Hi Harry - I’m Capnwatsisname. Saw a screening of Jersey Girl Thursday and have been mulling it over. Some thoughts below - slight spoilers, but nothing a previous reviewer didn’t reveal.

Lopez does not ruin the film. I really had no more trouble with her than I did Affleck - I just had more time to get used to him. I actually kind of liked her after a while, although I was mastering the zen of selective recall to make it through her scenes without applying all the media baggage of the main characters’ highly publicized real lives. She actually reminded me just a little of the playful moments with Joey Adams (button nose and all), and when we finally get a long enough slice of Affleck & Lopez later in their marriage to gage their relationship, there’s a couple of scenes that establish at least the implication of a life together. Mostly it’s just well-written-but-universal married-people talk. It’s just not quite enough to appreciate the characters or the relationship by the time you need to be able to do so.
The lack of development with Lopez’s character is, I think, most of the film’s weakness. Without any info about this film other than it being a J-Lo B-Lo project, I spent the first part of it trying to figure out when the other shoe is going to drop. There must be a good reason for Lopez to be in this film, considering her price-tag, the media hype, and Smith’s reputation. There is such a significant lack of information about her character, I guessed we were headed into a hidden mafia family/lesbian/divine identity twist (except that I couldn’t imagine an attempt to repackage Chasing Amy - which I loved and think is a stronger film, just to put my comments in context), and continued to view her character with suspicion until I realized we were really watching a film about a single Dad. But when Affleck is (and I think he worked hard at this) expressing his loss, I felt distanced from the emotions because I didn’t ever quite get the character he loves or their relationship. Okay, he loves her, but why should I?

Jason Biggs creates a similar challenge - I recognize him immediately, and assume he will be a major character (I think he was even in the promotional material), but his relationship with the plot and characters is confusing. What I know about his relationship with Affleck is that Affleck doesn’t fire Biggs in a friendly exchange between superior and subordinate, but that doesn’t establish why this character would be part of the mourning process later. His character does play a part in the film, but it’s a little distracting. While the film manages to keep us from getting lost in an unnecessary number of characters, you’re kind of missing the context for a few key players (who also are big names).

As far as abandoning the Askewniverse, I don’t think that’s totally fair. The Damon/Lee cameo works for me; it’s definitely not there for general audience appreciation (I wonder if most will find it distracting because they’ll think it’s an Affleck/Damon inside joke). There’s just enough self-reference to keep Smith in the picture. You’ve still got New Jersey, a video store, porn. . . heck, Ben Affleck. I’m curious about the placement of films in the video store - could be random, but I kept looking for dvd commentary fodder.

I went into the film waiting for the Mewes/Smith-ex-machina appearance, but by the time I got the hang of what’s going on I realized they probably weren’t showing up, and that was okay. Smith’s films are not just a cartoon strip about Jay & Silent Bob, and the setting & people heís dealing with here do not naturally co-exist with the weed inspired, idiot-savante-spirituality of those characters. It would have been too much a jump, and it’s great to let these well-developed characters work out their own problems. However, I don’t think Smith’s strength is writing the needed turning points. After several brilliant exchanges about the film’s primary themes, and a great deal of respect for the fluidity and messiness of life, Affleck throws us a couple of cheesy lines that make for a weak bridge into resolution (for some reason I think of Pee Wee Herman: “I’m so inspired, I’m going to start a paper route right now!”). His monologues drag compared to what Smith can accomplish in 5 minutes between two characters in a diner (why the recognizably Hollywood-lot diner set, though?).

I hear that Lopez is hurt by the negative response the early screenings are laying on her, and that in meetings with Smith there’s talk about some changes. There may be a level at which he’s developing some skills for mass consumption through this experience. But right now there’s a “no reshoots for Jersey Girl” notice on Smith’s website, and I applaud him for this. I don’t think J-Lo should be left on the cutting-room floor, but I do think we need a little warning as to what we’re headed in for from the marketing department. Remember Executive Decision (maybe you were smart enough to skip it) where Segal dies in the first 5 minutes? You just keep wasting energy waiting for him to surprise you in a save-the-day return, because he’s a big name and this is an action flick. Maybe just a little more help from editing. It may still be a weakness in the final cut, but her character is important - it’d be sad to lose the impact of Affleck’s previous relationship and his daughter’s namesake. I’m not saying much about the daughter, but she’s central, and she’s good. Well written and extremely well cast.
The centerpiece of this film is the dialogue and the relationships. I expected over two hours, but I expected to feel it. I think it was brilliant - I ate up every conversation, believed and loved Affleck with his Dad and with Liv Tyler (whose character I really liked - I hope we don’t lose a second of her in the final cut). I think when Tyler shows up is when I start enjoying Affleck more. The little girl is fantastic. Smith does a brilliant job of giving us a sympathetic father-son relationship that’s neither dominated by clichÈd abandonment/lack of affection issues or older-and-wiser omniscient father syndrome. It’s like most actual relationships - you feel like you’re seeing it in a context of the whole lives of these people; the film doesn’t attempt to idealize and capture the entire meaning of that relationship in one climactic scene. I love the Tyler/Affleck relationship as well - it is paced in a way that is believable, doesn’t take over as an over-the-top love rescue, and it avoids clichÈ speeches when dealing with Affleck’s grief.

I partly really value this because most of the crap that’s passed for movies about relationships is completely worthless in terms of identifying with the characters or situations - they mostly just try to get us to buy in to the fantasy. I’ll take something from Kevin Smith even if I have to watch some not-my-top-10 actors say the lines.

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If you can believe it, these two bastions of journalistic integrity have misreported (or flat out lied, depending on how you look at it) about “Jersey Girl” and re-shoots that just don’t exist.

Here’s their story. My comments below…

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Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck - Tough Luck

J. Lo and Ben’s latest vehicle may be a stinker. Plus, Kirsten Dunst becomes political

by BeatBoxBetty

The scoop on the latest, name-changing film from Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck is that in addition to having an identity crisis, it’s just plain bad. Tough Love has had its name changed from Gigli, had its release date pushed back four or five times and had a $5 million rewrite after test audiences were left unimpressed. In fact, the original ending had Ben’s character dying, but since audiences hated that, the studio had to re-shoot a new ending.

A quick review of the plot and it’s easy to see why folks have freezer burn over this puppy. In a nutshell, Ben plays a lowlife thug named Gigli who kidnaps the mentally retarded brother of a federal prosecutor to save his mobster boss from incarceration. Staked-out in his apartment with his kidnapee, Gigli’s soon joined by Ricki (Lopez), a gorgeous lesbian gangster who’s sent in to assist. But as time goes by (and your life force drained from you) — his feelings for Ricki grow, (and she of course, falls for him) and then they become concerned for their prisoner… blah, blah, blah.

Some say the fact that J.Lo and Ben met on set may be the only positive thing to come out of filming, while others claim that too is a sham. I’m betting both go straight to video. But wait, there’s more! Reports are also coming in that Ben and Jen’s romantic chemistry is zero onscreen. Nada. Zippity-doo-dud. According to the National Enquirer, producers of their other new flick Jersey Girl are desperately rewriting love scenes because test audiences don’t get why their characters are even attracted to each other! Price tag for re-shoots? A hefty $3 million. The cost of having Ben and Jen turn up the chemistry meter? Priceless.

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Yeah, use the Enquirer as a source. That’s always smart.

I know it’s only a gossip piece, but gossip or not, I thought I’d state for the record, that we have not re-shot, nor do we have plans to re-shoot, scenes for “Jersey Girl.” Ben and Jen’s chemistry in the flick is the exact opposite of zero. I’m not desperately (or even casually) rewriting dick. Both test audiences seemed to get why the two characters were together quite well. And there’s no $3 million being spent. There - you now have it from a credible source.

I’d heard they were playing that Enquirer game on Stern the other day and this “Jersey Girl” $3 million re-shoot crap came up as a true story. I assumed (wrongly, I guess) that anyone who really gave a shit knew that it was “Gigli” that had done re-shoots, not “Jersey Girl.”

Now I’m seeing this isn’t the case.

In her (or his) haste to attack and damn Ben and Jen’s relationship in any way possible (because it catches the interest of a news-reading public whose attention would be better spent on the war abroad), MSN’s unfortunately named BeatBox Betty has dragged our flick into a spot of mud, alleging problems where there are none. I know she (or he) is only a gossip hound, but I’d ask that, in the future, she (or he) at least try to contact someone involved with a production she (or he) plans to besmirch, rather than lazily take her cues from the likes of a tabloid.

While I’m at it, though, I’d also like to point out that all this “Gigli” stuff is crap too. I’ve seen the flick with a test screening audience, and I haven’t heard laughter like that in a movie theater since “American Pie” (or “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”). And, mind you, the laughter was WITH, not AT, the movie.

Much as I hate to disappoint BeatBox, both movies seem like they’re going to do just fine - quite like Ben and Jen’s relationship.

Regardless, next time you’re writing a story, even if it is for a gossip sheet, how about simply picking up a phone and doing a little research? Just because you’ve been reduced to the lowest rung on the ladder of journalism (manufacturing news where there really isn’t any), it doesn’t mean you have to conduct yourself like an asshole, know-nothing.

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Cops and the president we’re suspicious of, but freaks and masked men in tights - them we trust

By Kevin Smith

Stan Lee, the Godfather of Marvel Comics, the human face of comic books for the last forty years, comicdom’s ambassador to the world, once told me that he’d thought superheroes would be just a fad. But with the first appearance of DC Comics’ Superman, and the red letter (or red-boots) sales that followed, Marvel did what any good marketplace competitor would do when the other guys have a good idea: They aped it. And thus began the decades-long proliferation of the tights set.
So what is it about superheroes that has captured our imaginations for more than half a century? Why is it that we view cops, the legal system - hell, even the presidency - with cynical suspicion, whereas we will still believe in what a man masked in a pointy-eared cowl or a barelegged woman in a tiara stands for?

I say it comes down to two things: altruism and the clothes.

The superhero archetype was the creation of an international coalition of the willing, years before it was en vogue to team up and knock the tar out of an evil menace. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, an American and a Canadian, dreamed up Superman back in the Thirties and established the palette from which all superheroes will be painted, till the end of time. Take a man or a woman with the power or abilities that could be used to enslave the world (or at least a small corner of it, such as Gotham), and have him or her opt instead to employ their might for right. Give him or her two identities - either to protect their loved ones, or simply to maintain some semblance of a normal life outside their work. Wrap them up in clothes worthy of the Halloween parade down Santa Monica Boulevard in L.A., and you’ve got a superhero.

Like Westerns, superhero tales are normally about fixing what’s broken. But the clothes are a lot better. In the real world, cops and firemen perform heroics daily - but they don’t have the great outfits. They’re missing the cape. They’re missing the tights. And where the hell’s the codpiece? That’s how you can tell a superhero, right? They’re all-powerful, they can do no wrong and, apparently, they are also hung like Holmes. When women are superheroes, it’s not the codpiece that’s stacked, it’s the bra. If Wonder Woman really existed, the magic lasso or the invisible jet wouldn’t be the most implausible aspect of her character; it’d be her ability to just stand up without falling over.
But maybe it’s that touch of the impossible that makes them so appealing. The first comic book I ever purchased featured an “imaginary” Superman story, in which Lois and Clark were married. The image from the tale of Mr. and Mrs. Superman that struck me the most was of Superman and Lois Lane waking up together on a bed of clouds. The implication was that they decided to join the mile-high club, but because I was a kid, I didn’t put two and two together, because I didn’t really know what sex was yet (my wife says I still don’t). But I did know that my parents slept together - however, it was on a double Sealy Posturepedic, not a cloud. What I took away from that comic was that superheroes do the same stuff that everybody else does. They just do it way bigger (and probably longer, in more positions and far more satisfyingly).

After nearly seven decades of predominance by comic-book superheroes, their audience is dwindling. Today, successful comic books move up to 150,000 copies; in the Fifties and Sixties, even the less popular titles sold in the millions. It’s been rumored that Warner Bros. keeps DC Comics going solely for the licensing fees that can be derived from their characters. How sad that comic books wouldn’t be published for the value of their story so much as for the financial margin derived from slapping a superhero’s face on a pair of socks or a Frisbee
Even though big business threatens to do what the Legion of Doom couldn’t, the superhero still thrives today, continuing to capture imaginations. But the new superhero icons aren’t born on the page anymore; they’re born on the screen, where special-effects technology has finally caught up with their uncanny abilities. The Wachowski brothers’ ultrabrilliant movie The Matrix not only gave the world “bullet time,” it invented the superhero in the best way possible: by not changing much at all. Neo is the very definition of a superhero. He’s got a secret identity (the guy in the rags he normally is when not inside the Matrix), he wants to save the world, and he’s got the clothes. But if that’s not enough to rank Neo up there with the legends, I submit this final proof: In the trailer for The Matrix Reloaded, the guy can fly now. How fast, you ask? Probably faster than a speeding bullet.

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Chris Rock says he would love to work again with his “Dogma” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” filmmaker Kevin Smith.

“I want to work with Kevin again,” Rock told reporters in New York. “Ben Affleck’s the star of (’Jersey Girl’). I wanted that movie. I want to star in a (Kevin Smith movie.)”

So, did he actually lobby for the role in “Jersey Girl”?

“Yeah. I mentioned it,” he admitted. “I wanted that movie. I really wanted ‘Jersey Girl.’ He wanted Ben and then I started this. I want to star in one.”

Of course, the award-winning comedian said he would play another supporting role for a filmmaker like Smith.

“If Kevin had a supporting role, I’d take that,” he stated. “It depends on who the movie’s with. If the star is bigger than me, then I’ll take the supporting role. If the star is not… I just got ! offered the role, Ashton Kutcher, a supporting role, I was like, ‘Why would I do that?’ I would have no problem carrying Mel Gibson’s bag, but Ashton Kutcher’s bags?”

Asked what he admires so much about the “Chasing Amy” and “Clerks” director, Rock replied: “He does it so simple. Very simple. Movies don’t have to be so complicated. He does it so simple. It’s all on the page.”

“Head of State,” Rock’s directorial debut, opens Friday. (ArcaMax Entertainment Today for Friday March 28, 2003)

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by Mona Mansour
Quick quiz: What filmmaker has brought to the screen: a) two self-described “hetero life partners,” b) a sexual encounter with a dead man in a convenience store bathroom and c) Alanis Morissette as God, crouching down to smell flowers and celebrate Her handiwork?

The answer, of course, is New Jersey’s Kevin Smith. There is simply no other writer-director who can attest to the originality of Smith’s vision.

Smith burst onto the scene with 1994’s “Clerks,” a black-and-white film shot after hours at his then place of employment. His portrayal of two guys working dead-end jobs in a convenience store–and the freaky friends and patrons they encounter on an average day–struck a chord with audiences and critics, picking up awards at Sundance and Cannes.

Smith followed his auspicious debut with “Mallrats” (1995), “Chasing Amy” (1997), “Dogma” (1999) and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001). His recent projects include the upcoming fall feature “Jersey Girl,” starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, and “Fletch Won,” which is in preproduction.

Throughout his career, Smith has managed to convey an unmistakable point of view, with characters discussing everything from whether cookie stands are indeed part of the food court to whether Lois Lane’s uterus is capable of carrying Superman’s child. It’s quite fitting that the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival will present “Freedom in the Arts: An Evening with Kevin Smith” on Saturday, as part of its HBO programming.

“Comedy can be a sharp form of social comment and criticism,” festival founder and executive director Stu Smiley says. “Our Freedom of Speech programming acknowledges artists who have used their art and craft to speak out on social issues. In comedy, the freedom of speech really means the freedom to create satire or lampoon institutions, without fear of censorship. Much of comedy, at its best, is social satire.”

Smith’s social satire is perhaps most evident in “Dogma,” in which two banished angels from heaven rush to a New Jersey church where they’ll be given a second chance to re-enter heaven.

In the film, a “disgruntled” apostle, played by Chris Rock, offers his take on religion: “People only want to hear the good shit–life eternal, a place in God’s heaven–but as soon as you hear that you’re getting all this good shit from a black Jesus, you freak. And that, my friends, is called hypocrisy. A black man can steal your stereo, but he can’t be your savior.”

Smith’s frankness has, of course, earned him his share of controversy. “Dogma” was dropped by Miramax (and sold to Lions Gate) after its parent company, Buena Vista, received flak from religious groups who claimed the film was anti-Catholic.

When asked if today’s political climate puts freedom of speech at even greater risk, Smiley responds: “Freedom of speech is always in danger of being chipped away when a country faces uncertain times. Although, I don’t think there has been an institutional diminishment of liberties. I think it’s fair to say the current climate has made people more aware of what they say and how they say it.”

But even for Smith, there are limits to what he will put in his films: “You’ll never hear my characters talk about how they like Variety better than The Hollywood Reporter,” he says.

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Kevin Smith is making a film with tears as well as laughs. Will his cult following approve?

By Bob Baker, Times Staff Writer

The bearded, heavyset guy who walks into a darkened editing studio and starts shoving the two big couches back into alignment looks like Kevin Smith, the writer-actor-director-cult hero beloved for his vulgar, cockeyed yet sweetly human dissections of life through the eyes of the young and disaffected. There’s the oversized Brooklyn baseball jersey he wears over a long-sleeved sweatshirt, the sneakers with gray socks, the baggy below-the-knees jean shorts, the Marlboro Ultra Lights, the cans of Diet Dr. Pepper, even the new make-it-yourself snack discovery he offers you, frozen peanut M&Ms.

But then Smith starts watching the assembled scenes from his new movie, “Jersey Girl,” which wrapped shooting in New Jersey, Philly and Manhattan in November, and something seems weird. Amid his trademark rapid-fire-wisenheimer dialogue are scenes of pregnancy, childbirth, stinky diapers, school plays and harsh words between a father (Ben Affleck) and his 7-year-old daughter.

Smith, the creator of low-budget, high-wit films including “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma”– ribald, outrageous comedies that probed the underside of dead-end work, gender wars and the Roman Catholic Church — is making a movie with as many tears as laughs and a couple of moments that feel almost Capra-esque.

The film has its offbeat twists and wry air. (Only in a Kevin Smith script would somebody at a small-town meeting protest a public works project by warning, “If you tear up the street, Bay Avenue’s gonna look like Bei-rut!”) But what’s unmistakable is that the same Central-Jersey suburban guy who may have inserted a certain four-syllable profanity into his work more than any other filmmaker in history has fallen in love, gotten married, had a baby, turned 30 and is making a comedic drama inspired by it.

Affleck, Smith’s old pal who has appeared in the last five of Smith’s six pictures, is paired with his real-life fiancée, Jennifer Lopez. If that’s not glossy enough, Miramax Films, which is bankrolling the picture, insisted on a more polished look than Smith’s previous films and hired Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.

When Smith reacts to Zsigmond’s presence by posting a shot of them together on his Web site that refers to “Visually Challenged Director Kevin Smith,” his cult understands he is mocking his penchant for telling a story through conversation rather than action. When Smith, during one of his periodic campus Q-and-A sessions, volunteers to telephone the boss of a student who got fired from his pizza-delivery job for coming tonight, the cult understands he is not show-boating. It knows that Smith, a self-described prisoner of Catholic guilt, will whip out his cell phone and follow through in his customary deadpan delivery. The cult loves him because he is the fat kid from the neighborhood of Nowhere who made it on straight-up talent without compromising, who’ll never sell out.

And yet, as he edits “Jersey Girl” for release this summer or fall, Smith is conscious that his evolution as a filmmaker and a man is certain to alienate some cult members who revel in the perpetual adolescence his films have often celebrated.

“Every day I work on this, the more I encourage myself to get ready for the backlash,” he says during a break in editing on the Lot off Santa Monica Boulevard. He knows some fans regard the presence of J. Lo as a perverse celebrity invasion; he’s already bade them goodbye on his voluminous, good-natured Web site, http://www.viewaskew.com. “A good number of the folks who’ve loved our previous flicks will probably abandon us after seeing ‘Jersey Girl,’ ” he typed in mid-December. “I’ll save you the time of having to post this on our Web-board and let you know that I understand you feel I’m a … ’sell-out,’ I’ve ‘lost it’ (whatever ‘it’ was).”

Emotional bond to the film

What the cult can’t see is a director who, at 32 with a 3½-year-old daughter and a three-story house in the Hollywood Hills, is finding himself emotionally drawn to a movie in ways he never felt before. No matter how many times he edits this one, he says, he winds up rooting for Affleck’s character, a self-centered public relations executive overwhelmed by fatherhood. “I’ve become one of these dudes who talks back to the screen,” he says with amusement. “I’m saying, ‘I hope the dude makes the right choice.’ ”

There’s one scene in which father and daughter exchange a certain, knowing look while dad is addressing that town meeting. Something about it, said Smith, brought him to tears during one all-night editing session. A lot of artists could tell you that. But what friends love about Smith, and what the cult has always sensed, is a self-deprecating genuineness that compels him to add a few minutes later to a reporter he barely knows: “The bitch about this film is that you’re making a movie about being the perfect father, and you’re doing this all night and not spending any time with the kid.”

Hollywood can be tough on directors who are suspected of trying to break out of their mold. Smith already suffered this once, when his second film, “Mallrats” (1995), a more conventional albeit sex-obsessed comedy about youths in a mall during a weekend, flopped at the box office, earning back a fraction of its $5.8-million budget. (The film’s only “name” actress, TV star Shannen Doherty, struggled with Smith’s high-velocity patter.) When it came time to make his next film, “Chasing Amy,” Smith fended off Miramax’s offer to spend more on well-known actors, instead casting Affleck and several other pals on a $250,000 budget. (”They said, ‘Kevin, it’s not about making a movie with your friends,’ ” he told a college audience. “I said, ‘Really? Because that’s been the whole point of my career.’ “) Today the stakes are far higher: Miramax is spending $35 million to make “Jersey Girl,” $10 million alone for Affleck’s salary.

One afternoon in December, Smith was writhing over the first measured length of “Jersey Girl”: two hours, 32 minutes, not counting another four-minute scene to be shot in early January. During shooting, he’d figured it would come in at two hours and 20 minutes and that he and his longtime producer Scott Mosier, a friend since film school, would trim it to two hours.

He had one target for cutting in mind: an easily dispensable 6½-minute bedroom scene between Affleck and Lopez during her character’s pregnancy, in which she keeps waking him up to murmur sweet nothings like, “This baby is the only way I can express how much I love you” and “I think you’re gonna be an excellent father” and “I can’t do it all myself; there’re gonna be days when you have to take her to work….”

But there was a problem. The day before, he’d shown the film to a couple of his wife’s girlfriends, and they loved that scene — just the things a woman would say near childbirth and that a husband would slumber through, they said.

Imagine: Kevin Smith, who once wrote a scene for “Clerks” in which a young woman matter-of-factly told her boyfriend she had previously performed oral sex on 37 men, now worrying about the female demographic.

He and Mosier devised a rationalization to offer Miramax in defense of a longer-than-expected two-hour, 15-minute film: “‘Jerry Maguire’ was two hours and 18 minutes.” Smith had gone through this before with Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein, who is notorious for finding trims where his directors can’t or won’t. Smith knew he’d have problems selling two hours and 15 minutes. There were montages that could be sliced, but that would make his already talky style seem verbose. “This will be the hardest movie we’ve ever had to cut,” he said. “It’s easy on a comedy. You just cut what’s not funny. That’s the big difference.” He worked through the holidays, spending several days on each scene, and by last week he’d whittled the movie down to about two hours and 10 minutes.

Interview changes everything

If the cult is looking to blame someone for these predicaments, it could start with another Jennifer: Jennifer Schwalbach. She was a 27-year-old USA Today reporter assigned to interview Smith in 1998 as he was beginning to film “Dogma,” his effort to come to grips with eight years of Catholic school and the contradictions of his faith. (Plot: Two fallen angels, played by Affleck and Matt Damon, try to return to heaven through a scheme that would inadvertently destroy the universe. Pitted against them is a linear descendant of Jesus, played by Linda Fiorentino.) Within a year they were married, and two months later Harley Quinn was born. A few months after that, Smith had an idle fantasy that occurs to most every new dad (to reveal it would spoil the story) and began writing the script that became “Jersey Girl.”

Within the next year, Affleck, coming off the cartoonish “Pearl Harbor,” told Smith he craved something more human in the mold of “Chasing Amy,” in which he’d played a comic-book writer who fell for a lesbian (Smith’s then-girlfriend, Joey Lauren Adams). Smith showed him 40 pages. Affleck signed on and eventually suggested Lopez, someone he’d met while shooting the yet-to-be-released mob comedy “Gigli,” to play his wife.

Smith wanted to make “Jersey Girl” in 1999 right after “Dogma,” but there was the Jay and Silent Bob problem. The duo — neighborhood friend Jason Mewes as foulmouthed, id-dominated Jay and Smith as the taciturn Bob — had been effective slacker characters in each of his movies. There was no room for them in “Jersey Girl,” which, as Smith says, “stopped being ‘a Kevin Smith movie’ and became a ‘Jen and Ben movie,’ or a ‘Bennifer movie,’ as we call it now.” Still, Smith wanted a sense of closure — a way to acknowledge to the cult that without Jay and Silent Bob’s presence in his earlier films, “Jersey Girl” never could have happened. So he made “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001), in which the two losers head from New Jersey to Hollywood to prevent a studio from corrupting a comic book based on their lives.

With that, Smith, wife and toddler headed East last August to shoot “Jersey Girl,” using the Philadelphia suburb of Paulsboro, N.J., as a stand-in for Highlands, the town where Smith was raised as the middle-class son of a postal worker. By October, Paulsboro, a depressed riverfront hamlet, renamed a street Kevin Smith Way and presented him the key to the city. At the ceremony he was humble (”I’m glad the town felt the need to honor someone who doesn’t deserve it”) yet saw deeper possibilities (”If I could collect Boardwalk and Park Place, then I could have a monopoly”).

The cult was able to keep close watch on all this because Smith recorded a diary on his Web site. It ranged from prideful gushing about the film (”Outside of marrying Schwalbach and being too lazy to rip open a prophylactic that apparently had Harley’s name written all over it, though not necessarily in that order, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done”) to observations of craft (”If you’re ever shooting a movie about two people falling in love, I can’t urge you strongly enough to cast a pair of people who are actually falling in love”).

One of the things new parents notice is how time speeds. “Between 16 and 28, I never noticed any difference in myself,” Smith says, sprawled on a couch in his editing room. “I never thought about crossing 30 or crossing 40. And then here I was, on the threshold of 30, with a child. It’s like having a clock in front of you, reminding you, and I never noticed until there was someone growing up in front of me.”

It was barely a decade ago that Smith, who had dropped out of both a college creative writing program and film school, saw Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” and thought: I could do that. He maxed out his credit cards and sold his comic-book collection, and three years later “Clerks,” made in black-and-white for $27,000 in 21 nights at the Quick Stop where Smith clerked by day, was the hit of the Sundance Film Festival.

Three years after that, “Chasing Amy” won the Independent Spirit Award for best screenplay and grossed nearly 50 times its quarter-million-dollar budget for Miramax. That same year, Smith used his relationship with Miramax to get the Affleck-Damon script “Good Will Hunting” read and produced and used the then-unknown pair of actors in “Dogma,” a film he’d written years before. “Clerks” was reborn as a comic-book series and short-lived ABC animated series. For the last year, Smith has been a fixture on “The Tonight Show,” taping and narrating “Roadside Attractions,” quirky Americana features.

“It works because he looks like what regular guys look like,” says Jay Leno. “I find the most successful people in this business are people who make show-business money but live a normal life.”

John Pierson, a longtime booster of independent filmmakers who helped get “Clerks” sold, says fans nervous about the mainstream trappings of “Jersey Girl” shouldn’t worry about Smith too literally integrating his wife-and-kid experiences. “His magical gift, ever since and even in ‘Clerks,’ is to live it, observe it and then transform and transcend the actual experience,” Pierson said. “Scatology aside, he started out with tremendous emotional maturity, yet it has continued to grow exponentially …. From ‘Jersey Girl’ forward, he will understand that he doesn’t owe his fans anything except deeper, richer films — that are still funny as hell.”

No shortage of plans

Until now, there wasn’t a moment during the making of one movie that Smith didn’t have the next one planned. “It was an insurance policy, in case the movie we were doing then totally pooched.” Finally, he’s ready to take a deep breath. He might adapt Gregory McDonald’s “Fletch Won,” a prequel to the “Fletch” films that starred Chevy Chase. It would be a tribute to an author whose gift for dialogue and disdain for descriptive passages shaped Smith’s writing style. (Best guess on the lead: Jason Lee, another Smith pal.) He’s talking about a sci-fi project. He’s talking about a couple of comic-book flicks. He’s even talking about a vacation. After all, he just bought his first new car since the mid-’90s, a (cult members, don’t read the rest of this sentence) Ford Expedition.

Some fans may cringe when Smith uses the word “heartfelt” to describe the kinds of movies he wants to make and watch. (” ‘Jerry Maguire,’ ‘One True Thing,’ ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ — I totally connected with those characters.”) It’s not that he hasn’t made heartfelt films before. “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma” were praised by critics for reaching into deep-seated hopes and fears; they just operated on absurdist planes outside day-to-day life. Fatherhood has pulled Smith closer to the real world, where people do more than laugh.

“I’m in this place where a zillion movies have made me laugh,” he says. “Now I want a movie to make me laugh and cry.”

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By MARK VOGER

No, you won’t find Jay and Silent Bob in Kevin Smith’s forthcoming romantic comedy “Jersey Girl” starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Liv Tyler and George Carlin. The writer-director has sworn up and down that he’s set aside the characters he and Jason Mewes played in six films.

But Jeff Anderson — who starred as wisecracking Randal in Smith’s 1994 debut, “Clerks” — has his doubts. (Anderson recently became a writer-director himself, with “Now You Know.”)

“I know Kevin has always said that his Jay and Silent Bob characters — that he’s moving on from the ‘View Askewniverse,’ ” Anderson says, using Smith’s nickname for the fictional realm in which the characters exist.

“But I’ll tell you, when we get together with Kevin and we sort of talk about it — I still think it’s going to come out of him again.

“Somewhere down the road, we’re going to see all of these characters back, because they’re characters he knows so well and we just personally have fun with.”

In an online posting on his Web site (www.viewaskew.com), Smith seems to verify Anderson’s sentiments.

While warning “Clerks” fanatics that “Jersey Girl” will be different from his five previous films, Smith confirms that there is “Clerks” activity on the horizon.

Writes Smith: “Anybody who incorporates ‘Snootchie Bootchies!’ into their Internet postings or daily conversations might wanna wait for the ‘Clerks’ cartoon (which — take this as a promise or a threat — is next for us) and skip this one.”

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PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: This was a blockbuster year at the box office with Hollywood on the verge of record-breaking numbers. So, for the inside story on the movies you missed and those you shouldn’t miss, I spoke with Kevin Smith, the hot independent director. His latest feature: “Jersey Girl.” It stars — you know these two — Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. He gives us his hits and misses for 2002.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN (on camera): “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding.” What is it about a movie like that, where you can take unknown actors, or a unknown actor, and spend what, 3 or 4 million bucks on it and end up making close to a couple of hundred million?

KEVIN SMITH, DIRECTOR AND ACTOR, “JERSEY GIRL”: A total phenomenon really. You know, how often does that happen when something that extensive (ph) with almost no marketing budget behind it just keeps earning and earning?

SMITH: This is a movie that just kind of picked up steam as it went along. Obviously, people found something in the movie that they identified with, because boy, they went out there and told the world about it.

ZAHN: “Harry Potter, Chamber of Secrets,” “Men in Black II,” “Analyze that,” another “Star Trek” movie, “Santa Clause 2,” this genre of film doesn’t seem to lose its staying power, does it?

SMITH: No, there’s always comfort in the familiar, when you can kind of sit down in the movie theater and be like, OK, I pretty much know like what the chemistry is going to be like.

“Men in Black,” I love it, it was a wonderful movie. But “Men in Black II” it felt like they were like people love that dog. It really wasn’t the dog in the last movie that did it for most people. It was the chemical between Tommy Lee and Will Smith, and they didn’t seem to share as much screen time as they had in the first one.

ZAHN: Did “Spiderman” live up to your expectations? SMITH: The first time I saw “Spiderman,” I wasn’t really wild about it, but I watched it on a tape at home.

SMITH: And the movie came out and did huge numbers. I went to see it on the big screen when things calmed down a bit, when you could finally get in to see it, and I liked it a lot more, like you know it plays wonderfully on a big screen.

ZAHN: Another movie that got a lot of attention this year was Eminem’s “8 Mile.”

ZAHN: Is this the beginning of a new career for him?

SMITH: A large cross-section of people like Eminem music. You know, I’m sure there’s a certain percentage of the audience that showed up just to see if he’d fail, rooting for him to fail. But apparently, he didn’t, because he got great acting notices.

ZAHN: If you would, Kevin, reflect on what you think were some of the movies that had the greatest impact this year.

SMITH: Two of the best movies that I saw this year were cartoons: “Ice Age” and “Lilo & Stitch.”

SMITH: “Lilo & Stitch” I thought was one of the best, if not the best, movies of the year, because that really — it did everything that a movie should do. It made you laugh, and it made you cry, it totally touched you, and it had songs in it.

ZAHN: “Ice Age” visually was just spectacular.

SMITH: “Ice Age,” yes, was wonderful to look at, and I also thought the chemistry between the voices was totally well-done, proving like, you know, you could take something familiar and as long as it’s well-written and well-directed, it doesn’t matter.

ZAHN: Yes, that’s…

SMITH: I really enjoyed that movie.

I finally got around to seeing “Austin Powers 3: Gold Member,” and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I didn’t find it funny.

SMITH: There’s a few moments where you kind of chuckled, but it felt like diminishing (ph) returns. The movie did incredibly well, and everyone thinks that Austin Powers is really funny. And I thought he was funny the first time, but that movie to me was just kind of like, oh man.

ZAHN: Tell me a little bit about how the industry reacted to “Swept Away,” and that was the venture of Madonna and her husband, Guy Ritchie.

ZAHN: It did horrible at the box office.

SMITH: It’s kind of a shame. Guy Ritchie is really a talented director, and Madonna can’t seem to catch a break in movies. Don’t know why. But who knows? Who knows why stuff doesn’t work?

ZAHN: Some of the other movies you see leading the list of the worst movies of the year are “Jackass, the Movie.”

SMITH: In terms of “Jackass,” you’ve got to (UNINTELLIGIBLE), because it’s barely a movie. It’s to a certain extent a version of the TV show. I guess you’ll never go broke, you know, underestimating the intelligence of the American public, or the taste of the American public for that matter.

ZAHN: Let’s close by talking about your latest project, “Jersey Girl.” It’s your latest…

SMITH: “Jersey Girl,” yes.

ZAHN: … movie. Now, that stars, what? Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck?

SMITH: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, it will be out sometime in 2003. I had a great time shooting it.

ZAHN: Did they become a couple during the filming of this movie? Or were they a couple preceding it?

SMITH: They — I guess they had started dating right before we started rehearsing. So, they had been together for about a week, two weeks, and then suddenly we were rehearsing, and they were a couple, which was kind of great, because they were playing a couple falling in love in movie. So, the onscreen chemistry was mirrored by their offscreen chemistry.

ZAHN: So, you didn’t have to fake anything?

SMITH: Didn’t have to fake a thing, and hopefully, next year we’ll be sitting here talking about that movie and not you’re referring to it in “Swept Away” terms. That would be horrible.

Transcript #2
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Some of the hottest movies of 2002 are in theaters right now. Hollywood’s bringing out all the big guns from Leonardo DiCaprio to Jack Nicholson to the directing debut of George Clooney. So what should you see? I recently sat down and talked with hot indie director Kevin Smith to get his take on the can’t-miss movies of 2002.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEVIN SMITH, DIRECTOR: “Gangs of New York” I have seen.

ZAHN: What did you think?

SMITH: It’s fantastic, I think. The sheer volume of the flick, the sheer scope of the flick, kind of just screams out for, give it an Oscar right now, give it the best picture Oscar.

Beautiful movie, wonderfully acted, just amazing vision. You sit there as a filmmaker, you’re kind of humbled. You go like, oh, so this is what filmmaking is all about. Martin Scorcese kind of outdid himself.

ZAHN: Another movie getting a fair amount of buzz is the musical version of “Chicago” with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger. Do you think that will do well?

SMITH: I think it could do well. I don’t know, musicals don’t fare that well, but every Disney movie that comes down the pike seems to be a musical. So why wouldn’t a live action movie work, particularly if people really like the stars.

ZAHN: Let’s talk about Jack Nicholson. He’s out with in a new movie called “About Schmidt,” and I guess Oscar talk is really loud on this one.

What did you think?

SMITH: I mean, there ought to be, like, an Oscar category just for Jack Nicholson so that he doesn’t have to compete with everybody else. It seems like every time Jack Nicholson comes out in a somewhat dramatic role, people are like, it’s Jack’s year, he’s going to win again. We’re like, we know he’s a great actor, he’s wonderful, but maybe let’s give somebody else a shot this time.

It’s always a pleasure to watch Jack Nicholson, always a pleasure to watch Kathy Bates. Best picture of the year, “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.”

George Clooney, first-time director, made a better looking movie than my first five movies, far more visually engaged. I know that’s really not that great a compliment, because my movies don’t look that good, but I thought that movie was incredibly visually accomplished and incredibly well-directed, wonderful performances.

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Director Kevin Smith Calls In. 12/19/02. 7:30am

Director Kevin Smith called in to promote his new DVD. Howard said he hasn’t had him on much lately because he doesn’t think people care about Kevin. Howard said people probably don’t even know his movies. Howard said what got his attention was the fact that Kevin told them that he has tape of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez talking about Howard. Kevin told Howard that he hasn’t tried to call in since the last time he was on the show. Howard said Gary told him that he has tried to contact them though.Howard said there were rules about this tape that Kevin has. Howard said they got a letter from Kevin that said he can’t play the tape without him setting it up. He also has to get a plug in for his new DVD ‘’An Evening with Kevin Smith'’ where he sits down for 3 and a half hours and does a Q&A with some college kids. He said it’s pretty funny. Howard took a call from a guy who said he’s a big fa! n of Kevin’s and took offense to what Howard had said about him no being popular. Kevin joked and said that he wanted to thank his father for calling in. Howard took a couple more calls for Kevin and people defended him against the stuff Howard said.

Howard got to the clip and played the clip that Kevin sent them. It’s actually from his movie ‘’Jersey Girl.'’ Kevin said he wrote the lines but he might change them today because of the stuff Howard was saying about him. Howard spent a couple more minutes with him and took a call from Crazy Cabbie. Cabbie asked a question about Ben Affleck and the possibility that he wears a wig. Kevin said he doesn’t wear a wig though. Howard told Kevin that he really does like him so he shouldn’t be upset about the stuff he was saying earlier. Howard then wrapped up the call and replayed the clip of Ben and Jen talking about Howard in the movie. After listening to it again Howard and the guys thought the scene needed some music. Fred threw in a music clip he had and it actually worked. Howard said there are some movie scenes that don’t need music and played a couple of porn clips to demonstrate.

Listen in here.

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Filmmaker on his Way with key to Paulsboro
By STEVE LEVINE
Courier-Post Staff
PAULSBORO

He doesn’t have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame but the Jersey Girl director may not need one. He’s got Kevin Smith Way.

Smith, who’s been in this waterfront borough on and off for nearly two months filming his next Garden State-themed motion picture, was honored Tuesday with a street bearing his name.

Jersey Girl - starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Liv Tyler and George Carlin - is set in the Central Jersey shore town of Highlands. Paulsboro was cast, primarily for financial reasons, to play its part.

“Had I known they would have named a street after me it probably would have been set here,” mused Smith, casually dressed in calf-length denim jeans and an oversize blue hockey shirt.

The renamed thoroughfare, about 1 1/2 blocks near Paulsboro High School, intersects North Delaware Street and Greenwich Avenue.

It had been named Tyler Street - after the country’s 10th president, not one of the upcoming film’s stars.

During filming here, which began Aug. 23, the main actors have largely been out of public view. On Tuesday, however, Tyler and Raquel Castro, who plays the film’s title character, were on hand for the unveiling of the new Kevin Smith Way street sign.

Smith, who’s fast becoming one of Hollywood’s A-list directors, arrived for the brief midafternoon ceremony in a very un-Hollywood way - driving himself, his wife and 3- year-old daughter, Harley, in a late-model, but not new, Jeep Grand Cherokee.

A bona fide Jersey boy from Red Bank, Monmouth County, Smith thanked Paulsboro Mayor John Burzichelli. The mayor also presented him with a key to the borough and a proclamation naming Oct. 22, 2002, as Kevin Smith Day in Paulsboro.

“Thanks for the key to the city,” Smith said. “But lock the door because I will use the key. Hopefully nothing nefarious will happen on Kevin Smith Way but, if it does, call my lawyers.”

Smith said filming is expected to wrap up here later this month. Jersey Girl is tentatively scheduled for release in October 2003, with a premiere in Paulsboro, he announced.

Questioned about how it feels to have a street named after him while still alive, Smith said it’s a little weird.

“I expect to drop any second,” he quipped.

Burzichelli, a co-owner of Hill Studio on Broad Street who worked with Smith on Chasing Amy, an earlier film, said he wanted to honor the moviemaker because he helped elevate Paulsboro’s profile by shooting here.

After the ceremony the mayor interviewed Smith for Eye on Paulsboro, a local access cable program he hosts.

During the interview, Smith said Miramax, which is financing the film, wanted Jersey Girl shot in Toronto because Canada is a much cheaper location than the United States.

He said Paulsboro, which resembles Highlands in age and architecture, enabled the film to be shot here at a cost Miramax could live with.

“Paulsboro allowed us to shoot a movie called Jersey Girl in New Jersey,” he said.

Afterward, Burzichelli said interviewing a Hollywood hotshot isn’t really all that different from interviewing his regular guests about town.

“It’s just another day in Paulsboro,” he said. “Another day in Paulsboro.”

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