Way of the Ass
Way of the Ass
[Spoiler Note: If you consider a single specific description of a gross-out moment in a Kevin Smith film to be an earth-shaking spoiler, read no further.]
I can roll with bestiality as an occasional online diversion. Every five or six months, I mean. I'm not a subscriber to any of the farm-love sites, but an actor once sent me a video file...you don't want to know. But I've never seen a donkey show in Tijuana, and I'm proud that the notion of attending one has never crossed my mind.
KRosario Dawon and Brian O'Halloran in Kevin Smith's Clerks 2
How did I get started on this subject ? Oh, yeah....Kevin Smith's Clerks 2 (Wein- stein Co., 7.21), which does the gay-donkey thing inside a New Jersey fast-food joint called Mooby's in the third act with the whole crew (Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Smith, Jayson Mewes, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fuhrman) alternately fascinated and horrified, etc.
I come from a decent middle-class New Jersey family, and I've read read hundreds of good books. I have two children, I can sing on-key and play drums, I know how to write, I've been to Paris and Prague and Rome, I know some of the best people on the planet, I used to be heavily into the Bhagavad-Gita, and here I am riffing on a scene in a film in which a bald leather-clad gay guy blows a donkey and then lubes the poor animal and anally goes to town
I was fine with Clerks 2. Okay...define "fine." I think it means feeling okay, smiling, laughing now and then...having an alpha time of it.
I'm a fool for Jayson Mewes (whom I once called "the Marlon Brando of stoner comedies") and also Ms. Dawson, whose passion and vivaciousness upgrades this film all to hell. (As Smith put it yesterday during a round-table session at the Clerks junket, Dawson's top-grade acting is verified by the fact that "she makes you believe that she would fuck Brian O'Halloran.") And it has a Jackson Five musical dance sequence that rocks out pretty well.
Jayson Mewes, Kevin Smith
I presume I don't have to go into the basic drill about O'Halloran and Anderson playing older, slightly chunkier versons of the Dante and Randal characters they portrayed in Smith's original Clerks...you know this. The guys getting older and still treading water in a retail service job (serving fast food instead of selling smokes), and wondering what the hell's next.
But the energy and the humor is up and down, in and out...and I just wanted more. I was hoping for Clerks 2 to be faster and darker. That's just me. It hangs in there true and steady, but it doesn't build all that much as it moves along. It keeps to a certain deliberate pace and I guess I'm more comfortable with more wildness. I wanted more boyfriends and girlfriends arguing and challenging each other, more pushing the limits of propriety, more confrontations with customers, more shoving ....something looser and ruder.
I can honestly say that until last week I'd never heard, much less used, the term "porch monkey", but Clerks 2 has rectified the first half of that situation. (If you want an idea of how racist-ugly Americans can be, check out this Wikipedia page on ethnic slur terms.) And I agreed with Randal when he asks in the film, 'Why is 'porch monkey' necessarily a racial slur? It refers to a lazy guy doing nothing but hanging out on his porch. And monkey isn't racial thing -- it just implies "devolved."
Little Miss Sunshine does something pretty amazing. It sometimes drops down into some pretty dark places, but then two minutes later it bounces right back and does something pretty damn funny, or at least amusing, and sometimes touching. With the memory of that film in my head, I was kind of hoping for some meaner, grislier, heart-of-New-Jersey darkness stuff in Clerks 2.
Kevin Smith is too nice and mild-mannered, I guess, to go in that direction. I know him pretty well and it's really not a rumor -- he's one of the gentlest and giving-est guys working in this town. (What do you want me to do, lie about this?)
Thing is, Clerks 2 is about something very real and not altogether pretty -- what happens when under-the-radar guys get into their 30s and they're still doing nothing with their lives? What's it like to deal with this? What options are possible? Are people doomed by this age, or do they still have a shot?
The despair levels that I've seen among the unambitious knockaround types I know from Fairfield County are not pretty. Rage sometimes erupts out of nowhere and then it's "whoa....look out." These guys are not living lives of any fullness or self-satisfaction. And there's no one like Smith to point a finger at something psychological or sociological and say, "Forget what you've read or heard -- this is what's really happening."
I think if Smith wanted to get down and make a funny movie that also takes a probing look at a sad situation that may be happening with -- who knows? -- tens of thousands of GenX slacker types, he could do it with one hand tied behind his back. But he hasn't chosen to, and he's cool with that. He's just not a fire-in-the-belly John Osborne or Chuck Palahniuk.
A perfectly focused glass of water (center) and a less-focused Jason Mewes at Tuesday's Clerks 2 junket at Four Seasons Hotel -- 7.11, 2:20 pm.
Nothing against Anderson and O'Halloran, but I would have preferred seeing another Jay and Silent Bob film, or even one that's mostly about Jay. Call it a weakness, but I think Mewes is a truly gifted madman. I peed in my pants at the Silence of the Lambs stuff he does in Clerks 2, and I just think he's a star, and that he's got more X-factor magnetism than Anderson or Halloran have any day of the week.
I loved the Battle of the Trilogies debate scene (Rings vs. Star Wars). I was okay with the donkey-blowing, and cool with the urine ice being put into the glass of coke. I laughed at the porch monkey thing despite the negatives. The energy from Rosario Dawson is glorious when you consider the contrast. The vocal energy and the feeling in her eyes...Smith was either lucky or inspired or both when he decided to try and bring her into this.
I like O'Halloran's sad, soulful eyes and his voice -- he can do romantic lines pretty well -- but I wasn't quite comfortable with his puffy Irish kisser. With two women liking him enough to chow down on him, the guy should have dropped some pounds before shooting began. And what's with the hair? I sat next to him during the junket yesterday and it's kind of sandy brown, but his hair is dyed a kind of inky dark brown in the film and doesnt look right -- like he did it himself at home.
Why was I cool with Clerks 2 but hated You, Me and Dupree? Because at least Clerks 2 has some genuinely funny stuff that kicks in from time to time, and because Mewes is funnier than Owen Wilson, and because Rosario Dawson kicks Kate Hudson's ass.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on July 12, 2006 at 4:43 PM
comment #1
Mike says ...
Smith tells a great story. Not on-screen as of late, but on stage -- the "An Evening With Kevin Smith" DVD is hilarious. But I don't know, he seems to be in a holding pattern as a filmmaker. I mean, was anyone really clamoring for Clerks 2? It just seems... well, lazy. And sadly Smith is becoming a punch-line to some (see last week's Entourage).
Posted by Mike at July 12, 2006 5:55 PM
comment #2
Mathew says ...
I was never enamored with Clerks. It was just too amateurish to have been taken as seriously as it had. Also I thought O'Halloran and Anderson couldn't act themselves out of a Thank You bag. I don't think you could of made a really good film with these two guys in the lead. The problem I have with Smith is that he's got a knack for dialog but that's about it. His films are usually ugly to look at and I don't think he's very good with actors as everyone comes across as stiff. I think he's lucky that Harvey likes him as much as he does.
Posted by Mathew at July 12, 2006 6:21 PM
comment #3
Daniel Zelter says ...
"I used to be heavily into the Bhagavad-Gita, and here I am riffing on a scene in a film in which a bald leather-clad gay guy blows a donkey and then lubes the poor animal and anally goes to town"
So Kevin's now resorting to the same infantile humour in Freddie Got Fingered? How the mighty have fallen.
"Nothing against Anderson and O'Halloran, but I would have preferred seeing another Jay and Silent Bob film, or even one that's mostly about Jay."
Why? The last one was boring and uninspired. Jay and Silent Bob couldn't even hold up their comic book. I like them as supporting characters, but they're not very interesting as leads.
" and cool with the urine ice being put into the glass of coke."
Didn't they do something like that in Jackass?
"Why was I cool with Clerks 2 but hated You, Me and Dupree? Because at least Clerks 2 has some genuinely funny stuff that kicks in from time to time, and because Mewes is funnier than Owen Wilson, and because Rosario Dawson kicks Kate Hudson's ass."
I don't think saying it's better than You, Me, and Dupree is going to help it.
Posted by Daniel Zelter at July 12, 2006 6:22 PM
comment #4
balloon mob says ...
"...urine ice"
There was a similar scene in The Stoned Age.
Posted by balloon mob at July 12, 2006 6:34 PM
comment #5
CCA says ...
What happened to Smith abandoning his Askew Universe like he was talking a lot of shit about a few years ago?
Oh yeah, JERSEY GIRL. Proof positive the kid can't make a real movie.
CLERKS II sounded like a desperate act of an exposed filmaker when i first heard about it a couple of years ago and -- from the review here -- it would seem Smith has gone further out on his purile limb than ever before. I can't bring myself to ruin the memory of the only good movie he ever made (CHASING AMY suffers badly upon reexamination).
Mike up top is right, though, Smith is incerdibly entertaining on the Evening With clips I've watched on You Tube. I think the guy missed his calling by not doing stand up, frankly, because he sure can't write a movie.
Posted by CCA at July 12, 2006 7:59 PM
comment #6
Camster says ...
Seems like a lot of people here are forgetting Dogma which, though far from perfect, is a damn fine film.
Posted by Camster at July 12, 2006 8:43 PM
comment #7
Daniel Zelter says ...
Cam: I liked Dogma, too, but for some reason, people cite it as a sign of Smith's decline.
Posted by Daniel Zelter at July 12, 2006 8:55 PM
comment #8
Anonymous says ...
your first paragraph is some of the weirdest, most self-revelatory shit i've read in a long time.
Posted by Anonymous at July 12, 2006 9:55 PM
comment #9
nobdy says ...
dogma sucked.
I think he is a good 'slacker' director.
you know the talented one among the stoners who all the rest in the group always look to for a funny joke or leader in social situations.
I really hope he just starts a network or does some ind of really great behind the scenes milestone because I really don't know where he can go after this movie.
I mean, how many different ways can you act like a stoner?
I do want to point out that from what I do know of him, I think he is a great person.
Posted by nobdy at July 12, 2006 11:17 PM
comment #10
Neeb says ...
Here's the weird thing: Kevin Smith is a real director. By this, I mean that he makes films which can not be mistaken for the films of any other director.
Take a minute, how many directors can you say this about? Ridley Scott? Bruckheimer has a closet of clones if Ridley isn't avaiable. Anthony Minghella? Sure, if you can stay awake through one of his films. Sam Mendes? Nope- too mannered. Ang Lee? Not distinct enough (though he's not a bad director by any means).
Slag Smith all you want, but films are distinctive product. Gross-out humor with heart, he does make films that have an identity and he's been doing it for ten years (which is longer than any number of flash-in-the-pans).
I'm not ready to annoint him the great force in cinema that so many hacks enjoy (see Gore Verbinski) when they have a film that makes 61% on RottenTomatoes. I will predict that he'll be making pictures in ten years (and if he leaves, it won't be because he was chased out for a financial disaster).
In a way, he's Woody Allen if Woody Allen had grown up watching Star Wars and reading Frank Miller comics (therein lies a lesson about the debased material of the last 25 years).
Posted by Neeb at July 12, 2006 11:57 PM
comment #11
Rogo says ...
Neeb is right. Nothing more to add.
Posted by Rogo at July 13, 2006 1:23 AM
comment #12
Martin benitez says ...
Well I think Jersey Girl was pretty underrated. It got caught in the Bennifer thing. But the film itself was pretty solid. Not revolutionary but you can`t say it was mediocre. Because whatever you can say about Smith, he knows his shit. He`s a filmaker in his blood and he`s great with actors. The only problem I saw with it is that it was rather safe and I wouldn`t have want him to go into a too mainstream path. I think Chasing Amy proved that you can still be Kevin Smith and make crazy challenging flicks while talking about universal subject for a larger audience. Combine the two and that`s why Chasing Amy was so unique and touched a nerve because Kevin proved in adapting his style to more common ideas he could give a great shot in the arm of say a subject like romantic movies. CA was the first romantic film I can recall that felt truly modern, not just the rehashed romantic comedy model that`s been used since the 30s. It made me realise that KS could be very important for Cinema if he wanted to.
Posted by Martin benitez at July 13, 2006 3:28 AM
comment #13
Chuck says ...
To everyone bashing the first Clerks-he was TWENTY THREE when he did that movie for a few thousand dollars, most people that age are sleeping on their mother's couch.
Though I admit he hasn't progressed much beyond that.
Posted by Chuck at July 13, 2006 5:39 AM
comment #14
Rich says ...
If you've ever worked in the service industry (and most of us have), then Clerks, as amateurish as it is, still hits very close to home. Its crudeness is part of its charm. And whether Jeff Anderson can act or not, his Randal was one of my personal heroes.
I suspect that Smith has never quite reached that level again because he's no longer part of that world. Still, he is very gifted with dialogue and, like the South Park guys, has a very good grasp of the fanboy underground. Parts of Jay and Silent Bob were hilarious. I also thought Dogma was pretty good, though a little too full of itself.
If Smith were still part of the New Jersey neighborhood, I suspect Clerks 2 could have been something special. But it's hard to recapture that "you are there" feeling when you're not there any more, and haven't been for some time. I hope it will be funny, but I don't think it will touch the same chords the original did.
That poster of Rosario Dawson is pretty fabulous, though.
Posted by Rich at July 13, 2006 6:19 AM
comment #15
CCA says ...
"Not revolutionary but you can`t say it was mediocre."
Right, because that would be overrating it.
JERSEY GIRL struck me as a movie where two guys (Smith and Ben) wanted to make a movie about their working class roots but were so far removed from them every note was false. Not to mention the question, why didn't Ben's high powered NY type character just get a fucking nanny? Then he blows his career because he doesn't know how to change his months old daughter's diaper? All that time and he hadn't changed one diaper, how is that possible? Lazy writing. And George Carlin, while a comedic genius, is an AWFUL actor. Terrible casting.
I like CHASING AMY when it came out but found it almost unwatchable when I bought the DVD (sold it the next day). They say "show, don't tell" but that movie was unbearable with every character making speeches TELLING us exactly how they felt, ad naseum.
Two words for the DOGMA fans: shit monster. I can be as immature as anyone but I would have found that stupid at fourteen. Maybe it's because I was raised in a non-religious family but that movie did absolutely nothing for me. Someone like Scorcese can (okay, could) make me feel his guilt and the cross catholics bear but Smith? Dude, stick to Staw Wars dialogue if that's all you're willing to think about.
CLERKS was genius, though. Its being amateurish is part of its charm, IMO, plus its poignant AND hysterical. Seemed like Smith had great promise but ... promise broken.
Posted by CCA at July 13, 2006 8:26 AM
comment #16
Rich says ...
Sorry but I think Kevin Smith has zero talent. He's never done a movie that was worthwhile and wasn't a piece of amateurish crap.
Posted by Rich at July 13, 2006 8:35 AM
comment #17
Anonymous says ...
I grew up in Jersey and was raised Catholic, so maybe that's why I liked "Dogma." Sure it's not great, but it is funny and has some great moments. Just thinking about Alanis Morissette's God makes me chuckle.
Posted by Anonymous at July 13, 2006 9:11 AM
comment #18
sutter kane says ...
Honestly, I wonder what Smith could do with a play. Most everyone agrees that his dialogue is well written, and often very funny (almost like mamet without the machismo), but his directorial skills fluctuate between adequate and amateur. Seems to me like the theatre is the perfect way to take the focus off his camera work and put it on the dialogue.
Posted by sutter kane at July 13, 2006 9:40 AM
comment #19
Josh Massey says ...
"Most everyone agrees that his dialogue is well written."
Really?
Posted by Josh Massey at July 13, 2006 2:01 PM
comment #20
Hopscotch says ...
There is a movie coming out tomorrow called "The Groomsmen". Written, directed and starring Ed Burns. Every single review will say the following line in a harsh light, "Seen one Ed Burns movie, seen 'em all." And that goes DOUBLE for Smith.
Call me a traitor to my generation. But NONE of this guys' movies age well. Even Chasing Amy which I thought was great at the time now seems pretty so-so. The thing that has changed honestly is me. I'm older. I was in high school/college when his first four movies came out. I'm no longer a sucker for Jaws/Star Wars references with dick jokes, etc. However, Smith is a great interview and he has intelligent things to say about other people's movies. He reminds me of John Waters. Really, really smart guy, great in small supporting roles. But every movie he's done I think is attrocious beyond belief.
Posted by Hopscotch at July 13, 2006 4:27 PM
comment #21
Anonymous says ...
There is a movie coming out tomorrow called "The Groomsmen". Written, directed and starring Ed Burns. Every single review will say the following line in a harsh light, "Seen one Ed Burns movie, seen 'em all.
-- Except, you know, the Hollywood Reporter, which LOVED the Groomsmen.
Posted by Anonymous at July 13, 2006 5:30 PM
comment #22
Hopscotch says ...
No shit? Didn't read that one review yet. But I still stand by my point.
Posted by Hopscotch at July 13, 2006 6:02 PM
comment #23
CCA says ...
To be fair, next to Ed Burns Smith is a towering cinematic presence.
Posted by CCA at July 13, 2006 7:36 PM
comment #24
Chad says ...
"Here's the weird thing: Kevin Smith is a real director. By this, I mean that he makes films which can not be mistaken for the films of any other director.Take a minute, how many directors can you say this about?"
Um, NEEB... Michael Mann? David Lynch? Wes Anderson? Ingmar Bergman. Fellini. Soderbergh. Malick. Powell & Pressburger. Godard. Cronenberg. The list goes on...
Smith isn't even in the remote vicinity of any of these masters. Next time cite better examples,
Posted by Chad at July 13, 2006 8:34 PM
comment #25
Duck of Death says ...
I've always thought of O'Halloran as a romantic lead since I saw 'Vulgar'. Clown rape is no laughing matter people.
Posted by Duck of Death at July 13, 2006 8:47 PM
comment #26
Laura says ...
I've always been a fan of Smith. Not that his movies are classic cinema, but they've always given me repeat laughs. I gotta say though, my favorite is still Mallrats. For all the crap it gets, it's still the best to me!
Posted by Laura at July 14, 2006 6:49 AM