Kevin Smith Wants Rosario Dawson For His ‘Porno,’ Compares ‘Red State’ To ‘Shining’

‘It’s not horror like ‘Hostel,’ ‘ director says of ‘State,’ which starts filming in early 2008.

After years of writing films surrounding characters in the View Askewniverse, Kevin Smith is gearing up for two very different films without Jay and Silent Bob, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” and the horror film “Red State” — but that doesn’t mean audiences won’t see at least one familiar face from his previous flicks.

“I wrote [the role of Miri] for Rosario Dawson,” Smith said of the “Clerks II” star. “I’d be kind of flabbergasted if she didn’t do it.”

When reached for comment, Dawson’s management said “no deal is in place at the moment.”

“It’s a lot of new faces,” Smith continued. “But Jason Mewes is going to be in it — not playing Jay, but playing a new character. Hopefully Jeff Anderson [Randall from 'Clerks'] as well.”

The story of two friends from Minnesota who launch an amateur-porn studio on the eve of their 15-year high school reunion “Zack and Miri” will be “done shooting by Christmas,” Smith announced, and “sometime in February or March, we are going to start on ‘Red State,’ ” he said.

Though Smith described “Red State” as a “horror movie,” he conceded that not everyone will agree.

“I keep trying to, like, [temper] everyone’s expectations, because it’s not horror like ‘Hostel.’ It’s not gore porn,” he insisted. “The best comparison I think of is ‘The Shining.’ It’s going for that kind of mood. It’s a very unsettling film.”

A blogger, podcaster, lecturer and frequent commenter on the Internet, Smith was uncharacteristically tight-lipped about “Red State,” coyly suggesting that most of what we think we know about the film is wrong.

“You hear the log line about, like, religious fundamentalism gone awry, and you’re like, ‘All right, I kind of got the movie in my head.’ That’s Act One,” he said. “Whatever everybody knows about it in terms of the [Fred] Phelps-like character is just a piece of the movie and the movie kind of becomes a bigger statement than just that.”

Radical right-wing preacher Fred Phelps, whom Smith called “a fringe, bizarrely Christian archetype,” served as a model for the movie’s antagonist.

“He definitely informs the character, but it’s not like this is Fred Phelps with a different name,” Smith said. “That’s kind of an easy target to me. If you’re just going to tee off on crazy, crazy, right-wing fundamentalist extremists, that’s kind of easy. I think our movie doesn’t stop there. It goes out to target something a little harder.”

That hardness may come with a price, specifically Smith’s first onscreen death. (No, we’re not counting that old guy in the bathroom from “Clerks.”) Asked how many protagonists there were in the film, Smith replied, “We start with four.”

So, Red State filming early next year, and Zack & Miri done by Christmas! Cooool. You can also check out the story via the MTV website.