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Silent
Bob, a.k.a. Kevin Smith, is anything but quiet. After an advanced screening of Jersey
Girl, Smith turned the scheduled 30 minute Q&A into an hour and a half of sharing
information with a room filled with fans.
Jersey Girl will surprise die
hard Smith fans because the storyline and tone are different from anything he has done
before. There are still plenty of elements found in other Kevin Smith films. Listen
closely and hear Smith’s wit, and be on the lookout for the one Star Wars reference. “I
wrestled with leaving (it) in or not,” Smith said. “I promised I wasn’t going to do any
Star Wars references, but she sounded so cute and so far away. I said (expletive)
it.”
Another leap of reference is the “wisdom dispensing video clerk” that
Liv Tyler plays. Mya is a graduate student who meets Ollie, played by Ben Affleck, and
Gertie, played by Raquel Castro, while they are busy picking out movies to
watch. The scene plays out nicely and leads to friendship and love developing between
Ollie and Maya.
Tyler previously worked with Affleck in Armagedon, and
while Smith liked her work in Inventing the Abbotts, he was not completely sure how she
would play as Mya. As it turns out, he was pleasantly surprised. “I was so glad that I
cast her,” Smith said, “because she was one of the only actors or actresses that ever
took the role on the page exactly as it was written without changing a single line of
dialogue and created a new character from it.”
“(It was) far different
from the one I had in my head when I was writing it,” Smith said. “My version of Mya was,
hmm, she was more like Alyssa (from Chasing Amy) more blousy, kind of hard-edged and kind
of a smart a**. The way Liv plays it is more geeky and sweet,” he said. “It was weird to
see her do it without changing any of the words. It’s still the same words, but she
played it softer and more intriguing to me.”
Smith also said that this was
the best performance that he has seen Affleck give. “Being that she (Jennifer Lopez) was
in the movie, he was laser-focused,” Smith said, “because she was there the whole time,
not only for the scenes she was in. We shot her out in the first two or three weeks or
something like that. She stuck around for the entire shoot, so he was always
content.”
Even with Lopez’s short appearance in the movie, Smith feels her
casting had a great trickle down effect. “First, she gave me a great performance,” Smith
said. “Because it was her, Ben gave a better performance than I would have been able to
get out of him if it was just random actress A, B or C.”
“He was really in
love with her at the time,” Smith said. “So it kind of works in the scenes they are
together, but it really works when she’s out of the movie because you feel his
loss.”
“Jennifer helps out because it’s Jennifer Lopez, and we started
looking seriously at Raquel Castro because she bore a striking resemblance to her.” Smith
said. “If it wasn’t Jen, we probably wouldn’t have cast Raquel, and Raquel turned out to
be a great decision. So (I say) Jennifer gets credit for that as
well.”
With Jersey Girl hitting theaters, Smith is busy working the
publicity trail and doing appearances on college campuses. At the same time, he is
working on and contemplating new projects. He has signed on to write and direct the Green
Hornet, and he is also working on a new Fletch film.
Smith wants his comic
fans to know that the Spider-Man/Black Cat story will be done at some point, and he
apologizes for not getting it finished sooner.
While another Jay and
Silent Bob adventure is not on the immediate horizon, Smith did promise Jason Mewes if
Mewes could stay clean, Smith will write another story for them. “At this point, Mewes
has been clean for almost a year,” Smith said. “So after I finish the Green Hornet and
Fletch projects, I will look at writing another film for Jay and Silent Bob."
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