Written by: Michael Hickerson (SoSF Journalist)
After years of movies set in the comfortable View Askew universe, Kevin Smith is ready to start making movies that don’t feature Jay and Silent Bob. But that doesn’t mean that the director is ready to completely give up working the friends he’s cultivated during his ten plus years making movies.
Smith currently has two projects on the horizon. The first is a “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” The film, which is expected to start shooting later this year was written by Smith and he says he has an actress in mind for the lead role of Miri. That would be Rosario Dawson, who starred in Smith’s last film “Clerks II.”
“I wrote [the role of Miri] for Rosario Dawson,” Smith said. “I’d be kind of flabbergasted if she didn’t do it.”
When reached for comment, Dawson’s management said “no deal is in place at the moment.”
“It’s a lot of new faces,” Smith continued. “But Jason Mewes is going to be in it — not playing Jay, but playing a new character. Hopefully Jeff Anderson [Randall from ‘Clerks’] as well.”
The next film on Smith’s horizon is the horror film “Red State.”
Though Smith described “Red State” as a “horror movie,” he conceded that not everyone will agree.
“I keep trying to, like, [temper] everyone’s expectations, because it’s not horror like ‘Hostel.’ It’s not gore porn,” he insisted. “The best comparison I think of is ‘The Shining.’ It’s going for that kind of mood. It’s a very unsettling film.”
Smith is being unuusally tight-lipped about “Red State,” something that goes against his usual mode of operations. Smith is usually very vocal about his movies, sharing information with readers and fans at his blog and via interviews.
“You hear the log line about, like, religious fundamentalism gone awry, and you’re like, ‘All right, I kind of got the movie in my head.’ That’s Act One,” he said. “Whatever everybody knows about it in terms of the [Fred] Phelps-like character is just a piece of the movie and the movie kind of becomes a bigger statement than just that.”
Radical right-wing preacher Fred Phelps, whom Smith called “a fringe, bizarrely Christian archetype,” served as a model for the movie’s antagonist.
“He definitely informs the character, but it’s not like this is Fred Phelps with a different name,” Smith said. “That’s kind of an easy target to me. If you’re just going to tee off on crazy, crazy, right-wing fundamentalist extremists, that’s kind of easy. I think our movie doesn’t stop there. It goes out to target something a little harder.”
That hardness may come with a price, specifically Smith’s first onscreen death. (No, we’re not counting that old guy in the bathroom from “Clerks.”) Asked how many protagonists there were in the film, Smith replied, “We start with four.”
“Red State” is scheduled to begin production in early 2008.
Techniclaly, Jennifer Lopez in Jersey Girl was Kev’s first on-screen death. Her character had an aneurysm while giving birth.
@Arkle: and rightly so
Hey, I know she’s got her diva issues, but to be fair, she really can act. It just seems that the qulaity of her performance is inverse to how well the movie does at the box office. I call it the J.Lo Paradox; the better her acting performance is, the less money it makes. Example; Maid In manhattan, horible movie, no real acting involved, grosses over $100 Million. An Unfinished Life, good movie, holds her own next to Robert Redford and Mrogan Freeman, disappears from theatres faster than Freejack.
I loved Freejack.
Then I saw it again.
*retch*
Re: Onscreen deaths
Did we forget about “Dogma” too? Too many to count.
I second the Dogma comment. Anybody remember the Mooby’s Massacre? Or how about people dropping out of the sky?
Doh! How could I forget Dogma?!?