Maverick filmmaker Kevin Smith won legions of fans with Chasing Amy, Clerks and his recurring role as Silent Bob. But Bob's gone, and so is the safety net.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published March 26, 2004
[Photo: Miramax Films]
Director Kevin Smith, left, works with actors Liv Tyler, center, and Ben Affleck during the shooting of Jersey Girl.
[Getty Images]
Smith and his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach, attend the Jersey Girl premiere this month in New York.
[AP photo]
“I’m certainly a sucker for (Ben) Affleck (after five collaborations),” says Kevin Smith, and “I’ve become a recent sucker for Liv Tyler . . .” Affleck and Tyler star in Smith’s latest film, Jersey Girl.
I don't like Ben Affleck movies. Liv Tyler doesn't impress me at all. My aversion to perky child actors has been well-documented. I wince when a movie's hero runs through the streets to a romantic climax, especially if Liv Tyler and a cute kid are involved.
All those annoyances figure into Kevin Smith's romantic comedy-drama Jersey Girl, a movie that I truly enjoyed and look forward to seeing again.
Don't worry. Smith couldn't figure it out, either.
"Don't think about it too much," he said from a limo heading to Miami International Airport, "or you might decide you don't like it."
Yet there's too much to consider about such a sweet, predictable film as Jersey Girl. Mostly that such a previously anarchic filmmaker made it. The earlier films of this Red Bank, N.J., native - the sexually profane Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy and Dogma's provocative theology - don't prepare his fans for this warm and fuzzy tale of a widowed father (Affleck) raising his daughter (Raquel Castro) while coping with a blown career and a new romance (Tyler).
All those ingredients for a movie I won't like.
"Well, those are things in movies that do appeal to me," Smith said. "I'm a sucker for that stuff. I'm certainly a sucker for Affleck (after five collaborations). I've become a recent sucker for Liv Tyler and I do like the chase through the streets to the happy ending, as predictable as it may be.
"It's just doing my version of it. There's a reason it becomes a cliche, why it's done to death. I just felt like, if I'm making that kind of movie I've got to include it. Actually it includes my favorite shot in the movie, the shot of (Affleck) running up the hill and he runs from a wide (shot) into a closeup. He's got this determination on his face that kind of defines fatherhood."
Get used to that theme in Smith's next few films, even his take on The Green Hornet recently commissioned by Miramax Films. The idea for Jersey Girl began with Smith's realization that work was keeping him from watching his daughter, Harley Quinn, grow up. Then his father's death by heart attack affirmed a new cinematic perspective. He informed Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein of that immediately.
"Harvey called when my dad died," Smith said. "I told him I appreciated it but "you do realize over the next few years I'm just going to be making movies about my father.' He said, "Sure, I get it.' "
"You'll see more paternal plot lines and themes than I've worked with before. I've got to do a movie on marriage sooner or later but I don't have enough data yet, enough marriage experience to do a marriage film that hasn't been done before. But I know eventually I'll get there."
That's interesting to hear from a guy whose fan base loves him best as Silent Bob, one-half of a recurring duo in his films, especially the dopey (in both senses of the word) Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Losing that audience was a risk Smith calculated before cameras rolled on Jersey Girl.
"I fully expected to lose some of the Jay and Bob guys," he said. "There's not much I can do about that. Our fan base is small but loyal and varied enough to run the gambit. There are hard-core Chasing Amy fans and there are people who think I haven't made a good picture since Clerks. There are people on board for all of them. There may be people curious because, my god, he's moving away from Jay and Silent Bob.
"That was the intent, to make a movie without the safety net. It's not exactly a high-wire act. But falling back on Jay and Silent Bob when I was in trouble was a gimme, a safe place to go.
"I remember with Chasing Amy, getting to a point where I felt it was all getting too touchy-feely. That's why Jay and Silent Bob pop up in the movie. They're there because it's an insecure filmmaker thinking that people are going to think I've gone soft.
"Now I've kind of matured to a point in my life where I don't care if they think I've gone soft with this movie. That doesn't dictate the tone of the rest of my films or negate everything I've done before. It's just this movie."
However, circumstances beyond Smith's control make Jersey Girl more than just a movie. It's also the death rattle of Affleck's broken engagement with Jennifer Lopez, playing his wife who dies within 14 minutes. It would be 15 except Smith cut a wedding scene that might be distracting.
"That was a bomb that we weren't expecting to blow up in our faces," he said. "If you told me two years ago that I'd be worried by the fact that I have Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in my movie I would have laughed at you. It isn't one or the other but a combination of the two. That gave us pause, particularly after Gigli.
"But I think the press has stopped beating the dead horse that the relationship was. It feels like the movie actually has a chance to be judged on its content and not a tabloid story. That's all I ever wanted, man, the same benefit of the doubt that every other film is given. Not every film gets judged by its back story."
It's suggested to Smith that Jersey Girl will be judged more according to who made it than most films of its type. Perhaps moviegoers will think Smith turned stale ideas into something fresh.
"That's really all I can hope for, right?" he said. "I'm not the guy who reinvents the wheel. If I'm lucky I get to add another spoke."
