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Behind The Seen: Kevin Smith
Alternative Press - Rob Ortenzi on 10/20/08 @ 5:53 PM - altpress.com
Unless you've been living in a cave, under a rock buried beneath an even bigger rock, the chances are excellent that writer/director KEVIN SMITH has made you piss your pants laughing. As the master of the View Askewniverse (the microcosmic New Jersey backdrop for the Clerks films, Chasing Amy, Mallrats, Dogma and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back), Smith has lampooned everything from convenience store culture to God himself (or in Smith's case, herself) with incisive wit and filthy language. This month, he drags Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks to Monroeville, Pennsylvania-site of George Romero's 1978 horror classic/consumerism critique, Dawn Of The Dead-for Zack And Miri Make A Porno, a comedy about two roommates who have sex on camera to pay the bills. View Askewniverse veterans Jason Mewes (aka Jay of Jay and Silent Bob fame) and Jeff Anderson (Randal Graves from the Clerks movies) co-star alongside Craig Robinson (Pineapple Express, The Office), real-life porn star Katie Morgan and former teenage sex queen Traci Lords.
[SPOILER ALERT: Some questions address specific scenes in the film.]
You're at the Courtyard Marriott in Red Bank, New Jersey. Could it get any more glamorous?
What rocks more than this, dude? This is where it all happens. It's a pussy palace. It's fucking sex central. I dig it because the internet's free. There are two other hotels in the Red Bank area that are a little more posh, but they don't have free internet and they don't have in-room movies. This place does, so I tend to go here.
Where did the idea for Zack And Miri Make a Porno come from?
I guess I've kind of been thinking of a version of Zack And Miri since '96 or '97, right around the time that we were doing Chasing Amy. I wanted to do a porn story that featured Ben Affleck, Joey [Lauren] Adams and Jason Lee, but I went right into Dogma afterwards, so we never wound up doing it. And then, you know, everyone kind of went their separate ways and started doing different stuff. But the idea stuck around and took different shapes. It ultimately became less about the world of professional porn-which I thought Paul Thomas Anderson handled real well in Boogie Nights-and I started thinking more about all the DIY porn that's cropped up with the advent of the Internet. By, like, '99 or 2000, there was already so much porn just put up by people for the sake of being seen fucking. So I started thinking about that and mixed it up with one of my favorite topics, which is the different between fucking and making love. I mean, I've never been a one-night stand kind of guy. Guys that look like me are not one-night stands. We basically woo a chick and get into a relationship-we don't just fuck and run. The closest I had to a one-night stand was the chick I ended up marrying, you know?
Jason Mewes, on the other hand, is the king of the one-night stand. He's fucked more people than I'll ever meet in my lifetime. I'd always say to him, "I don't get it. You find some woman who's goodly enough to sleep with you-why wouldn't you call her up and see if you could do it again?" And he's like, "There's always someone else." And I'd be like, "Wow, man. I'd love to be you for even ten minutes. What a great way to live." The final linchpin was seeing Seth [Rogen] in The 40-Year-Old Virgin when I finally caught in on DVD. I was like, "This dude sounds like one of my characters. I wanna work with him."
Initially, the MPAA gave Zack And Miri an NC-17 rating, and you appealed the ruling. What specifically did they disapprove of? If anything, the language is more "obscene" than the sex scenes.
Well, they felt that overall there was a lot of adult content. The two areas they zeroed in on specifically were the first porno scene with Lester [Mewes] and Stacy [Katie Morgan] and the shit shot. I was not surprised that they singled out the shit shot, but the first porno scene is so obviously a caricature of sex. It's cartoony and over the top-it's not titillating at all. The shit shot, well, maybe that goes beyond the pale, but I didn't feel so. I mean, it's less than a second long. It's only 14 frames, so I couldn't understand why it was a big deal.
Fourteen frames that will be burned into our collective psyche forever.
Exactly. [Laughs.] It's a very effective 14 frames, that's for sure-proving once again that it's never the size, it's how you use it.
Did you ever consider giving the movie a different title?
I felt that would've been a betrayal of what it is. When we were about two weeks into shooting, [executive producer] Bob Weinstein called up and said, "I think we should probably change the title." And I said, "To what?" And he's like, "How about Zack And Miri Make A Movie?" I told him I thought that was lame. And then he goes, "The title Zack And Miri Make A Porno gives everything away." And I said, "I hope not. It tells you one aspect of the movie, but if that gives everything away, then I've failed as a filmmaker." Finally I said, "Look, Bob-it's already been announced as Zack And Miri Make A Porno. If we change it now, it'll look like we got scared. Plus, it's a catchy title. And it does the job of policing the movie in that you're never gonna get some blue-hair ending up in the theater and not knowing what she's gonna see. If it's called Zack And Miri Make A Porno, she's staying away."
The movie seems like exactly the kind of thing you would set in New Jersey, in the View Askewniverse. Why didn't you do that?
I thought Clerks II was a logical conclusion to the View Askewniverse flicks. From there on, I wanted to make disconnected movies that didn't feature the same characters like Jay and Silent Bob. It felt like a good time, too, to change locations. I mean, why set it in Jersey if it's not gonna be a View Askewniverse flick? It gave me the opportunity to move it to Steel Town in the middle of winter, which is probably the last place on earth anyone would think of making a porno.
Other than the obvious Dawn Of The Dead connection, why did you pick Monroeville, Pennsylvania?
Because I thought putting it in the heart of Pittsburgh would've been too metropolitan for these characters-it would've raised their rent. And Monroeville is only 15 minutes away, tops, from Pittsburgh. It just made more sense for them to be creatures of the 'burbs.
Is it your intention for the viewer to draw a parallel between George Romero's DIY horror and Zack and Miri's DIY porno?
Totally. It is not without precedent that people have thought about making filmed entertainment there. It's just not the kind of filmed entertainment that our gang is looking at.
Were any scenes in the movie uncomfortable to shoot?
When we were shooting the first porno scene between Lester [Mewes] and Stacy [Morgan], I was kind of sweating it, because I'd never shot anything even remotely close to that before. Most of the [porno references] are in the dialogue, not the actual visuals. So I cleared the set and just kept Jason and Katie behind. For some reason, just the three of us in that room worked better than if I had had everybody sitting around listening and watching. I felt more comfortable, you know? I mean, I've got this chick who, you know, anything I ask her to do is not gonna be nearly as out there as what she does at her day job. [Laughs.] And Jason has been air-humping since the moment he sprang from the womb. So I had two people who were comfortable enough to run through the positions. It was easy. The discomfort went away right quick. All of that stuff was shot on video, and at one point I was sitting behind the monitor, so from my vantage point, for all intents and purposes, it looked like we were shooting an actual porno. It looked like there was penetration going on. There wasn't, but if you brought someone in off the street and showed them what I was looking at, they'd think we were making a porno.
Next you're going to tell me that Jason really did hook up with Katie.
I wish, but he's got a girlfriend and she's got a boyfriend. But they were insanely convincing. Katie is this weird statistical anomaly because she actually doesn't have some kind of sad, abusive back story that most porn stars have, and she actually enjoys doing porn. She's very fond of saying, "Porn didn't find me-I found it."
Didn't she get started in porn to pay a bondsman off after she was arrested for possession of marijuana?
Yeah, it was for possession. I asked her, "Could you conceive of yourself doing more mainstream films? And if that takes off, would you just leave adult films behind?" And she said she'd like to do both. I was like, "Wow, man-you could be the first."
I read that you had to convince Traci Lords to do that scene where she uses the strap-on. Did you have to convince Ricky Mabe to be the catcher in that scene?
Ricky went for it right away because it was like, "More screen time? I'm there!"
What kind of conversation did you have with Jeff Anderson before the shit shot?
Well, we showed him how it was supposed to work. Then we took him out to the parking lot and covered his body with Hefty bags, just leaving his face exposed. Kenny, our special effects guy, brought out this giant inverted cannon. It kind of looked like a bazooka with a hook pointing down at the end. He pulled the trigger and launches this fuckin' glob of what was essentially edible shit because it was made with corn starch and baby food. So Jeff got to see exactly what he was in for. He knew it was going to be a funny moment.
Did you have a eureka moment when you decided to cast Superman as a gay porn star?
You know, it wasn't until after people started seeing the flick that I made the connection. He was just the right guy for the role. We were sitting around trying to figure out who would be Bobby Long and I was like, "He should be a real salt-of-the-earth type; all-American like Superman." And Seth was like, "What about Brandon Routh?" And I was like, "Yeah, like a Brandon Routh." And Seth goes, "Let's just call Brandon Routh." In Seth's world, you just call people, because the worst they can do is say no. [Elizabeth] Banks was there while we were talking about it, and she was like, "Wait-are you talking about Superman? My agent reps Superman!" So she called her agent, who we already knew loved the script, because he read it before Banks did. Brandon read it and jumped on board. I felt bad because he was traveling all the way from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh to essentially play the straight man in the scene. [Laughs.] Well, not really the straight man, but he was able to wring some laughs out of it because of the way he'd react to everybody. So the relationship between him and Justin [Long] got a little bit richer. But it wasn't until it was all done that someone goes, "Holy shit-you've got Superman playing gay in the movie." But I hadn't pieced it together.
Justin nailed it.
Oh, Justin killed it, dude. He had a really bad cold while we were doing it. He was like, "My voice is shot. I was going to try and sound like I normally do, but I borrowed a friend's gay porn tape..."And I was like, "Sure you did." But he went on to say that most of the guys talked in really low voices, so he tried it and it sounded fuckin' phenomenal. It happened because he wasn't feeling well, but it actually augments that character.
How much improvising did Seth Rogen end up doing?
The dude always did the script, but he'd ad-lib, you know? I mean, improv to me is, "We don't have a script; let's make up a scene." That's not what was happening. What Seth is really great at is making all of his ad-libs usable. Sometimes people will ad-lib in a scene to make the crew laugh, or because they think it's funny even though it's not inherent to the plot or doesn't sound like the character. Seth is really great at being able to button a joke or come up with an alternate line that not only sounds exactly like his character, but it's also germane to the scene and propels the plot forward. He's fantastic at that. So I'd say there's about 20 percent of that in the movie, no more than we did in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, but all the better because Seth is so genius at that kind of shit.
Where did you get the "Dutch rudder" thing from?
[Laughs.] Dave Klein and I were shooting the Reaper pilot, and I made some comment like, "I'm gonna fuck you." And Dave goes, "Just give me a Dutch rudder." I asked him what it was, and when he told me I was like, "That is fucking genius, dude. I've never heard that before. I'm totally using that in the next movie." And then I came up with the double Dutch rudder. We took it even further while we were shooting, and we came up with the double Dutch fudge rudder, which is the double Dutch rudder with a finger up your ass. But when we put it together, it felt like we had beaten the joke into the ground, so we cut it. It is actually kind of genius. It's like a variation of the Stranger, but it's gay and it's not gay at the same time. -J. Bennett
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