacker in Live Free or Die Hard, and has made cameos in other movies. His other non-"View Askewniverse" films written and directed by Smith include the comedy-drama Jersey Girl, the sex comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Cop Out, the horror Red State, and the comedy horror Tusk. He has directed numerous episodes of television for series such as The Flash, Supergirl, and The Goldbergs, and created the animated television series Clerks: The Animated Series and Netflix's Masters of the Universe.
Smith owns Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Red Bank, New Jersey, a comic book store which became the setting for the reality television show Comic Book Men. As a podcaster, Smith co-hosts several shows on his SModcast Podcast Network, including SModcast, Fatman Beyond, and the live show Hollywood Babble-On. He is known for participating in long, humorous Q&A sessions that are often filmed for release, beginning with the DVD release of An Evening with Kevin Smith.
Early life
Kevin Patrick Smith was born on August 2, 1970, in Red Bank, New Jersey, the son of Grace, a homemaker, and Donald E. Smith, a postal worker. He has two siblings: an older sister, Virginia, and an older brother, Donald Jr. He was raised in a Catholic household in the nearby clamming town of Highlands.Smith's childhood was scheduled around his father's late shifts at the post office. His father grew to despise his job, which greatly influenced Smith, who remembers his father finding it difficult on some days to get up and go to work. Smith vowed never to work at something that he did not enjoy.
Smith attended Henry Hudson Regional High School, where he was a B and C student, videotaped basketball games, and produced Saturday Night Live-style sketch comedy. An overweight teen, he developed into a comedic observer of life to socialize with friends and girls. After high school, Smith attended The New School in New York City, but did not graduate. Smith met Jason Mewes while working at a youth center; they became friends after discovering a mutual interest in comic books.
Career
As a filmmaker
On his 21st birthday, Smith saw Richard Linklater's comedy Slacker. Impressed that Linklater set and shot the film in his hometown of Austin, Texas, rather than on a soundstage in a major city, Smith was inspired to become a filmmaker, and to set films where he lived. He has said: "It was the movie that got me off my ass; it was the movie that lit a fire under me, the movie that made me think, 'Hey, I could be a filmmaker.' And I had never seen a movie like that before ever in my life." He assembled a library of independent filmmakers like Linklater, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee and Hal Hartley to draw from.Smith attended Vancouver Film School for four months, where he met longtime collaborators Scott Mosier and Dave Klein. Unlike them, Smith left halfway through the course, figuring he knew enough to proceed and wanting to save money for his first film.
Smith moved back to New Jersey and got his old job back at a convenience store in the Leonardo section of Middletown Township, New Jersey. He decided to set his film, Clerks, at the store, borrowing the a-day-in-the-life structure from the Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing. Smith maxed out more than a dozen credit cards, and sold his much-treasured comic book collection, to raise $27,575 to make the film, while saving money by casting friends and acquaintances in most roles. Clerks was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994, where it won the Filmmaker's Trophy. At a restaurant following the screening, Miramax Films executive Harvey Weinstein invited Smith to join him at his table, where he offered to buy the film. In May 1994, it went to the Cannes International Film Festival, where it won both the Prix de la Jeunesse and the International Critics' Week Prize. Released in October 1994 in two cities, the film went on to play in 50 markets, never playing on more than 50 screens at any given time. Despite the limited release, it was a critical and financial success, earning $3.1 million. Initially, the film received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA for sexually graphic language. Miramax hired Alan Dershowitz to sue the MPAA. At an appeals screening, a jury of members of the National Association of Theatre Owners reversed the MPAA's decision, and the film was given an R rating. The movie had a profound effect on the independent film community. According to producer and author John Pierson, it is considered one of the two most influential film debuts in the 1990s, along with The Brothers McMullen.
Smith's second film, Mallrats, Jason Lee's debut as a leading man, did not fare as well as expected. It received a critical drubbing and earned only $2.2 million at the box office despite playing on more than 500 screens. Mallrats was more successful in the home video market.
Widely hailed as Smith's best film, 1997's Chasing Amy marked what Quentin Tarantino called "a quantum leap forward" for Smith. Starring Mallrats alumni Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck, the $250,000 film earned $12 million at the box office, wound up on a number of critics' year-end best lists, and won two Independent Spirit Awards. The film received some criticism from members of the lesbian community, who felt that it reinforced the perception that lesbians merely need to find the right man. Smith, whose brother Donald is gay, found this accusation frustrating, as he has endeavored to be a pro-LGBT filmmaker, believing that sexuality is more fluid, with social taboos, not sexual desire, preventing more people from expressing bisexuality.
Smith's fourth film, Dogma, featured an all-star cast and was mired in controversy. A religious-themed comedy that starred a post-Good Will Hunting Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, as well as Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, George Carlin, Alan Rickman, Linda Fiorentino, and Lee and Mewes, it was criticized by the Catholic League. The film debuted at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, out of competition. Released on 800 screens in November 1999, the $10 million film earned $30 million.
Smith then focused the spotlight on the two characters who had appeared in supporting roles in his previous four films. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back featured an all-star cast, with many familiar faces returning from those four films. Affleck and Damon appear as themselves filming a mock sequel to Good Will Hunting. The $20 million film earned $30 million at the box office and received mixed reviews from critics.
Jersey Girl, with Affleck, Liv Tyler, George Carlin, and Raquel Castro, Smith's first film outside the View Askewniverse, marked a new direction in Smith's career. The film took a critical beating as it was seen as, in Smith's own words, "Gigli 2", because it co-starred Affleck and his then girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez. Smith heavily reedited the film to reduce Lopez's role to just a few scenes, but the film did poorly at the box office. Budgeted at $35 million, it earned $36 million.
In the 2006 sequel Clerks II, Smith revisited the Dante and Randal characters from his first film. Roundly criticized before its release, the film won favorable reviews as well as two awards. It marked Smith's third trip to the Cannes International Film Festival, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation. The $5 million film, starring Jeff Anderson, Brian O'Halloran, Rosario Dawson, Mewes, Jennifer Schwalbach and Smith reprising his role as Silent Bob, earned $25 million.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno was originally announced in March 2006 as Smith's second non-Askewniverse film. The film began shooting on January 18, 2008, in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, and wrapped on March 15, 2008. It stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as the title characters who decide to make a low-budget pornographic film to solve their money problems. It was released on October 31, 2008, and ran into many conflicts getting an "R" rating. Rogen said:
Smith took the film through the MPAA's appeals process and received an R rating without having to make any edits. Zack and Miri Make a Porno was considered a box-office "flop". It was hurt by "tepid media advertising for a movie with the title PORNO". In the aftermath of the film's performance, Smith's and Weinstein's business relationship became "frayed". Zack and Miri opened #2 behind High School Musical 3: Senior Year with $10,682,000 from 2,735 theaters, an average of $3,906. The "bankable" Rogen experienced his "worst box-office opening ever". In an interview with Katla McGlynn of the Huffington Post, Smith said:
It was announced in 2009 that Smith had signed on to direct A Couple of Dicks, a buddy-cop comedy written by the Cullen Brothers and starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. Due to controversy surrounding the original title, it was changed to A Couple of Cops, then reverted to its original title due to negative reaction, before finally settling on the title Cop Out. The film, shot from June to August 2009, involves a pair of veteran cops tracking down a stolen vintage baseball card, and was released on February 26, 2010, to poor reviews; it was the first film Smith directed but did not write. Cop Out opened at number two at the box office and was mired in controversy, mostly over reported conflicts on the set between Smith and Willis. It was the last time Smith worked with a major studio, leading him to return to his independent film roots.
In September 2010, Smith started work on Red State, an independently financed horror film loosely inspired by the Westboro Baptist Church and its pastor, Fred Phelps. Weinstein and his brother Bob, who had been involved in the distribution of Smith's films except Mallrats and Cop Out, declined to support Red State. The film stars Michael Parks, John Goodman and Melissa Leo. Smith had said he would auction off rights to the $4 million film at a controversial event following its debut screening at Sundance but instead kept the rights to the film himself and self-distributed it under the SModcast Pictures banner. The January 2011 premiere drew protests from a half-dozen members of the church, along with many more who counter-protested Westboro members. Smith explained his decision as a way to return to an era when marketing a film did not cost four times as much as the film itself, a situation he called "decadent and deadening".Red State was a box office bomb, earning just $1,104,682, and opened to poor reviews; the critical consensus was "Red State is an audacious and brash affair that ultimately fails to provide competent scares or thrills." In April 2011, Smith said that Red State had made its budget back by making $1 million on the first leg of the tour, $1.5 million from a handful of foreign sales and $3 million from a domestic distribution deal for VOD.
Smith had said before Red State that he would soon retire from directing, and announced that his last movie would be Clerks III. In December 2013, he said he would continue to make films, but only ones that were uniquely his, as opposed to generic ones "anybody could make".
In 2013, Smith directed Tusk, a horror film inspired by a story Smith and Mosier read about a Gumtree ad for a man who rents out a room in his house for free on the condition that the respondent dresses as a walrus for two hours per day. The project began pre-production in September 2013, and was shot in November of that year. Released September 19, 2014, it received mixed reviews.
Before Tusk release, Smith wrote the script for a spin-off of the film, which he titled Yoga Hosers. The film began filming in August 2014, and was released in 2016. It stars Smith's daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, and Lily-Rose Depp, reprising their two minor characters from Tusk, with Johnny Depp playing his inspector character from the earlier film.
Smith revealed at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con that he had written the script for a film called Moose Jaws, which he described as "Jaws with a moose", and which is planned to be the third film in his True North trilogy.
Smith wrote and directed one segment, Halloween, of the 2016 horror anthology film Holidays, in which each segment takes place during a different holiday.
In June 2017, Smith started shooting KillRoy Was Here, a horror film based on the graffiti phenomenon. Directed by Smith, the script was co-written with Andrew McElfresh, marking the first time he shared writing credit. It represents a retooling of their Anti-Claus film, which was initially canceled after the release of Krampus, due to the two stories' similarity. The film crew was mostly made up of students of the Ringling College of Art and Design, with shooting continuing over every semester break.
In 2017, due to obstacles getting Clerks 3 or Mallrats 2 produced, Smith decided to write and direct a Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back sequel instead, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. It was scheduled to be filmed in September 2017, but shooting was postponed to February and March 2019. The first trailer for the film was released on July 18, 2019. Smith announced a tour to accompany the film.
On October 1, 2019, Smith announced on Instagram that Clerks III was happening and that Jeff Anderson, who had retired, had agreed to reprise his role as Randal. The film was released on September 13, 2022.
In 2024, Smith released The 4:30 Movie, focusing on a group of teenagers in the 1980s who spent a day "theatre-hopping", in Monmouth County, New Jersey.