An Evening With Filmmaker Kevin Smith in Glasgow
Bob May be Silent - Clerks Director Kevin Smith Isn't!
Nov 13, 2009
‘An evening with Kevin Smith’ took place October 12 at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, his only date in Scotland. The filmmaker is originally from New Jersey, and joked that before he came to Scotland he thought it was the New Jersey to England.
Kevin had a hard time understanding accents, with several people having to repeat questions several times. One misunderstanding was when a girl said she was from Bridgeton, and Kevin replied incredulously “You’re pregnant? What are you, three weeks along? I’m more pregnant than you!”
He said about his working style as a director: “I’m not the type of director that goes ‘you’re an antelope surrounded by hungry lions, but they don’t know you’re an antelope...go’!”
Directing Bruce Willis in A Couple of Dicks
About A Couple of Dicks, a cop movie due to be released February 2010, Kevin said he had communication problems with lead Bruce Willis. He said at one point he asked Bruce to look at co-star ‘like the look he gave in an episode of Moonlighting’, to which he asked how Kevin expected him to remember a performance he gave 24 years ago.
While Kevin was clearly keyed up about working with Bruce Willis, he joked we shouldn’t tell Ben Affleck how excited he was.
Ben and Kevin are famous for their jokey relationship, with one of Ben Affleck’s most famous roles in a Kevin Smith film was in Dogma, where he played fallen angel Bartleby.
Dogma: The Controversy Over The Film
The film follows fallen angels Bartleby and Loki as they try to find a way back into heaven. However, if they do this, it will prove that God fallible, and the universe will end. Therefore, God sends one of his angels to a woman who works in an abortion centre. This woman is given the quest of stopping the fallen angels, with the help of Jay and Silent Bob.
The film affected Christians in different ways, with some clergymen emailing Kevin saying they used the film as a way to preach to the younger generation.
However, others disagreed with the satirical look on Christianity, which included a 13th apostle left out the Bible because he was black, and God being played by a woman. These disagreements led to Kevin getting three death threats.
“Someone threw a brick through my window on the day of my daughter’s Christening...that’s not very Christian, is it?” he added with a grin.
Making The Film on Making a Porno
But religious irony does not tend to be a recurring theme in Kevin’s films, with one of his more recent films being Zack and Miri Make a Porno, in which two flatmates decide the quickest way to make a few bucks to pay for their electricity bill is to make their own porn film. Hilarity ensues.
This film was not as successful in the box office as it had been hoped. The overall amount that a film can be expected to make can be estimated from how much it earns during the first weekend of opening. The director told us how shocked he was when his wife told him the film had only made $2.2 million in this time.
Kevin mentioned he was always getting asked by fans their advice to film makers. His answer: go out and do it. He said YouTube is a godsend for making work seen, with instant distribution over the net.
With the lower level of interest coming from higher budget film Zack and Miri Make a Porno than from lower budget cult work Clerks, ‘go out and do it’ seems great advice to any budding film makers. After all, if he can do it, so can you.
