In some ways “Mae Day” is a sort of proto-Lost in La Mancha. Incidental footage and anything else available is used to create a film that would have at least some sort of measured success. “Mae Day” does a decent enough job at this, though its 10-minute length means that there isn’t much depth given and, well, student films fall through all the time. That part of the story isn’t particularly interesting, and it seems like the original idea would’ve been a much better way of using everyone’s time. In this way it’s a decent bailout video for the students’ grades, but not much more.


Now, what I really like about the short is that while half of it is about this failed documentary, half of it is Smith and Mosier making fun of their classmates, the school’s faculty and documentary form in general. The pair finds what they’re putting together utterly ridiculous and they’re not afraid to say this, albeit in a highly ironic fashion. Keeping themselves in silhouette as if they’re informants is done to parody bad TV documentaries of the time, as are their overly dramatic pronouncements about what they’d done. Smith in fact wrote all of their interview dialogue beforehand in order to maximize the film’s ridiculousness.

One episode down, Smith developed an unnatural emotional connection to Snooki, who on her first night in the house stripped down to her bra and thong, got in the hot tub with all four male housemates and tried to make out with each of them. Smith figured that he would have hooked up with Snooki and then tried to save her. “I’d date Snooki, and she’d cheat on me repeatedly. ‘Snooki, I’m trying to help.’ ‘I don’t need your help, you fat canker-blossom!’ ” I have no doubt that by now Smith has called his agent about meeting Snooki.

Time’s got the full article. — Be sure to click over.

Cop Out (Feb. 26) Kevin Smith directs Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as the po-po, in what we’re hoping will be the funniest cop film since Bad Boys (the original, not Bad Boys 2). Our prediction: When it comes to buddy cops, Tracy Morgan is the next Eddie Murphy and/or Will Smith!

The Director: Kevin Smith
Age: 22
How Did They Get Their Break
Smith?s first film, Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary, was shot with co-director Scott Mosier while the pair were at the Vancouver Film School.

The latter dubbed it ?the greatest documentary that never was?. It followed the duo?s failed attempt to made a documentary about the titular Mae Day, who was going through a sex change.

Just two years later, Smith made Clerks.

Via @wadew22 “Who plays the villian in COP OUT?” A guy I’ve wanted to work with for a long time now: http://tinyurl.com/iloveguillermodiaz

Via @JeepersMedia “Is there ANY Old Movie that you could Remake Better?” DOGMA. I’d make minor cast changes and move the camera a lot more.

Via @codyunderblood “Austin Q&A: Still a chance we’ll get live SMOD to close the show?” If it sells out, yes: http://tinyurl.com/kevaustin

Via @thebdizzle “widening gyre kicking ass.” Thanks! I love it, too. Ish 4 ships this week (or next) & Walt’s almost half done w/ ish 5 art.

Via @TJdaSportsGuy “Ever consider getting a show on XM/Sirius?” If they can set it up so I can do it all from my office every morning? In.

As always, hit up the Twitter feed directly for all the lurid details, but strap in — And hide the kiddies!

“December right now is wide open, and that’s when I’m going to sit down and start writing and I’ve got pages and pages of notes, I already wrote the last 10 pages of the script which is weird, I went to the end and started, but it’s ready … it’s just fucking poised to go,” Smith told us in September.

Smith was upfront with the financial uncertainty that would come with bringing “The Hockey Song” to the big screen.

“I don’t know if anybody’s going to want to do the hockey movie, because name one hockey movie that people made money off of in its theatrical release; it’s tough,” he said. “Look, the sport doesn’t have a massive following, how the fuck is a film about the sport also going to have a massive following? So, you go in with tailored expectations, you know you’re kind of dealing to a very specific audience, dealing with a specific audience, so you know, we’ll probably make it on the inexpensive side, I can’t imagine spending more than $25 million on a movie like that.”

However, Smith is convinced of the power of his project. “When all is said and done, when that movie’s done, I guarantee you it’s gonna impact, it’s gonna hit people, even if you don’t like hockey it’s gonna hit you in a very personal place,” he said. “The movie I see in my head, and more than that the movie I feel in my heart, oh God, it’s gonna be good.”

We’re betting Kevin’s going to be surprised to find cast lining up for “Hit Somebody” — Going out on a limb here to predict the biggest and best ensemble yet.

“I don’t know if there’ll be any more movies. I did two with Kevin Smith, Dogma in ‘99 and Jersey Girl in ‘04, where he wrote me a great part as Ben Affleck’s dad. I like working with Kevin: there’s alot of great counterpunching and the catholic thing is a strong bond. Acting is fun to do, a worthy fraternity and a great tradition to have had a tiny speck of a part of.”

Very brief, but you definitely get the impression that Carlin enjoyed his time in front of the camera while working with Kevin. Great book also, well worth checking out if you’d like some new winter reading material.

“…After Zack & Miri I was like ‘oh my god, Zack & Miri didn’t do well’. And then I thought it was a mid-life crisis. But then a mid-life crisis is generally for people who have not achieved their hopes and dreams.

I was so young and my life was in front of me and what am I doing wasting my time. I had goal and I achieved it when I was like 23. And all of a sudden people were like okay, in order to keep yourself entertained, create new fucking goals, dude! And I didn’t create big ones for myself. I know me, I create little challenges! I want to step over things, I don’t want to climb mountains!

So I set myself little challenges, and I accomplished them, and felt very accomplished and whatnot. But then you get to that point, man, where it’s just like I’ve been doing it a bunch, it’s now what I do for a living, so I can’t just walk away from it. Particularly because I enjoy it. I enjoy doing it for a living and the lifestyle it affords. I like that my job is to make pretend, and somebody pays me. And I’m like I can’t give that up, that’s awesome.

But the mid-life thing for me, it was like everything I ever wanted came true. So I feel like it wasn’t mid-life, maybe it is what Stephen Fry is talking about, where it’s like wow, it’s been 15-16 years straight of a really successful run. And I’m not ambitious enough. It’s not like I’ve done it all. I’m not Alexander, and I’ve reached the end of the world and there’s nothing left to conquer. But, I mean, for me, I’m just I can’t retread the same territory anymore, because number one, I can’t do it, and number two, it’s just like leave it alone, it speaks for itself.

So I reach a point now where it’s like well, now I’ve got to find a different thing that fuels me as an artist, or something I want to express without expressing it the way I’ve expressed it through my characters for all these years.

Thing was with Clerks, that was a way in, that was a way to start a conversation with the world at large. It wasn’t so much a film as an ice breaker. It was like ‘hi, I’m Kevin Smith and I would like to talk to you for the next 30 years, 40 years. However long you want to speak to me’ or something like that.

Now with the SModcast, with the Q&As, with Twitter, any number of other things, I could exercise and I can reach out and touch and get instant gratification. I can throw out something funny, ‘hey, that’s funny’, ‘thank you very much’. Everything really kind of on a much quicker basis. Compact. You don’t have to spend a year and a half of your life building it and constructing it.

Because that’s what the movies are. You get an idea and then it takes a year and a half to hear a response when all’s said and done. With SModcast, we put it up that night, we hear from people that’s funny, thumbs up, and there it is. So I can do those things or talk about weird things that I would use to fuse into the flicks in any of those formats, and I’m like ‘alright, let me figure out what I want to do with film for the next few years’.

I know it ain’t going to be what I do for the rest of my life, because apparently View Askew wasn’t what I was going to do for the rest of my life. So I figure if that’s one chapter, maybe this is chapter two, or maybe it’s the end of the book. Who knows what’s in the cards?

But I feel like I’m closing View Askew for the time being, and now I’m opening a new book and I’ll see for a while if I can be this filmmaker where I don’t write everything that I direct, or create everything that I direct.

Like in the case of the hockey movie [that Smith is currently working on], Hit Somebody. It’s based on a Warren Zevon song that Mitch Albom wrote the lyrics for. So in that instance, that’s almost in my world that Story By credit goes to somebody else, and I would get Screenplay credit. That’s where the passion is. The story or that character is something I identity with, and I can infuse it with my own experience. It’s not strictly my story. But essentially it is. “

If you haven’t kept up with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier’s podcast (or SModcast as they call it) you either have weeks worth of audio to catch up with on iTunes or you need to pick up the above book: Shootin’ the Shit With Kevin Smith: The Best of SModcast. Love him or hate him, the dude is a funny motherfucker when talking off the cuff.

Pick up signed copies of the book through the Stash — Might we suggest taking advantage of today’s newly announced coupons to make the deal even better?

• Via @courtenaymmkay “whatcha doing today?” Signing mountains of merchandise for http://www.jayandsilentbob.com – Christmas rush is coming…
• Via @movieinsiders “Check out this Amazon deal: Dogma(Bluray) $7.99 http://bit.ly/28a7fM ” That’s a pretty sweet deal and a packed disc.
• Via @dvdmike “Dave: getting in the ASC” HUGE congrats to Baby Dave Klein (my eyes), invited 2 join the American Society of Cinematographers.
• Via @timmcknightUK “does Jason Mewes have twitter?” Yes, but be warned: it’s a lot of “Mmm..coffee” and “Love the Puggle” Tweets. @JayMewes

Hit up the official twitter page for detailed tweet sessions on some recent couples times with the wife, and his thoughts on attending the recent “Twilight: New Moon” premiere with his daughter. WireImage has the photos.

“One of my favorite movies that you were in is Kevin Smith’s Dogma. After you read the script for that the first time, were you concerned about the response it might get? And also, how was working with Kevin Smith as compared to directors like Soderbergh or Spielberg?”

Watch the entire interview to see Damon’s answer to the question here at Digg — Jump in to around the eleven minute mark if you want to get right to it. Thanks for stopping by today — We’ll see ya next time. Those of you heading to Kev’s shows over the next few days, enjoy it!

Smith completed the first six issues and will begin writing another batch of six. “We’re breaking it up into a volume 1, volume 2 kind of thing,” Smith continued. “So the first six issues happen, then there’s a break, and then the next six issues happen, but I don’t know. DC’ll probably ultimately wind up going, ‘Why don’t we just make it two separate miniseries? 1-6 is one thing, and call the next one something else.’ So we may do that. I don’t know, but I know we’re going to stop at six for the time being and take a little break. Then whether or not the next issue is 7 or a new number 1 for a volume 2 miniseries remains to be seen.”

Keeping the audience entertained between sets was Jason Mewes — famous for playing Jay, a pot dealer in the Jay and Silent Bob flicks.

“It’s a lot of fun. It’s been great,” said Mewes, between signing autographs for a huge lineup of fans. “(There are) a lot of cool bands (and) a lot of cool people here.”

Between acts, Mewes dutifully told the crowd to “drink water, be safe, recycle and Jesus loves you.”