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Zack and Miri Make a Porno

I felt guilty for not seeing the movie opening weekend. Then I realized I couldn't afford twenty million dollars worth of tickets and somehow... I think that's the only thing that could have cheered him up.
 
I thought it outright sucked, to be honest. If there was ever a premise that didn't call for over the top melodrama, this was it.
 
You know I've been thinking about Smith's funk over Zack & Miri and I think he may have lost perspective. It's clear that he wanted Zack & Miri to not just do well or even to be the most profitable of his movies... He wanted a hundred million dollar hit. He wanted the same sort of recognition that Judd Apatow gets for making the exact same types of movies that Smith has been making for the last fourteen years and it's clear he thought Seth Rogan was his ticket to doing that.

I'm guessing this is an early-middle age thing that he's going through that's causing this sort of depression in him. He's clearly forgotten that if life had been a little less generous to him he'd still be a clerk at the Quick Stop instead of a successful filmmaker. No he isn't in the same league as Apatow is at the box office but... His movies have never lost money. He's always told the stories that he's wanted to tell. And people have always responded to his way of telling stories. No his fanbase isn't legion it's small but it's also loyal. Trying to throw away his own style in the hopes of aping Apatow is actually a form of artistic dishonesty on his part and brings him a hairsbreadth of being a hack something his detractors have been claiming fraudulently for years.

I know that as he gets older that he thinks he needs to prove himself and a blockbuster is a way of doing that but... He doesn't understand that he's already everything he needs to be and it doesn't matter what the public at large thinks. It matters that he be the best he can be on every script. On every film. On every single project. He needs to be true to himself and not worry about what Judd Apatow is doing.

I think Clerks 2 was easily his most accomplished work. In it he told the truth about being a man in his 30s. Zack & Miri as funny as it is is not as good as Clerks 2 because all it's about is showing that he can be Judd Apatow too if people will just show up. That's unfortunate that he felt the need to go that route when he could have just been happy being Kevin Smith.
 
firehawk12 said:
For the one or two people who care, Smith talks about the disappointing receipts on the latest SModcast:
http://www.quickstopentertainment.com/2008/12/15/smodcast-68/

It's really, really sad. :p
Click to expand...
Interesting. They basically say they set out to make a Judd Apatow movie which explains why it started out vintage Kevin Smith and slowly degraded into overly-sentimental schlock. If you watched the trailer you know exactly how the movie ends.
 
I guess that might be his biggest disappointment - that he'll never be "mainstream".
He's got several genre projects coming down the line and I just wonder how this will affect him. Clearly, for him anyway, this was a major setback in his career.
 
You'd think that he would have know that a Halloween release was going to cut into his opening weekend though. I remember he announced the October, 31st release date on SModcast around April and I couldn't help but think: "Is anyone going to see a comedy on Halloween night?"

Smith and Apatow's target audiences are twenty-somethings who typically spend Halloween at parties and other social gatherings. They aren't going to be seeing Zack & Miri on one of the best drinking nights of the year.

What was he thinking? He should have fought to have it released a week later or a week earlier. You'd think that after all this time he would have known better. Shit you'd think the fuckin' Weinstein's would have known better.

There was no common sense employed when it came to the release of this movie.

I just hope this doesn't fuck up his ability to find financing for Red State. I've been looking forward to this sucker ever since he first announced it.
 
Admiral James Kirk said:
You know I've been thinking about Smith's funk over Zack & Miri and I think he may have lost perspective. It's clear that he wanted Zack & Miri to not just do well or even to be the most profitable of his movies... He wanted a hundred million dollar hit. He wanted the same sort of recognition that Judd Apatow gets for making the exact same types of movies that Smith has been making for the last fourteen years and it's clear he thought Seth Rogan was his ticket to doing that.

I'm guessing this is an early-middle age thing that he's going through that's causing this sort of depression in him. He's clearly forgotten that if life had been a little less generous to him he'd still be a clerk at the Quick Stop instead of a successful filmmaker. No he isn't in the same league as Apatow is at the box office but... His movies have never lost money. He's always told the stories that he's wanted to tell. And people have always responded to his way of telling stories. No his fanbase isn't legion it's small but it's also loyal. Trying to throw away his own style in the hopes of aping Apatow is actually a form of artistic dishonesty on his part and brings him a hairsbreadth of being a hack something his detractors have been claiming fraudulently for years.

I know that as he gets older that he thinks he needs to prove himself and a blockbuster is a way of doing that but... He doesn't understand that he's already everything he needs to be and it doesn't matter what the public at large thinks. It matters that he be the best he can be on every script. On every film. On every single project. He needs to be true to himself and not worry about what Judd Apatow is doing.

I think Clerks 2 was easily his most accomplished work. In it he told the truth about being a man in his 30s. Zack & Miri as funny as it is is not as good as Clerks 2 because all it's about is showing that he can be Judd Apatow too if people will just show up. That's unfortunate that he felt the need to go that route when he could have just been happy being Kevin Smith.
Click to expand...
You raise some very insightful points in this post. I did enjoy Zack & Miri, but it was clear to me that he was trying to be a different filmmaker to a certain extent. He wasn't completely being true to himself. I will also say that you are completely right in saying that Clerks 2 was the best work of his career. I'm in the age group he was aiming the story at and it really stuck with me. There was was a lot of truth in that movie. There was also a lot of donkey fucking. Here's hoping that stays true to himself in the future.
 
Personally I thought it was very good, the problem I had was it turned in to any other romcom at the end, but even then it was a good romcom.
 
Admiral James Kirk said:
You know I've been thinking about Smith's funk over Zack & Miri and I think he may have lost perspective. It's clear that he wanted Zack & Miri to not just do well or even to be the most profitable of his movies... He wanted a hundred million dollar hit. He wanted the same sort of recognition that Judd Apatow gets for making the exact same types of movies that Smith has been making for the last fourteen years and it's clear he thought Seth Rogan was his ticket to doing that.

I'm guessing this is an early-middle age thing that he's going through that's causing this sort of depression in him. He's clearly forgotten that if life had been a little less generous to him he'd still be a clerk at the Quick Stop instead of a successful filmmaker. No he isn't in the same league as Apatow is at the box office but... His movies have never lost money. He's always told the stories that he's wanted to tell. And people have always responded to his way of telling stories. No his fanbase isn't legion it's small but it's also loyal. Trying to throw away his own style in the hopes of aping Apatow is actually a form of artistic dishonesty on his part and brings him a hairsbreadth of being a hack something his detractors have been claiming fraudulently for years.

I know that as he gets older that he thinks he needs to prove himself and a blockbuster is a way of doing that but... He doesn't understand that he's already everything he needs to be and it doesn't matter what the public at large thinks. It matters that he be the best he can be on every script. On every film. On every single project. He needs to be true to himself and not worry about what Judd Apatow is doing.

I think Clerks 2 was easily his most accomplished work. In it he told the truth about being a man in his 30s. Zack & Miri as funny as it is is not as good as Clerks 2 because all it's about is showing that he can be Judd Apatow too if people will just show up. That's unfortunate that he felt the need to go that route when he could have just been happy being Kevin Smith.
Click to expand...
Very well said. You nailed it.
 
Huh, and somewhat related, but he did another one of those QA sessions. 4 hours cut from 7 (!!) hours.
 
Ryan said:
Interesting. They basically say they set out to make a Judd Apatow movie which explains why it started out vintage Kevin Smith and slowly degraded into overly-sentimental schlock. If you watched the trailer you know exactly how the movie ends.
Click to expand...

I haven't seen the movie but I noticed Apatow associated actors in the movie.

Rogen, Banks and Craig Robinson who plays Dwayne on The Office with Carrell who worked with Apatow on "The 40 year old virgin"
 
I can't believe that I haven't posted in this thread yet. I saw Zack and Miri on the second weekend of release (I think that is the week where Twilight came out) and thought it was Kevin's best well rounded film. In some ways I thought it was one of the best shot and mature efforts (even with the tradional stuff from Kevin we've come to expect). It seems though like he will never get over that thirty million dollar box office intake hump...and I read something that he posted about a year ago while shooting the movie that he wanted this movie to be Seth Rogen's breakout film but Knocked Up beat him to the punch :( which seems like Kevin's luck. I really did think it was one of his best films though...right up there with both Clerks films and Mallrats for me! I'm looking forward to Red State...his first horror flick, hopefully.
 
This is a really silly thing - but it pulled me right out of the film - when Zack and Miri fuck for the first time, we see it from "our" perspective and when we see it replaced as part of the movie later - it's still from our perspective, not what it should have been given where the camera was.

Tiny I know but little things like that bug me.

As for the film, there were some nice lines but it's a very conservative film at heart.
 
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