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Antony: For Fletch: Won, you've come out in heavy support for Jason Lee, obviously. Why Jason Lee and no one else? I imagine [the studios] are pushing pretty hard for the Beantown Hero...

Kevin: Of course, from the get-go [they] were saying Ben Ben! Ben [Affleck] could do it!, and I love Ben to death, but Lee is a more natural fit for it. Plus Ben already has his franchise. He's going to be known as Jack Ryan from here on, y'know, not totally, but that'll be his franchise. Does he really need another one? Whereas Jason Lee is a really perfect fit for that character. It's not about favoritism, it's just about whom matches that role best, and that would be Lee.

Antony: I've always wondered what it must have been like to pitch J&SBSB to Harvey Weinstein. What was his first reaction to all the Miramax jokes? Did he need convincing?

Kevin: There was never a pitch. I haven't pitched a movie since Mallrats. Basically, I just let them know what I'm going to do. With J&SBSB, I went in and spoke to Harvey and Bob [Weinstein] and [Creative Exec] John Gordon to suss out where I wanted it to go. Originally we were going to do Clerks 2, and Harvey was excited about that because he felt it had a built in audience. Initially after having the desire to do it, I said I don't really want to go back and touch Clerks because it exists in it its own little unique pocket of my h'ouvre, if you will. It seemed silly to go back and sequel-ize something like that, or sequel-ize at all. So when I finally came to grips with the fact that I would be doing J&SBSB instead, I went in and said, Instead of a Clerks movie, I want to do a Jay and Silent Bob movie, but I want to do it at Dimension because it's not going to be a Miramax-toned flick. It's not going to be a classy picture by any stretch of the imagination.

To me, in spite of what they continue to churn out, Miramax will always stand for something classy, whereas Dimension is the genre label, that's where you can go and be low-brow, or sci-fi, or weird. So I went in to tell them what I wanted to do it with Bob and Bob said Absolutely. We've had a very cool relationship with them, they've always kicked back and let us do what we want, and I think that largely has to do with the fact that we've always turned them a profit. [They think] Whatever he's going to do, we know his people will show up to watch it. Well make cash, even if it's a little bit, that's fine. It tends to give us a bit of creative freedom, which is one of the reasons that I love doing stuff with the fans, whether it's at the website or coming to comicons like this, or doing the college Q&A's. People are always bugging me about Why do you hang out with the fans so much? Why are you so fan intensive? I mean, the fans have not only put asses in the seats and kept me working. They also, because of the volume of them, have afforded me huge creative freedom where I can do something like make J&SBSB, which if you step back is an incredibly self-referential and self-indulgent film. Without the fans I wouldn't have been able to do that.

Antony: Agreed. Switching gears here a bit, why Nails brand cigarettes? They show up in your other flicks, and they're everywhere in J&SBSB. Is there a particular significance to that product name?

Kevin: Like coffin nails, y'know, people call cigarettes coffin nails. Back on Amy, when we were doing up the props and whatnot, I said, Call the cigarettes Nails. Then our graphic designer Scott Purcell, who did the design for Mooby when I told him Make him look like Mickey Mouse. and he created [Mooby], he did Nails as well. He came up with the design. It's this really authentic looking pack of cigarettes. As the movies have gone on we just varied. I smoke Menthol; he made a Nails Menthol and a Nails Light. If you look at Clerks, it's all real cigarettes, but when we go back to Quickstop for this one, it's an all Nails world.

Antony: Where is the Bluntmobile currently residing?

Kevin: The Bluntmobile's in storage but will be going to The Secret Stash. We had kept everything in storage out in Los Angeles in case we had to go back and re-shoot, thankfully we never did so it will all make the move from a Los Angeles storage facility to Jersey and then we'll start decking out the store. It would have been great to [have had the store] all decked out in time for the opening of the flick, but I've been on the press-run and the post-run

Antony: Understandable. Does The Bluntmobile run?

Kevin: No. It's built on the chassis of a Volkswagen, but the guy who designed it and built it on the chassis kept his chassis, and rightfully so. The body of course is separate. It's fiberglass, and it's not too heavy, but it's also not that light. We'll just set it up in the middle of the store.

Antony: So we won't see it in a Red Bank fourth of July parade any time soon?

Kevin: [Laughs] No, maybe you can see it if you come to The Stash, but it can't drive. Eric, the guy who built it, said We can make an operable version of this for about fifty grand. I said, I don't think it's that necessary. It wasn't even going to be for the movie; he wanted to take it to car shows, but it wasn't necessary.

Antony: I've been watching the trailers for awhile, when the van explodes, is that you and Mewes doing that stunt?

Kevin: That's Ben Jensen and Matt Anderson, our stunt guys. Isn't that funny? We've got a Ben and Matt in the movie, and Ben and Matt our stunt guys

Antony: Did you use an air ramp for that?

Kevin: No, those dudes just lifted themselves up

Antony: I was looking really hard for the air ramp

Kevin: It was a great fall, they got awesome air on that one. They're excellent stunt guys. They doubled for us in the lightsaber fight as well. If you see me go up the ladder and do the flip, that is Matt, that's not me. Everything else is me, but the guy that goes up and does the circle in the air comes down, that's Matt. Matt was really intuitive about the Silent Bob performance. I mean, there's not much of a performance to ape, but there were times when he would do it for action-y stuff, and you didn't know if it was me or him because from behind, he gives the same kind of non-performance I give.

Antony: When you guys beat up that first little kid, and the camera pulls back to the wide shot, that didn't look like a stuntman

Kevin: Yeah, he was a stuntkid.

Antony: When you broke the gates at Skywalker Ranch, was that a feeling of vindication for you, kind of the end of a road, so to speak?

Kevin: For this movie, or for Dogma?

Antony: Dogma.

Kevin: For Dogma, it was kind of nice. When you get there the ranch is not what people assume. People assume you go to the Skywalker Ranch, and it's like Star Wars Land. It's not, it's just this huge, beautiful piece of property in Gods country that you would have to look very, very hard to find anything remotely Star Wars oriented. In the big house where the restaurant is, there are a few models. There's a Boushh model, kind of a maquette in the library that's next to the idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark that Indiana Jones steals in the beginning and maybe a model X-wing or Y-wing there, but those are the only things in evidence that have anything to do with Star Wars. There's an archive building that has everything, which I have not gone to. Dave Mandel went to [it], and said that it's amazing. There's a life-size speeder bike that you can stand there and take pictures in front of, the Ark of the Covenant, Han Solo in carbonite, like it's all just laying around at the end of Raiders of The Lost Ark, just boxes and boxes and boxes. You have to look hard to find that stuff, you have to go to a special place to see it. At the Ranch itself it's not like you come through the gates and R2 is at the front gate.

It's very nice, it's a fantastic sound facility. The guys who worked on Dogma, Gary Rizzo and Tom Meiers, also worked on [J&SBSB], as well as Phil Benson who is kind of our post sound guy. Phil Benson worked all through the flick. He was our post production sound supervisor on Dogma. We grew very close with him, and then he worked on Vinnie Pereira's movie A Better Place, he was the guy who brought it up to Skywalker and did us a real favor. He worked on Vulgar as well, and he wanted to try to move out of just sound and see all the other aspects of production, so he jumped on to J&SBSB. He worked every aspect of pre- and post-production, which was kind of nice because he turned down the Lord of the Rings gig to do it. He was going to be the sound guy out in New Zealand on all three because he'd worked with Peter [Jackson] before on The Frighteners. But instead [laughs] he opted to work on J&SBSB, which, I don't know, Phil should have his head examined. He's an excellent guy, and a man of many talents.

He and Mosier went up and did the mix on this movie because I was out tubthumpin, doing press. This time I didn't even sit through most of the mix. I sat through pre-mixes where I told the guys the kind of stuff I was looking for, and I'm never looking for anything much. The only thing I'm ever looking for is Make sure I can hear the dialogue, you can do whatever you want, make sure I can hear the dialogue. Then I went up to Skywalker just for a day just to listen to playback and give any notes, and I had eight notes. It was very minimal, three of my notes were Excellent job on this one spot. Generally I tend to trust the people I work with very well, and I'm not a big sound guy. Phil and Scott were way into sound. I said Go ahead, go nuts. You get up there, and they layer in jokes that nobody else will hear, but I do, and kind of dig on.

Going to Skywalker this time around it was nice to go up and visit because the last time I was there I got married. It was two years after the fact we went up for [a] screening [of J&SBSB] which was like three weeks ago, four weeks ago. So Jen went back with me as well, and it was kind of nice to see where we got married.

Antony: Have you met George yet?

Kevin: Never, never in person. I was in the big house once, up at the Ranch at the restaurant. I've met Rick McCallum, his producer, who's a very nice guy, very gracious to us. He kind of gave us carte blanche on this movie and said whatever we needed we could have because his daughter is a big fan of Chasing Amy. [Rick] was eating with George at the big house, and I was eating at a table not far away at the restaurant. [Rick] looked over and I waved at him and he waved at me, and then George looked over I gave George kind of a wave, and I saw George kind of lean in to Rick to [ask] Who did I just wave at? Rick explained and then George nodded, and waved back again. That's it, I never felt the need to go over go over and [say] Hey, how are ya? I assume the dude must know by now that I'm a fan. What more do you say beyond that? I'm not a craft or technical guy. I know Robert Rodriguez went up and talked to him about HD, and sat down and kind of picked his brain about how George shot Episode 2 in all high definition video. Based on that conversation, Robert went out and bought one of those cameras and that's what he shot Once Upon A Time In Mexico on, and that's what he's going to shoot Spy Kids 2 on. He's [now] a complete HD guy, I'll never go back to film. That's Robert, Robert's very into the technical stuff and the craft and whatnot, and I'm more of a story guy, there's not much I could really say to George beyond, Hey, thanks. Love the stuff thanks for never suing us.

Antony: Who's the lady on the Dogma DVD? Is she a friend of yours?

Kevin: No, Columbia Tri-Star brought her in. Frank Rodriguez, a guy who works at Columbia Tri-Star produced those segments. Don't know her.

Antony: I wanted to give you a chance to tell the fans about what we need to see happen next weekend. Were you worried that the preview screenings are going to affect grosses at all?

Kevin: I was a little bit [worried] initially, and Bob [Weinstein] broke down the math to me. I said Why would you f*** with our opening weekend by having a sneak? He said the sneak is excellent for spreading word of mouth, to which I didn't agree. I said that everyone that we were counting on [was] going to see it in advance, the hardcore [fan]s'll go. I believed it was just going to be packed with people who just wanted to see it a week early, the people who were going to go anyway. He said, Kevin, it's one screening, on one day. Do the math, it's like a thousand theaters, three hundred seats average per theater. Maybe, a million, a million and a half. I don't know that it will generate word of mouth, because like I said, the people who went to see it are cats who were going to go anyway, it's like preaching to the choir at that point. At the very least, it's kind of a nice way to give everyone an advance peek at the flick.

Antony: Finally who's ass is on Moviepoopshoot.com?

Kevin: You'd have to ask Ming, Ming knows. It's none of our asses. I called up Ming and said I needed him to make a big ass with film coming out, and he found it, he found the ass

My twenty minutes with Kevin was up as profound conversation ended with a no less profound question. How J&SBSB will do at theaters this weekend is anyone's guess. I believe Kevin Smith is poised to take his next step towards a larger world. His next flick will be more modest in scale. While Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back could hardly be considered intellectual faire, it does represent something Hollywood is sorely lacking in: an independent filmmaker with the freedom to make the kinds of flicks he needs to make and a built-in loyal audience that wants to come see them.

Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back opens this Friday, August 24 2001 at theaters everywhere.