Kevin Smith Says the One Thing He'd Change About 'Dogma' Would Be Even More Controversial Than the Original [Exclusive]

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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck sit next to each other and laugh in Dogma.

Summary

Collider's Steve Weintraub talks with Kevin Smith for the 4K Blu-ray re-release of Dogma.
During their conversation, Smith reflects on his career, the movies that inspired him, and talks about the impact of Dogma since it debuted in 1999.
The writer-director also shares updates on the sequels he has in the works for Jay and Silent Bob, Mallrats, and Dogma.

Almost 30 years since its controversial debut in theaters, Kevin Smith's satirical comedy Dogma is topping the charts on Amazon with its 4K Blu-ray re-release, in celebration of its 25th anniversary. Talking with Collider's Steve Weintraub, the filmmaker joked, "Being above Tron: Ares, I'll sleep tonight." He goes on to discuss his surprise at the overwhelming reception of his all-star cast B-movie's reentry into the zeitgeist after a limited theatrical release earlier this year, in addition to the 4K glow-up, acknowledging "the movie’s 'peak Kevin Smith,' as they say on the internet." Plus, it doesn't hurt that the sensational sales of Dogma will all but guarantee that sequel he's been talking about.

Starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as two fallen angels shunned by God, Dogma stirred up quite a controversy (and even a few death threats) upon its 1999 release. In the movie, Bartleby (Affleck) and Loki (Damon) try to make the best of their exile in Wisconsin, a fate deemed worse than the pits of hell, but when the Midwest proves too boring, the pair cook up a scheme to return to heaven, thanks to a loophole provided by Cardinal Glick's (George Carlin) Catholic Church — unfortunately, that loophole would spell the end of humanity. Dogma also features Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman, Chris Rock, Jason Lee, Alanis Morissette, and, of course, Smith and Jason Mewes as Jay and Silent Bob.

In this interview, Smith looks back at the movies that defined his career and shares details on what fans can expect from the upcoming sequels he has in the works, including Jay and Silent Bob: Store Wars and Twilight of the Mallrats. He shares how Quentin Tarantino and an early screening of Pulp Fiction impacted the Dogma we know today, opens up about his relationship with Star Wars cinematographer David Klein, and reveals the "digital Jabba the Hutt" that would almost certainly up the controversy in Dogma.

Kevin Smith on Someone Else Writing for Jay and Silent Bob

"I never saw that coming."

COLLIDER: I'm going to throw some curveballs at the beginning before getting into Dogma. If someone has actually never seen anything you've done before, what is the first thing you'd like them watching and why?

KEVIN SMITH: Honestly, I have preferences. I would love people to look at Red State first, but I don't think Red State makes sense or is truly indicative of my body of work as a whole. So, I mean, I’d honestly tell them to start at the beginning, man. Clerks is still a little magic trick of a movie. It's like pulling a quarter out from behind somebody's ear. It still has the ability to low-grade impress somebody, so I would recommend they start there. I wouldn't necessarily say go in order, quite like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Going in story order feels better than going in release order.

Jay and Silent Bob make an appearance in Paradise Records. Does that mean the film is part of the View Askew universe, or more like a multiverse kind of location?

SMITH: I believe, while we can still play in the multiverse before Marvel shuts it down with Doctor Doom, it has to be more of a multiversal appearance. It was the only time that Jay and Silent Bob have been written by somebody who wasn't me. Logic presented the scene, and I was like, “Are you sure? I don't think anybody is going to know who we are.” But it seemed very important to him, and so it wound up in the flick. But I like to think that's a multiversal appearance, man. They're the same Jay and Silent Bob that showed up in Scream 3.

I totally get that. What was it like having Logic write dialogue for you? Because I know that these characters are everything to you, and, as you said, this is the first time that anyone has written dialogue for these two characters but you.

SMITH: He was so passionate about making his film, and I played a role in it as much as I was like, “You should do this. I don't know why you're waiting for somebody to give you permission. You have money, make your own movie.” And I say that to a lot of people, but Logic took me seriously. So when he was like, “Hey, I wrote a scene for you and Jay, as well,” I was absolutely flattered. Then I read it, and I'm like, “It's not too difficult to pull off Jay.” It doesn't take a genius. It doesn't take somebody specific to write Jay's dialogue. I thought he did a pretty decent job. So, it's nice to have lasted so long in the business — three decades — and to still be surprised, to still hit a moment where you're like, “Oh, I never saw that coming.” I never imagined anyone else would ever write for these characters.

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'The Dark Knight' Brings Kevin Smith to Tears

"Where does that put me in the Letterboxd world, Steve?"

Batman stands with the bat-symbol burning in fire on a tall building behind him in The Dark Knight.

I’ve been asking this question of a lot of directors and actors recently, and you're now going to get it. Do you have a favorite Christopher Nolan movie?

SMITH: Let me see. Of all the Nolan flicks, I guess it would have to be The Dark Knight. I guess it’s between The Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises. I liked both of those movies. I mean, I like Dark Knight. I love Dark Knight. It was like The Godfather 2, I think I said at the time, of comic book movies. But also, if you go listen to, I think it was on SModcast way back in the day, I reviewed the movie, the last one, The Dark Knight Rises, for Scott Mosier, and I'm, like, bawling telling the story. I remember saying something like, “And then he decides that he's going to take the bomb out over the water and die with it, and I was okay with that. He earned a rest.” Like, I took the movie very seriously. But that being said, I still think I'm a bigger Dark Knight fan.

Where does that put me in the Letterboxd world, Steve? Man, you're not supposed to like the fucking comic book stuff. You’ve got to like Oppenheimer.

No, I've been asking this of everyone from Paul Giamatti to you name it. I've asked everybody these three questions, including the Stranger Things cast, and generally, Dark Knight is a common answer. But you would be surprised at how many people say Interstellar or Inception or The Prestige. Not many people say Memento, and no one says Oppenheimer.

SMITH: Is that right? Nobody says Oppenheimer? That's surprising to me, because I know so many people seemed to like it. Remember, they were dressing up like him and going to the theater, for heaven's sakes?

I think Oppenheimer is a great movie.

SMITH: Is it sort of a case of maybe it’s too soon? People are like, “Hey, man, it ain’t cool to like the most recent thing.”

I don't know if that's it. I don't know if people had an emotional reaction to it the way people had emotional reactions to Interstellar or The Dark Knight, and with Heath Ledger. There are a lot of emotions attached to certain movies, and I think that carries you and has more of a special place in your heart. Oppenheimer's phenomenal, but I don't see that as my favorite Christopher Nolan movie.

SMITH: Does anybody say the one that came out during COVID?

Tenet? I haven't heard people say that. But it also could be because — I'm going to make a joke here — it was hard to understand the dialogue.

SMITH: Not for Universal, man. Universal understood that dialogue so well that they were like, “We're about to get a $100 million grossing history film because Warner Bros. botched this so badly for this guy.” And man, did that pay off.

Steven Spielberg Changed Kevin Smith's Life

"I was raised on Spielberg."

Do you have a favorite Steven Spielberg movie?

SMITH: Yes. Naturally, it would have to be Jaws. It's the movie I've referenced the most in my own work. It's the first movie I remember seeing at a drive-In when I was a kid. I know I saw movies before that, like I know I saw The Land Before Time, but Jaws, for some reason, marks my first cinematic experience, even though we weren't in a cinema; we were in a car watching on a big screen. But it was also the feeling of my parents going, “He can handle this,” which I really couldn't. It terrified me and ruined me for the ocean. We grew up in a shore town in New Jersey, and because of that flick, I never engaged with the ocean after that. So, it’s certainly a powerful film, not just entertaining. The dialogue is fantastic, and the lack of the shark in the first half, as we all know, is just cinematic genius born out of necessity. So it has an indie film ethos behind it, as well. There are moments where, as a low-budget filmmaker, even in Jaws, you can see the work of a new filmmaker, a nascent filmmaker, somebody who hadn't done it all that often, that still had new tricks to show the world, and steps up to the plate. So, for so many reasons, it being just absolutely beloved in my heart and head from the moment I saw it until now, and winds up being referenced so heavily in my work, naturally, that gets the top spot.

But Schindler's List runs real close. That's a powerful piece of filmmaking. I remember when they first told us three hours, and you’re like, “Oh my lord.” And then you watch that movie, and it's not like, “Give me three more of misery,” but the filmmaking, the storytelling, the heart, the experience is so cinematically satisfying that you could watch more of that movie, just on the technical aspect. The problem is the movie is so goddamn heartbreaking and heart-rending and stuff. But the older I get, I guess I can't help but mature to some degree.

I love the entire canon of Spielberg, and I grew up on it. I was raised on Spielberg. Spielberg was one of the first brand-name directors that culture had ever seen, the name that became shorthand for the job. Your mom and your grandma, when I was a kid, could reference Steven Spielberg and know who he was. So, so many to choose from, but as much as the ones that I was raised on, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, so forth and so on, Schindler's List is the one that I return to at least once a year. Incredible performances, stunning cinematography — I believe it was Janusz Kaminski — and still it breaks me down.

I've seen that movie so many times, you'd imagine you know where the cry points are, and I'm still not prepared. It still reduces me to tears, and that's important. I love all kinds of movies. I love to laugh, and I love to be entertained, and I'm a whore for them Marvel pictures, but the way to my head and heart is to make me cry, because it will always remind me of my father. When we went to see Raging Bull, the first time I ever saw my father cry was sitting next to me watching Raging Bull, and I remember, as a kid, being taken aback by that. We’d been to funerals for family members, and I never saw my dad cry, and here, he was deeply emotionally engaged with this movie that I knew was fake. I mean, I know it's based on a real story, but it's not like Jake LaMotta was his dad, and there he was, so emotionally connected to the story.

Even then, it impacted me to the point where it's just like, if you can make people laugh in a movie theater, congratulations. But if you can fucking make people cry, if you can reduce them to tears, that is a true gifted filmmaker. Somebody who is not just playing with your head, but they're playing with your heart, man. And in the case of Schindler's List, he didn't play with it in any sort of lackadaisical fare. It's such a well-made movie. It is so, so fucking good.

The craziest thing about Schindler's List, and people will forget, is that he made Jurassic Park and Schindler's List the same year.

SMITH: I remember. He left the set of Jurassic. Famously, he never finishes his last shot or whatever, because he doesn't wanna get thrown in the water like in Jaws, and so he was off to do the other movie and posting one while doing the other, looking at cuts while shooting! Incredible. Two epic works. If you give me half an hour to go down on Jurassic Park, I could do it, as well.

But I will say this, as much as I enjoy Jurassic Park, and particularly his rendition, I wish we lived in a better timeline, for many reasons, Steve, but mostly, there is a timeline out there where we have as many Jaws movies as we have had Jurassic movies. For some reason, we're in this timeline where “dinosaurs.” He was okay with, like, “Yeah, let's sequalize and go for dinosaurs.” But there's a better world out there that we shifted from somehow, where Steven Spielberg felt that same way about Jaws that he felt about Jurassic Park. He made a few sequels himself and then stuck around as exec producer on a bunch of others, man. I wish we lived in a more Jaws than Jurassic world, but you play the cards you're dealt.

'Dogma's 4K Release "Bodes Very Well" for the Sequel

"My whole career is a testimony to the secondary market."

As I talk to you this morning about Dogma, the 4K is number five on Amazon's top sellers, above Tron: Ares and Mission: Impossible, and a host of huge-name movies. What do you think it is about Dogma that has stood the test of time, and why people are buying it more than these other big movies?

SMITH: Those charts, man. You click on them at any given time, they move all around. But for the moment, being above Tron: Ares, I'll sleep tonight. That'll help. I think it has a lot to do with nostalgia and sentimentality. The movie’s “peak Kevin Smith,” as they say on the internet, but also, it was the one that most people, based on my interactions with the public, saw with a beloved family member. “I saw this with my parents. I saw this with my cousin. My grandmother showed me this movie.” Those are the people I met while I was on tour with the movie last year. So, I’m not obtuse. I don't feel like, “Well, it's what I did.” Definitely, I'm in there, but it has everything to do with who you saw that movie with.

And in terms of Amazon and physical media, it's not tough to chart, man. You just got to make the product. So many people don't make physical media anymore. We were able to sell out of our steelbooks on Amazon, and Amazon and Lionsgate made a fuck-ton of steelbooks because they know that we can sell physical media. So, even given that, they sold out pre-Christmas, and honestly, that bodes very well for a Dogma sequel, because that's how Clerks III got made. We sold so many DVDs and Blu-rays of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot that Lionsgate was like, “Do you have any more of this Jay and Silent Bob bullshit lying around?” And I said, “I do,” and that was Clerks III. So, it looks like the sales of Dogma here in the present are going to make financing Dogma 2 in the near future much easier, and that's good, because the older one gets as a filmmaker, the less they give a fuck about you.

I've never been a very commercial filmmaker. I've seen better filmmakers than me sidelined. Like, I remember interviewing one of my favorite filmmakers, Martha Coolidge. She made Valley Girl, Rambling Rose, Real Genius. She had three bangers in a row when I was a kid. I'm in Manhattan today, so I interviewed her here at Lincoln Center back when I was doing a podcast series called SMoviola. It was her, Freddy Elmes, and Deborah Foreman, who played Julie in the movie. Freddy Elmes shot it. So I'm talking to her, interviewing them all on stage, and I'm talking to Martha about, “What are you working on now?” And she goes, “Nothing.” And I was like, “Well, did you just finish something?” And she goes, “No. I haven’t worked in a while.” I said, “What are you talking about?” She goes, “There comes a time in your career when the phone just stops ringing.”

I didn't come up through the industry. I've always been adjacent to the industry and whatnot. I came up independently, and so I always felt that as long as I want to do this, meaning if I'm willing to pay for the movies, then I will make a movie, you know? But it it had never occurred to me that there are those who eventually get told no. Of course, it occurred to me that somebody’s like, “I want to make a Marvel movie,” and they're like, “No,” but it never occurred to me that somebody who had proven themselves time and time again to be a master storyteller in the cinematic arts would not be called, even for regular TV show gigs. Lots of TV gets produced, and streaming shows. So, I remember that moment in time, being cognizant of, like, “Oh, there is a ticking clock on this job.” That's why Quentin [Tarantino] always talks about, “I'm making 10 and getting out,” and he talks about how directing is a young man's game, and I never understood that, and that's because I used to be a young man. But now I'm 55. I get it. They don't want some old-timer with experience, you know? Number one, those people tend to be more expensive — although, not me — but number two, youth rules, as it always has. That's how I got in this business in the first place.

jason-mewes-as-jay-kevin-smith-as-silent-bob-in-clerks-1994-1.jpg

So, it's nice to know that something I want to do in the future has a better chance of seeing reality. There are so many people who aren't getting shit made anymore, man, and people who are legit talents in this business. Fucking giants. If this business were granting projects or greenlighting shit based on the body of work that people have done that have pulled in dollars and put asses in seats, it is mind-bending to me to see how many people are sitting on the sidelines and not being pulled in. Then, it's even more mind-bending and almost damn insulting as a film fan that I'm going to get to make a movie this year, that I get to make Store Wars in March. It don't seem fair, but thankfully, I’ve got something. I've been banging that Jay and Silent Bob drum forever, and who knew there was still gas in that fucking tank? It blows my mind. I'm always like, “These characters are nothing more than a Cheech and Chong ripoff,” and still, somebody out there's like, “Yeah, but I want to see them do something else.” And so we get to go back to work.

But I know those opportunities are about to get fewer and farther between, so the fact that Dogma sold so well on physical media is a nice feather in the cap in the present, but what it makes me relieved about is when I walk in there with the finished Dogma 2 script, it's not going to be like, “I don't know.” It's going to be a different conversation altogether as long as my budget's in the right place. Mind you, I'm no Nolan, and believe me, every critic will tell you that. I can't walk into a place and be like, “I’m doing a Dogma sequel, man. I need $150 million.” That'll never happen. No matter what I write, I'm going to have to walk in with a smart budget. But the good news is that the sale of physical media will grant any kind of budget in a world where fewer and fewer of my very talented peers are actually getting to step behind the camera anymore. It's crazy. Never saw this one coming. You?

I agree with everything you said, and it's true, though, with physical media. It's very hard to get people to buy stuff, and if you have a fan base that will support it, that's how so many movies got made, based on physical media sales.

SMITH: My whole career is a testimony to the secondary market. You go back and look at my box office figures, man, it doesn't correlate to how I continue to get to work. But it was always historically, man, even from Clerks forward, everything we did on home video, our home video numbers were always so strong that they were like, “Alright, what do you want to do next?” Never the theatrical. Theatrical is always the most painful part of the process for me, because that was running the gauntlet. You had to get reviewed, and you had to sit there exposed, while your movie underperformed. But I always, after a certain point, I guess it was from Chasing Amy on, the moment we hit home video, that's where my audience would find it. That's where it would live and breathe, and that's where we would live to fight another day.

So, as a video store kid, like many of us who grew up video store kids, of course, I love the ease of being able to watch whatever I want at the touch of a button, but I used to love the hunt. I'm still a cat that goes to comic book stores, so the idea of going to a place and not knowing what you were going to leave with… Now we're fed everything we want. You want to watch Oppenheimer? Here it is. But back then, part of the joy was walking in there, and you wanted to see something, and sometimes you didn't get fulfilled, but you had to watch something else, and then discovery happens. Suddenly, you're learning about a new filmmaker, a new storyteller, and falling down the rabbit hole. I miss that experience, and I doubt we're going to get that back again, ever, but physical media still ties back to that moment in that memory.

Again, I agree with you.

Smith gives us the rundown on the sequel, three decades in the making.

I want to jump to something before I run out of time. I am a proud fan of Mallrats, and one of the things that Mallrats does, and at the time, you didn't realize it, but nowadays it captures that time and place where going to the mall was just the thing you did. People don't remember that before the internet and social media, there was nothing going on, so people went to the mall just to kill time and walk around, and Mallrats captures that. If you end up getting to make a Mallrats sequel, malls nowadays are basically dying, and they are not what they were. Some of them have been converted into Google space, or they're going to be converted into whatever they might be. I'm just curious how much the story that you've thought about for a Mallrats sequel addresses the fact that that is a bygone era?

SMITH: 100%. The Twilight of the Mallrats script was mostly predicated on Brodie Bruce, our hero, Brodie Bruce, who was, quite like many of us, unwilling to let go of the glory days. So, Brodie spends Twilight of the Mallrats trying to save the mall from being closed, but not because anyone needs it anymore, but because the happiest moments of his life happened there. They're the best days of his life.

When I made Mallrats, I never felt that I was making a feature social studies cinema. It is now a snapshot of a time that just doesn't fucking exist. It's like a historical document now. Like, it was a disposable, throwaway teen titty comedy in 1995, but now you could actually study that fucking movie and be like, “No, that's what people did. We went to places. Even if we didn't have money to shop, we would just go there and be around other people. We didn't silo. We didn't isolate.”

So, the plot of Mallrats 2 is all about a dying culture. That's why it was called Twilight of the Mallrats. And hopefully, we get to make it. It’ll be a bit bittersweet if we do, though, because Shannen [Doherty] was such a big part of it, as well.

Seeing 'Pulp Fiction' at Cannes Had a Massive Impact on 'Dogma'

"I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?"

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Jumping back into Dogma, I watched the 80-minute documentary, and one of the things that I learned, which was fascinating to me, was that, A., you got to see Pulp Fiction the night before it premiered, and B., after watching Pulp Fiction, you completely changed Dogma because that movie opened your eyes to essentially what cinema could be in a way that you hadn't really thought about before. Can you talk about seeing Pulp Fiction the night before it changed everything at Cannes, and how that film influenced Dogma?

SMITH: That was one of the benefits of being at Miramax at that particular moment in time, and having made a movie that Quentin, when I first met him, was like, “I almost made Clerks!” And I knew that because I had read in a New York Times Magazine interview that he had done, predicated on Reservoir Dogs. I guess it was maybe when Reservoir Dogs hit home video or something like that, but I'll never forget this article because I read it the week that I was going into production on Clerks. In the piece, he talks about, and I'm paraphrasing, making cinema. He had a low-budget movie that he wanted to do called The Birthday Party that was just people sitting around talking, and he's glad that he didn't do that. He's glad that Reservoir Dogs was the first movie he made, because that represents cinema. The quote he gave her, the thing he said that I was like, “Oh no,” was because he talked about being at the video store, and he goes, “Why would I make a movie about working at the video store? That's not stupid, but what a waste of time. That's not cinema.” I was about to make a movie about working at a video store, and I was like, “Oh no. Oh no.”

So when I met him at Cannes in 1994, Clerks had gone to Sundance, and we did well. Then, we got into the International Critics Week section at Cannes, and that surprised Miramax because Miramax didn't submit us or anything. They were like, “Oh!” What do they call that? An unintentional win, or something like that. So, the festival was flying me over, and I said, “Can you fly Scott over?” So they flew Scott in with me. So, me and Scott Mosier are in Cannes days before our screenings ever going to happen, and so that puts us in the right place, where we're part of the Miramax family. They just bought our movie a few months before, at Sundance, so we get invited to stuff, and there were four Miramax movies there. There was Picture Bride, there was Fresh, there was Pulp Fiction, and there was us, Clerks. So, Miramax had a yacht that they rented for the Pulp Fiction people. Bruce Willis was there, for heaven's sakes. So they had this big-ass yacht in the harbor, and at one point, we got invited. We didn't know any muckety mucks, but all the kids who worked at Miramax, we knew. Anyone our age who worked there and stuff, and there were a lot of kids there, knew us because of Clerks and shit. So, Mark Tusk got us onto the Miramax yacht, and that's where we met Quentin. One of the first things he said to me was, “I almost made Clerks, man.” I was like, “I know. I read about it in the New York Times,” and I told him that story and stuff.

Two bored men look on inside a convenience store in Clerks, directed by Kevin Smith

I think he might have felt a little guilty because I was just like, “I read that right before I went into production,” and so he was like, “Well, you’ve got to come see Pulp Fiction then,” because I blew him up about Reservoir Dogs. I said, “Honestly, my hearing the Madonna, ‘Like a Virgin’ dialogue at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs allowed me to write Clerks.” Because I remember watching that movie in Third Street Cinema here in Manhattan and going, “Wait, this counts? You can just talk about pop culture? This is what me and my friends do all the time. If this counts as movie dialogue, I think I could write movie dialogue and stuff.” So he was like, “Then you’ve got to come see Pulp.” So, me and Mosier got to go to that screening of Pulp. The festival is very uptight about, “Nobody can see this fucking movie until it debuts!” So this low-key, what you would today call an “influencer screening,” I guess, was set up for Todd McCarthy, who was reviewing for Variety; Janet Maslin was for The New York Times, and she was there — they were seeing it early, before they were supposed to see it — a bunch of industry people and whatnot; Quentin, and some of the cast who hadn't even seen it yet; and then there's me and Mosier, like, sunk down in our seats.

If you've never seen Pulp Fiction before, do yourself a favor. It is, as Martin Scorsese says, cinema. It was an eye-opening experience, not just what he does with storytelling structure and whatnot, but tonally, the tone was what was breathtaking to me because Quentin could have you laughing one second and then fucking shoot somebody brutally in the next. It's typified in the Sam Jackson moment where he shoots “Flock of Seagulls” on the couch, and goes, “Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration?” Moments like that, I was like, “Oh my God, you could dramatically go from that to that?”

So, the Dogma draft that came out of Pulp Fiction got a lot more violent. All the blood, all the Angel of Death stuff, and whatnot, that got bigger. All the tone shifts going from something comedic to Ben [Affleck] in the garage, barking about being cast out of heaven in Matt [Damon]'s face, that stuff, those big swings came after seeing Pulp Fiction early. Then, we were there for the rest of the festival, and we got to see what happened with Pulp Fiction happen firsthand, when they won the Palme d'Or. There's a picture somewhere on my Instagram of me and Mosier sitting there on the Miramax yacht with Quentin's Palme d'Or, and we're sitting there with Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran. That was such a weird, wild time.

Clerks won the Prix de la Jeunesse and International Critics Week. So we won two awards at Cannes, but the best thing that came out of Cannes, hands down, was seeing Pulp Fiction early, because it made Dogma a better movie. And then, ironically, I got to go back to Cannes with Dogma. Fuck, I never thought about that until this moment.

Uma Thurman and John Travolta dancing in Pulp Fiction on a red background

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I've been to Cannes the last two years for the first time, and it's been amazing. I love how much they love movies at Cannes.

SMITH: Oh my God, Europeans, as much as we think we love movies and comic books over here, Europeans got us beat, man. Cinema is in their blood, and comic books are in their blood, as well. It may not be superhero shit, but it's like Asterix and Tintin. The two mediums that have defined my life are so deeply embraced over there.

I went to Cannes this year, too. We showed Dogma in Cannes Classic — I didn’t even know that was a section — for the 25th anniversary. So I got to go back, and it felt very much like a victory lap because I was like, “Oh my God, that's where we did this. That's where we did that.” I was standing outside of the International Critics Week when they were starting their award ceremony, and I called up Scott Mosier to be like, “Twenty-five years ago, that was us in there getting awards.” And then Scott pointed out, “No, Dogma is 25 years ago.” He's going, “What you're talking about, that was 31 years ago.” And I was like, “Motherfuck, I feel so old.”

I thought about going to the door and being like, “Hey, man, I just happen to be here. You want me to present?” But after he said 31 years, I was like, “There's a good chance I'm like, ‘Hey, man, I'm here,’ and they'd be like, ‘Qu'est-ce que c'est?’ and not know who the fuck I am at all.” That is a lifetime, Steve. Thirty-one fucking years, man. People have a whole human being that grows into an adult over time like that.

Man, I can't open the door to talking about time. It makes me sad.

Kevin Smith Reveals What He Would Change About 'Dogma' Today

He calls this scene his "digital Jabba the Hutt."

Ben Affleck wearing armor, with angel wings extended, in 'Dogma'

The beginning of Dogma has a disclaimer basically saying, “Everyone relax. It’s just a movie.” Do you think that if you made the movie today, you would still have that disclaimer? Because I think a lot of people don't remember what it was like doing something like Dogma 25 years ago, and the religious fervor. It's such a different world back then.

SMITH: Originally, the movie was supposed to open with words, with a quote, but it was supposed to open with a quote that said, “Men go crazy in congregations. They only get better one by one,” and then you'd fade up on the name Gordon Sumner, and then you'd fade up on the name Sting, because it's a quote from a Sting song. After the religious folks started sending all the letters, and the death threats started coming through, I think it was Gina Gardini, who was our publicist at Miramax, who suggested, “Why don't you put something at the front of the movie that says, ‘This is just a joke?’” And I was like, “A disclaimer?” And they're like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Can I make it funny?” And they said, “Yeah.” So I wrote the platypus thing.

Today, it wouldn't be necessary at all. I mean, I didn't think it was necessary for Dogma, but it got us one more laugh before the movie began. Actually, three really good laughs because I was just on the road with the movie again last year, and during the opening, where it's like a minute of text on the screen, there are three good, solemn laughs that actually wind up setting the movie up pretty well. So, as much as I liked the Sting quote to begin with, and I think we would have gotten a mild chuckle when you read a deep quote like that, and then you see Sting's name come up and whatnot, I think having to kind of throw the platypus disclaimer up there actually allowed me one more bite at the comedy apple. I was like, “Oh my God, I get to squeeze in one more laugh? Three more laughs?” So, it worked in our favor.

When you look back on Dogma, now that you've rewatched it, I'm sure a number of times with the 4K, is there anything that you wish you could change, a la George Lucas, the way he's tweaked some of the Star Wars movies, or do you feel like you know what was made and what was released, that's it, and the only thing you should really fix is making it a 4K release?

SMITH: Yeah, I'm kind of lazy when it comes to that shit. I'm like, “We already made this movie. I'm not going to remake it.” So, I generally don't think like that. And it's not any sort of position where I judge others if they want to do that, it's more me. It just seems like, why would we do that? We made this already once.

That being said, before we took Dogma out this time around, we talked about, “Do we clean up some of these CG shots?” They were made in 1998 — fucking Ben’s wings as he comes down, Noman coming up out of the floor. And then my feeling was this: imagine you go, and you show up to watch that movie, and then you see brand new spiffy special effects. That ain't the movie that you came to see. The movie you came to see had 1998/1999 special effects to it. Again, no judgment call, but it felt a little Star Wars Special Edition-y to me to be like, “Well, let's fix the Noman shot.” To me, I was like, if it dates it a little bit, you know what else dates the movie? Nobody pulls out a fucking cell phone. That doesn't seem to interrupt us at all. So I was like, “Let it ride.”

That all being said, having watched the movie in 20 cities, two sold-out shows a night, I had thoughts. You know what I'm saying? The editor in me is just like, “Oh my God, I would tail-trim that scene. I could get out on that joke. This is the one thing that I would George Lucas, and I would change.” Because I was worried, like, “Oh man, is this dated? Is this going to be cringe to stand in front of?” And it actually holds up really well, except there's one section where I'm like, “Well, something's missing there.”

There's a moment where George Carlin's character, Cardinal Glick, is saying to our merry band of marauders, “The Catholic Church does not make mistakes,” and Chris Rock, who plays Rufus, the 13th Apostle left out of the Bible because he was Black, says, “Please. What about the church’s silent consent to the slave trade?” And then Linda Fiorentino's character, Bethany, jumps in and says, “And the church's noninvolvement during the Holocaust?” And then George's character goes, “Alright, mistakes were made,” and then he goes on. After having to watch the movie with two audiences a night in 20 cities, nobody ever said this, but I felt the glaring omission of, like, “Is that all the Catholic Church ever really did? Those two swings?” If I were to redo the movie now, if I were to George Lucas it, if I were to add one more thing, my digital Jabba the Hutt that I would add to this movie is referencing the pedophile scandal that rocked the Catholic Church moments after Dogma came out. That was just a matter of when I wrote that movie, that stuff wasn't public knowledge.

So, if you're talking about mistakes the church has made and you're pointing to the slave trade and you're pointing to the Holocaust, the biggest one one could point to, and one that takes up recent memory, is just, like, what about all them touchy priests? So, that's the thing I felt made it a little dated as I watched the flick. I was like, “Okay, this movie was made before people started seeing documentaries, before survivors started speaking out.”

'The Mandalorian & Grogu' Is Cosmic Justice

"The guy who said he's not good enough is in jail, and the guy who supposedly wasn't good enough just shot a movie that’s probably going to make $1 billion at the box office."

Pedro Pascal as Mando with Grogu on his shoulder in The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Again, something I learned in the doc was that for Dogma, you'd been working with David Klein, your DP, starting with Clerks, and the studio made you go with the new DP. You ended up getting Robert Yeoman, who worked with Wes Anderson and is a great cinematographer. But it's funny because the studio says you can't work with David anymore. What is it like for you having your friend who you started with on Clerks as a Star Wars fan, now having shot all these Star Wars projects, including the next Star Wars movie, which is The Mandalorian & Grogu?

SMITH: It is an absolute delight and long delayed. Clerks benefited almost everybody involved, with the exception of the DP. Of all the wonderful things people have said about Clerks, nobody's ever said, “Movie looks great.” You know what I'm saying? It looked like it was shot through a glass of milk, so poor Dave, you can't make the movie without him, but he didn't get his proper Zen. Mallrats is his film school, and Chasing Amy is where he starts to establish his style.

At Sundance 1997, me and Scott Mosier drive up to the Stein Eriksen Lodge and have a meeting with — clench your assholes, kids, here comes the name — Harvey Weinstein, and it's about Dogma. We were looking for a $4 million budget at that point, and he was like, “I will give you the $4 million, but you can't cast Joey [Lauren Adams] as the lead, and Dave can't shoot the movie. You need a better DP.” So, it was one of those, “Oh, man, we sold out on our friend.” That's a cross you carry for the rest of your life. Dave took it well. Dave was like, “Look, I went off and learned my craft and shit.” But the great justice to me is the guy who said he's not good enough is in jail, and the guy who supposedly wasn't good enough just shot a movie that’s probably going to make $1 billion at the box office, and has helped to define the look of the Star Wars universe. I love every aspect of that, man. That just makes me so fucking happy.

I love Dave’s cinematography, but if you go look at Red State — because me and Dave got back together and we did Clerks II, Zack and Miri, Red State, and Cop Out together — Red State is a spellbinding movie in terms of its cinematography, and that was Dave Klein unleashed. That was me going, “Dave, nobody’s looking anymore. We don't have to do any Jay and Silent Bob. This has ties to no previous effort of ours. If I take my name off this movie, I doubt anyone will even know that I had anything to do with it. So, let's just go nuts, man. Let's shoot. Let's do whatever we want.” And Dave was throwing cameras in cages, running around with little reds and stuff like that. Oh, it's such a wonderful experience.

Now, it's very easy to see that guy graduated to being Lucasfilm's star cinematographer. They tap him for so much now. It’s wonderful. So much so that when we went to make Clerks III, Dave was in, and he was like, “I can't wait,” and then I got the call one day where he was like, “They offered me The Mandalorian & Grogu.” Or maybe that was [The Mandalorian] Season 3, or whatever they offered, whichever one came first. I was like, “Dave, there's no decision here. You've shot two Clerks. Go fucking make Star Wars, man. Trust me. Two dudes standing on the counter in a two-shot, tits up… You're going to have a much better time.” And he went off, and he worked on the Volume and all that shit.

To me, I'm proud Ben Affleck became famous, Jason Lee became famous, and stuff like that. I get to do that with Dave Klein now, as well, to be like, “Well, you fucking think that's something? The guy who shot Clerks, he’s shooting fucking Mandalorian right now.”

It's crazy. When you look back on Dogma and the people that are in the movie, it's insane.

The 'Jaws: The Revenge' Doc Is a "Salute to the Never-Ending Passion of Fandom"

"You have to call this shit The Shark that Roared."

I think you're making a doc called The Shark That Roared, which is a doc on the 40th anniversary of Jaws: The Revenge. Am I wrong or right about this?

SMITH: I wish I were making it. I was being interviewed for this doc, and while I was in the interview, I did the interview proper, and answered the questions, but I kept turning around to be like, “This is fucking brilliant. The fact that you are doing a documentary just about Jaws: The Revenge makes me so fucking happy and shit.” But they had a name. The name of it was, like, Jaws Goes on Vacation?

I think they're calling it The Shark That Roared.

SMITH: That was my title! So I'm sitting there being interviewed, and their original title was, like, Jaws Goes to Paradise, or something, and I was like, “No, you're out of your mind.” I was like, “I guarantee you, everyone talks about the shark roaring.” Because he asked me the question, and I was like, “Of course, we're going to talk about the shark roaring.” I was like, “Did everybody talk about the shark roaring?” He was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “That's the fucking name of the documentary, dude. You have to call this shit The Shark that Roared, because that's what everyone remembers about Jaws 4.”

When the interview was done, I harassed and accosted the filmmaker to let me be involved. I was like, “Dude, take my name and throw it all over this movie if it helps you open doors and shit like that,” because it's just a good idea. I love documentaries about the not obvious, you know what I'm saying? Like, Schnepp. Remember when Jon Schnepp, when fucking Big Sweaty, did the Superman doc, The Death of Superman Lives? Don't get me wrong, I love the-making-of docs, and I love seeing people win and succeed, but tell me the fucking story of what happened. […] With so much of the internet being film literate, I feel like that is a documentary genre that has no fail whatsoever. You know what I'm saying? To deep dive on less obvious movies that will never be fucking celebrated, but celebrate it for what makes it unique. The fourth fucking Jaws movie that everyone claims to not like, but everyone knows, and they know it as the movie where the shark roars. Then they did a Kickstarter campaign to raise some money, so I was very happy for them.

I wish I could take more credit, but that was me glomming onto what I thought was a great idea. And once I gave them what I thought was a better title, I honestly insinuated myself in the process to make sure that they stuck with that title. I was like, “I'll do it, but you have to go with that title.” And it just makes me happy. It's such a salute to the filmmakers who made that movie, way back in the day, Jaws: The Revenge, but it's also a salute to the never-ending passion of fandom, that every movie, doesn't matter what the fuck it is, some movie written off by the rest of the world as the least of all the Jaws movies, somebody's like, “Oh no, I have a different perspective, and we'll celebrate it.” I know the internet has given us horrible fucking things and probably fucked up our country for quite some time, but it also gave us moments like that, where a fan could be like, “You know what? I'm going to celebrate the movie that nobody else will.”

People will love that documentary. He got Mario Van Peebles, not just people like me who were like, “Oh, I saw it, and I liked it.” He got almost everybody he could get. I don't think he got Spielberg, but Spielberg wasn't nowhere near that movie anyway. But, my God, it's thrilling to me. And we're doing it through SModcastle Cinema, so through my movie theater, the one in Atlantic Highlands. That's where we do the SModcastle Film Festival. We've been hooking up with filmmakers in the nascent stage, while they're still building and stuff, or hooking up with them, like Alejandro [Montoya Marin] with The Unexpecteds, once they play the festivals and win an award and stuff, and then we can get them some distribution. So, it's been fun with SModcastle Cinemas to kind of get into the fucking sandbox again with the people who are making their dreams come true the same way I did way back when. So yeah, I can't wait for people to see that doc. I haven't seen it, but just the idea of that fucking doc made me happy. And I know my interview was good, man, because I was passionate.

I definitely want to see it.

I Love ‘Jaws: The Revenge’ Because It's Actually a Slasher Movie

It wouldn't have been surprising if the shark rang Ellen Brody and asked her what her favorite scary movie is.

Jay and Silent Bob Prepare for Battle in 'Store Wars'

"As the industry crumbles, we need one more Jay and Silent Bob movie."

Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes as Silent Bob and Jay in MallratsImage vi

You mentioned earlier in the interview that you're filming something in March. I definitely want to know more about it because I'm sure fans are going to want to know. What are you making in March? What is it about? Who's in it? What can you say?

SMITH: Believe it or not, man, we still find financing for Jay and Silent Bob pictures, so we're making a movie called Jay and Silent Bob: Store Wars. For those who recall and still follow this closely, in Clerks III, they now run their own dispensary, since weed is legal in New Jersey. Store Wars is basically Spy vs. Spy. Another dispensary opens up across the street, and they spend the whole movie fighting and trying to destroy one another. So, it's a stoner comedy, man, of the highest order, and I'm happy as hell.

Me and [Jason] Mewes have been playing Jay and Silent Bob now for 32 years, and still, we get to do it one more time, and I know how rare that is at this point. Time was, when I entered this business, there was no guarantee that I'd be making Jay and Silent Bob movies 32 years into my career. But as we all know what the business is like today, it's confounding, to be honest with you, that somebody is still like, “You know what? As Hollywood crumbles, and as the industry crumbles, we need one more Jay and Silent Bob movie, just in case that's what was missing.”

So, I'm here for it, man. I can't wait to go back. Jason’s ready. He knows how to play that character in his sleep, so if he's awake, it's going to be a great movie.

Have you already thought about the other cast, or is this something that you're still putting together as we talk?

SMITH: Yeah, we're still putting it together. We're in the casting stages right now. So, the other two characters are much younger than us, and basically are our opposites in almost every way. So, that's where we are. We’re casting right now.

You can purchase Dogma in 4K on Amazon now.