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J Wilson wrote: Tue Nov 15, 2022 3:16 pm I can only assume it's the movie version of taking a picture of your meal for instagram cred or whatever.
"Seeing this classic! #iwasbornwhenshekissedmeidiedwhensheleftmeilivedafewweekswhileshelovedme #noircity22"

hearthesilence wrote:Kind of pathetic how he's mocked Scorsese for being "stuck in his ways" when he acts and dresses like he's still in junior high.

knives wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:46 am He might be the director who’s fallen the most of any I can think of. He used to be fairly legitimate and now he makes sub-Wynorski streaming fillers.

Why then, now, midway upon the journey of my life, when in all likelihood I have more sunsets behind me than ahead, did I pick up the habit of watching Kevin Smith movies again? The inciting incident was an anecdote that was passed on to me by my friend, the writer/director Michael M. Bilandic. Years ago, Mike told me, when he was working as a producer on Abel Ferrara’s 2010 documentary Mulberry St., he’d shared a screenplay he’d written with Abel, that of his first feature, 2011’s Happy Life. Abel, who would wind up with an executive producer credit on the finished film, was excited about the script, and by way of praising it compared it to the work of… Kevin Smith. When Mike balked at the comparison—and who in 2010 would relish being likened to the auteur of Cop Out?—Abel came back with a spirited defense, something to the effect of: “You don’t like fuckin’ Clerks, bro? The fuck is wrong with you? It’s a working-class classic, man!”

While it’s unclear as to if the director of The Blackout (1997) has seen any of Smith’s films aside from Clerks (I would venture to guess he has not), his word carries some weight, and reconsidering Smith as a specifically working-class filmmaker made him suddenly interesting again, if only because today’s American independent cinema isn’t exactly overrun by men and women from blue-collar backgrounds. (Of the abovementioned Sundance Darlings of yore, only Linklater and Hartley share Smith’s legitimate Joe Lunchpail bona fides.) Seen in this light, maybe Haskell was right to invoke Clerks before La maman et la putain, because Eustache was himself a blue-collar guy, and as such an outlier among post-New Wave directors; furthermore, don’t both films show characters who struggle to reconcile the mores of post-Sexual Revolution dating with recidivist Catholic guilt?—in Eustache’s, Françoise Lebrun’s Veronika, who in the film’s final scene drunkenly rails against the life of barren bed-hopping she’s been leading before pleading the virtues of procreation and fidelity; in Smith’s, O’Halloran’s Dante Hicks, who must come to terms with the fact that his girlfriend, played by Marilyn Ghigliotti, sucked 36 men’s dicks prior to the beginning of their relationship. (His brings the total to 37.) And what to make of the obscure family resemblance between Jay and Silent Bob, Smith’s signature characters, and Insane Clown Posse’s Mutt-and-Jeff duo, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope? The old logo for Smith’s View Askew Productions, which depicts an obese clown, wearing only garters and stripper heels, holding a clapper board? The 2000 View Askew-produced Vulgar, a cheapjack prototype of Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019) in which O’Halloran stars as a much-abused birthday party clown who sets his sights on revenge? Was there some kind of occult connection between the Juggalos, the View Askewniverse, and Joker fandom—three cults widely disdained by the culturati, each distinguished by their appeal to disillusioned working-class American males? I had to learn more.

domino harvey wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:39 am Guess he didn't realize we were all saying No Fucking Thanks to a new movie from him?

furbicide wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:54 am I take it none of you guys read Nick Pinkerton's (very funny and kind of moving) recent long-form KS tribute? Not a Smith fan myself, but it made me see his work in a slightly more affectionate light:

https://nickpinkerton.substack.com/p/talk-is-cheap

domino harvey wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:09 pmI’m not reading beyond that excerpt, because these comparisons are more of a stretch than the waistband on Kevin Smith’s favorite pair of JNCOs

beamish14 wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 3:36 pm John Hughes, in his last published interview, singled out Smith for having a “regional” flair in his films, which is probably a kinder and more accurate descriptor of his works

knives wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:46 am He might be the director who’s fallen the most of any I can think of. He used to be fairly legitimate and now he makes sub-Wynorski streaming fillers.

beamish14 wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 3:36 pm John Hughes, in his last published interview, singled out Smith for having a “regional” flair in his films, which is probably a kinder and more accurate descriptor of his works

Mr Sausage wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 5:32 pm Another reason the working class moniker sits so ill with Smith's work, especially the early Jersey films, is because what it really has is that 90s slacker/stoner ethos, an arrested adolescence and dissatisfaction with the workaday world. And that's a very different thing. The people in Smith's world worry more about their own boredom and aimlessness than they do the rising cost of living or job security or any typically working-class concerns. The endless pop culture riffs are there to stave off ennui, not the crushing realities of capitalism. So you have movies about people hanging around in malls avoiding the local bully and scheming to get their girlfriends back--like teenagers. Or struggling comic book artists whose biggest struggle is their relationships. In the early movies, everyone feels very young, and their biggest problems are rarely financial (even when the characters have no money). The characters' lives never feel absent of opportunity; it's the opposite. Their problem is always that slacker disinclination to actually embrace opportunity if it comes at the cost of comfort. His characters encounter internal barriers, not social ones. Blah blah blah.