It’s impossible to have gone through ’90s indie cinema and not be familiar with Kevin Smith’s brand of slacker moviemaking. Between 1994 and 2001, Smith essentially became the spokesman for a misfit generation of geeky basement dwellers with his films “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Mallrats,” “Dogma,” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.”
What bound all of those lo-fi ’90s films together—beyond their DIY, stitched-together spirit, and juvenile jokes —was their zealous enthusiasm for geeks inheriting the earth. And, of course, tons of dick jokes. Smith, like Richard Linklater before him, showed an entire generation of audiences that you, too, could make a movie if you were willing to max out your credit card and carry a gutso attitude.
Surely, these lowbrow antics wouldn’t carry over into the next generation, and the 54-year-old Smith has struggled to find a groove in the post-“Dogma” phase of his career. Mostly working on B-movies and low-rent Hollywood vehicles—some of which worked (“Red State”) while most others didn’t (“Yoga Hosers,” “Tusk,” “Cop Out,” “Clerks III”)—Smith has been trying to find himself by reinventing his style, sometimes with each passing film.
In a new interview, Smith tells THR that he was poised to start production on another low-budget effort, a third Jay and Silent Bob film, earlier this year. However, the stoner comedy lost its financing due to the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and Canada. “Jay and Silent Bob: Store Wars” is now slated to begin shooting at a different location in 2026.
“We had Canadian money, and the Canadian money went away. It was just as people were getting aggressive with our friends up north,” Smith shares. “I was more down on myself for the movie falling apart. I was like, ‘Well, this is your fault. You should have been more successful. If you’d been better at your job, then you could fucking pay for your own art, and you wouldn’t have to go hat in hand to somebody else.’ So I can’t bitch.”
As of now, there have been two Jay and Silent Bob movies, not counting the duo’s appearances in “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” and “Chasing Amy” in smaller roles. The first film centered primarily on them as leads was “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001), followed by “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” (2019).
Smith’s most recent film, “The 4:30 Movie,” released last year, was a nostalgic coming-of-age comedy set in the summer of 1986, centered on three teenage friends who sneak into movies. Reviews were mixed, but that seems beside the point for Smith these days. His low-budget filmmaking has become more personal than commercial, and he keeps rolling, finding ways to make movies even as the relevance he once had in the ’90s feels increasingly uncertain.
Brady Corbet's “The Origin of the World,” his X-Rated epic about "Northern California’s economy" in the 1970s epic, has now started production in South Africa under the working title “SALT FLATS.”