My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (85 page)

Then, our prospective male lead needed some time to get some stuff done, so we moved
Zack and Miri
back to a January start — which would mean a late October/early November pre-production start (precluding any pre-
Zack
start for
Red State
). This would’ve mean Rosario would be sitting on her hands all fall, waiting to shoot
Zack and Miri
. And with the impending strike, with actors not knowing if they’re gonna be working at all post-March, that’s a tough request to make of any actor.

Then, along comes
Eagle Eye
— the flick starring man-of-the-moment Shia LeBeouf, to be directed by
Disturbia
helmer D. J. Caruso — based on an original idea by...

Wait for it...

Steven fucking Spielberg.

I mean, who wouldn’t take that gig?

Problem is,
Eagle Eye
starts shooting in November and doesn’t wrap ‘til Feb/March. Well, that’s not really a problem for anyone... except me and
Zack and Miri
.

So here I sit, momentarily, without a leading lady.

*sigh*

However, this is the nature of the movie business. It happens all the time. You start off thinking... knowing who your cast is gonna be, and then it changes on a dime.

I rewrote
Dogma
with Joey Lauren Adams in mind for the lead and Sam Jackson as Rufus. The parts wound up going to Linda Fiorentino and Chris Rock instead.

I wrote the first fifty pages of
Jersey Girl
for Bill Murray and Joey Lauren Adams. The parts wound up going to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

I wrote
Clerks II
with my wife Jen in mind to play Becky. Then, we went to Liv Tyler, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ellen Pompeo, and Sarah Silverman, before ultimately casting... Rosario Dawson. And Rosario did such an amazing job in that flick, that I wanted to put her in the next flick —
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
But alas, it’s not to be.

I’ll miss her, to be sure, but spin control dictates that I’ve gotta say maybe this is a good thing: certainly for Rosario (why be in the donkey show guy’s next picture when you’re invited into Camp Spielberg?) and maybe even for me and
Zack and Miri
. I’ve never worked with our (potential) male lead before, so it might be nice to have a female lead I’ve also never worked with before.

Anyway, there it is. I apologize that the tale’s not more juicy or that it doesn’t involve delicious bridge-burning and name-calling, but sometimes, schedules just don’t blend — no matter how much you want them to — and you just have to be understanding about a great opportunity for someone you dig. Rather than curse my friend for making the right career decision, I’m elated for her. Go, Ro, Go!

Who is and isn’t
Zack
...

Wednesday September 12 2007 @ 1:37 p.m.

Monday

I didn’t get to sleep until 5 a.m., so when I’m woken up at 7:45 to take Harley to school, it stands to reason that I’m like “Y’know — I used to walk to school when I was a kid...” But in the age of sexual predators and child killers, I slap on some clothes and groggily stumble out the door to the car, where I somehow manage to get the kid to school without driving into a telephone pole or through a Starbucks front window. I come home and almost immediately go back to sleep.

When I wake up, I watch some season three of
The Closer
that I’d downloaded from iTunes (awesome show) and answer email. Google news sends me a link to this story on
SlashFilm.com
about Jason Bateman saying he’s not in
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
.

A few weeks back, I got an email from Brad Pleyvak, one of the fellas who runs News Askew, that read...

Just wanted you to see this... Any truth or denial here? I assume if it’s true
it’s something you’d want kept quiet and not run at News Askew anyway... So I’ll wait to hear back from you. And if it’s true, very cool news — Bateman is a fantastic comedic actor in my opinion, and really would be a great fit with your words. See below.

The attachment read...

Hello News Askew Scoops,

Reason: I’ve Got A Scoop!

I was on the set of a new superhero movie coming out called
Hancock
previously known as
Tonight He Comes
(hmm... wonder why they changed the title).

Any way I overheard a conversation between Will Smith and Jason Bateman about working with Kevin Smith. Bateman stated that he was excited to start working with Kevin. I checked Batemans Imdb page and searched around the net and there was no mention of him working with K. Smith so I’m assuming this is a big scoop.

I’m a huge
Arrested Development
fan — and equally as big a fan of Jason Bateman. I’d only ever met him once: at the Baja Fresh on Sunset and Fairfax (the one next to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf). I was in line with Schwalbach when I spotted Bateman outside, sitting alone at a table, eating and reading a newspaper. I nudged the wife and was like “Holy shit — it’s Michael fucking Bluth.” I’m never... never the guy who wants to talk to famous people, but, Jesus — it’s Michael fucking Bluth! Sitting not ten feet away from me!

After some initial hesitance, I opted to bug the guy while he was eating and tell him how much I loved the show and his work on it, opening with the standard “I hate to bother you, but...” Thankfully, he didn’t seem bothered, saying “Thanks, Kev,” as I was heading off. The whole exchange lasted about fifteen seconds, and I was shocked as shit the dude knew my name, as I’d never said “Hi, I’m Kevin Smith.” (If this story sounds familiar, it’s because I’d talked about it in SModcast 4, around fifteen minutes in.)

But as cool as that brief exchange was, and I much as I love Bateman’s stuff, I wrote
Zack and Miri
for another guy I love. So I wrote back to Brad and told him not to run the story on NewsAskew, as there was no truth to it.

That’s when the story showed up at Ain’t It Cool News...

Who is playing the Zack of Kevin Smith’s ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A
PORNO? I think I know!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I think this maybe a bit of scoopage. I haven’t seen it reported anywhere else, but I have gotten it on good authority that Kevin Smith has found his titular Zack for his upcoming ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO.

Rosario Dawson just dropped out, but Smith has been tight-lipped on who is playing the male lead. He’s only said it’s someone he admires, but hasn’t worked with yet.

That someone, according to a source known as “Big J”, is none other than Michael Bluth himself: Jason Bateman.

I think that’s a great marriage of material and actor, personally. Now we’ll just have to see who is the new Miri...

Take the scoop with a tiny pinch of salt. The scooper is definitely in a position to know this information, but is untested.

And even though Quint urged folks to take the info with a pinch of salt, it wound up running all over the ‘net, at Cinematical, CinemaBlend, SlashFilm, Ugo, JoBlo... as well as a slew of others. And I never thought to simply say “It’s not true” to anyone but Brad at News Askew. Jason, however, was asked and did have an answer for Peter Sciretta over at SlashFilm. Then, over at MTV’s Movies Blog, Shawn Adler threw up a link to the SlashFilm article, but it kind of insinuated that Bateman had passed on
Zack and Miri
. So I called Shawn to clear it up and asked him to adjust it on their site.

However, in case folks are still unclear, I’ll second what Bateman said: no, he’s not Zack in
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
. We never asked him and he never read it. He was a great idea for Zack, as Bateman’s a genius who drops performance clinics in even small roles (
Smokin’ Aces
, the upcoming-but-gonna-be-retitled
Quebec
), but like I said: I wrote the role for someone specifically, and that specific someone’s the only guy I’ve ever sent the script to.

The Man Who Would Be Zack

Monday November 19 2007 @ 11:47 am

So, a bunch of folks have seen the announcement of Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, and asked “How the fuck did that happen?!?”

If you’ve got a minute, I’ll tell you.

In late 2005, I had a breakfast meeting with Harvey Weinstein at the
Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Even though we were a few weeks away from shooting
Clerks II
, he was asking what I wanted to do after that. I told him I’d been thinking about this flick called
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
. I’d gotten no further than the title when he said “Done. I’m making that movie.”

“Don’t you wanna know what it’s about first?” I asked.

He replied “I thought the title said it all.”

“Well it doesn’t.”

“Fine. What’s it about?”

“It’s a meditation on the Holocaust.”

He stared at me blankly for a beat.

“Alright,” I relented. “The title says it all.”

I never got to see
The 40 Year Old Virgin
in a theater. When it was released in the summer of 2005, we were buried in pre-production for
Clerks II
, so it wasn’t ‘til the flick’s DVD release that I was finally able to kick back and enjoy it. It was a significant watch for me, because that day, I fell in love with the bearded guy who talked about watching a chick fuck a horse and feeling bad for her. But I knew I wanted to work with the guy when I watched him play a video game with Paul Rudd’s character and utter “I’m ripping your head off right now. It’s off and now I’m throwing it at your body. FUCK you!”

The delivery of that “FUCK you!” had me rolling. I rewound that moment multiple times during that viewing.

A few days later, Scott and I had a meeting with Harvey (at the Peninsula again) to talk about the release plans for
Clerks II
. When those discussions were out of the way, he asked “Where’s that porno script?”

“I’m working on it,” I lied. “But, hey — did you ever see
40 Year Old Virgin
?”

“Yeah. Funny.”

“There’s a guy in that movie I wanna cast as Zack.”

“Steve Carell?”

“No — the guy who worked in the stock room. His name’s Seth Rogen.”

“I like that guy. I’m meeting with him next.”

“What?!”

“He’s coming in to talk about
Fanboys
. You wanna meet him?”

I never wanna meet anybody. This guy, though, I did wanna meet. And meet him I did, on our way out, as he was coming in. Harvey introduced us, and I immediately told him how many times I watched him say “FUCK you!” to Paul Rudd. He said he was a fan, but I didn’t take him seriously; in Hollywood, people tell you that all the time, even though they don’t mean it.
We talked a little bit about
Clerks II
and I said I’d happily show him the flick if he wanted to see it. The guy gave me his phone number and we said goodbye.

When I got home, I slipped the piece of paper with his phone number under the transparent blotter on my desk, beside pics of my kid, my wife, the original cast of
Clerks
, and sundry other mementos. I never called him about that
Clerks II
screening because I figured it’d be awkward somehow — like he’d feel more obligated to go than anything else, and that’s a position I never wanna put anyone in, let alone a guy whose work I like.

A year later, I finally started writing
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
. At this point, it was a month out from the release of
Knocked Up
, and I was seeing posters with Rogen’s mug on ’em all over town. “I’m an idiot,” I thought. “This dude’s gonna be huge. I should’ve written
Zack and Miri
a year ago.”

A week later, I was done with the first unofficial draft — the one I send to Scott for a first look and possible edits. A week after that, on May 14th, I was done with the official first draft. When I submitted the script to Carla, our Weinstein Co. exec, I asked her if she, by chance, had Seth Rogen’s email address (since she was also the exec on
Fanboys
— a movie Seth wound up doing some cameos for). So, on May 15th, at 3:31 in the afternoon, I wrote Seth the following email...

Sir,

We met very briefly, about a year and a half ago, as I was leaving a meeting with Harvey Weinstein and you were entering a meeting with Harvey Weinstein. I don’t expect you to remember it, but I practically blew you over your “I throw your head at you. Fuck you!” moment in
The 40 Year Old Virgin
.

Anyway, I’m a fan, and that day, I started thinking about writing a script for you. But laze (and
Clerks II
promotional duties) got the best of me, so I never got around to writing it.

Until two weeks ago.

I know you’re probably buried in
Knocked Up
and
Superbad
stuff at the moment, but if you’ve got an hour or two, I’d love you to read it. We’re not gonna be shooting ‘til Jan/Feb ‘08, so there’s no immediate rush, I guess. I also know (or at least suspect) that you generate your own material, so I realize I’m doing you no favors, as you’re probably not hurting for work at the moment. Still, I’d love you to read it and, ultimately, be in it, so maybe we can hook up sooner or later.

As I hit send I thought, “Yeah, you wanna hook up with him, alright. You and every studio in town, at this point. You snooze, you lose, fat-ass. Next time, don’t be so fucking lazy. This dude’s never gonna respond now.”

At 4:42, that dude responded.

Dude,

This may sound like bullshit, but when I first moved to LA, I went out to meet with agencies, and one of them asked me what my goals were. I said, “to be in a Kevin Smith movie.” That goal has not changed. I would be honored to read anything you wrote, and am truly flattered and amazed that you sent me this e-mail. I wouldn’t be a writer if it wasn’t for you and your movies. It’s as simple as that. Thank you so much.

Naturally, I about fell out of the chair. My man-crush not only responded (quickly, at that), but he paid me just about the highest compliment he could’ve, short of “And
Jersey Girl
is a misunderstood masterpiece.” (Granted, it’s not; but a guy can dream, can’t he? And also delude himself?)