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Wednesday, October 7
Considering Kevin Smith's dearth of stoner comedies, it may surprise you that he recently admitted to the Huffington Post that pot smoking wasn't a past time he regularly enjoyed. He decided to change his pot smoking ways after Zack and Miri Make a Porno bombed at the box office, though. Smith says he took the movie's failure hard.
I was depressed, man. I wanted that movie to do so much better. I'm sitting there thinking "That's it, that's it, I'm gone, I'm out. The movie didn't do well and I killed Seth Rogen's career! This dude was on a roll until he got in with the likes of me. I'm a career killer! Judd [Apatow]'s going to be pissed, the whole Internet's going to be pissed because they all like Seth, and the only reason they like me anymore is because I was involved with Seth! And now I f**kin' ruined that."
It was Rogen that Smith claims introduced him to his new herbal lifestyle, a development that Smith told the New York Post has been a positive choice for a career he felt was slumping. His next project, A Couple of Dicks, is a buddy cop comedy starring Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan. It marks the first movie Smith has directed but didn't write.
I was like "If I write a movie right now it's going to be about a filmmaker who made a movie that enough people didn't go see and it's really sad." You know, I'm not gonna write that. So this Couple Of Dicks script fell on my desk and I was like "Wow, if I had written a buddy cop movie this is exactly what it would be like."
Think Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop. It's totally fun and very warm but let's be honest, it's not a movie that has a searing message at its center. It's pretty much the movie you imagine in your head but like 40% funnier.
After Dicks, Smith will move onto a movie about another love in his life, hockey. Hit Somebody, inspired by the Warren Zevon song of the same name, will follow a man who wants to play hockey but is only good at beating people up. It sounds a lot like Happy Gilmore, but Smith says the movie will not be a comedy.
It's not like my normal s**t. Some people heard of it and were like "Oh, you're gonna do a Slapshot" and I'm like "No." I mean it's set in that era [The 70's] but I'm going for something a little else, a little different on this one.
A Couple of Dicks opens February 26, 2010. Hit Somebody has no release date currently scheduled, though Smith recently Tweeted that Wil Wheaton will be joining the cast.
Posted 10/7/2009 by Ryan
Related: Kevin Smith | Wil Wheaton | Seth Rogen | Zack and Miri Make a Porno
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Thursday, October 30
Kevin Smith has had an unusual career since bursting onto the indie scene with 1994's Clerks. Fourteen years later, he's still making movies, yet he continues to fester in a strange purgatory between studio and independent releases. Nearly every smaller release of his career has been followed with a larger studio release that disappointed at the box office. His high point financially came with 1999's Dogma grossing $30.6 million. And while that may have been impressive in comparison to Smith's prior efforts, it barely covers the marketing budget for most major Hollywood releases.
After very publicly announcing he was leaving the sophomoric humor behind to concentrate on the more mature Jersey Girl, Smith immediately retreated to direct Clerks II after Jersey Girl took a ruthless critical and commercial pummeling. With the wide release of Zack and Miri Make a Porno this week, the director is again attempting to bring his world to the masses. Will the eighth time be the charm for historically inconsistent Smith?
We've gone through the complete filmography of Smith to offer up a detailed graph of Tracking Kevin Smith's Career Trajectory.
Posted 10/30/2008 by reelz
Related: Kevin Smith | Dogma | Jersey Girl | Clerks | Clerks II | Chasing Amy | Zack and Miri Make a Porno
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Friday, September 12
The new, official poster for Zack and Miri Make a Porno was released today, and it looks like Kevin Smith and company are taking an interesting approach for advertising their upcoming film.
Be sure to check out the large version for the details. And keep an eye out here for further updates
Posted 9/12/2008 by reelz
Related: Kevin Smith | Zack and Miri Make a Porno
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Wednesday, August 6
Director Kevin Smith has won his battle with the Motion Picture Association of America to change the rating on his upcoming Zack and Miri Make a Porno from NC-17 to R. An appeals board overturned the decision on Tuesday.
Smith seems to have a certain amount of charm with the MPAA, having successfully appealed decisions on three of his movies -- Clerks, Jersey Girl and now Zack and Miri.
Perhaps Smith should share his secrets with the thousands of poor indie schleps who have been unjustly marked with the dreaded NC-17 by the wildly inconsistent band of housewives and geezers that make up the MPAA.
Source: Variety
Posted 8/6/2008 by reelz
Related: Kevin Smith | Zack and Miri Make a Porno
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Friday, December 14
Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy) is looking for extras for his next project, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and he wants you.
The writer/director has posted a request for head and body shots for extras on his MySpace blog. The gig only pays minimum wage and if you don't live in the Pittsburgh area (where he's filming) you'll need to provide your own transportation/lodgings should you be chosen. However, if it's your life goal to meet the View Askew crew, now's your chance.
Posted 12/14/2007 by reelz
Related: Kevin Smith | Zack and Miri Make a Porno
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Sunday, November 18
Seth Rogen is the newest member to join Kevin Smith's fold. The star of Knocked Up and Superbad has been cast as the lead in Smith's upcoming comedy, Zack & Miri Make a Porno, opposite The 40-Year-Old Virgin costar Elizabeth Banks, as two friends who make a porn to alleviate debt and discover they have feelings for each other.
Rogen's Knocked Up costar Katherine Heigl also has a deal going this week. Heigl has signed to star in The Ugly Truth, a romantic comedy about a morning show producer who is tested by her chauvinistic correspondent's theories on love. Robert Luketic (Legally Blond, Monster-in-Law) will direct.
And finally Kristen Stewart will star in Twilight, a thriller/romance adapted from Stephanie Meyer's novel about a young girl's relationship with a mysterious classmate when she moves to a small town. Catherine Hardwicke (The Nativity Story) will direct.
Source: Variety.
Posted 11/18/2007 by reelz
Related: Kevin Smith | Catherine Hardwicke | Robert Luketic | Seth Rogen | Zack and Miri Make a Porno | Kristen Stewart | Twilight | Katherine Heigl | The Ugly Truth
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Tuesday, August 7
Renee Zellweger has signed on to star in Appaloosa, a Western drama that will be directed by Ed Harris (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13). The movie is about "a pair of friends hired to protect a lawless town suffering at the hands of a renegade rancher," says Variety.com.
Harris, who will also be starring in the movie, adapted the script with Robert Knott (with whom he worked in Pollock) from the 2006 novel by Robert B. Parker. Harris will also be re-uniting with his A History of Violence co-star Viggo Mortensen, who also toplines the film which will start filming in New Mexico in October.
And according to The Hollywood Reporter, Jennifer Connelly (Blood Diamond), Kevin Connolly (Entourage), Bradley Cooper (Wedding Crashers), Justin Long (Live Free or Die Hard) and Ginnifer Goodwin (Big Love) are all close to closing casting deals in Ken Kwapis's (License to Wed) film adaptation of He's Just Not That Into You.
As we reported in June, Drew Barrymore will be producing and starring in the movie, based on the book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo.
And finally, MTV.com is reporting that actress Rosario Dawson (Grindhouse, Sin City 2) won't be in Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno after all. Although Smith wrote the role of Miri with Dawson in mind, it appears she is too busy with her other projects (most notably Eagle Eye, which will be directed by D.J. Caruso) to fit it into her schedule. We wonder if Smith will delay shootnig Zack and Miri to get his muse?
Posted 8/7/2007 by reelz
Related: Bradley Cooper | Ed Harris | Jennifer Connelly | Justin Long | Kevin Smith | Rosario Dawson | Ken Kwapis | He's Just Not That Into You | Kevin Connolly | Zack and Miri Make a Porno | Viggo Mortensen | Appaloosa | Ginnifer Goodwin
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Friday, July 20
Kevin Smith has two new projects in the hopper, both of which sound quite interesting.
The first, a comedy called Zack and Miri Make a Porno, is about two Minnesota friends who decide to start up an amateur porn studio as their high school reunion looms.
Although no casting is definite yet, Smith told MTV.com that he wrote the role of Miri for Rosario Dawson and would be "flabbergasted" if she didn't do it. Jason Mewes will likely be in it as well, although not as his View Askew character Jay.
The next project, Red State, is less traditional Smith fare. The writer/director describes it in the horror/thriller vein (he actually said it was more like The Shining than Hostel), with a character inspired by Fred Phelps--the uber conservative right-wing Christian minister who claims that AIDS is a scourge sent by God to punish homosexuals. Sounds scary to us.
Smith expects to shoot both Red State and Zack and Miri this winter.
Posted 7/20/2007 by reelz
Related: Jason Mewes | Kevin Smith | Rosario Dawson | Red State | Zack and Miri Make a Porno