Kevin Smith is back with 'Clerks III,' the most looping, meta, story he’s told so far. Read our conversation.
I was trying to make [this] one for the better part of the last 10 to 13 years. At one point, it was a very different version of the movie than it is now, very King Lear. Didn’t even take place at Quick Stop. And I think if we’d made it, people would’ve been like, ‘I don’t think this guy understands his own movie. I don’t think he fucking even sawI had a heart attack about four and a half years ago. And that gave me a spine for the flick. I can’t really technically follow up.
Interestingly enough, no. The weirdest thing was me going, “Well, Dante would never make a movie,” even though Dante was based on me and Imake a movie. But that’s where the character and I differentiate. There’s a big moment in Clerks where they talk about shit or get off the pot. I got off the pot. Dante wouldn’t do that thing. But at the end of, we revealed that Randal, the hardcore cynic, is a secret dreamer.
One thing that’s not brought up is Randal’s so-called “reclaiming” of the racist term “porch monkey” inThat was me trying to — my take on racism, I guess, but through a humor lens or whatever. It works, the scene works, but it is a tough watch for me at this point. Anybody coming intohopefully they’re looking for something a little different than that. But at the root of it is Randal being Randal, which is like, “I’m going to be contrary to everything.
No. I mean, as the engineer, it’d be weird if I was watching it being like, how did this happen? It’d be like being in a threesome, and somebody’s having sex with your wife and you’re like, ‘How did this happen?’ And you’re like, ‘You were involved.’ I feel like for the kids in the movie, there was that. When Brian and Jeff, on separate times, Kim Loughran, now Kim Garby. She was my ex-girlfriend. She was the model for Caitlin and Veronica and stuff.