Originally posted April 17, 2013 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Jason Mewes, best known as Kevin Smith's gabby sidekick in "Clerks" and the "Jay and Silent Bob" films, was sober but was afraid if he didn't stay busy, he'd fall off the wagon.
So in 2011, he bugged Smith to help him helm a project that would focus his mind. Smith dug up a script he had written and handed it to Mewes.
"It was a busy work project," Smith admitted.
The concept: Jay and Silent Bob win the lottery and become superheroes Bluntman and Chronic.
"I figured he'd work on it for 10 minutes," Smith said. "He's easily distracted. This was a dude for years who had trouble even staying sober. How could he complete a project like this from start to finish?"
Shockingly to Smith, Mewes - now a producer for the first time - came back with a 10-minute intro.
"It made me laugh," Smith said. "I knew the material. It shouldn't make me laugh. I'm 42. I don't know how often I find p**** and fart jokes funny. Yet in this case, I did."
In the end, Mewes turned it into a full-fledged animated film "Jay & Silent Bob's Super Groovy Cartoon Movie." You can judge for yourself how funny it is at a screening Saturday, April 20 at Center Stage.
And you can meet Smith and Mewes in person. They'll do a Q&A after the film, tape a podcast and probably hang out with the fans afterwards.
"It's kind of celebrating a dude's ability to pull it together, to make his own movie," Smith said. Mewes himself found a fan, Steve Stark, to direct it.
"He made our s*** even funnier," Smith said. The pair first considered trying to get it funded through a production company. Then they just decided to do it themselves.
Smith himself merely tweaked the movie. Starks and Mewes did the heavy lifting. The film in the end cost a relatively microscopic $69,000 out of their own pockets.
Mewes said he hopes to eventually get the movie on Netflix or iTunes or Comedy Central. And if it's successful, he's psyched to do more: "As long as I can talk and do all my lines, we can do it for another 20 years."
Mewes, when he talks, sounds stoned even though he said he's stone-cold sober. Smith, though, readily admitted he was high while doing the interview with me.
"Our dynamic has shifted," Smith said. "I was always the sober one. He was the substance guy. It's now vice versa."
Smith started the "wake and bake" pattern at age 38. "It doesn't make you more creative but when you hit a wall of self doubt," he said, "it helps you move forward. I have to make sure my smoking is tied with productivity. I have to work. If I'm working, nobody can say jack s***. The moment I spark up, I'm working on script, cutting a podcast, recording a podcast."
And Mewes, despite the stoner cadence in his voice, was what Smith dubbed a "junkie. Heroin. Oxycontin. Percocet. Crystal meth. Crack cocaine. He spent very little time with weed. It made him paranoid. He was predisposed. His mother was a junkie. He's one of those f***ed up kids with a million-dollar heart. The guy was fighting a losing battle based on his genetics."
Mewes, who said he's been broke and nearly homeless due to his drug problems, has been sober for more than two years and feels his podcast fans keep him accountable.
And he loves that others have been inspired by his story and have dried out. "I can't say I'm more creative sober," Mewes said. "It's just a lot easier to work when I'm not spending my days thinking about how I'm going to get money to get drugs."
He said he missed out on so much being a druggie. When he went to the Cannes Film Festival yearsa ago, he ran out of stuff three days into a five-day trip and spent the last two days sick as a dog. "I missed all the parties and all the movies," he said.
Smith, in the meantime, is grateful for his success the past 20 years. "Film gave me everything in life. I met my wife when she interviewed me in person for USA Today. She never would have come in to the convenience store when I was a clerk. I got a kid because of it. A film was a passport into this world. I would never have left f**ing Jersey without 'Clerks.' "
While talking to me, he said he was on page 100 of a script for "Clerks 3" in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the original. That film cost a whopping $27,575 but became a surprise cult hit.
"It looked like s***," Smith mused. "But if it looked good, it wouldn't have connected." (And why was it black and white? It would have cost extra money to create special lighting in the convenience store and the existing lighting would have looked horrid in color.)
Smith said he is trying to imagine what his life would have been like without the original film "Clerks."
It's not easy, he said: "I'm cursed by having experience. When you're inexperienced, you don't know what you can or cannot do. Now I'm boxing myself in from the jump. It's a bizarre process. But I love it. I love the story. I love where the characters have wound up."
He said he can't repeat the formula of "Clerks" because the quirky aspects of that film have become mainstream. "I can't just do a scene talking about 'Star Wars,' " he said. "It was funny when we went first. But everybody does stuff like that now. I can't reach into my old bag of tricks!" If this whole Hollywood thing goes away for Smith, he does have a Plan B:"I'm going to get me a food truck. I can make a damn good sandwich."
Show preview
“Jay and Silent Bob's Super Groovy Cartoon Movie" with Q&A afterwards 8:30 p.m. Saturday. $39-$49. Center Stage, 1374 West Peachtree Street Atlanta Buy tickets here.
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