Kevin Patrick Smith (born August 2, 1970) is an American screenwriter, film producer, and director, as well as a comic book writer, author, and actor. He is also the co-founder, with Scott Mosier, of View Askew Productions and owner of Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash comic and novelty store in Red Bank, New Jersey. He also hosts a weekly podcast with Scott Mosier known as SModcast. Smith is known for participating in long, humorous Q&A sessions that are often filmed for DVD release, beginning with An Evening with Kevin Smith .
His films are often set in his home state of New Jersey, and while not strictly sequential, they do frequently feature crossover plot elements, character references, and a shared canon in what is known by fans as the "View Askewniverse", named after his production company View Askew Productions. He has produced numerous films and television projects, including Clerks , Dogma , and Zack and Miri Make a Porno .
Personal life
Smith was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, the son of Grace, a homemaker, and Donald Smith, a postal worker.
He has an older sister, Virginia, and an older brother, Donald Smith, Jr. He was raised in an Irish Catholic household and attended Henry Hudson Regional High School in Highlands.
After high school he met Jason Mewes who would later become a recurring actor in his films. He then attended The New School and the Vancouver Film School, where he met Scott Mosier, his producer for every movie that he has made.
He majored in film, but dropped out halfway through his studies, electing to take a partial tuition reimbursement in order to help finance his first film. Smith is married to Jennifer Schwalbach Smith. He named his daughter Harley Quinn after the character from Mad Love , a Batman comic book.
Although Smith was raised Catholic, he has said on Back To The Well , the Clerks II documentary, that now he only goes to Mass on the day before he starts production of a movie, and the day before it premieres. He never smoked until his debut film, Clerks , in which he used the cigarettes as a prop, but never actually inhaled. In fact, he has said that prior to filming Clerks , he was a staunch non-smoker.
Kevin Smith is a hockey fan and a self-described "die-hard" New Jersey Devils fan. Smith wrote his own blog that was posted on the National Hockey League's website and also often blogs specifically about the Devils. NHL has since discontinued his blog when the NHL found his blogs to be too controversial.
Career
Work as director
His first film, Clerks , was shot for the sum total of $27,575 in the same convenience store where Smith worked. It went to the Sundance Film Festival in 1994, where it won the Filmmaker's Trophy and was picked up by Miramax before the festival's end. In May 1994, it went to the Cannes International Film Festival where it won both the Prix de la Jeunesse and the International Critics' Week Prize. Released in November 1994 in two cities, the film went on to play in fifty markets, never playing on more than fifty screens at any given time. Despite the limited release, it was a critical and financial success, earning $3.1 million.
Initially, the film received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, solely for the graphic language. Miramax hired Alan Dershowitz to defend the film, and at an appeals screening, a "jury" consisting of members of the National Association of Theater Owners reversed the MPAA's decision, and the film was given an R rating instead.
Smith's second film, Mallrats , didn't fare as well as Clerks . It received a critical drubbing and earned merely $2.2 million at the box office, despite playing on more than 500 screens. The film marked Jason Lee's debut as a leading man. While it later found its audience on home video, Smith has said of the movie "It was a six million dollar casting call for Chasing Amy ."
Widely hailed as one of Smith's best films, Chasing Amy marked what Quentin Tarantino called "a quantum leap forward" for Smith. Starring Mallrats alumni Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck, the $250,000 film earned $12 million at the box office and wound up on a number of critics' year-end best lists, and won two Independent Spirit Awards (screenplay and supporting actor for Lee).
Smith's next film, Dogma , had an all-star cast and found itself mired in controversy. The religious-themed comedy, which starred a post - Good Will Hunting Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, as well as Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, George Carlin, Alan Rickman, Linda Fiorentino, and Smith regulars Jason Lee and Jason Mewes, raised the ire of the Catholic League due largely to a reference about the Virgin Mary having post-Jesus intercourse with her husband, Joseph. Smith received over 10,000 pieces of protest/hate mail (some of which were showcased on the film's official website) and three death threats.
The film debuted at the 1999 Cannes International Film Festival, out of competition. Released on 800 screens in November 1999, the $10 million film earned $30 million.
After the controversy surrounding Dogma , Smith said he wanted to make a movie that couldn't be attacked for its content. Focusing the spotlight on two characters who'd appeared in supporting roles in his previous four films, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back featured an all-star cast, with many familiar faces returning from Smith's first four films. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon appear as themselves filming a mock sequel to Good Will Hunting . The $20 million film earned $30 million at the box office and received mixed reviews from the critics. It was meant to be the film that closed the book on the "Askewniverse" — the New Jersey-based, interconnected quintet of movies written and directed by Smith.
Jersey Girl with Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, George Carlin and Raquel Castro was meant to mark a new direction in Smith's career. However, the film took a critical beating as it was seen as a post- Gigli vehicle for Affleck and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, who also appeared in this movie. Budgeted at $35 million, it earned only $25 million.
Clerks II marked one more trip into the Askewniverse, Smith resurrected the Dante and Randal characters from his first film and looked in on them 10 years later. Roundly criticized before its release, the film went on to win favorable reviews as well as two awards (the Audience Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival and the Orbit Dirtiest Mouth Award at the MTV Movie Awards). It marked Smith's third trip to the Cannes International Film Festival, where Clerks II received an eight minute standing ovation. The $5 million film, starring Jeff Anderson, Brian O'Halloran, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes, Jennifer Schwalbach and Smith himself — reprising his role as Silent Bob — earned $25 million.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno was originally announced in March 2006 as Smith's second non-Askewniverse comedy. The film, which began shooting on January 18, 2008 in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, and wrapped on March 15, 2008, stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as the title characters who decide to make a low-budget pornographic film to solve their money problems. The film, which was released on October 31, 2008, ran into many conflicts getting an "R" rating, with Rogen stating:
Smith took the film through the MPAA's appeals process and received the R rating, without having to make any further edits.
Frequent casting
Main article: Casting in Kevin Smith filmsSmith often casts several of the same actors in his films. This originally began with actors from his first film, Clerks , appearing in subsequent films.
Work as a writer
Smith has been a regular contributor to Arena magazine. In 2005, Miramax Books released Smith's first book, Silent Bob Speaks , a collection of previously published essays (most from Arena ) dissecting pop culture, the movie business, and Smith's personal life. His second book, My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith , published by Titan Books, was another collection of previously published essays (this time blogs from Smith's website www.silentbobspeaks.com) and reached #32 on the New York Times Best Sellers List. Titan will release Smith's third book Shootin' the Sh*t with Kevin Smith: The Best of the SModcast on September 29, 2009 .
Comic writer
A life-long comic book fan, Smith's early forays into comic books dealt with previously established View Askew characters, and were published by Oni Press. He wrote a short Jay and Silent Bob story about Walt Flanagan's dog in Oni Double Feature #1, and followed it with a Bluntman and Chronic story in Oni Double Feature #12.
He followed these with a series of Clerks comics. The first was simply Clerks: The Comic Book , which told of Randal's attempts to corner the market on Star Wars toys. The second was Clerks: Holiday Special , where Dante and Randal discover that Santa Claus lives in an apartment between the Quick Stop and RST Video. Third was Clerks: The Lost Scene , showing what happened inside Poston's Funeral Parlor. (This story was later animated in the TV series style and included as an extra on the 10th Anniversary Clerks DVD.)
Smith has written a comic mini-ser
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