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| Interview: Kevin Smith Makes "A Porno" |
by Peter Sobczynski
The acclaimed writer-director of Clerks," "Chasing Amy" and "Jersey Girl" talks about his latest work, the controversial comedy "Zack and Miri Make A Porno."
Over the past 15 years, indie-based auteur Kevin Smith has developed both a loyal fan base and a virtual cottage industry thanks to such genially raunchy and surprisingly thoughtful films as “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma” and the two “Clerks” films and with his latest effort, “Zack and Miri Make A Porno,” he has figured out a way to move outside of the self-contained and constantly overlapping universe that he created for his previous efforts (save for 2004’s underrated “Jersey Girl”) in such a way that he is able to flex his storytelling muscles more than he has since the breakthrough of “Chasing Amy” while still retaining enough of the outrageous humor of his earlier works to attract his devoted followers. In the film, Zack and Miri (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) are a couple of lifelong platonic friends living in near-squalor in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. When their standard of living shifts over to total squalor, they hit upon the idea of making their own porno film in order to score some quick cash--after attending a class reunion, they figure that if nothing else, sheer curiosity might inspire most of their former classmates to buy a copy. After assembling a small cast and crew--consisting of a pal (Craig Robinson) with enough money to finance the venture, a low-rent videographer (Smith regular Jeff Anderson) to shoot the thing and a few actors willing to bare all for the cameras (including Smith veteran Jason Mewes and actual porn stars Traci Lords and Katie Morgan)--they set off on their filmmaking adventure. All goes well until it is time for Zack and Miri, who have never slept with each other, to shoot their big scene--although they assure each other that it is only business and that it won’t change things between them, it does and the repercussions of this act transform what had been a goofball comedy into something far more grounded and emotional in its final third.
Recently, Smith, who is rarely at a loss for words when it comes to talking about himself and his work (as you can also see on the newly-released “Sold Out: A Threevening With Kevin Smith,” the latest DVD record of one of his marathon discussion/Q&A sessions), got on the phone to briefly discuss “Zack and Miri,” the challenges of stepping outside of his personal cinematic comfort zone and his difficulties with the MPAA. (Incidentally, I did ask Smith, who was one of the more notable of the rotating hosts that “Ebert & Roeper At the Movies” utilized for a while, what his feelings were regarding the new version of “At the Movies” currently polluting the airwaves but, alas, he said that he had not yet had a chance to watch it.)
“Zack and Miri Make A Porno” is your second film to take place completely out side of the so-called “Askewniverse” that the majority of your movies have been set in, the first one being 2004’s “Jersey Girl.” This time around, was it easier to create a film without your usual characters and trademarks since you had done it before of was it harder because of the way that many of your fans rejected that previous attempt?
You know, I have been able to compartmentalize what went wrong with “Jersey Girl” and that was more about elements that I couldn’t control. All I had to worry about on this flick was if Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks suddenly started dating and mercifully, that didn’t come to pass. It was tempting to set it in Jersey because I am so used to doing that but I wanted to place the story in a location that seemed like the least likely place where somebody would ever make a porno, so I went with Pittsburgh.
There are many different ways in which people can look at and analyze this film--it can be taken as a sweet romance, a raunchy comedy, a satire on the current economic climate and even as sort of a vaguely autobiographical look at the making of your own first film, “Clerks.” For you, what was the initial inspiration for this film?
I had kind of been thinking of doing a film set on the fringes of the porn industry since back in ‘96, when we wrapped “Chasing Amy,” with Joey, Jason and Ben--it wasn’t exactly “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” but it shared a lot of the same elements. I didn’t want to do a film set in the porn industry because Paul Thomas Anderson kind of did it so well in “Boogie Nights”--what’s the point of trying to compete in that field once he has already mastered it? The subject of normal people trying to make pornos kind of appealed to me and so it kind of stayed there swimming in the back of my head. When I saw Seth in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” I just fell in love with him and felt like he was a living, breathing version of one of my characters and so I started writing and crystallized the story that became “Zack and Miri” and he loved that.
It then evolved somewhat in order to tell one of my favorite bits of conversational subject matter, the difference between fucking and making love, so I got to touch on that to some degree. In writing it, a lot of the “Clerks” stuff seeped into it. I didn’t set out with the plan to do an autobiographical take on how we made “Clerks” but by virtue of the fact that I was dealing with a bunch of knuckleheaded amateurs who didn’t know anything about filmmaking trying to make a film, it immediately took me back to my first film when I was the knucklehead who didn’t know anything about filmmaking, though I am sure that you can find people today who still think I am a knuckleheaded amateur who doesn’t know what he is doing. All of that wound up informing the screenplay as well.
With the exception of “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back,” all of the films that you have done from “Chasing Amy” on have mixed in serious moments along with the comedy. While “Zach and Miri” is first and foremost a comedy, it probably contains the most serious and emotional moments in any of your film since “Chasing Amy,” mostly due to the significant tonal shift that you make in the last third.
You know, it is always kind of a dicey proposal to start shifting the emotional tones on people in the midst of the flick but to me, it was worth the risk because you don’t want to just spend all your time simply making disposable jokes . If people have invested in those characters, you kind of want to give them something more than a conventional joke machine. For me, it is always more interesting when you can kind of rope them in with the humor and then take a harsh right or left into more dramatic terrain and hope that they stay with you. For me, that is a risk worth taking. It kind of works out in this movie and in “Chasing Amy” to the same degree. To me, it is actually a little more impressive that it works here because with “Chasing Amy,” it looked like an indie film and played like an indie film. This film is more of a raunchy, mainstream R-rated comedy fare and populist entertainment and to take that kind of emotional turn is a little more risky to me because the audience might not be ready for that kind of thing.
Maybe I give my fans more credit than most but I feel like since most of them have been with us since “Chasing Amy” at least, they are kind of ready for it--I don’t think they will be going “What the fuck is this?” like we were suddenly speaking Martian or something. I think they are prepared for it. I mean, the fan base is kind of all over the place. There are those who are just Jay & Silent Bob people who like the really easy laughs, there is the “Chasing Amy” audience and those who like the bromantic-comedy stuff with Dante and Randall. It is kind of all over the place and I think that “Zack and Miri” manages to hit every one of those audiences. It’s weird--when I watch this flick, it feels like the sum total of all the flicks that we have done right up to this minute and that all seven of the previous films inform this one, even “Jersey Girl.” I know that some people might say “Are you sure that you want to compare this film to ‘Jersey Girl’?” but in some weird way, it is kind of like the filthy, working version of “Jersey Girl” in its handling of the sentimentality.
You spoke earlier about writing with Seth Rogen in mind and outside of a couple of the smaller parts, the vast majority of the actors that you cast are people that you haven’t worked with before. Was this a conscious decision on your part when it came to casting the film?
To some degree. I knew there were a couple of people that I wanted to bring over from the other stuff like Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes but largely, once we got Seth, we wanted to try to cast people that we hadn’t worked with before. Once we cast Seth, he was actually really instrumental in picking other people up as well. He was the one who suggested Craig and championed Elizabeth as well. He really deserves an unofficial casting credit on the movie. Having him in there, it opened the door for everybody else and I think that it is the strongest total cast that I have ever worked with because there is not a single weak link--everyone pulls their weight.
The casting choice that I was especially curious about was the brief appearance by Brandon Routh, who was hyped to the hills as the star of “Superman Returns” and who kind of disappeared after the film failed to connect with audiences, as the former class heartthrob who is now the boyfriend of the gay porno star played by Justin Long. He is actually really good in the scene but I was wondering how you came to think of him for the part.
Seth and I were talking about who you could get to play that part since you are asking someone to fly all the way out to Pittsburgh to be the straight man in a comedy or a straight man pretending to be a straight man, which is even worse. It is a thankless role because you have to be the set-up guy and not the punchline guy. We were stuck trying to find someone willing to make the trip and we were trying to figure out what the character would look like and what type of person he was. I kept saying that he was a salt-of-the-earth, mid-American guy like Clark Kent. Seth said, “Yeah, like Brandon Routh” and I said yeah. He goes, “Why don’t we just ask Brandon Routh to do it?” and in Seth’s world, you just ask people. Banks was sitting there while we were having this conversation and she was like “My agent also represents him. I’ll call my agent.” That was how we got to Brandon. He read the script and came out and wound up getting to be funny. On the page, it wasn’t very funny but he brought something to his performance, which is a really wonderful and nuanced performance, because he was able to get laughs out of his discomfort of dealing with his drunken boyfriend in public.
As with many of your films, “Zach and Miri Make A Porno” has generated some pre-release controversy, this time involving the MPAA, who apparently disagreed with the original promotional materials to such a degree that the current posters utilize stick figure drawings while making reference to the problems that you had with them.
Initially, they gave us the NC-17 three times and I wound up going to the appeals process where you can move away from the ratings board and have an appeals screening before a brand-new audience and try to flip the rating without making any cuts. We were able to do that and that was kind of cool. This was the third time I had gone before the appeals board--I did it when they gave “Clerks” an NC-17 back in 1994 and then on “Jersey Girl” when they gave us an R rating for that movie, God knows how, back in 2004 and now this time with “Zack and Miri.” In the appeals process, I have always been able to flip the rating without cutting anything out and this time was no exception.
Then they came down on me even more stringently on the marketing materials. We had a tough time getting any posters approved and finally, in frustration, we put forward the stick-figure poster which they could not not accept because it was so innocuous, and it wound up being the cornerstone of out campaign. I think it is kind of clever--it is nice to look at a movie poster where it isn’t just “Here’s this famous fucker and here’s that famous fucker. . .” It is really stripping marketing down to its bare elements and I guess we won’t know if it works for a couple more weeks but I like it.
Finally, I wanted to know what you are working on now. Specifically, can you say anything about the status of “Red State,” the politically-oriented horror film that you have apparently been working on for a while?
I am still hoping to do that one in the spring, maybe in March or April, but I am still trying to find the cash for it. It is a little political horror film that is different from anything that I have done before and which is a complete 180 away from “Zack and Miri.” It is a bleak little non-commercial political horror flick and I don’t know how else to describe it.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2602
originally posted: 10/26/08 17:19:34
last updated: 10/26/08 17:38:10
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