20 YEARS AGO TODAY: "But I'm Not Even Supposed to BE Here Today!"

So, does Bryan lives with his parents or do his parents live with him?

 

Randal's the Ultimate Troll in some respects (could you imagine if he were a Trek BBS poster? Yikes....), but the guy contains some pretty good nuggets of wisdom for an underachieving smartass who knocks over caskets and loves hermaphrodite porn.

 

And donkey shows and seems to be indifferent towards or accepting towards donkey shows where post participants are male.

 

I was totally going to travel to Seattle to see it and Kevin, but they're doing it on Wednesday! I'll be in Cheney for school and don't feel like rushing 300 miles for it. That sucks, it would have been better if it was on the weekend.

 

It finally hit me why it has taken me so long to warm up to Clerks II.

With the original Clerks, I was able to relate to the notion of being stuck in a rut, and yet being so comfortable in that rut that it was impossible to make changes to it, no matter how much you hate your current situation.

When Clerks II came out that told the story of the main characters finally realizing what it took to move on and get out of that rut, I was still in the situation of the characters from the first film. It's taken me seven years to finally find a way out of the rut I was in, so now the premise of Clerks II resonates with me so much more than it ever did when the movie first came out.

 

And, in their own way, they were still stuck in a rut. Except for Dante, who was engaged to Emma, planning on moving down to and living in Florida and running a car wash given to him by his new father-in-law.

Poor Randal was looking at a life without his best friend, laboring at Mooby's for the foreseeable future and hoping that he could find some way to mold nerdy, repressed Elias into his new best friend without any guarantees that it would work and stick.

The donkey show that ended things between Dante and Emma and solidified the feelings he had for Becky was the best thing that could have happened to everybody (except Emma, of course). Dante gets to marry a local girl and remain home in Jersey where he can be a new father, Randal keeps his best pal, Jay and Bob get to return to crashing in front of the Quick Stop and RST and Elias gets a better job at the video store.

 

I watched Red State last night.

I didn't like it.

 

That's disappointing to hear. The trailer looked pretty good.

 

It is a well-made film, it's just way too dark for my liking.

 

I like Red State more than Zack and Miri, Jersey Girl and that nougated rhino turd we know more commonly as Cop Out, but that's not really saying as much as it probably sounds like.

 

I actually liked Jersey Girl well enough. I never did understand why it got the thrashing it did...yeah yeah OK I realize some of it might have been to do with Bennifer at the time, but was that really enough to kill the movie?

I want to see Cop Out just based on Kevin's stories from his most recent Q&A special, but probably not enough to actually pay money for it.

 

I think Jersey Girl is great. It was a bid maudlin for typical Smith, but still a sweet story.

I also liked Cop Out. Yes. It was very cliche and obvious, but still a lot of fun. It was content with what it was.

Zack and Miri though, yuck. I went with friends, and I had this weird experience where I'd sort of "forgotten" it was a Smith film until Mewes showed up.

 

I do think Z & M and Jersey Girl are both much, much better than Cop Out for what it's worth. JG isn't awful, it was just a deep disappointment after Kevin's first five theatrical pictures and the Bennifer publicity didn't help the film. It does have a lot of heart and soul.

Cop Out is just a bit of a train wreck. It's not Kevin's directing, it's the story. The script is just a colossal, unfocused mess. It's the film that soured Kevin to Bruce Willis after many years of respecting and even loving the guy. Bruce was apparently very difficult and even kind of an asshole on the set and the experience was pretty disillusioning for Kevin.

 

I just watched his story about making Cop Out again today. For as honest as he comes off, you know he's gotta be holding back his real feelings about Willis.

Though I am curious why he didn't expect this going in, I mean he did work with Willis (albeit briefly) on Live Free or Die Hard, he had to have seen how Willis was treating Len Wiseman?

 

Red State is well made and darkly entertaining. It's definitely not a "Kevin Smith" film but it is good.

Cop Out is a fun shallow buddy cop movie. Nothing wrong with that.

Zack and Miri is pretty funny, but it's no Askewniverse.

Jersey Girl I had absolutely no interest in. I only saw it the once and I'm not interested in seeing it again. It's pretty much a straight up drama.

 

Yeah the main problem with "Cop Out" was the script, just horrid. You'd think it would be perfect for Kevin, and even he has stated that he enjoyed the first drafts of it and seemed up his alley...but for whatever reason the script is incredibly erratic and unfocused like cooleddie stated. I think just the whole process burnt out and stressed Kevin out.

 

I got the impression Zack and Miri was Smith trying to make an Apatow-style comedy because he saw how well they were doing. When it didn't hit big (for no reason in particular) he decided he simply didn't understand what people wanted any more and started doubting his own vision, which is what caused him to do things like announce his retirement, make Cop Out, publicly tell the critics to fuck off, and make Red State just to get it out of his system.

 

Closest I've been to New Jersey is Tennessee. For most of life I've lived in California. Smith's humor is pretty universal though. If it wasn't his films wouldn't have the cult success they do. Not sure what's "Jersey-Centric" about the humor.

 

Sometimes I wonder if Smith feels he got the short end of the stick. When he closed the book on the View Askewniverse wtih "Strikes Back" I got the impression he was looking to become a serious filmmaker. Then Jersey Girl failed to do anything substantial. Then I saw on the Clerks II doco that he was offered the Green Hornet film, and you gotta wonder how his career would have been different had he done that film as well.

Now granted, I'm glad he didn't get that because we got Clerks II instead, but I just feel bad for the guy that his career never took off.