Clerk. revolves around Kevin Smith and takes a look at the career of the indie filmmaker going all the way back to his acclaimed directorial debut, Clerks. The documentary touches on every facet of his work, from the recently revived View Askewniverse to his horror efforts and his surviving a heart attack and coming out on the other side eager to get to work.
Ahead of the film's digital debut, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with Kevin Smith to discuss Clerk., revisiting the highs and lows of his past, and the future to come from the filmmaker.
Screen Rant: So you're well known for wearing your heart on your sleeve and being so open about everything, but this really feels like the most unprecedented look that we've had of you behind the scenes. How did that come about working with Malcolm Ingram for this?
Kevin Smith: Malcolm I've known since I met him at the Toronto Film Festival in 1994, so it's not like I knew Malcolm before I made Clerks, I met him after I made Clerks and we'd been traveling for a whole year on the festival circuit, doing festival after festival starting at Sundance '94 then TIFF '94 was kind of the end of our run, then we came out theatrically a few weeks later. So I met Malcolm there and Malcolm was just so brutally honest, he was so painfully honest. He worked at Film Threat, which was my favorite film magazine at the time, it was kind of like Film Twitter before Film Twitter, just in printed form. So he was at a crêpe joint with me and Scott Mosier was there and a mutual friend Paul Zimmerman, who also wrote at Film Threat.
So the movie played at TIFF and played through the roof, great reaction, we all went out to get crêpes, Malcolm's there and Paul says to him, "Malcolm, what'd you think of the movie," and Malcolm goes, "It's alright." I was like, "I want to know this guy a lot more, who is this? Who's this honest man?" All year long, I'd have people kissing my ass going, "You're the voice of a generation." Finally, I meet someone from my generation who is like, "You're not all that. Like, you know, a Canadian with an American negative sensibility? It's like a unicorn." So I adopted him instantly, he came into our world and he's been with us ever since; he came to do a three-day story on Mallrats, but I convinced him to stay for the whole shoot, then we made a movie for him, Drawing Flies, I put him on the road to filmmaking.
I've helped produce his other docs, like Small Town Gay Bar and stuff like that. But he's been there for every step of the way when we've been making the movies, so Malcolm had been saying, "You're coming up on your 20th anniversary, I really feel like there's a documentary in your life," and I was like, "Oh Malcolm, when they make documentaries about people, that's when their f***ing s**t falls apart." I'm superstitious about that, but we were doing this book, The Kevin Smith Secret Stash book with Insight Editions and at one point, Malcolm was going to write the book. So I wound up doing 25 hours of interviews and that's what makes up the words in the book.
But at one point, I suggested Malcolm do it and Malcolm was like, "Well, if I'm gonna interview people for the book, maybe I'll bring a camera with me and shoot a documentary at the same time." I was like, "Yeah, why not?" and that's how it grew, it grew out of that. So he took the documentary incredibly seriously and as much as he's the guy that keeps me grounded and never lets me get too full of myself, he's also been the guy with perspective.
Case in point, we're on the set of Clerks III, I'm in New Jersey where we haven't started shooting, but we're getting close, we're in the last days of pre-production. Not to brag, but on Netflix, I had a program called Masters of the Universe dropped the first half of their season and none of us were prepared for the very vocal minority that went after the series very loudly. So if you know anything about social media, if you click on something, social media is going to feed you more, so I was clicking on all the negatives and all that was coming at me was the sea of, "You f***ed up my childhood, you piece of s**t. How could you remove the Iron Cross?" Just on and on people shredding me for making Masters of the Universe when I honestly believe in my heart of hearts I was like, "This is the most faithful telling of these characters' tales since Mattel minted their backstories."
I did not think we were upsetting the applecart, so where I stood, I was at the eye of a storm and everybody hated my guts and we had failed, that's what my timeline was telling me. Malcolm calls me out of the blue, he texts me first and he goes, "Hey, congrats, you've got the most-talked-about show on the planet right now, it's getting great reviews and everybody loves it, you must be so happy." I immediately put down everything I was doing and call Malcolm to be like, "Is that your read of the situation?" He's like, "Yeah, all I see is positivity and stuff, what are you seeing?" I was like, "All I'm seeing is people that hate my guts," and he's like, "Well stop clicking on negative things," and I was like, "So, Malcolm, is your perspective from outside of this that I shouldn't kill myself?" He's like, "No, I think you're fine. I think anybody would be enviable of the amount of coverage the show is getting. I'm gonna watch it now the reviews have been great."
I always give him crap about being the guy who brings me down a peg in my life or keeps me real, but he's also the guy who could give me a perspective that I can't have myself. Generally speaking, I'm in a thing and I'm like, when it's bad, it's bad and I assume it's gonna be bad forever, like a cancer. Malcolm is the guy who's like, "No, this is what it's really playing, pull your head out of your ass." So having him be the guy to direct the story of my life, make Clerks. is probably the best possible choice next to me doing it myself, which would have been gross.
Since you do mention that he keeps you grounded, this documentary is interesting in how it balances the highs of Clerks and Chasing Amy as well as the struggles that you initially had following Mallrats. I even talked to Jason Mewes and he was telling me how he was heartbroken for you for that initial reaction. What was that like for you, though, having to revisit some of the emotions from those bad times, so to speak, for the documentary?
Kevin Smith: What a great question, honestly, so easy. I've lived in the past, my head is up the ass of the past pretty much at all time, so much so that most of my stock and trade now is predicated on what has happened, not what's going to happen. Like I said, I was working on Masters of the Universe, that's an old thing, I just finished shooting Clerks III, that's the third iteration of a thing. Even our TV show, Comic Book Men, was predicated on, "Look at this f***ing toy you haven't seen since you were 10 years old." So I guess I became a resident of the nostalgia nation at a certain point early in my career.
To be fair, I remember being sentimental and nostalgic about an episode of Happy Days an hour after it aired when I was nine years old. So I'm prone to nostalgia anyway and, you know, I'm nothing if not my own biggest fan, so I've never let go of those other movies. Since I'm the guy online answering for Kevin Smith, to some people those movies are happening for the first time, so the conversations are always fresh, or they're coming back to razz you about Jersey Girl for the zillionth time. So it's always fresh in my mind since I spend so much time on the internet, I don't really go very far away from my past.
I always refer to Chris Nolan, where it's like Chris Nolan is a futurist because when's the last time he even referenced Memento, which is like one of the greatest independent films ever made. But he doesn't have to talk about it anymore, because he could talk about the movie he's making next, he's talking about the bomb movie that he's working on and stuff, so he's always living in the future.
I'm the guy who's very comfy in the past where I'm like, "Let's not leave the 90s, it was awesome for me back here." So it wasn't really difficult to revisit those movies as a guy who spends a lot of his life talking and doing Q&As and podcasting since 2007, I tell these stories on a regular basis, I'm like my own prophet, like Matthew, Mark, Luke or John walking around telling the stories of Kevin Smith, even though I am Kevin Smith and I'm still very much alive. It wasn't that much of a revelation to me where I'm like, "Oh my God, I had to go relive the morning we got the phone call where Mallrats tanked."
I've told that story so many times, I'm inured to it, it doesn't have the power it once had. I also have the benefit now of knowing everything works out for Mallrats; in the beginning, it was a movie that, "Oh my God, it's dead and we got to carry it like a cross forever." That cross became the foundation of my religion, go figure, because people love that Mallrats picture, man, even more so than Clerks. It's aged incredibly well because Stan's in it and we're f***ing all about comic book culture now, so Brody seems like he's got his finger on the pulse, that movie's made right on time.
Without the lack of cell phones, it could work in modern day. You got to remember, I'm trying to get Twilight of the Mallrats, the sequel, made. It was easy to revisit the highs and the lows, easier now to revisit the lows, because I've got time on my side and the benefit of knowing what ultimately happens. 1995 Kevin Smith is sitting there going, "I'm ruined by Mallrats," 2021 Kevin Smith knows that Mallrats minted my reputation for an entire generation, oddly enough. So it was fun, never sad, even the stuff about the heart attack and whatnot. We just got finished making Clerks III and, I've talked about it many times but, I borrow from my heart attack for the plot of Clerks III. Randal has the heart attack and decides I'm going to make a movie, so he winds up making Clerks.
When we were making the flick, my wife and my kid didn't want to watch the scenes for the heart attack stuff and I'm like, "Why?" and they're like, "That was the most traumatic thing that happened to us." I was like, "It's the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me and I'm talking about it, I'm getting to make fun of it!" But they don't see it quite the same way, so there's really no subject matter for me where I'm like, "Oh, that was tough to go into," you know, I love the sound of my own voice, I'm like, "Oh, let me tell you about the story I almost died. It was so unpleasant for me, but it will take up 20 minutes of your time and your attention."
Since you mentioned Clerks III, you've shared that the final cut is done and with the speed of the production and post-production, it seems hopefully we'll see next year. But can you give me any kind of update on where the film is in its post-production and release?
Kevin Smith: It's looking like mid-2022. If I had to predict the trailer, I would predict March or April. Where we are right now, we're figuring out music, we have a budget for music [at a certain level] and right now [we're above that] music. So it's about making choices where you're like, "Okay, I can tell the story without this, but I can't tell the story without this." Thankfully, I'm an indie filmmaker and have been used to pivoting or modifying expectations for years, so it's never a problem where I'm like, "If that's what it costs, we can't play with them and stuff." So we're doing that right now.
Oddly enough, we just had - this is gonna blow your mind - a special effects meeting on Clerks 3, which there are no special events in the movie [laughs]. But it's our boy Arman [Mafi], who's going to go in and digitally erase the few things that we got to change and stuff like that. We just spent half an hour going through about 20 shots that are going to have to be digitally altered, stuff like you have to remove a sign or there's a light in the background, minor s**t like that. But at the same time, ironically, there will probably be more effect shots in Clerks 3 than there were in Star Wars. [Laughs]
That's just the nature of the business now, in terms of like, "Oh, you can go in and touch that up, you can take that out, you can fix that." Things that, for years, I would have just lived with. For example, you could watch Chasing Amy and anybody who sees Chasing Amy for the first time and has an internet connection generally runs to Twitter to tell me that they can see the reflection of the crew in the window as Ben [Affleck]'s walking back to the car. Nowadays, that wouldn't exist, I'd say, "Arman erase the crew," and he would be like, "Done and done." So tiny fixes that everybody does, little cosmetic things like that, it just blows my mind.
This is a sequel to a movie that costs us $27,575 bucks and if we were paying the actual prices - thank got Arman's a friend - one of those shots would be $27,000 to repair digitally. So it's a weird world, even as much as I'm like, "I'm not a filmmaker that works with those tools," those tools come into play even for me. Just not to the effect of, "Let's take Robert Downey Jr. down about 20-25 years" because this movie's gonna make a billion bucks. We have to be more sparing with our shots. [Laughs]
Every behind-the-scenes shot you've shared so far has built my anticipation.
Kevin Smith: You know, when they do the trailer, I imagine - and if they didn't do this, I'd be shocked - they'll feature the moments in the movie where Dante and Randall essentially shoot Clerks, but they're shooting a movie called The Inconvenience. But it looks an awful lot like a movie we're all familiar with, right down to the black and white. HBO Max had Clerks on that month, so we had it on the phone and anytime we replicated a moment, we pulled up the shot and hung it right next to the monitor and then composed that way.
We're like, "Jeff [Anderson], move in just a little bit more. Okay, turn your head this way. Alright, Brian [O'Halloran], now you're going to slide in and stop right there. Don't forget to put the Yoohoo down here," stuff like that. Replicating these moments that years ago we took for granted because we're like, "We'll never do this again." You just do it once. So I think when people see the trailer, what they're going to sell them is this time around the clerks make Clerks, which is funny and visually it'll make you feel a certain way, you'll be like, "That looks dope, I'll risk my money on Kevin Smith one more time."
But the movie that we give you, when you get in there, it's better than that. We were able to do something really special based on the fact that we've been making these movies for a long time and two other of them exist in our timeline. I'm trying to be obscure without spoiling it, but bring a box of tissues for two reasons. One, you will j**z, because it's wonderful in some places, but you will also get emotional in places.
I know you're also working with Movies Anywhere right now and they just introduced that really cool feature of My Lists, which hopefully will get to see more of your movies get on there to build a View Askewniverse playlist. What's that been like for you working with them and having this feature come out?
Kevin Smith: They've been great, for anyone that doesn't know, Movies Anywhere is an app that aggregates all of your media into one place. So if you have movies on iTunes, you got movies on Amazon, you can bring them all into one place. You could alphabetize your movies and that was about it, so people were like, "Hey, man, what if you made it personalized?" So Movies Anywhere came up with My Lists and My Lists allows you to categorize your movies any way you want in fun ways.
For example, one of my lists is "Marvel Movies: Best to Thor 2," so it tells you the story of that list. People can look at it, argue with me and be like, "You're out of your mind, this one's here and this one's here." It's fun and it creates conversation, and also I'm sure there'll be suggestions galore, not just, "Change the order" but also "Why don't you go f**k yourself," I get that a lot online. I was able to put together the "Movies That Made Me" list, so here's the list of the movies that went into what I became as a filmmaker and you can kind of see their influence on Clerks. Then just movies that are "Dialogue Porn," movies that are just pure dialogue fancy, so you can arrange them any way you want and it's kind of fun and then you trade them off then people come in and be like, "This is how I do it."
So it's a really nice addition and more importantly is an example of a company going, "What does the audience want? Let's do that." They literally did it because the audience asked for it and I support that.
Clerk. is now available on digital platforms.