Kevin Smith
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Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith is a prime example of the kind of person in my industry that I aspire to be like. His humor is intelligent, but he walks the fine line between funny and outright offensive. I admire him for his ability to tell a story using people, instead of effects and a huge budget.
Kevins first movie, Clerks, had a budget of around $27,000 (Kevin Smith). The entire film was black and white, and the only effect that had on the movie was to further highlight how obscenely drab these QuikStop clerks daily lives were. Despite the tiny budget, Kevin showed off his sense of humor and told an involving story using barely anything but the characters. This movie was the birthplace of Jay and his hetero-life-mate Silent Bob, who are now well known after their appearances in several of Kevins other movies. This film ended up getting into the Sundance Film Festival, and tickets for it sold out before the festival started. There were people outside scalping tickets. This was the cast and crews first inkling that the movie might just make it. (Brian OHolloran) The film was bought by Gramercy after the festival.
Mallrats was Smiths second film, they went back to Gramercy for this one, and were offered a budget of 6 million dollars. Kevin actually fought against this size budget because he saw no need for that much, “Why? Its just a little picture about kids running around the mall. Lets not spend that much money on it in case it doesnt really pan out” (Kevin Smith) Luckily for them it did pan out and Kevin put out his second semi-successful movie. One reason this movie did as well as it did is perhaps, Smith said, because they actually tried to reach a larger variety of people with Mallrats. Even though they had a hard R rating and could have cursed up a proverbial storm, Kevin cut down on much of the unnecessary vulgar language.(Kevin Smith) By doing this he made the film more acceptable to a general audience. Another step taking in that direction was Jays reduced number of drug related tag lines. This is not to say, however, that Smith dumbed down the movie for the general public, as “Trish the Dish” a 15yr old highschool senior and author of “Bore-gasm, A study of the 90s male sexual prowess”, will tell you. (Renee Humphrey) Although the movie did only fair in the theatres, Kevin had his customary cult following (Renee Humphrey)
Chasing Amy was the movie that really got Kevin accepted by a wider audience. Up until this point he had made farcical comedies with crude language, drug related humor, and lots of innuendo. Chasing Amy brought Kevin to a more mainstream audience, and also served to dispel the complaint about how he wrote women into his scripts. Though women in his movies never complained about it, “No. Male, female, Kevins just being funny. Thats how I always saw it.” (Renee Humphrey)
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