Kevin Smith is an American screenwriter, writer, film director, actor, and comic book writer. He is also the founder of View Askew Productions along with Scott Mosier. Smith's films are often set in his home state of New Jersey, and while not strictly sequential, do feature crossover plot elements, character references, and a shared canon: the View Askewniverse.
Background
Ethnicity:
Kevin Smith's paternal grandfather was of Irish, English, and distant German, descent. His three other grandparents were all of German ancestry.
Kevin Patrick Smith was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, the son of Grace Schultz, 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 (as stated in an interview in Clerks 10th Anniversary DVD) household. He is very proud of his native state; this fact can be seen in all of his movies.
Education
Kevin Smith studied at Henry Hudson High School, New Jersey. After the High School, he met Jason Mewes who would later become a recurring actor in his films.
Smith then attended classes on creative writing programme at the New School for Social Research. But he left the course after one year when the authorities complained about his undisciplined behaviour at the institute.
In 1990, Smith attended the Vancouver Film School for four months, where he met Scott Mosier, his producer in 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. After leaving the course, he was uncertain about his future. Therefore, he joined a convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey, as a clerk, which would an inspiration for his future movie.
Career
Kevin Smith's first film, Clerks, was shot for the sum total of $27,575 in the same convenience store where Smith worked. 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 didn't fare as well as his first. Mallrats 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, earning the title "cult classic", Smith has said of the movie "It was a six million dollar casting call for Chasing Amy."
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, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, 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 ten thousand 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 the 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. 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 Jersey-based, interconnected quintet of movies written and directed by Smith.
Jersey Girl 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 Bennifer movie (also starring George Carlin and Liv Tyler). 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 ten years later. It marked Smith's third trip to the Cannes International Film Festival, where Clerks II received an eight-minute standing ovation. The $5 million dollar 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.
In March 2006, Smith announced he was working on a new, non-Askewniverse comedy. Zack and Miri Make a Porno, starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, started shooting on January 18, 2008, in Monroeville, Pennsylvania and wrapped on March 15, 2008. The film was released on October 31, 2008. Asked if he'd done any research to make the film, Smith replied: "I've been researching "Zack and Miri" since I was 11. Sometimes three times a day, depending on who was in the house."
Smith announced at the Wizard World Chicago 2006 convention that his next project would move in a different direction, and would be a horror film. In April 2007, Smith revealed the title of the horror movie to be Red State and said that it was inspired by extremist preacher Fred Phelps, or as Smith claimed, "very much about that subject matter, that point of view and that position taken to the absolute extreme. It's certainly not Phelps himself but it's very much inspired by a Phelps figure." He plans to start shooting Red State in late March or early April. It has been recently posted on Kevin Smith's website that he has already finished the script for both films. In a blog update, Smith stated that Bob and Harvey Weinstein have passed on Red State. The Weinsteins had thus far been involved in the distribution of all Kevin Smith films, with the exception of Mallrats.
Another planned project for Smith is Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers. He has described the project as "My stab at a comic-book/sci-fi movie. It's in the vein of Flash Gordon, something I've noodled with a couple of years. Now I feel we are mature enough filmmakers to tackle it". In an April 2007 post on his blog, he mentioned that he's "planning something special" for his tenth movie.
Another project that has long been in the works is Clerks: Sell Out, a feature-length animated film done in the style of Clerks: The Animated Series. The fate of this project is currently unknown.
As an actor, Smith is known for his role as Silent Bob in Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, and Clerks II. He made a cameo appearance in the horror film Scream 3 and was featured along with Jason Mewes in several Degrassi episodes, including a special, Jay and Silent Bob Do Degrassi (also as a fictional version of himself).
From 1995 to 1997, Smith played small roles in the View Askew movies Drawing Flies, Vulgar, and "Big Helium Dog". In 2001, he appeared in friend Jeff Anderson's Now You Know. In 2003, Smith appeared in a cameo role as coroner Jack Kirby in the film Daredevil. In 2006, he voiced the Moose in the CGI cartoon Doogal.
In 2007, Smith appeared in three films as an actor. He had his first starring role in a film he didn't write or direct, co-starring as Sam in the film Catch and Release, starring Jennifer Garner. The performance earned him many favorable critical notices. Later that year, he had a small part as a hacker called The Warlock in the fourth installment of the Die Hard franchise, Live Free or Die Hard for which he again received strong critical notices.
Smith has also done small roles on television in shows such as Law & Order, Veronica Mars, Joey, "Degrassi: The Next Generation", and Yes, Dear (in Yes, Dear he also reprised his role as Silent Bob, which was simply him standing in one spot smoking a cigarette and saying nothing as the end credits rolled).
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-series Chasing Dogma, which tells the story of Jay and Silent Bob between the films Chasing Amy and Dogma. He has also written the trade paperback Bluntman and Chronic, published by Image, which purports to be a collection of the three issues of the series done by Holden McNeil and Banky Edwards (of Chasing Amy). It includes a color reprinting of the story from Oni Double Feature #12, purported to be an early appearance by McNeil and Edwards. These stories have all been collected in Tales From the Clerks (Graphitti Designs, ISBN 0936211784), which also includes a new "Clerks" story tying in to the Clerks 2 material, and the story from Oni Double Feature #1. They were previously collected by Image Comics in three separate volumes, one each for Clerks, Chasing Dogma and Bluntman and Chronic.
Smith makes occasional mention of his desire to do a comic-book one-shot of Bartleby and Loki (from Dogma) and the story behind how they got kicked out of heaven, as well as a comic-only sequel to Mallrats called Mallrats 2: Die Hard in a Mall announced all the way back in August 1998.
Smith began a lengthy association with Marvel Comics in 1999, taking over as the writer of the Marvel Comic Daredevil. His run, titled "Guardian Devil" and lasting eight issues, was plagued by delays (which artist Joe Quesada publicly took responsibility for, though it was a sign of things to come). His tenure on Daredevil was controversial among Daredevil fans. Some fans accused Smith of misogyny in his handling of Karen Page's death, and others objected to the killing of long-time Spider-Man foe Mysterio in a non-Spider-Man series. John Byrne and Howard Mackie (then-current writers on the Spider-Man titles) would bring the character back to life (however, because of the delays in his Daredevil run, Mysterio's return to life in the pages of Spider-Man was published before the Daredevil issue featuring Mysterio's death was published).
Kevin Smith followed this by jumping to DC Comics, producing a 15-issue tenure on Green Arrow that saw the return of Oliver Queen from the dead and the introduction of Mia Dearden, a teenage girl who would become Speedy after Smith's run had ended.
Smith returned to Marvel for two mini-series: Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do and Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target. The former is six issues long, but after the third issue was published two months after the initially scheduled release date, the final issues were delayed for at least three years, prompting Marvel to release an "in case you missed it" reprinting of the first three issues as one book prior to the remaining issues' release. The delay in part was due to Smith's movie production schedule (in this case, work on Jersey Girl and Clerks II) causing him to shelf completion of the mini-series until the films were completed.
Smith was announced as the writer of an ongoing Black Cat series and Amazing Spider-Man' in early to mid-2002. However, because of the fatal delays on Evil That Men Do and The Target, the plan was switched so that Smith would start a third Spider-Man title (originally planned for then-ASM writer J. Michael Straczynski), and even this plan was eventually abandoned and the title (by then known as Marvel Knights Spider-Man) launched, in 2004, by Mark Millar instead.
While the Spider-Man/Black Cat mini-series was ultimately completed, Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target remains unfinished, with one issue published. As of May 2007, Marvel and Kevin Smith have indicated that there are no plans for the mini-series to ever be completed.
Smith is reportedly going to be writing the limited series Batman: Cacophony (with art by friend Walt Flanagan) that will run November 2008 through January 2009. As announced at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, the series will reportedly feature the villains Onomatopoeia (a character created by Smith during his run at Green Arrow), Joker and Victor Zsasz.
Smith also appeared in an MTVu show titled Sucks Less With Kevin Smith. The show gives college students ideas for things to do on the weekends. Smith also played the role of Paul, a cynical married man, in a Showtime television series pilot, "Manchild", filmed in December 2006. However, it was not picked up by the network. After an August, 2001 appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" to promote "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back", Smith returned to the show for monthly segments as a correspondent. The "Roadside Attractions" segments featured Smith traveling to random locations around the country and showcased places like Howe Caverns in upstate New York and the Fish Market in Seattle. While five of these segments were included on the Jersey Girl DVD, twelve or more were aired on the actual show. Smith regularly appeared on the program to introduce the pre-taped bits.
From July 2006 on, Smith has guest reviewed on the television show Ebert & Roeper three times, in place of the recovering Roger Ebert. These spots have been notable for the arguments between Smith and Richard Roeper over certain films, with Smith often citing Roeper's poor review of Jersey Girl to discredit his review of the film at hand. On his most recent appearance Smith compared Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan to the works of William Faulkner.
In early 2005, Smith appeared in three episodes of the Canadian-made Degrassi: The Next Generation television show. In the episodes, Smith, portraying a fictionalized version of himself, visited the school to work on the (fictional) film Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh!. Smith wrote all his dialogue for the shows he appeared in. All three episodes were collected on a DVD entitled "Jay and Silent Bob Do Degrassi". Smith and Mewes also appeared in 2 more episodes the following season, when they returned to Degrassi for the Toronto premiere of the fictional Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh! movie. In addition to appearing on Degrassi: The Next Generation, Kevin Smith is an avid fan of the original Degrassi series, Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High and references to the original are present in some of his early films.
Smith directed the pilot for a CW network show called Reaper. Tv.com's summary of the show is "A twenty-something slacker finally scores a job as the devil's bounty hunter." He describes it as "less Brimstone or Dead Like Me and more like Shaun of the Dead than anything else". He also goes on to say that the reason he took the job is that he has always wanted to direct something he did not write, but never had an interest in doing it on the big screen. He has since said he'll never do it again.
At the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that Kevin Smith would write and direct an episode of the Heroes spin-off, Heroes: Origins. Smith is the first director officially announced for the series. However, the project has been indefinitely postponed due to the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike.
Smith has also cameoed in the second season premiere of the sitcom Joey and the Big Break (Part I & II), where he played himself, on an episode of Law & Order in 2000 (episode "Black, White and Blue" playing Tony's wife's nephew), Duck Dodgers (2003 as Hal Jordan, voice only) and Yes, Dear (2004, as himself and Silent Bob). Smith appeared in the second episode of season two of Veronica Mars, playing a store clerk. He stated on his web page that Veronica Mars is some of the best television work ever produced.
In the third season of the HBO series Entourage, Michael Bay and Kevin Smith are directing and writing Aquaman 2. In reality, Smith wrote a script for the Superman Lives movie, while Bay was attached to direct a separate Superman movie. In Entourage, the characters awkwardly react with obvious disappointment at Smith's involvement. Smith has speculated that, that jab and another from season 2 may have been motivated by a book he was involved in, in 1995 where he criticized Rob Weiss and his movie Amongst Friends. At his 37th birthday Q&A in August 2007, Smith assured the audience that he was not offended by the jibe, but rather that he is always tickled when his name is mentioned on television shows. He said that whether the comments are positive or negative, his reaction is "The magic box said my name!"
Smith has directed 3 episodes of The Flash ("The Runaway Dinosaur," "Killer Frost," and "Null and Annoyed"), 4 episodes of Supergirl ("Supergirl Lives", "Distant Sun", "Damage" and "Bunker Hill") and 3 episodes of The Goldbergs ("The Dynamic Duo", "Graduation Day" and "Our Perfect Strangers").
In February 2019, Smith made his second appearance on The Big Bang Theory in season 12 episode 16, "The D&D Vortex", alongside other guests stars, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, William Shatner, and Joe Manganiello in a storyline where they get together at the home of recurring star Wil Wheaton, to play Dungeons and Dragons. His first appearance was in season 8 episode 20, "The Fortification Implementation", when he joins Wil Wheaton on a podcast, voice only.
Smith owns and operates Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Red Bank, New Jersey, a comic book store largely dedicated to merchandise related to his films and comics. He purchased the original store in January 1997 for US$30,000, using the money he earned from Clerks. The current location is its second. The store was moved to a defunct ice cream parlor on Broad St. after Smith sold the Monmouth St. property. The New Jersey location is managed by Smith's long-time friend Walt Flanagan, who appears frequently in Smith's films. A second Secret Stash in the Westwood section of Los Angeles was opened in September 2004 and was managed by long-time friend and associate Bryan Johnson, who has appeared in Smith's films as Steve-Dave. Smith had announced that he would close after his lease expired and Johnson wanted to resign but eventually relocated to Laser Blazer, a DVD store in Los Angeles. In January 2009 the West Coast Store closed, leaving the east coast store as Smith's only operating store.
Views
Kevin Smith has said that after his career is over he'd like to teach film and creative writing courses at a college. In 2018, Vancouver Film School announced three 'Kevin Smith Scholarships' in Acting, Writing and Film Production covering full-tuition. Thirteen partial-scholarships were also awarded, funded by Smith. Smith personally selected the recipients from over nine hundred applications.
Quotations:
[on directing Bruce Willis in Cop Out (2010)] "He turned out to be the unhappiest, most bitter, and meanest emo-bitch I've ever met at any job I've held down. And mind you, I've worked at Domino's Pizza."
"The Jay character is kind of based on who Jason was when he was about 14 years old. In the movies he's a bit more well spoken than he was at that age. Silent Bob - there is no affiliation to myself. I needed a guy to stand next to Jay and not say much, being that Jason was going to be saying a lot. - on resemblances between real life and his characters."
"I wasn't disappointed by Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). I know a lot of people were but I was one of those cats who wasn't. You go in with low expectations, or not expecting it to bring you right back to the days of your youth, but it's kind of a fun movie."
"They're like, 'I can't believe Kevin Smith gets into comics, and all he can do is a superhero comic.' Well, that's what I want to do."
"More often than not, a hero’s most epic battle is the one you never see; it’s the battle that goes on within him or herself."
"Why take life seriously? No one gets out alive anyways."
"There's a trick to being whatever you want to be in life. It starts with the simple belief that you are what or who you say you are."