My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (87 page)

— On
Chasing Amy
, we rehearsed for at least two weeks, probably closer to three. I’d been dating Joey at the time, so she had constant access to the script. Ben and Lee moved out to Red Bank a month before we started shooting, and we devoted lots of time to rehearsing — mostly in the old Red Bank office on Broad Street. Again, we were in a situation of having little cash with which to make the flick; so getting the performances as close to camera-ready was gonna save us from burning film (and stock and processing costs) and help us make our days. I remember getting uppity with the three leads one day, because we were three weeks out, and they were still on book. “How can we really rehearse if none of you have your fucking lines memorized?!” I’d said, pissed, calling an early close to that rehearsal day. When Ben left the office, he went over to the Dublin House bar on Monmouth for five hours and learned his lines. Joey went back to my condo and did the same. Within two days, Lee was, also, off book. That just seems funny to me now: me being mad at those guys for not having the entire script memorized three fucking weeks away from shooting. On
Catch & Release
, I memorized most of my dialogue on the day, repeatedly going over my sides in my trailer after blocking rehearsal. On the fucking day — like most actors. And here I was, bitching these cats out about not committing all their lines to memory three fucking weeks away from shooting. Oh, how naive I was...

—
Dogma
was the first flick in which I learned that, the more famous your cast, the less likely you’re gonna get the luxury of two/three weeks’ rehearsals. I think we got about a week and a half of serious rehearsal time. Ben and Matt were blowing up off of
Good Will Hunting
, Salma Hayek had just landed a Revlon contract, Chris Rock was still shooting
Lethal Weapon 4
in L.A. (I actually had to go out to Los Angeles to rehearse with Rock before he could join us in Pittsburgh). Unlike my previous three flicks, people had lives outside of the movie. And since all of the actors were getting paid the same amount of money to do the flick, in a “favored-nations” deal, the last thing I could do was get shitty and decree “I need three weeks rehearsal with all of you or you’re out of the fucking picture!” Still, you’ve got people like Alan Rickman in the cast; how much rehearsal does an actor of Rickman’s caliber need, really? Ben I’d worked with before, so he knew what I wanted. Mewes had memorized the
whole script (his lines as well as everyone else’s) so all I had to do with him was modulate and tweak. Matty Damon was... Matty fucking Damon, i.e. — he’s genius at every role. At the end of the day, that week and a half was all we needed.

— On
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
, I never rehearsed with anybody but Mewes, really (and maybe one or two days with Shannon Elizabeth). Since the flick was so cameo-driven, it would’ve been impossible to get any kind of full-cast rehearsal going. (Make people show up and stay all day just to rehearse six or eight lines? Ludicrous.) So the rehearsals on that flick mainly consisted of me teaching a heroin/oxy-kicking Mewes how to be Jay again — and even that wasn’t tough, considering he’d played the role four times already.

— For
Jersey Girl
, I got a week of rehearsals. We had Lopez for two days, though, since her manager wouldn’t let her rehearse until Miramax closed her deal — even though she was with us in Philly, sharing an apartment with our leading man. Said leading man had sold me on doing this flick with him a year and change earlier, at a party in a house that’d one day be mine, when he said, “I wanna do something like
Chasing Amy
again — where it’s character-driven, and we rehearse for like a month before we shoot. I miss that.” What I didn’t know was he was just feeling a bit of the ol’ libations-fueled sentimentality in that moment, and that when it came time to actually rehearse, the chances of Affleck finding a month with decks cleared enough to concentrate solely on rehearsing were nil and none. Ultimately, it didn’t matter: this was my fifth film with Ben and he knew what I wanted, performance-wise. Carlin came loaded for bear; all we did in rehearsals was find his inflection and accent. Tyler is just always great. And Raquel? She mostly came together in editing (I mean, she was eight when we shot the flick). That week was all we needed, really. As it would turn out, we could’ve done six months of rehearsals, and still gotten fucked by the critics and at the box office. Sadly, that movie was doomed from the start.

—
Clerks II
was a different story. We rehearsed for around two weeks on the flick, both at my house and at the Mooby’s. Most of that rehearsal time was spent with Brian and Jeff, since they carry the lion’s share of the flick. Jeff had memorized all his lines prior to our first rehearsal, so he was already pretty much off book. After one day of rehearsals with Rosario, it was clear she didn’t need any work whatsoever, so natural was her delivery. Jen and Trevor I spent the second most amount of time with, trying to find the characters. Trevor’s Elias we arrived at almost by accident. He was written as borderline-retarded, but Trevor was just too good looking to play that. So instead, we went with extremely sheltered. When Trevor ad-libbed a “‘cause” at the end of one of his lines, and I said, “That’s it! That’s the guy! Do the whole performance like that!” What really helped our rehearsals on that flick was being able to do them on location. Since most of the picture took place in and around the Mooby’s, the moment it was construction-sound enough to get inside of, we all started meeting down there to rehearse — because then, we could also block it (the physical activity/actor placement of a scene). But it’s rare when you have a flick that’s set in one location, so you’re not afforded that kinda of time with the space you’ll shoot in/on very often.

Which brings us back to
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
. I’ve got a guy whose inflections I wrote for/to reading the scenes and sounding like he’s not acting at all, as much as being the character. I’ve got a chick who could read the Bible aloud and make it seem charming. They’re naturals. They’re excellent. There’s no need to sweat inflection or do drills; they innately get what they’re reading and say it like I heard it in my head when I wrote it. And while they’re not off-book yet, I’ve learned a thing or two about actors and their lines-memorization abilities since that
Chasing Amy
rehearsal back in ‘96; I’m not sweating that kinda thing anymore.

It’s weird to work one way for so long, and slowly realize it’s not necessary anymore; that it was just something you did when you didn’t know any better. I hired pros; aside from on-set tweaking and an extra take or two, they don’t need to be broken like wild horses or worked like puppets. Those days are behind me now. Now I spend more time thinking about/working on what the flick’s gonna look like — which, I guess, should be the primary job of the director.

Ratface has done a great job with the sets, as usual. Sal, too, knocked the costumes out of the park. Purcell (the man behind Mooby) has created another stellar corporate logo for our fake world (as well as a few not-so-corporate logos, and a brilliantly simple chair-back design). Scott and Laura have found a way to get Dave and I everything we asked for. Milos has tamed the production beast into a sensible, manageable schedule. Everyone’s ready to pull the trigger (or the pud, considering the subject matter). And I am, too.

We start shooting our eighth film on Wednesday.

Making Porno, Part 2: Climax

Friday March 14 2008 @ 11:50 a.m.

It’s been a long time since the last update, I realize; over two months, to be precise. My apologies for that and the total lack of SModcast during that period. I was preoccupied. Rest assured, SModcast will return the moment the recording gear gets back to L.A.

Around two in the morning Wednesday, we wrapped
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
. Poetically, it snowed right before we rolled for the last time... just after we’d laid a bunch of fake white stuff for an exterior shot at Zack’s job. It nicely summed up the uncooperative nature of the weather we’d grown accustomed to over the course of the production.

Banks did her last scene the night before, so Tuesday became a countdown of “production wraps” (when you check the gate after an actor’s/actress’s last shot, and if it’s good, you announce their work completion on the show to much applause). First, it was Katie. Then, Mewes. Then Ricky. Then Seth. Then Traci. Then, we moved outside, and Craig and Jeff shot the only dialogue scene we had left to shoot. And with that, the last of our amazing cast was gone, leaving us with merely two establishing shots of a building before we had to say goodbye.

The crew was wonderful. Aside from working with people I’ve worked beside on almost every show, I got to work with people I hadn’t worked with since
Dogma
in ‘98. There wasn’t a weak link in the bunch.

Monroeville/Pittsburgh (and all the surrounding towns we also shot in, like McKeesport, McKee’s Rocks, Hazelwood, the Southside, etc.) were so kind and welcoming. Thanks to everyone we may have inconvenienced while in your backyards.

Some folks have asked why I’ve been so stingy with the details on this flick, as opposed to flicks we’ve made in the past, during which I was blogging and posting pics galore. There’s no conspiracy behind it, really; I just wanna try something different this time. I want folks to discover the flick for themselves, instead of me jamming it down their throats. I’m also gonna try to keep from over-selling it with hyperbole and absolutes. I’ll let you guys apply those (good or bad) when the time comes. Just know that we had a problem-free, productive shoot in which everyone was firing on all cylinders and the result was THE FUNNIEST FUCKING MOVIE WE’VE EVER MADE!!!

* ahem *

No more hyperbole starting from this point on, I meant.

I spent all of Wednesday traveling and got to sleep in my own bed last night. When I woke up, I instinctively bolted for the shower, fearing I was gonna be late for call time. When I remembered that not only were we done, but that I was over two thousand miles away from our equipment and locales, I smiled and did the next best thing: took a shit on my own toilet.

Can’t wait to share it with you.

The movie, not the shit.

Curious George, the Shadow of the Bat, and Other Stuff

Sunday June 29 2008 @ 12:30 p.m.

It’s only been a week, and the world feels much emptier without him.

Here’s the piece I wrote about my friend for
Newsweek
on Monday.

They say you should never meet your heroes. I’ve found this a good rule to live by, but as with any rule, there’s always an exception.

My first exposure to George Carlin was in 1982, when HBO aired his
Carlin at Carnegie
stand-up special. When I saw the advert — featuring a clip of Carlin talking about the clichéd criminal warning of “Don’t try anything funny,” and then adding, “When they’re not looking, I like to go...,” followed by a brief explosion of goofy expressions and pantomime — I immediately asked my parents if I could tape it on our new BetaMax video recorder.

That was a hilarious bit. But when I finally watched the special, Carlin blew my doors off. Whether he was spinning a yarn about Tippy, his farting dog, or analyzing the contents of his fridge, Carlin expressed himself not only humorously, but amazingly eloquently as well. I was, as they say, in stitches.

And that was before he got to the Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.

I was twelve years old, watching a man many years my senior curse a blue streak while exposing the hypocrisy of a medium (and a society) that couldn’t deal with the public usage of terms they probably employed regularly in their private lives. And while he seemed to revel in being a rebel, here was a man who also clearly loved the English language, warts and al — even the so-called “bad words” (although, as George would say, there are no such things as “bad words”.. I wouldn’t say George Carlin taught me obscenities, but I would definitely say he taught me that the casual use of obscenities wasn’t reserved just for drunken sailors, as the old chestnut goes; even intelligent people were allowed to incorporate them into their everyday conversations (because George was nothing if not intelligent).

From that moment forward, I was an instant Carlin disciple. I bought every album, watched every HBO special, and even sat through
The Prince of Tides
just because he played a small role in the film. I spent years turning friends on to the Cult of Carlin, the World According to George, and even made pilgrimages to see him perform live (the first occasion being a gig at Farleigh Dickinson University in 1988). Carlin influenced my speech and my writing. Carlin replaced Catholicism as my religion.

Sixteen years later, I sat across from the star of
Carlin at Carnegie
in the dining room of the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. It was a meeting I’d dreamed of and dreaded simultaneously. George Carlin was the type of social observer/critic I most wanted to emulate... but he was a celebrity, too. What if he turned out to be a true prick?

What I quickly discovered was that, in real life, George was, well, George. Far from a self-obsessed jerk, he was mild-mannered enough to be my Dad. He was as interested as he was interesting, well-read and polite to a fault — all while casually dropping F-bombs. But most impressive, he didn’t treat me like an audience member, eschewing actual conversation, electing instead to simply perform the whole meeting, more “on” than real. He talked to me like one of my friends would talk to me: familiar, unguarded, authentic.

I made three films with George over the course of the next six years, starting with
Dogma
and his portrayal of Cardinal Glick, the pontiff-publicist responsible for the Catholic Church’s recall of the standard crucifix in favor of the more congenial, bubbly “Buddy Christ.” A few years later, I wrote him a lead role in
Jersey Girl
— as Bart Trinke (or “Pop”., the father of Ben Affleck’s character. It called for a more dramatic performance than George was used to giving, but the man pulled it off happily and beautifully. (Something most folks probably don’t know about George: He took acting very seriously. The man was almost a Method actor.) Sadly, I consider that
Jersey Girl
part my one failing on George’s behalf, and not for the reasons most would assume (the movie was not reviewed kindly, to say the least). No, I failed because George had asked me to write a different role for him.