26. Zack And Miri Make A Porno (2008)

Kevin Smith’s underrated 2008 romantic comedy Zack And Miri Make A Porno put a raunchy but sweet spin on the trusty “Let’s put on a show” template that fueled many a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney musical (and breakdancesploitation cheapie). Only this time the show is a homemade Star Wars-themed porn movie and the plucky young upstarts a pair of down-and-out platonic best friends (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) who decide to make the beast with two backs onscreen as a way of getting out of debt. The lusty neophytes struggle to make a porn film with no budget, untested stars, and funky, makeshift locations like a coffee shop, but the trickiest variable aspiring pornographers Rogen and Banks face is their growing romantic attraction to one another.

The Film: Mallrats (1995)

The Line: “One time my cousin Walter got this cat stuck up his ass. True story. He bought it at our local mall, so the whole fiasco wound up on the news.

“It was embarrassing for my relatives and all, but next week, he did it again. Different cat, same results, complete with another trip to the emergency room.

“So, I run into him a week later in the mall and he’s buying another cat. And I says to him, ‘Jesus, Walt! What are you doing? You know you’re just gonna get this cat stuck up your ass too. Why don’t you knock it off?’

“And he said to me, ‘Brodie, how the hell else am I supposed to get the gerbil out?’ My cousin was a weird guy.

Jensen and Gallery 1988 will be picking just ONE WINNER and they’ll need all submissions by the end of September. This is your chance to have your art seen and SOLD! Send all submissions to gallery1988@aol.com. Write “SModmission” in the subject line. Remember, this has to have a connection to any episode of the great SModcast.

“…there are more than a few stand out scenes, although my personal favourite is Ollie’s conversation with Will Smith. The scene is seamless and so well written when it could really have turned into a giant joke.

Like most movies with children included in the cast, it does sometimes fall into its own sugary sweetness and you can’t help but notice the influence of the late, great John Hughes’ She’s Having a Baby running throughout. Both director/writers were influenced by their own families.

As this genre of movie goes, you could, in fact, do a lot worse and if the critics put you off watching this movie first time round then take a look at it when it’s next on TV. And if you haven’t watched it in a while, wait until the next rainy afternoon and put it in your DVD player, you’ll feel better after.

This is one of those flicks we hope that many folks, including critics, take a look at again with a lot of the Bennifer stuff now in the distance. And we’re really hopeful that many of you can one day see Kevin’s extended cut of the film, which we feel gives it an even stronger emotional connection and impact with the viewer. Kevin’s stated it’s a possibility for an eventual special edition Bluray, so keep your fingers crossed.

Dogma (1999)

Being an angel is a cushy job. You mooch around Heaven, taking time out to fluff your feathers, attend celestial choir practice and pose for the odd Renaissance painting. Unless, of course, like Loki and Bartleby, you get the Almighty heave-ho and find yourself exiled to Wisconsin. The smart-mouthed seraphs don’t take rejection lying down, though. Exploiting a Biblical loophole, they set off on a cunning quest for forgiveness that threatens to invalidate God. Considering God turns out to be Alanis Morissette, their failure is ours too.

Angelic retribution level (out of 10): 7

Chances against massed armies of Heaven: High. Well, one of them’s the Angel of Death and the other’s Jason Bourne.

You just know Jason Lee’s stash has some serious classics hidden in there. Plus, this is the collection that stated the rules we all try to follow: “Touch not, lest ye be touched.”

…

Some of Smith’s upcoming film projects were the next topic of discussion, however Smith said that he is still looking for funding for “Red State” and that the script for “Ranger Danger” hasn’t been finished yet. The following question brought up the negative “Kevin Smith asides” in “Entourage.” Smith revealed that “Entourage” producer Rob Weiss throws those into the scripts because Smith once called him “Vanilla Weiss.” However, Smith reiterated that he isn’t offended by the jabs and in fact, he greatly enjoys them because they mean that “in that universe, I exist!”

The final question returned to “A Couple of Dicks,” which is a departure for Smith in that it will be the first film that he directed but didn’t write. “I read it and fell in love it,” explained Smith. “This is the buddy cop movie I would have written if I had any interest in writing one. The script is really strong.” Smith mentioned that he is much more collaborative on this project and that he has learned a lot while making this movie.

The Magic of Penetration

By Christian Bu

A romantic comedy disguised as a sex flick: Kevin Smith pulls of an impressive magic trick with his loser comedy “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”: he lets tender feelings grow amidst filth and sperm.

The city of Philadelphia didn’t allow the public display of posters for “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”. Officials argued that the word porno in the movie’s title might deeply disturb adolescents. This is a curious concern, considering that, online, every hardcore movie is only a mouse click away for the hands of sweaty boys.

The brouhaha seems even more inappropriate when you watch the movie-turned-scandal all the way to the end: Quite possibly “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is the most romantic comedy ever made.

Every kind of filth and sperm just rolls off of the heroin and hero, while the world around them drowns in all sorts of bodily fluids. And that basically is what every romantic comedy is about: staying clean and steering towards a morally flawless happy end in an environment determined by temptation, depravity and brutalization.

However, presumably director Kevin Smith doesn’t see pornography as such as something objectionable. On the contrary, it can be assumed that the 39-year-old slacker for life, who ,with comedies such as “Clerks” or “Chasing Amy”, is second to none when it comes to putting the pop cultural compensatory interests of sexually underfed boys into focus, is indeed rather fond of XXX-home-entertainment. He probably dusts off his porn stash under the bed just as affectionately as his Star Wars figures on the shelf.

Keeping that in mind, you may think of the protagonist Zack (Seth Rogen, “Knocked Up“) in Smith’s latest movie as the director’s alter ego, because what does he – broke and permanently trapped in a McJob – do when he and his equally broke roommate Miri (Elizabeth Banks) want to fill their empty coffers by shooting an amateur porn? The very first thing he does is create a number of movie titles which artfully and knowledgeably combine his own pop cultural preferences with official porn-speak. For someone like him, coming up with the words is more important than the actual deed.

Therefore I recommend you watch Smith’s porn romance in the original English if you can. Even if there may be a fitting German translation for Zack and Miri’s movie project “Star Whores”, things will get more difficult in finding one for “Swallow My Cockaccino.”

The humor of “Zack and Miri“ is in the details. The story itself doesn’t exactly knock your socks off. And it doesn’t have to. It’s exactly as predictable as it has to be in a romantic comedy – or in a porno. One genre is as no-frills about advancing the consummation of romance as the other is about the consummation of the sexual act; there are hardly two other movie genres which are less secretive about their objectives.

What is interesting about “Zack and Miri” are not the plot twists but the dialogues. Comedy unfolds masterfully, for example, when at her high school reunion Miri tries to talk a guy she used to have a crush on into a one night stand while he gently tries to reveal to her that he has become a gay porn star and that he chose to do gay porn because that corresponds to his sexual orientation.

The one positive thing that Miri and Zack take home from this failed hook-up is the inspiration for their new business idea. They quickly recruit a crew which includes real-life porn veterans Traci Lords and Katie Morgan, who might be known to fans of that genre from movies such as “Open Up Traci” or “Desperately Horny Housewives.”

It’s touching how a group of friendly freaks grows closer while realizing their independent project. It is even more touching how amidst all this uninhibited and enthusiastic going-ons Zack and Miri suddenly discover their love for each other.

As if by magic every exercise in penetration either of them has scheduled with another of the semi-pros gets canceled until finally Zack and Miri get some action with each-other during their shoot on some uncomfortable padding – while director Smith seems to let the camera float chastely upwards to the ceiling from the strictly functional porno close-up shot. This monogamous final act is almost a little conservative.

But who would call all that immoral? The very first bizarre postures already allude to the heartfelt finale. Even Traci Lords, the grand old dame of eighties porn uses her body to create some romantic ambiance: In her first scene, she blows soap bubbles with her vagina.

He wasn’t, as was so often decreed, not even supposed to be there. But Dante, the clerk at the Quick Stop, had to spend his day off in the ninth circle of hell. Well, at the very least, it was with his best friend-come-shoulder devil, Randal who manned the neighboring video store. No, not really much of saving grace, but it did make for one bromantic turn of events. From the door being gummed shut, to the constant shooing of drug peddlers, Jay and Silent Bob, to a mishap at a wake, to a blown hockey game on the store’s roof, to a love-life disaster between Dante, Veronica, and Caitlin, to the death of a masturbating patron… and that’s barely half the day. It is a day that will never end, but through it all, even after a snack food fight, Dante and Randal begin to understand just what they mean to each other. But soon, a few years later, the two share employment at the Mooby’s fast food place (see, Randal burns down the Quick Stop), and they manage to get into a similar situation: Dante does not really love his fiancee, but rather his boss, and Randal just chooses to be the monkey wrench in the works. Eventually, after a donkey show goes horribly awry (seriously), they end up in jail where Randal spouts quite possibly one of cinema’s finest bromantic diatribes of all time. Yeah, they love each other.

Setting up a world populated with characters that would run across the length of a further five movies, including a sequel, Clerks 2, you can’t help but feel, after about ten minutes of watching the movie, that you know these characters already. That’s the strength of Kevin Smith’s writing right there. And although a lot of what happens in the course of the day wouldn’t happen to the average person in the course of their lifetime, you do feel like you have spent a couple of hours with your slacker friends rather than watched a film. Personally, I think that speaks very highly of Smith’s ability to connect with his audience.

Smith’s expert and legendary use of dialogue is quickly established in this movie, and again, is something that follows through the rest of his catalogue. Completely profanity-laden for the most part (a good example of this is the scene in the video store with Randal and the customer who is after Happy Scrappy Pup), there is also a sense of intelligence between the F-bombs. Even though there are a lot of F-bombs.

The simplicity of the plot also works wonderfully for this film, from the discussion of whether innocent contractors died while working on the Death Star in Star Wars, to the customer who had hit a short fuse and was looking for the perfect dozen eggs. It all interlinks with the plot formation and the sense of how bizarre Dante’s life really is. Say what you like about shoestring budgets, but there’s skill here to the structure, and many, many, gut-bustingly funny moments.

It’s a very nicely written piece about a film that’s been written about for many years, and that’s saying something. We’re looking forward to what else the Den might have to offer as part of this special feature.

INSTEAD OF: Humpday, in which two male best friends decide to have sex on camera for an amateur porn festival, the hook being that they’re both actually heterosexual…

WATCH: Almost any “bromance” would do, since that subgenre is always about sublimated male sexual attraction anyway, but certainly Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is most explicit about that: Jason Mewes’ Jay describes Kevin Smith’s Silent Bob as his “hetero life mate.” Smith touched on the same sort of unexpected sweetness and discomfort involved when friends contemplate becoming lovers in his Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which — like Humpday — isn’t as lascivious as the premise makes it sound.

This August, writer Kevin Smith returns to DC Comics for the new six-issue miniseries BATMAN: THE WIDENING GYRE!

Now, DC Comics details the variant covers for the debut issue of this hot new miniseries.

For every 25 copies of BATMAN: THE WIDENING GYRE #1 (JUN090143) ordered, with a cover by Bill Sienkiewicz, retailers may order one copy of the BATMAN: THE WIDENING GYRE #1 Variant Edition (APR098339), featuring a cover by Gene Ha.

For every 50 copies of BATMAN: THE WIDENING GYRE #1 (JUN090143) ordered, with a cover by Bill Sienkiewicz, retailers may order one copy of the BATMAN: THE WIDENING GYRE #1 Sketch Variant Edition (APR098340), featuring a pencils-only version of the variant cover by Gene Ha.


Penciled by Walter Flanagan, Smith’s collaborator on BATMAN: CACOPHONY, and inked by Art Thibert (TRINITY), WIDENING GYRE takes off when Batman encounters a new vigilante under his wing amid what Smith describes as a “backdrop of romance, intrigue, and geek-bait guest stars galore.”

BATMAN: THE WIDENING GYRE #1 is set to arrive in stores on August 26th. Comic shops can place their orders now. Both variants will be quite rare at those levels. The Stash will likely be your best method to collect them all, so we’ll keep you posted once we have an idea on pricing and inventory with the books.

A Couple of Dicks is the first movie you’re directing that you didn’t write. Did you feel the need to put your own stamp on the script?

Beautifully, [screenwriters] the Cullen brothers are dialogue crazy — the whole movie is like cops who are practically married but not actually, and, I mean, that’s right up my alley. It’s like Dante and Randall [from Clerks] as cops. That’s why I was attracted to it in the first place. We all feel like we’re trying to make a TNT classic — that movie that will just air ad nauseam forever once it hits TNT. I want it to be Road House. [My movies] all get cut to shit. I could never watch them [on TV]. Jersey Girl is the only one that doesn’t get hit hard, but that one’s tough to watch for a number of reasons. Television version or not.

Were you nervous about shooting action scenes for the first time?

The studio — it’s very cute — they try to not say the obvious. And the obvious is, “We are piss-scared you are going to fuck this up. You have never done anything like this.” So every step of the way everyone’s like, “It would probably be good to see some storyboards two months before you start shooting the sequences.” So we sat down with Dave, my DP, and the storyboard artist, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief.

And you’re still doing your “political horror film,” Red State, at some point?

I’m hoping. That’s about finding cash. And right now it’s the worst time in the world to go finding cash. I’ll just wait till the time is right and somebody ponies up, and maybe it’ll get to the point where I’ll just say, “Fuck it — I’ll do it.” But I’ve been in the business long enough to know that you should never risk your own money, particularly on a fucking Kevin Smith movie.

Take it all in at the New York Magazine website.

…”That dude is astounding. To be able to invoke Kirk without doing a Shatner impression? That performance was so electric and so wonderful to watch.

But it wasn’t just Pine that had Smith raving about “Trek.” “The opening 10 minutes of that movie are astounding,” he said. “It’s, like, everything could go downhill after that, and you would still leave that movie going, ‘That movie rocked.’ But, luckily, it doesn’t really go downhill. It maintains that energy throughout.”

Famous gossip site took the Pine-love a step further with one of his trademark doodles along with a story today.

In a related story, Kevin also suggests that the inevitable Trek sequel will need to find a villain that will do justice to the awesome Khan if he should be rebooted into the new time-altered mythology:

“It would have to be someone who can chew the scenery and [who] did a car commercial at one point in their career,” he said, referring to the ’70s era Chrysler Cordoba ad in which Montalbán appeared.

We suggested Joe Isuzu, otherwise known as David Leisure from the late ’80s sitcom “Empty Nest.”

That proposal got Smith thinking about the way other franchises have handled the task of reintroducing iconic characters with different actors. “Maybe they have to go another way with it,” he said. “With [Jack] Nicholson’s Joker, you had the scenery-chewing, over-the-top, wonderful Joker performance. And then Heath Ledger gives this 180-degree, creepy but wonderful Joker performance, so maybe they need to go that route. Like, if Ricardo Montalbán’s Khan is always beloved because it’s so over-the-top and operatic, maybe you get somebody who’s a little more coiled-spring.”

Just as important as who could play the new Khan, Smith told us, will be the power of the new Kirk, Chris Pine, to pull off Shatner’s memorable line about his enemy.

“It’s really going to come down to if Pine can sell, ‘Khaaaaan!’ ” said Smith. “And I’m sure he will be able to.”

For the people who had property damaged during the flood there’s a lot of talk of what was lost.

Furniture. Carpet. Televisions. Entire houses. Bootleg videos of “BJ and the Bear.”

Whatever the flood stole from you – your ambivalence toward the Red River – there’s something to be gained from this ordeal; a career as a semi-famous filmmaker who just might be the voice of a generation.

Lost in the discussion about his movies is the fact that auteur Kevin Smith started his career because of a flood.

The guy who made low-budget film chic with his 1994 movie “Clerks” paid for part of that movie’s production expenses with FEMA money that was given to him after a flood destroyed some of his well-worn Volkswagen vehicles.

Smith used that money, the ransom from selling some comic books and credit cards to finance “Clerks,” the dialogue-heavy movie about lazy convenience store employees that became a benchmark of ’90s culture.

Since then, Smith has made several feature films, become a slacker icon and, at least to me, proved he – not Kurt Cobain – was the voice of the generation that came of age in the ’90s.

Would Smith have attained that stature without a flood and some FEMA cash? Probably. But with basements that still smell like the Red River puked in them, it’s more fun to think that the flood made the man.

Moral of the story: Grab that FEMA money and make a movie. Or write a book. Or design a video game. Or get the stink out of your basement.