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Kevin Smith & His Cast Talk Disability, Reboots, and 25 Years of View Askew

This article is more than 4 years old.

Twenty-five years ago director Kevin Smith decided to make a movie. Maxing out his credits and taking over his place of business, Smith produced and released the indie feature Clerks. Never could he have foreseen that the film would connect so heavily with a generation of disaffected young people working dead-end jobs, let alone that it would span into a career that’s seen Smith work with a host of A-list talent and turn many of his actors into stars along the way. Now, Smith is returning to those original characters that made him famous with Jay & Silent Bob Reboot. The two “hetero lifemates” Jay and Silent Bob (played by Jason Mewes and Smith, respectively) are on another road trip filled with Hollywood in-jokes and a sweetly tempered tale of fatherhood.

For Smith himself, who turned away from his ViewAskew universe over the last few years to make genre fare like Tusk, Red State, and Yoga Hosers, Reboot goes far beyond the movie itself. It’s a reboot to Smith’s own life, coming after he endured a heart attack that almost took his life. As Smith explains, with his career-defining mix of warmth and humor, while laying on the operating table he decided to take stock of his life. “I felt at peace...I sat there going ‘You got great f***ing parents...you built this weird career that is uniquely yours...then because of that career you met this woman and fell in love and been with her for 21 years and had a great f***ing kid.” But what Smith refused to allow was that his final feature was the critically trashed story of teenage girls and sausage Nazis, Yoga Hosers.

So after a series of failed starts with other properties Smith eventually pieced together Reboot, which he hopes to hold up as his masterpiece. Not in the sense that the movie is the best thing ever made, Smith has no illusions about that, but in that it is a culmination of everything Smith has learned, not just over 25 years as a filmmaker but in his 49 years on this planet all “couched and wrapped up in an easily disposable stoner movie.” It was also a much-needed return to the family atmosphere he’d had on previous sets. His daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, takes center stage in Reboot playing Jay’s somewhat more responsible but still just as outrageous daughter, Milly.

The young actress started out in her father’s film by circumstance, playing a random little girl in Clerks 2 or, in the case of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, playing her father’s character as a child. Smith herself cringes when bringing up her previous forays into her father’s film once she decided to take up acting. “I'm scared to go back and watch Yoga Hosers because I know how much I've grown since then. It's scary that you can literally watch my acting evolution on-screen but I try not to think about it,” she says. Now, after taking time off to study acting and take a turn in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Smith is ready to prove that she’s talented in her own right.

On the flipside, the Reboot was also a chance to show off the changes in Kevin Smith’s long-time collaborator, acting sidekick, and muse, Jason Mewes. As Mewes himself says, Smith has “always sort of adapted to changes to what’s going on in my life” and here was no different. The movie follows the foul-mouthed Jay as he attempts to not only bond with his newfound daughter, but reconcile with his own feelings of fatherhood and growing up.

Mewes himself became a father four years ago and Smith was heavily inspired to write the movie based on watching his interactions between father and daughter. “He was born to be somebody’s dad,” Smith says. “I thought I had a great relationship with my kid when she was little.” But because Mewes grew up without a father that demanded he craft his own parenting style without a guide. As Smith explains, “He is legitimately interested in every aspect of her life. He finds her fascinating. Everything is the best thing she’s ever done.” And this, in turn, also helped shape Mewes’ performance off Smith’s daughter, whom Mewes has known all her life. Mewes explained that several of their scenes together were easy because he knew her, but it was often difficult to watch Harley get emotional as it would make him emotional.

But for all the ways Smith hearkens back to his past with Reboot, he also takes a leap towards progress. A key character in his latest is Milly’s own version of Silent Bob, her best friend “Soapy” played by deaf actress Treshelle Edmond. Smith is taken aback and thanks me for bringing up the character. He explains that he initially wanted to make the character deaf and transgender but couldn’t find one who fit both characteristics. So he instead decided to stick with the concept of having a deaf actress and bringing in Edmonds.

Harley Quinn Smith says she had been learning sign language before Edmonds was cast and the two quickly developed a close bond. “There were some instances where everything happened so quick that she might not have a chance to see the interpreter, so I always made sure she knew what was going on and she made sure I knew what was going on.” For Kevin Smith, he denounces the belief that disabled performers slow things down, citing Edmonds’ amazing ability to keep up with the filmmaking process in spite of needing an interpreter on-set.

Smith says he hopes to include more disabled performers in the future and can’t understand why anyone would see it as a bad business move. “I can’t understand people who are like ‘you don’t want that.’ If you see yourself on that screen you’re gonna tell everybody! Someone watches sees someone speaking with ASL. They say, ‘I speak ASL like that!’ That’s somebody going to see the movie who was never going to see it before!” To him, it just makes sense.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot plays October 15th and 17 in theaters via Fathom Events.

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