Esteemed writer/director Kevin Smith still has fond memories of speaking at Northwestern a couple years ago, but much has changed since then.
He has at least temporarily left behind the life of college tours and promotional speeches in favor of family life, settling down with his wife to raise a child while still writing scripts to keep his many fans at bay. He cites his own fatherhood as the dominant influence for his new movie, “Jersey Girl.”
During the interview to promote his latest film (scheduled for release on March 26), his gold wedding band seems almost as wide as the broad lenses on his glasses.
This filmmaking heavyweight’s latest Jersey-based lightweight film explores a sentimental side that many Kevin Smith fans might find unfamiliar. It tells the story of Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck), a city man who loses his wife Gertie (Jennifer Lopez) while she is in the hospital delivering their daughter of the same name (later played by 7-year-old newcomer Raquel Castro). As a result Ollie, a former publicist for important celebrities, is forced to live in the New Jersey suburbs with his father (George Carlin) and raise young Gertie by himself.
Smith sits at ease because he is fairly confident that the film will perform well at the box office. “When ‘Gigli’ bombed, it meant that we would never have a number one opening for this movie, so I kind of got used to that real quickly.” But the negative publicity surrounding Affleck and Lopez doesn’t faze Smith. He foresees “Jersey Girl” being a “strong word-of-mouth movie. Once (people) hear that Jennifer Lopez isn’t in it that much and that the movie makes you feel good — particularly if you’ve got kids — word-of-mouth will defeat those notions.”
In fact, Affleck’s main love interest is Maya (Liv Tyler), who initially serves as the object of affection solely for Gertie. All of this flimsy sentimentality makes for a sort of watered- down version of Smith’s third film, “Chasing Amy,” in which Affleck also starred. Smith himself describes “Jersey Girl” as “‘Chasing Amy’ without the lesbians or the dick-and-fart jokes.”
The signature characters that many have come to associate with Smith’s films, Jay and Silent Bob (played by Jason Mewes and Smith, respectively), are glaringly absent in this script. Discussing their omission, Smith comments on “the feeling that perhaps Jay and Silent Bob were very close to overstaying their welcome, and becoming like Pauly Shore.”
Adding to this concern was Jason Mewes’ ongoing trouble with drug abuse, about which Smith spoke openly. “(He) was knee-deep in OxyContin and heroin. It was becoming tougher and tougher to pull him out of it to make movies.” But on a positive note, Smith adds that “April 6 will mark one year of complete sobriety for him. And honestly, he’s much funnier (when sober).”
Aside from personal reasons for this move forward, Smith was eager to make a departure from the inside jokes and connecting jabs that characterized his other films. “I also had a desire to see if I could work without a net, without relying on references to other movies,” Smith admits. “It’s nice that it stands alone.”
But perhaps the more defining element that sets this film apart from the other five installments of the so-called “Jersey Chronicles” is the introduction of young Castro’s character. While Jay and Silent Bob may have frequently acted like they were seven years old, in this case the star is a seven-year-old girl. Smith says that he cast her because “she wasn’t raised from the embryo to go out there and be an actress.”
Her physical similarity to her onscreen mother didn’t hurt, either. “I was initially drawn to her because she resembled Jennifer Lopez,” Smith says. “But also when she read, it was very natural. She just sounded like a normal seven year old.”
“(By working with a child actor) you lose out on the shorthand you have with grown-up or familiar actors or actresses,” Smith explains. “It cut down on the amount of smoking you could do and harsh language you could hurl around on the set.” This was a difficult adjustment for Smith, who lit a total of three cigarettes and used a good deal of profanity during our roughly 30-minute interview.
Among the topics that “Jersey Girl” manages to poke fun at are Will Smith, the MTV Video Music Awards and the Broadway musical “Cats.” He maintains that this film doesn’t zero in on as many obvious targets as some of his other films, but regardless, according to Smith, “at somebody else’s expense, you’ll always get a laugh.”
But by no means does this casual inclusion of mockery translate to confidence as a respected writer within the film industry. “I never get to that level of confidence that a lot of other directors have,” Smith says.
“Ten years in the business, there’s still this level of trepidation, but luckily it’s not paralyzing or crippling,” Smith explains. “It’s more like an attitude of ‘I have something to prove so I’d better get out there and do it.’ It keeps you in the right frame of mind and you don’t get too comfortable.”
But the guy seems plenty comfortable as he kingly sits sporting a baggy yellow and black jersey that reads “Smitties” in cursive embroidery with his leg crossed to reveal checkered Converse shoes. His calm cynicism prevails, even in light of higher budgets and bigger stars. And with his newest project, he might prove to the world that there’s more to “Bennifer” movies than negative publicity, and there’s more to Kevin Smith movies than Jersey regulars and “snootchie-bootchies.”
