THE BIG PICTURE: PATRICK GOLDSTEIN

John Hughes’ imprint remains

He’s still revered in Hollywood, but whatever happened to the king of the teens?

By Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
3:38 PM PDT, March 24, 2008

JOHN HUGHES hasn’t set foot in Hollywood for years, but his influence has never been more potent. The king of 1980s comedy, Hughes now qualifies as something of a Howard Hughes-style recluse — he doesn’t have an agent, doesn’t give interviews and lives far away, somewhere in Chicago’s sprawling North Shore suburbs where most of his films were set.

But he has an entire generation of fans in the industry who grew up infatuated with his films, especially a string of soulful mid-1980s teen comedies that helped capture the eternal drama of modern teenage existence. They include “Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “The Breakfast Club,” which no less an authority than Courtney Love once called “the defining moment of the alternative generation.” Any number of successful actors and filmmakers, from Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith to Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller and Wes Anderson, are fans, having soaked up Hughes’ keen observational humor, love of mischief and shrewd dissection of social hierarchies.

“John Hughes wrote some of the great outsider characters of all time,” says Apatow, the writer-director-producer whose new film, “Drillbit Taylor,” is loosely based on an old Hughes story idea. “It’s pretty ridiculous to hear people talk about the movies we’ve been doing, with outrageous humor and sweetness all combined, as if they were an original idea. I mean, it was all there first in John Hughes’ films. Whether it’s ‘Freaks and Geeks’ or ‘Superbad,’ the whole idea of having outsiders as the lead characters, that all started with Hughes.”

Hollywood is full of older masters who’ve been mentors to younger acolytes. But Hughes, 58, is the only one who’s disappeared without a trace; he quit directing in 1991, moved back to Chicago in 1995 and has basically stayed out of sight ever since.

“He’s our generation’s J.D. Salinger,” says Smith, whose film “Dogma” shows its heroes, Jay and Silent Bob, on a pilgrimage to Shermer, Ill., a mythical town that only exists in Hughes’ films. “He touched a generation and then the dude checked out. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be doing what I do. Basically my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words.”

Smith says whenever he’s in Chicago promoting a film he asks his local publicist if they know how to find him, to no avail. The one person who made contact was Vaughn, who grew up in the North Shore suburbs and met with Hughes when shooting “The Break-Up” in the area in 2005. It’s in keeping with this aura of mystery that while Hughes came up with the idea for “Drillbit Taylor,” the Owen Wilson comedy that opened Friday to lackluster reviews, his name isn’t anywhere on the film. But his handprints are everywhere.

The story evokes memories of Hughes’ teen sagas, being a comic tale about a trio of nerdy high-school freshmen who recruit a supposedly fearsome bodyguard to protect them from a nasty school bully. As the film’s scruffy hero, Wilson is something of a throwback to John Candy’s character in “Uncle Buck,” Hughes’ 1989 comedy that stars Candy as a bedraggled bachelor forced to look after his brother’s three smart-aleck kids.

Based on a treatment Hughes wrote some years ago, the “Drillbit” story is credited to frequent Apatow collaborators Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown, who also wrote the screenplay, and Edmond Dantes, a favorite Hughes pseudonym. Susan Arnold, who produced the film with Apatow and her partner, Donna Arkoff Roth, is married to producer Tom Jacobson, who is one of the few people in Hollywood still in contact with the reclusive filmmaker.

“Tom is the unsung hero here,” says Roth. “He’d always remembered the story and knew there was a great movie in there. He got permission from John to use it and got us involved.” Arnold and Roth were fans of Apatow, who once had offices on their floor at Revolution Studios. “We’d always felt we were lucky to get Judd involved,” says Arnold.

If anyone is a repository of Hughes lore, it is Jacobson, who calls him “one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met” but is scrupulously tight-lipped when it comes to offering any speculation about the filmmaker’s retreat from view. When Hughes was looking for someone to produce “Ferris Bueller,” Paramount executive Dawn Steel introduced him to Jacobson, who spent a decade working on various Hughes films.

Jacobson says Hughes could write the first draft of a script in a week. “Once he had the characters and a strong idea, it would carry him all the way through,” he recalls.

Hughes’ method of shooting comedy has become virtually an industry standard. He’d often let the camera roll through four or five takes in a row, looking for the right tone and rhythm for a scene. “He loved his actors and loved language, so he’d shoot a lot of film,” says Jacobson. “It became a big thing in comedy after John did it — listening to the actors and looking for those great moments. John would hear a line and get the actor to go with it. It really wasn’t the actors who were improvising. It was John improvising.”

No one who knows Hughes is eager to theorize about why he dropped out of sight. It’s possible that the filmmaker, who gave studio executives headaches when he was riding high, simply grew tired of the messy business of making movies and chose to pursue a simpler life.

Still, it’s hard to find a thirty- or fortysomething writer or filmmaker who doesn’t credit Hughes as a seminal figure in their movie education. “You see Hughes’ influence on all TV comedy, especially the stylized single-camera comedy,” says Apatow. “His great film characters, starting with Anthony Michael Hall in ‘Sixteen Candles,’ were big inspirations. When we were growing up, we were all like Hall — the goofy skinny kid who thinks he’s cool, even if nobody else does. ‘Superbad’ has that same attitude, that mix of total cockiness and insecurity.”

Hughes’ influence remains so lasting that when Paramount Vantage needed an iconic image for the poster for “American Teen,” a documentary due out this summer that chronicles the lives of five high school seniors, it re-created the look of the poster from Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club.”

It’s interesting that for all of Hughes’ identification with teen films, some of his biggest fans, notably Apatow and “Wedding Crashers” director David Dobkin, cite his “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” as a favorite film. The 1987 picture offers a distinctive Hughesian riff on the odd-couple buddy picture, pitting Steve Martin’s sophisticated marketing executive against John Candy’s garrulous salesman when the two are thrown together trying to get home for Thanksgiving after their flight to O’Hare is canceled.

It is perhaps Hughes’ most grown-up film, especially in the way it shows how the caste system in his teen films could carry over to adult life. Stuck in a dumpy motel far from home, Martin erupts, making no secret of his contempt for Candy’s mindless chatter. Though clearly wounded, Candy throws us off guard with his response. “Yeah, I talk too much” he says. “I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. [And] I’m not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I’m the real article.”

Dobkin says scenes like that are great examples of what he calls Hughes’ “clear voice. That argument in the motel is pitch-perfect. . . . It’s the great thing about Hughes’ films. He made them for himself, but when you watch them, you always feel that he made them especially for you.”

This sense of personal attachment is a big part of the Hughes mystique. Producer Scott Stuber was such a fan that, as a teenager, when he wanted to impress a girl, he’d get her a soundtrack from a Hughes film. “He somehow knew we were all struggling with the same things,” Stuber says. “Whenever I watch a Hughes film now, I remember the euphoria of being 13 and falling in love with movies.”

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The cocoon, plus the cast and crew for Kevin Smith’s “Zack & Miri Make a Porno,” are gone.

“The whole show, we’ve been kind of in a cocoon and not really talking to anybody,” the writer-director said earlier this week in Monroeville as filming wrapped. “But it was incredibly productive for us to work that way.”

Moviegoers and members of the media generally left the production alone, even though some knew about locations or spotted tell-tale trucks around places like Monroeville, McKeesport, McKees Rocks and Hazelwood.

“Everyone was really nice about it. If we were shooting any place else, we wouldn’t have gotten the kind of privacy that a movie like this kind of requires. There are a lot of naked people walking around.”

Still, Smith added, “Some people think it’s a nonstop party, but you’re talking about 12-, 15-hour days that take their toll. You’ve got a lot to accomplish in a very short window.”

Nevertheless, he managed to finish two days ahead of schedule, which prompted Seth Rogen to chime in: “All I keep thinking is I wish I did more takes. That’s about a thousand more jokes.”

He and Elizabeth Banks star in the comedy — dirty, sexy but sweet, Smith promises — about two friends who decide to make a porn movie for the money but discover they have feelings for each other.

Rogen was a trouper, returning to Pittsburgh the day after he was a presenter with fellow funnyman Jonah Hill at the 80th Academy Awards. “It was a little hectic, schedule-wise, because I had to fly out of here and fly back and I worked on Monday, but not till the afternoon.”

Smith said Rogen could have insisted he pick another scene to shoot that day, but he didn’t. “He was a true champion, man,” the director said.

As for Rogen’s red-carpet and Oscar experience: “It was really weird. It was a lot of fun. I kept expecting someone to ask me to leave. It was great, I was shocked that they asked us to do it. The whole thing was just kind of thrilling, it was really cool. … It was great watching Philip Seymour Hoffman not laugh at my jokes.”

Oscar-winner Hoffman, a nominee for “Charlie Wilson’s War,” was among the A-listers in the front rows of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. “Never before have I not made such famous people laugh,” Rogen quipped.

Smith and the table of Pittsburghers had no trouble laughing. In fact, the director said of Rogen and Banks: “Both of them were, hands down, the two best actors I’ve ever worked with. I know you’re supposed to say that cause it’s the current movie but I’ve worked with [expletive] Matt Damon.”

Not to mention the likes of Alan Rickman, Rogen volunteered. “Make a list of all the people we’re better than,” he said, laughing. (Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette movie editor)

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By William Loeffler
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, February 29, 2008

Fans of the NBC Comedy series “The Office,” know that Darryl Philbin is not a man to be trifled with.

The warehouse manager at Dunder-Mifflin has a fierce glower that says “Please don’t make me tear off your arm and beat you with it,”which is probably what he’d like to do to his clueless boss Michael (Steve Carell).

Robinson used his powers of intimidation to great effect in a scene-stealing turn as a club doorman in Judd Apatow’s smash movie comedy “Knocked Up.”

Robinson, who’s in town filming “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” will perform a stand-up show March 8 at the Pittsburgh Improv at the Waterfront in Homestead.

Some of the other “Zack and Miri” cast will be on hand to sign autographs and contribute to the hoopla, including actor Seth Rogen and director Kevin Smith, who will serve as host.

Robinson, a keyboard player and singer, will log double duty by performing with his band.

“It’s going to be his show but he’s bringing members of the cast of ‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno,’ ” says Improv manager Aimee Arnold.

There’s no word on whether cast members Traci Lords or Elizabeth Banks will show.

Tickets to the 11 p.m. show are $20. Details: 412-462-5233

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NEW YORK — There may be no bigger comics fan in Hollywood than “Clerks” director Kevin Smith — after all, he’s the only director known for actually writing comic books.

So when not-so-Silent Bob showed up to speak for two hours at the inaugural New York Comic-Con this past weekend at the Jacob K. Javits Center, he was treated more like a god than a geek, and he rewarded the audience with candid insight into his creative process, as well as a lot of dirty jokes.

For instance, the reason Smith doesn’t want to direct a comic book movie, as he was once in line to do with “Green Hornet”? He thinks shooting action is boring, and it’s better suited to those who love it. “Sam Raimi does more cool sh– in two minutes in ‘Spider-Man’ than I’ve done in seven movies,” he conceded.

Smith’s version of a superhero movie would feature something “simple and straightforward” like this: Green Hornet and his sidekick, Kato, are leaning against the Black Beauty in a two-shot, standing around asking each other about what they did the night before and going off on tangents such as, “The funny thing about ‘Star Wars’ and sex is …” Then Kato would hear some trouble and they’d walk out of the frame, while the shot would hold on the car. Then, after some sound effects, they’d walk back in the frame, wipe themselves off, and go back to leaning and say something like, “So, yes, I did get some [action] last night.”

“Nobody wants to give you $70 million to make that,” Smith said.

Plus, Smith would want to dispense with the metaphors of some superheroes and their sidekicks, most notably the gay subtext of “Batman” and “X-Men,” and just bring it out full-force, something that mainstream America might not be ready to accept, he pointed out. “The whole movie is an allegory of what it’s like to be gay,” he said. “You take the word ‘mutant’ out and stick ‘gay’ in there and the movie still works. I dig that, it’s taking a mainstream movie and putting a positive message in it, a message of tolerance. It’s ‘Brokeback Mutant.’ I just want to go up to kids and say, ‘You like Wolverine? That means you’re gay.’ ”

And since Bryan Singer, the man behind “X-Men,” is directing the new “Superman,” Smith said, it’ll be more of the same. “Never mind Lois Lane and Clark Kent,” he said. “I’m looking at the relationship between Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen. Lois says, ‘I love you,’ and Clark says, ‘That’s great. So, Jimmy …’ ”

There’s another kind of film Smith doesn’t plan on making anytime soon — one about religion. Smith said he’d love to do a “Dogma 2,” but you can’t do that without talking about Islam these days, “and after watching what happened with the cartoons, I want to say nothing about Muhammad except that’s he’s really cool guy. … And I don’t have a picture or drawing of him.”

So, Smith said, he’s going to keep telling the same kinds of stories he always does, “and put Jay and Bob in them” (see “Kevin Smith Vows ‘Clerks 2′ Language, Content Ups The Ante Of The Original ‘A Hundredfold’ “).

“I’ve learned absolutely nothing, except not to make any more movies with Bennifer,” he said. “I think I’ve learned to tell a better visual story, but I haven’t really walked away with that much insight over the past 12 years. But I’ve stayed true to telling the kinds of stories me and my friends would get. And I’m lucky to be getting away with it.”

“Clerks 2″ is also not going to reference Smith’s previous films that heavily. “It’s not rife with references to everything that’s come before in the View Askew-verse,” Smith said. “Dante’s not walking around saying, ‘I’m still not even supposed to be here today,’ or anything like that.”

Meanwhile, Smith has detached himself from another project, a “Brave and the Bold” film for DC Comics. “I’ve decided, based on my inability to produce a script on time, that I should never go near a comic book again,” he joked.

As for the convention, Smith did have one complaint: Too many guys and not enough girls attend comic book gatherings, making it difficult to exploit his celebrity status. “Ben Affleck tells me stories about girls who come up to him in restaurants, ‘Take me home with you.’ That never happens to me. It’s always a bunch of guys going, ‘Are you doing “Green Hornet” or not?’ or ‘Where’s “Spider-Man/Black Cat”? You got to issue three and you stopped because you were doing “Jersey Girl,” and then that came out and it bombed and you stopped! That’s irresponsible to take a job and not finish it! How hard is it to write a comic book? Give it to me and I’ll write it. I’ll draw it too. Where’s “Spider-Man/Black Cat”?’ ”

“I had to finish the series just to walk out on a Comic-Con floor,” Smith said. “I was proud of myself. I thought I was safe to walk around, but now it’s all, ‘Where’s “Daredevil: Target”?’ It’ll never end.”

“You know what, Kevin? I’d [go home with] you,” one female fan said in response during the marathon Q&A session. “But I just finished ‘Spider-Man/Black Cat,’ and that’s the best ‘Spider-Man’ ever, and I’m just wondering … where is ‘Daredevil: Target’?”

“Isn’t that just like a girl?” Smith laughed.

Visit Movies on MTV.com for more from Hollywood, including news, interviews, trailers and more.

— Jennifer Vineyard

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PARK CITY, UTAH — Loyalists swear by the movement he spearheaded with the help of his foot soldiers; others wonder why he still has a job. His common-man persona and disarming grin might be masking a brilliant mind, or he might be as simplistic as his detractors insist. Now, he has returned for a second term that’s shaping up as even more controversial than the first.

No, Kevin Smith isn’t the president — although the polarizing figures have more in common than one might think. As the famously indie writer/director made the rounds at the Sundance Film Festival to support “Small Town Gay Bar,” a documentary he executive produced, Smith admitted with some trepidation that his next mission could go disastrously wrong if he’s rushing into a battle that can’t be won.

Still, in the form of the upcoming sequel to his breakthrough 1994 comedy he claimed to have substantial weapons of crass production at his disposal.

” ‘Clerks 2′ came out phenomenally, and I couldn’t be happier with it,” the bearded, not-so-silent Bob said. “We were really hoping to come to Sundance with it this year, which would have been great because it’s the 25th anniversary of Sundance, and it would have been the only sequel to a Sundance film to ever play at Sundance. Then Harvey Weinstein — the chairman of The Weinstein Company, who we produced the movie with — said, ‘No, we want to go to Cannes instead.’ ”

“The movie itself is kind of a look at what happens when the angry young man enters his thirties. The movie is primarily set in a fast-food joint, but it has so little to do with working in a fast-food joint.”

“Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson, who played Dante and Randall in ‘Clerks,’ are back and Jason Mewes and I play Jay and Silent Bob,” Smith continued. “Ben Affleck showed up for a day. Jason Lee came in for a day. Wanda Sykes came in for a day. There’s a guy named Earthquake, this really funny comedian, and Kevin Wiseman, who plays Marshall on ‘Alias,’ he came in.”

“There’s this kid in the movie, Trevor Fehrman, who’s really funny,” Smith said. “I think he’s gonna pop in a really big way off this film. Rosario Dawson’s in the movie; she’s one of the main characters. My wife, Jennifer Schwalbach, is in the movie,” he laughed. “So for a movie that’s about two dudes, it’s got a really well-rounded cast.”

Although some vocal fans and film purists have expressed their displeasure with the revisiting of, arguably, a classic, Smith insists that by moving Dante and Randal to the fast-food industry, he simultaneously moved his own game to the next level.

“It’s my favorite of all the movies I’ve ever done,” Smith said of the sequel. “It used to be that ‘Chasing Amy’ was my favorite, but this has supplanted ‘Chasing Amy.’ ‘Clerks’ was what it felt like to be in my twenties, but ‘Clerks 2′ is what it feels like to be in my thirties. A portrait of that. It’s about how people have to struggle to grow out of a role that they’ve filled for the better part of their adult life. It’s really poignant, but it’s insanely funny.”

As with previous flicks, such as “Clerks,” “Dogma” and “Amy,” the New Jersey auteur intends to balance the aforementioned seriousness with his bread-and-butter: “di– and fart jokes.”

“We’re not even going to rate it — we’re going to go out unrated,” Smith declared defiantly. “If we put it in front of the ratings board they’d be like, ‘You’re insane. We have to create a new rating for that.’ ”

Even more noteworthy, however, is that the boundary-busting film is devoid of the nudity or graphic violence that typically pushes the NC-17 envelope. Instead, when these clerks say “I assure you, we’re open” this summer, the phrase will likely be peppered with even more four-letter words than the original.

“I’ve never been a nudity dude,” Smith insisted. “We did nudity once, in ‘Mallrats,’ and it was just such an uncomfortable thing to shoot. Anybody can get somebody to take their clothes off. ‘Clerks’ was a movie that the MPAA gave an NC-17 for language and content alone. This movie ups the ante by a hundred-fold, and there’s just no way it gets an R.”

As for everybody’s favorite drug-selling, adventure-seeking, bootchie-snoochin’ duo, Smith says that they’ve grown up — so much so, in fact, that they’ve gone from grade-school humor to something closer to junior high.

“Jay and Silent Bob in ‘Clerks 2′ have about as much, if not less, screen time than they had in ‘Clerks,” Smith revealed, “but it’s a different Jay and Silent Bob, a slightly more mature Jay and Silent Bob.”

“Slightly,” he laughed, after a moment. “Ever so slightly.”

Don’t miss a moment, a story, a photo or a premiere from Park City. Click right here to check out all of our Sundance coverage over the whole wild week.

And be sure to visit Movies on MTV.com for Hollywood news, interviews, trailers and more.

— Larry Carroll

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I figured I’d address this here before it’s made public next week.

‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ is being taken to task (wrongly, I believe) by GLAAD - the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (for those unfamiliar with the acronym). Below is the letter, verbatim, that I received from Scott Seomin, GLAAD’s Entertainment Media Director.

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Dear Kevin:

Two colleagues of mine from GLAAD joined me last evening at a screening of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. We were overwhelmed by the potential negative impact for the film with what we would assume is a large share of its target audience: teen and young adult males. We will be public and aggressive in our condemnation and will provide substantiation for our opinions.

Here are the points to which we will object and our reasons for doing so:

- As one of the principal characters states, the film is a “big gay joke”, but the joke is at the expense of the stereotyped category of people;
- All references to gay men reinforce them as objects of acceptable ridicule and dehumanization;
- Specific epithets for gay men include not only traditional slurs but also have the potential to introduce an expanded vocabulary of defamatory words and phrases;
- When sympathetic characters substitute the word “gay” for something that is wrong or stupid, it validates a common slur used by school-age youth to mean anything unacceptable.

We, or course, are familiar with your work as a writer and director and understand that satire is a large part and object of you expression. The intentional excesses of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and over-the-top characterizations and situations are fundamental to its nature. However, we believe that satirical sophistication is not a fundamental expectation of an audience bombarded by fag jokes and gags revolving around genitals and simulated sex acts.

Also, the inclusion of various other potentially offensive material (e.g. the bits about the acronym CLIT, racism, child abuse) for laughs does not excuse or dilute the omnipresent backdrop of the “big gay joke”. While I will not fall as far back as the Hays Code, at no time is there any retribution or remorse for gay-bashing “humor”. Again, to write off the behavior of the lead characters, especially Jay, with a what-do-you-expect-from-someone-so-dumb shrug truly trivializes the impact.

I wanted to state our position strongly here before I request a meeting with you to discuss this. I will be in New York from August 2nd to 6th and either can come to New Jersey or arrange a time at your convenience if you are in the city. Because I realize there are no changes you could make to this film to satisfy our concerns, I still believe we could discuss how you will be interviewed (for) this film and how GLAAD moves forward with its concerns.

Please let me know as soon as possible of your interest and availability.

Sincerely,

Scott Seomin
Entertainment Media Director

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Needless to say, I was crestfallen.

You all know me. You all know how big a fan I am of the gay community. You all know the respect and fascination I have for gay culture and practices. I’ve said in many an interview, from ‘Chasing Amy’ onward, that the only reason I never dabbled in homosexuality when I was younger was because I wouldn’t know what to say to a guy after he blew a load in my mouth - a sentiment that says more about my social awkwardness than any socially awkward stereotypes that’ve been unfairly hung on the gay community.

Gay or straight has never been a big issue with me. Sex is sex, as far as I’m concerned. Some cats dig on the opposite gender, and some cats dig on their own. Sexual identity will always be as mystifying as why ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ was once the number one television show in our country: there’s no point in getting bent out of shape about it; it just IS. Some cats will always gravitate toward Daisy Duke, and some will always pine over Boss Hogg.

I’ve been knee-deep in gayness for the better part of my twenties and up (I just know THAT’S going to be printed out of context somewhere: SMITH SAYS HE’S “KNEE-DEEP IN GAYNESS”). For those who’ll recall, we made a movie called ‘Chasing Amy’. Bob Hawk (he who was most responsible for exposing the world to ‘Clerks’) is about as gay as they come (no pun intended), and he lived with me for three years. My brother’s gay. There are prominent members of this board community who are gay. The list goes on and on.

Now lest you all think I’m pandering, I’m not trying to save face with the View Askew Gay All-Stars list above; I’m just trying to give some context as to why I was so crushed to receive Scott Seomin’s GLAAD missive. So as soon as I read it, I called Scott Seomin (who joked about how hard it was to grow up gay with a last name like Seomin) to address his concerns. He was a sweet guy who, after talking to him for an hour, admitted that in his heart, he knew I was not a homophobe. But he couldn’t cotton to the disparity between who I am and some of the humor in the flick.

I pointed out that the jokes in the movie, while funny at face value, do far more than evoke chuckles at the expense of the gay community. I believe that they teach tolerance to the same audience that Scott feels won’t get the humor. When you have two main characters who’ve both - at one point or another - hinted at or flat-out copped to homo-erotic escapades, how on earth can that be considered “gay-bashing”. It’s more than you get in most “buddy” flicks. Did Murtaugh and Riggs ever cop to getting dreamy over the male anatomy? I think not.

But this is nothing new for us. Recall, if you will, the scene in ‘Dogma’, when Jay asks Rufus to tell him something about himself (Jay) that nobody knows. Rufus points out that when Jay masturbates, he thinks about guys. When that movie came out, the board got flooded with angry posts, demanding “How can you make Jay gay like that?!” I would answer “Why on earth would that bother you?”, pointing out that Jay’s sexual proclivity should never effect how the viewer accepts the character, and that if it did, then perhaps some soul-searching was due on the objecting viewer’s part. If you liked Jay before that scene, why the hell wouldn’t you like him afterwards? The long and short of it: that scene sparked healthy discussion about tolerance and acceptance - as well as made a lot of people laugh.

If you believe Scott’s stated position that the target audience for our flicks is “teen and young adult males”, then you have to allow that some of these impressionable youngsters will have to come to grips with the fact that the character they hold very dearly as one of “their’s” has, in fact, expressed homosexual tendencies. And either those folks stop being fans at that moment, or accept that a character they identify with engages in behavior they may not approve of (if you work under the assumption, of course, that ALL “teen and young adult males” are terrified of the gay community). If they can accept that in a fictional character, some - not all, mind you, but some - will carry this newfound tolerance into their daily lives. Suddenly, I can do more than just entertain with even a flick that purports to have nothing on its mind apart from making you laugh; I can also educate in some weird way. That’s the heart of “satire”.

However, as Scott points out in his letter, sometimes, satire may fall on deaf ears.

During the ’70’s, Norman Lear created ‘All in the Family’, a show with a protagonist who was, essentially, a bigot. Some people understood this and enjoyed the show because of its well-observed satirical content. Some people misconstrued it and enjoyed the show because Archie Bunker didn’t like black people… just like them. Did that make Norman Lear a hate-monger? Nope. Norman Lear wasn’t responsible for how white America dealt with race issues. Norman Lear just showed us how stupid white America can be when it came to race issues. He held up a mirror to our culture. In essence, he was just the messenger.

But then, we all know what happens to the messenger…

The gay jokes in ‘Jay and Silent Bob’ satirize a young male culture terrified of any cock that isn’t their own. I accept the fact that some folks seeing the flick may not get the joke behind the joke, and just walk away thinking “Jay and Silent Bob don’t wanna be gay, man! Just like me!” However, I also KNOW - based on posts I’ve read on this board, following the release of ‘Chasing Amy’ and ‘Dogma’ - that some folks in that same demographic will walk away from this movie a little more tolerant toward the gay community. But just because there’s a threat that the message of tolerance-through-humor falls on some deaf ears, should I not endeavor to reach ANYONE? No can do. Because if even one person is made more tolerant of that-which-isn’t-him-or-her by watching a film I’ve made, then that means more to me than whatever the box office may wind up being - or whatever any protest group hypothesizes about my motivations.

That being said, I can’t claim complete altruism in making the jokes we make in the flick. Gay sex is funny… just like STRAIGHT sex is funny. Just like making fun of racism is funny (I assume Scott’sreferring to Chris Rock’s white-hating director character when he mentions racism in his GLAAD letter). Just like making fun of bad parenting is funny (a young Jay and Bob are left outside the stores by clearly bad mothers early on in the flick; I’m assuming that’s the “child abuse” Scott was talking about in his letter). Just like the homophobic mind-set, while frightening, is also fodder for ridicule (indeed, we make fun of the exact thing we’re being accused of in the Biggs and Van Der Beek scene in ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’). Just like Miramax making ‘She’s All That’ is funny. Just like all the things we make fun of in the movie are funny. I mean, this is a movie that mocks ITSELF as it goes along, for crying out loud. No one escapes unscathed.

Anyway, I told Scott all of this during the course of our conversation, and asked what we could do to allay his (and GLAAD’s) fears. He said he’d be asking Miramax to make a substantial donation to the Matthew Shepherd Foundation (Matthew Shepherd is the Wyoming student who was beaten to death for being gay in one of the worst hate crimes in recent memory; the Foundation’s aim is to educate the public on the dangers of homophobia). I said I’d be happy to make a donation as well, as it’s a great cause, and one I believe in strongly. He asked how much I’d like to donate. I queried how much he intended to seek from Miramax. He said two hundred grand. I admitted I don’t have pockets as deep as Miramax. He suggested I donate ten grand, and I said “Done.”

We spoke further about how important a film he thought ‘Chasing Amy’ was, and he informed me that if he’d been at GLAAD at the time the film came out, he would’ve given it a GLAAD award. It was nice to hear, as I was always kind of bugged that we didn’t receive much GLAAD attention on ‘Amy’, considering how pro-gay the flick was. He said he wanted to meet me in person to shake my hand, and I invited him to the office on Tuesday to do so, as well as pick up his check. I bid him adieu, and thus ended a very friendly conversation that resulted in a couple of guys enlightened as to one another’s feelings about some potentially thorny issues, as well as the Matthew Shepherd Foundation being ten g’s richer.

Then, yesterday afternoon, I fielded a phone call from Rebecca Ascher-Walsh of ‘Entertainment Weekly’, asking me to comment on how GLAAD (in the person of Scott Seomin) was “horrified” by the homophobia on parade in ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’. I was taken aback, as Scott never once expressed being “horrified” by the jokes in the flick we’d discussed at great lengths on the phone Friday. He said he was merely concerned.

Suddenly, I was being painted as homophobic by GLAAD.

This I can’t quietly sit by and let happen.

Neither ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ nor myself are homophobic. Fuck, if anything, we’re overtly gay-friendly.

In regards to the film, the openly gay journalists who saw it during the junket didn’t express one iota of a reservation in regards to the content of the flick. In fact, two of them thought it was pretty daring of me to have Silent Bob admitting that he’d have gone down on Jay (see the flick). The even better barometer for me was Bob Hawk - a man whose opinion I trust more than almost anyone on the planet. Bob watched the flick and never flinched, aside from laughing very, very heartily. And believe me - if anyone was going to call me on the gay jokes in the flick, it was the producer of ‘Trick’ himself. But he didn’t, and I can’t believe it’s because he’s self-loathing or afraid for his job (as Scott suggested the journalists at the junket must have been in order to not be insulted by the movie).

But most importantly, *I* don’t feel the film’s homophobic. I would never (nor could never) make a homophobic film. I’m not that guy, and here’s why: I grew up fat. Even though I’m a white male, being fat my whole life still puts me in a minority category as well, and has made me the butt of jokes my entire life. Trust me - I know how hurtful or damaging it can be to be called a name or two. The last thing I’d ever want to do would be to mock others for who they ARE (except Ben Affleck; I can mock him incessantly and never feel guilty about it, because a) he’s my boy and it’s done with affection, and b) he’s Affleck, for God’s sake).

What really burns me about all this, though, is that now my donation to the Matthew Shepherd Foundation is going to be sullied in the process. Based on what Rebecca Ascher-Walsh told me, my donation is now being portrayed as an admission of some sort of culpability; that by giving ten thousand dollars to this worthy cause, I’m essentially saying “I’m sorry I made some gay jokes.”

And that’s horse-shit.

I’m not sorry - because I didn’t make jokes at the expense of the gay community. I made jokes at the expense of two characters who neither I nor the audience have ever held up to be paragons of intellect. They’re idiots. Funny idiots, yes, but idiots all the same. And by making them and other mental midgets in the film so leery of homosexuality, I’m making fun of a mind-set that exists in our culture - a mind-set, mind you, that I didn’t create nor condone. And making fun of said mind-set doesn’t legitimize it, in my opinion; it de-fangs it.

I swear, I caught it from the right wing on ‘Dogma’, and now I’m catching it from the left wing on this flick. Which am I, people: a bleeding heart liberal or a Bible-thumping conservative? And when the hell do I get to make a movie in which I don’t have to explain myself afterwards? When the hell do I get to make a movie that some special interest group won’t demonize? I sweat - it’s like all that’s left is to walk that thin, boring line down the middle that makes for really bland cinema. Because no matter what you do and say, no matter how good your intentions are, sooner or later, you’re going to offend SOMEBODY.

So I could use a few good character witnesses. If you folks wouldn’t mind, can you drop GLAAD a CIVIL line and let them now that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a homophobe? Please - no immature comments for these folks, alright? I’ve got enough troubles without anyone reinforcing the worst suspicions Scott Seomin and GLAAD has about our fans. They can be reached at glaad@glaad.org.

In closing, I’d like to leave you with an excerpt from the Jay and Silent mini-series that was re-released by Image Comics last week under the title of ‘Chasing Dogma’…

JAYWhat the fuck is this country coming to?!?
First, we’re accused of brown-humping each
other, and then we get kicked to the fucking
curb for having a smoke! You know, there was
a time when a man could fuck his friend, AND
enjoy a goddamn toke, and nobody said shit!
Where’s the so-called freedom for the pursuit
of happiness?! What if I WANTED to fuck you,
Silent Bob?
(quieter)
I’d never, because I fucking love chicks man -
even though I know you think about cuddling
up to my three-piece set all the time.
(continuing)
But what If I was all pent up, and all I needed to
keep me from going postal on that bus was to
bust a nut in your dark and stinky? That’s the
problem with the climate of consciousness on
this planet today! Everyone gives too much of
a shit about who fucks what! The moral majority
has to wake up and realize that it’s better to have
two guys stink-dicking or two chicks gargling clit,
than it is to have four complete fucking lunatics
nine millimeting random people from a rooftop
because they’re not allowed to ‘unpack their bags’
in whatever ‘hotel rooms’ they want, so to speak!
And by that token, I should be able to scream - if
I so desired - from the bathrooms of the buses
that traverse the unending roads of this great
country, to the bathrooms of the public parks
and rest-stops that dot the landscape like a
thousand points of light…
(second balloon)
“I’M HERE! I’M QUEER! GET USED TO IT!!!”

Homophobic indeed.

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