Kevin Smith, Never Lost For Words, Eagerly Talks About Zack and Miri

Zack and Miri–lots of talented people made this movie, but will it work? 

Good interview with Kevin Smith at ComingSoon about his new film Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Can’t just cut and paste the whole thing here, but let’s look at a few snippets:

ComingSoon.net: I guess when people hear the title for your new movie, they automatically think, “Okay, Kevin Smith is finally making porn.”
Kevin Smith: (chuckles) Yeah, “Apparently ‘Clerks II’ didn’t do well enough and now he’s in porn.” Yeah, I guess the title has been a boon and a bane in many weird ways. Like the title got the movie greenlit from just the announcement of the title when I was talking to Harvey Weinstein. He was asking, “What do you want to do after ‘Clerks II’?” I was like, “There’s this movie I’m thinking about doing, a comedy called ‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno’” and he was like, “Done, greenlit.” I was like, “Don’t you want to know what it’s about?” and he was like, “With a title like that, I can’t imagine it’s about much more” and I was like, “Well, I hope it is.” But at the same time, “porno” in the title is definitely going to put some people off, and it’ll definitely put off a bunch of people who would never see this movie anyway, but it might put off some people that would enjoy it because it is kind of a sweet movie.

CS: Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like there’s a lot more improv in this movie than we’ve seen from you in the past. Is that a perception or is that true?
Smith: Well, it depends. I define improv as there’s no scene, a bunch of actors, “go make something up” but we always had structure on our set, because we always had the script, but there’s more ad-libbing in this flick than I’ve had in the earlier stuff that I did, maybe about as much as we had in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” but the wonderful thing about the ad-libbing this time is that Seth is so damn good at it. Seth is an innately talented ad-libber. He knows not just how to say something funny that’ll make the crew laugh on the set, but he knows how to ad-lib the line that’s organic to the scene and it sounds like it’s coming from the character, not the actor, and actually propels the plot forward, and that’s a guy that you always want around, man, because he doesn’t just execute, he elevates.

CS: Also Craig Robinson and Justin Long are amazing improvisers.
Smith: And Justin Long is an insanely funny man, very very talented. I think we saw the best Justin in “Live Free or Die Hard” because he got to kind of be Justin and be funny, and I think this movie, you actually get to see how much range the dude has. He should play Fletch, because he can just play 20 characters in that movie and still be one guy.

CS: Also, you gave porn star Katie Morgan some legitimacy and her first IMDb credit.
Smith: I dunno, she did have the HBO credit. When we cast her, I hadn’t seen her porn work and I’d never seen the HBO show, but I found her… I was looking up porno actresses, because Seth suggested, he said, “Look, why don’t we for the Bubbles and Stacy roles, let’s just go right to porn actresses because it’ll be so easy when it comes to the time where you’re like, ‘Okay, so we need you to take your top off.’” He said, “The worst thing you can ask a porno actress to do on your movie is a thousand times better than the least worst thing that they do on their day job.” I was like, “That’s pretty smart thinking” so I started looking up actresses and the problem is a lot of them are great at the sex and performance-wise, not quite there, but I found this clip on YouTube of Katie doing the performance part of a porn before it gets to the sex, ’cause that wasn’t on the YouTube part, and I was just like, “Wow, this chick can actually act. Is she really a porn star?” I started looking her up and she was truly a porn star, but she had really natural comic delivery.

Okay, I admit that I find it totally kind of shocking to hear that Justin Long has talent. I wouldn’t have thought it. But I’m willing to be open minded. Anyway, the rest of the interview is here, give it a look.