Work as director
His first film,
Clerks, was shot for the sum total of $27,575 in the same convenience store where Smith worked. It went to the Sundance Film Festival in 1994, where it won the Filmmaker's Trophy and was picked up by Miramax before the festival's end. In May 1994, it went to the Cannes International Film Festival where it won both the Prix de la Jeunesse and the International Critics' Week Prize. Released in November 1994 in two cities, the film went on to play in fifty markets, never playing on more than fifty screens at any given time. Despite the limited release, it was a critical and financial success, earning $3.1 million.
Initially, the film received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, solely for the graphic language. Miramax hired Alan Dershowitz to defend the film, and at an appeals screening, a jury consisting of members of the National Association of Theater Owners reversed the MPAA's decision, and the film was given an R rating instead.
Smith's second film,
Mallrats, didn't fare as well as
Clerks. It received a critical drubbing and earned merely $2.2 million at the box office, despite playing on more than 500 screens. The film marked Jason Lee's debut as a leading man. While it later found its audience on home video, Smith has said of the movie "It was a six million dollar casting call for
Chasing Amy'".Widely hailed as one of Smith's best films,
Chasing Amy marked what Quentin Tarantino called "a quantum leap forward" for Smith. Starring
Mallrats alumni Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck, the $250,000 film earned $12 million at the box office and wound up on a number of critics' year-end best lists, and won two Independent Spirit Awards (screenplay and supporting actor for Lee).
Smith's fourth film,
Dogma, had an all-star cast and found itself mired in controversy. The religious-themed comedy, which starred a post-
Good Will Hunting Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, as well as Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, George Carlin, Alan Rickman, Linda Fiorentino, and Smith regulars Jason Lee and Jason Mewes, raised the ire of the Catholic League due largely to a reference about the Virgin Mary having post-Jesus intercourse with her husband, Joseph. Smith received over 10,000 pieces of protest/hate mail (some of which were showcased on the film's official website) and three death threats.
The film debuted at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, out of competition. Released on 800 screens in November 1999, the $10 million film earned $30 million.
After the controversy surrounding
Dogma, Smith said he wanted to make a movie that couldn't be attacked for its content. Focusing the spotlight on two characters who'd appeared in supporting roles in his previous four films,
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back featured an all-star cast, with many familiar faces returning from Smith's first four films. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon appear as themselves filming a mock sequel to
Good Will Hunting. The $20 million film earned $30 million at the box office and received mixed reviews from the critics. It was meant to be the film that closed the book on the "Askewniverse" ... the New Jersey-based, interconnected quintet of movies written and directed by Smith.
Jersey Girl with Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, George Carlin and Raquel Castro was meant to mark a new direction in Smith's career. However, the film took a critical beating as it was seen as a post-
Gigli vehicle for Affleck and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, who also appeared in this movie. Budgeted at $35 million, it earned only $25 million.
Clerks II marked one more trip into the Askewniverse, Smith resurrected the Dante and Randal characters from his first film and looked in on them 10 years later. Roundly criticized before its release, the film went on to win favorable reviews as well as two awards (the Audience Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival and the Orbit Dirtiest Mouth Award at the MTV Movie Awards). It marked Smith's third trip to the Cannes International Film Festival, where
Clerks II received an eight minute standing ovation. The $5 million film, starring Jeff Anderson, Brian O'Halloran, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes, Jennifer Schwalbach and Smith himself ... reprising his role as Silent Bob ... earned $25 million.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno was originally announced in March 2006 as Smith's second non-Askewniverse comedy. The film, which began shooting on January 18, 2008 in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, and wrapped on March 15, 2008, stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as the title characters who decide to make a low-budget pornographic film to solve their money problems. The film, which was released on October 31, 2008, ran into many conflicts getting an "R" rating, with Rogen stating:
Smith took the film through the MPAA's appeals process and received the R rating, without having to make any further edits.
It was announced in 2009 that Smith had signed on to direct a buddy-cop comedy starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan (both of whom Smith had worked with on previous projects) called
A Couple of Dicks and written by the Cullen Brothers. Due to controversy surrounding the original title, it was changed to
A Couple of Cops, before reverting back its original title,
A Couple of Dicks, due to negative reaction, before finally settling on the title
Cop Out.
The film, which was shot between June and August 2009, involved a pair of veteran cops tracking down a stolen vintage baseball card, and was released on February 26, 2010 to poor reviews; it was the first film that Smith has directed but not written.
Frequent casting
Smith often casts several of the same actors in his films. This originally began with actors from his first film,
Clerks, appearing in subsequent films.
Work as a writer
Smith has been a regular contributor to
Arena magazine. In 2005, Miramax Books released Smith's first book,
Silent Bob Speaks, a collection of previously published essays (most from
Arena) dissecting pop culture, the movie business, and Smith's personal life. His second book,
My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith, published by Titan Books, was another collection of previously published essays (this time blogs from Smith's website www.silentbobspeaks.com) and reached #32 on the
New York Times Best Sellers List. Titan released Smith's third book
Shootin' the Sh*t with Kevin Smith: The Best of the SModcast on September 29, 2009.
Comic writer
A life-long comic book fan, Smith's early forays into comic books dealt with previously established View Askew characters, and were published by Oni Press. He wrote a short Jay and Silent Bob story about Walt Flanagan's dog in
Oni Double Feature #1, and followed it with a Bluntman and Chronic story in
Oni Double Feature #12.
He followed these with a series of
Clerks comics. The first was simply
Clerks: The Comic Book, which told of Randal's attempts to corner the market on
Star Wars toys. The second was
Clerks: Holiday Special, where Dante and Randal discover that Santa Claus lives in an apartment between the Quick Stop and RST Video. Third was
Clerks: The Lost Scene, showing what happened inside Poston's Funeral Parlor. (This story was later animated in the TV series style and included as an extra on the 10th Anniversary
Clerks DVD.)
Smith has written a comic mini-series
Chasing Dogma, which tells the story of Jay and Silent Bob between the films
Chasing Amy and
Dogma. He has also written the trade paperback
Bluntman and Chronic, published by Image, which purports to be a collection of the three issues of the series done by Holden McNeil and Banky Edwards (of
Chasing Amy). It includes a color reprinting of the story from
Oni Double Feature #12, purported to be an early appearance by
Chasing Amy characters Holden McNeil and Banky Edwards.
These stories have all been collected in
Tales From the Clerks (Graphitti Designs, ISBN 0936211784), which also includes a new "Clerks" story tying in to the
Clerks 2 material, and the story from
Oni Double Feature #1. They were previously collected by Image Comics in three separate volumes, one each for
Clerks,
Chasing Dogma and
Bluntman and Chronic.
Smith makes occasional mention of his desire to do a one-shot comic book about
Dogma characters Bartleby and Loki and the story behind how they were expelled from heaven, as well as a comic-only sequel to
Mallrats called
Mallrats 2: Die Hard in a Mall announced in August 1998. In 1999, Smith won a Harvey Award, for Best New Talent in comic books.
In 2009 it was also stated that he would be making a comic book version of
The Green Hornet, the storyline for which is based on his unproduced screenplay for the film adaption.
Marvel and DC Comics
Smith began a lengthy association with Marvel Comics in 1999, taking over as the writer of the Marvel Comic
Daredevil. His run, titled "Guardian Devil" and lasting eight issues, was plagued by delays (which artist Joe Quesada publicly took responsibility for, though it was a sign of things to come). His tenure on
Daredevil was controversial among Daredevil fans. Some fans accused Smith of misogyny in his handling of Karen Page's death, and others objected to the killing of long-time Spider-Man foe Mysterio in a non-Spider-Man series. John Byrne and Howard Mackie (then-current writers on the
Spider-Man titles) would bring the character back to life (however, because of the delays in his
Daredevil run, Mysterio's return to life in the pages of Spider-Man was published before the
Daredevil issue featuring Mysterio's death was published).
Kevin Smith followed this by jumping to DC Comics, producing a 15-issue tenure on
Green Arrow that saw the return of Oliver Queen from the dead and the introduction of Mia Dearden, a teenage girl who would become Speedy after Smith's run had ended.
Smith returned to Marvel for two mini-series:
The Evil That Men Do and
The Target. The former is six issues long, but after the third issue was published two months after the initially scheduled release date, the final issues were delayed for at least three years, prompting Marvel to release an "in case you missed it" reprinting of the first three issues as one book prior to the remaining issues' release. The delay in part was due to Smith's movie production schedule (in this case, work on
Jersey Girl and
Clerks II) causing him to shelve completion of the mini-series until the films were completed.
He was announced as the writer of an ongoing
Black Cat series and
Amazing Spider-Man in early to mid-2002. However, because of the fatal delays on
Evil That Men Do and
The Target, the plan was switched so that Smith would start a third Spider-Man title (originally planned for then-ASM writer J. Michael Straczynski), and even this plan was eventually abandoned and the title (by then known as
Marvel Knights Spider-Man) launched in 2004, by Mark Millar instead.
While the
Spider-Man/Black Cat mini-series was ultimately completed,
Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target remains unfinished, with one issue published. , Marvel and Kevin Smith have indicated that there are no plans for the mini-series to ever be completed.
Smith wrote for the limited series
Cacophony (with art by friend Walt Flanagan) which ran from November 2008 to January 2009. As announced at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, the series featured the villains Onomatopoeia (a character created by Smith during his run at Green Arrow), The Joker, Maxie Zeus, and Victor Zsasz. The trade paperback of
Batman: Cacophony became a New York Times Bestseller in their Hardcover Graphic Books section.
Smith has recently announced he will be writing new Batman comics and a Green Hornet story. The Green Hornet story being based on an unused script he wrote for a Green Hornet film project that never came to fruition. He is currently working on
The Widening Gyre.
Hired screenwriter
In 1997, Smith was hired by New Line to rewrite
Overnight Delivery, (1998) which was expected to be a blockbuster teen movie. Smith's then-girlfriend Joey Lauren Adams almost took the role of Ivy in the movie, instead of the female lead in
Chasing Amy. Eventually she lost out to Reese Witherspoon, and
Overnight Delivery was quietly released directly to video. Kevin Smith's involvement with the film was revealed on-line, but he remains uncredited. He has said that the only scene which really used his dialogue was the opening scene, which includes a reference to long-time Smith friend Bryan Johnson.
For a time, Smith worked on a script for a Superman movie. He did a couple of drafts but his script was dropped when Tim Burton was hired to direct. Burton brought his own people to work on the project. Smith still sees the whole experience on working on the Superman project as a positive one however; he has said that he was well paid and it was a lot of fun. In the end, neither Smith's nor Burton's vision for Superman was filmed. Years later Smith noted the coincidental similarity between a scene in one of his comics and a scene in Burton's remake of
Planet of the Apes.
In the 2007 Direct-to-DVD animation release of
Doomsday, Smith has a cameo as an onlooker in a crowd. After Superman defeats The Toyman's giant mechanical robot, Smith scoffs, "Yeah, like we really needed him to defeat that giant spider. Heh.
Lame!" This was a reference to a giant spider that producer Jon Peters of the Superman movie wanted Smith to put in the movie when he was attached, that was later put into another movie tied to Peters called
Wild Wild West.
In 2004, Smith wrote a screenplay for a new film version of
The Green Hornet, and had originally intended to direct as well. The project however died after Smith's longtime producing partner Scott Mosier said he didn't want to produce something with such a big budget, and without Mosier producing, Smith no longer wanted to direct the movie, and thus the plans were dropped. Smith's screenplay is now a Green Hornet comic book miniseries.
Other film involvement
Smith was co-executive producer for the 1997 movie
Good Will Hunting, assisting friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck with making and marketing their film. After Damon and Affleck received Academy Awards for their screenplay, critics alleged that Smith himself was responsible for the script, a rumor which Smith vehemently denies. On an episode of
SModcast in 2007, he also revealed that he was invited to direct the film, but ultimately turned the offer down, citing an insecurity he had at the time with directing something that he had not himself written.
Smith has appeared in three Q&A documentaries:
An Evening with Kevin Smith,
Evening Harder and
A Threevening with Kevin Smith. The first is a collection of filmed appearances at American colleges, while the sequel was shot at two Q&A shows held in Toronto and London. The third was filmed in Red Bank, New Jersey at the Count Basie Theater on Smith's 37th birthday. The first two DVD sets were released by Sony Home Video, while the third was put out by the Weinstein Company.
Smith appears with Marvel Comics guru Stan Lee in
Marvel Then & Now: An Evening With Stan Lee and Joe Quesada, hosted by Kevin Smith. The film is similar in tone to the
Evening with Kevin Smith series. Proceeds from the sale of the film benefit The Hero Initiative, a charitable organization that aids ill or aging comic book creators.
Smith was featured in
This Film is Not Yet Rated, a documentary about some who believe the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sometimes unfairly gives out ratings. Smith's interview was in reference to
Jersey Girl receiving an R rating and reference
Clerks originally receiving an NC17 rating.
Television
Clerks: The Animated Series
In 2000, Smith and Mosier teamed up with television writer David Mandel (
Seinfeld and
SNL) to develop an animated television show based on
Clerks. This was an idea Smith had since the production of
Mallrats and, after pitching it to nearly every major television network, ABC TV picked it up for airing in March 2000.
After being delayed to May,
The Animated Series aired only two episodes before being canceled as a result of poor ratings. The six produced episodes were released on DVD in 2001, marking one of the first occasions in which a very short-lived TV series found success in the DVD format.
Commercials
During the mid-1990s Smith directed and starred in a series of commercials for MTV, alongside Jason Mewes, in which they reprised their roles as Jay & Silent Bob. In 1998 he directed best friend Jason Mewes as "Gary Lamb - Ground Activist" in a series of Nike commercials. That same year, he also shot commercials for Diet Coke. Two years later, he directed "Star Wars" toy commercials for Hasbro. He has also directed and starred in commercials for Panasonic. In 2004 he also shot a public service announcement for the Declare Yourself organization. These advertisements brought Jay and Silent Bob out of their "semi-retirement."
Other appearances
Smith also appeared in an mtvU show titled
Sucks Less With Kevin Smith. The show gives college students ideas for things to do on the weekends. Smith also played the role of Paul, a cynical divorced man, in a Showtime television series pilot, "Manchild", filmed in December 2006. However, it was not picked up by the network.
After an August 2001 appearance on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Smith returned to the show for monthly segments as a correspondent. The "Roadside Attractions" segments featured Smith traveling to random locations around the country and showcased places like Howe Caverns in upstate New York and the Fish Market in Seattle. While five of these segments were included on the
Jersey Girl DVD, at least twelve were aired on the actual show. Smith regularly appeared on the program to introduce the pre-taped bits.
From July 2006 on, Smith has guest reviewed on
Ebert & Roeper, in place of Roger Ebert, who was recovering from thyroid cancer treatment. These spots have been notable for the arguments between Smith and Richard Roeper over certain films, with Smith often citing Roeper's poor review of
Jersey Girl to discredit his review of the film at hand. On his most recent appearance, Smith compared Craig Brewer's
Black Snake Moan to the works of William Faulkner.
In early 2005, Smith appeared in three episodes of the Canadian-made teen drama
The Next Generation. In the episodes, Smith, portraying a fictionalized version of himself, visited the school to work on the (fictional) film
Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh! Smith wrote all his dialogue for the shows he appeared in. All three episodes were collected on a DVD entitled
Jay and Silent Bob Do Degrassi. Smith and Mewes also appeared in two more episodes the following season, when they returned to Degrassi for the Toronto premiere of the fictional
Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh! movie.
In addition to appearing on
Degrassi: The Next Generation, Kevin Smith is an avid fan of the original
Degrassi series,
Degrassi Junior High and
Degrassi High and references to the original are present in some of his early films. He also appeared in the 2009 made for TV movie Degrassi Goes Hollywood.
Smith directed the pilot for The CW Television Network show
Reaper. Tv.com's summary of the show is "A twenty-something slacker finally scores a job as the devil's bounty hunter." He describes it as "less
Brimstone or
Dead Like Me and more like
Shaun of the Dead than anything else". He went on to say that the reason he took the job was that he has always wanted to direct something he did not write, but never had an interest in doing it on the big screen.
At the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that Kevin Smith would write and direct an episode of the
Heroes spin-off,
Origins. Smith was the first director officially announced for the series. However, the project has been indefinitely postponed due to the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike.
Smith has also cameoed in the second season premiere of the sitcom
Joey, where he played himself, on an episode of
Law & Order in 2000 (episode "Black, White and Blue"),
Duck Dodgers (2003 as Hal Jordan, voice only) and
Yes, Dear (2004, as himself and Silent Bob). Smith appeared in the second episode of season two of
Veronica Mars, playing a store clerk. He stated on his Web site that
Veronica Mars is some of the best television work ever produced.
In the third season of the HBO series
Entourage, Michael Bay and Kevin Smith are directing and writing
Aquaman 2. In
Entourage, the characters awkwardly react with obvious disappointment at Smith's involvement. Smith has speculated that, that jab and another from season two may have been motivated by a book he was involved in in 1995, where he criticized Rob Weiss and his movie
Amongst Friends. At his 37th birthday Q&A in August 2007, Smith assured the audience that he was not offended by the jibe, but rather that he is always amused when his name is mentioned on television shows, whether in a positive or negative light. He expressed interest in guest starring on the show and punching main character Ari Gold.
Acting roles
Silent Bob
As an actor, Smith is known for his role as Silent Bob in
Clerks,
Mallrats,
Chasing Amy,
Dogma,
Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, and
Clerks II. He made a cameo appearance in the horror film
Scream 3, and was featured along with Jason Mewes in several
The Next Generation episodes, including a special, "Jay and Silent Bob Do Degrassi" (also as a fictional version of himself).
Other roles
From 1995 to 1997, Smith played small roles in the View Askew movies
Drawing Flies,
Vulgar, and
Big Helium Dog. In 2001, he appeared in friend Jeff Anderson's
Now You Know. In 2003, Smith appeared in a cameo role as coroner Jack Kirby in the film
Daredevil. In 2006, he voiced the Moose in the CGI cartoon
Doogal. In 2007, Smith appeared in three films as an actor. He had his first starring role in a film he didn't write or direct, co-starring as Sam in the film
Catch and Release, starring Jennifer Garner. The performance earned him many favorable critical notices. Later that year, he had a small but significant part as a hacker called The Warlock in the fourth installment of the Die Hard franchise,
Live Free or Die Hard for which he again received strong critical notices. At year's end, he appeared briefly in friend and fellow writer-director Richard Kelly's
Southland Tales, in which he played the legless conspiracy theorist General Simon Theory. That same year, Smith also did voicework for the CGI film
TMNT as a diner chef. He was also seen as Rusty (a friend of lead Jason Mewes) in
Bottoms Up with co-star Paris Hilton.
Smith has also done small roles on television in shows such as
Law & Order,
Veronica Mars,
Joey,
The Next Generation,
Phineas and Ferb, and
Yes, Dear (in
Yes, Dear, he also reprised his role as Silent Bob, which was simply him standing in one spot smoking a cigarette and saying nothing as the end credits rolled).