Kevin Smith

Kevin Patrick Smith (born August 2, 1970) is a screenwriter, film director, and the creator of View Askew Productions. He is also known as a comic book writer and actor, although he has criticized his own acting ability on more than one occasion. Smith's films are often set in his home state of New Jersey and are filled with pop culture references, particularly to comic books and the Star Wars movies. Many of Kevin's films take place in the "View Askewniverse" and feature appearances from small-time play-marijuana-dealers Jay and Silent Bob, the latter portrayed by Smith himself. Although sometimes criticized for crude humor and technical amateurishness (which Smith himself frequently makes fun of at Q&A's), his films are also known for their distinctive vision, dialogue, and characters

In 1995, Smith wrote and directed Mallrats, the second film in the so-called "Jersey Trilogy". Mallrats chronicles the romantic difficulties of two slackers (played by Jason Lee and Jeremy London) who spend their days hanging around a shopping mall. The film also featured a post-Beverly Hills 90210 Shannon Doherty and a pre-fame Ben Affleck. A more typical Hollywood comedy than Clerks, Mallrats was a failure with critics as well as at the box office, and Smith later found himself haunted by a tongue-in-cheek apology he made at the 1995 Independent Spirit Awards. Universal had said that they wanted it to be a "smart Porky's". Smith later remarked in his question and answer session, "An Evening with Kevin Smith", that Universal executives pressured him to cut scenes, including especially a section where Silent Bob (Smith himself) masturbates over Gwen (played by Joey Lauren Adams) while she changes clothes, and he ejaculates over the partition into her hair. According to the scene, her hair would be altered as a result (as famously seen two years later in There's something About Mary), but the executives claimed that the gross-out factor was too disgusting to be comedic.

The movie is a simple premise: two young couples separate and the boys try to get the girls back by their side, all around the backdrop of the neighborhood shopping Mecca. T.S. Quint (Jeremy London, TV's Party of Five) is a directionless young man who has the hots for Brandi Svenning (Claire Forlani, The Medallion), but she would rather commit to demands of her bigwig producer father, Jared (Michael Rooker, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), who wants her to appear on his dating game. T.S. and Brandi come undone, as do T.S.'s buddy Brodie Bruce (former Smith regular Jason Lee, in his film debut) and his lover Rene Mosier (Shannon Doherty, formerly on TV's Charmed). Brodie is a loser who lives in his mom's basement and plays Sega all day, which doesn't satisfy Rene all that much, thus she deep-sixes him for his arch enemy, Shannon Hamilton (Ben Affleck, Jersey Girl), who works at the "Fashionable Male" stop at the mall.

Deciding to get off their butts and go down to the mall, where they love to hang out and eat cookies and talk about sex between superheroes, T.S. and Brodie decide they should reconcile their problems with their girlfriends even if it means having to crash on Jared's taping of his daughter's match-making stint. Along the way, they encounter a bunch of colorful characters, including William Black (Ethan Suplee, currently starring with Jason Lee on TV's My Name is Earl), an obese fella with a preoccupation for those "Magic Eye" paintings; Tricia Jones (Renee Humphrey, French Kiss), a young sex researcher; a triple-nippled psychic named Miss Ivannah (Priscilla Barnes, The Devil's Rejects); comic book maven Stan Lee; and, of course, Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith): one's an obnoxious white boy, the other's a fat mute in a trench coat. They figure more here than in Clerks, mainly because they decide to help T.S. by trying desperately sabotaging the TV show.

As writer and director

* Clerks. (1994)

* Mallrats (1995)

* Chasing Amy (1997)

* Overnight Delivery [uncredited rewrite] (1998)

* Dogma (1999)

* Coyote Ugly [uncredited rewrite] (2000)

* Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

* Jersey Girl (2004)

* Clerks II (2006)

* Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers (TBA)

As