Kevin Smith Discusses His JAY & SILENT BOB REBOOT Film and Compares it to Gus Van Sant's Remake of PHYCHO
Last year Kevin Smith announced that he would be making a new Jay & Silent Bob film called Jay & Silent Bob Reboot. When previously talking about the film, Smith said:
"It's a tongue-in-cheek, silly-ass satire that pokes fun at the movie business's recent re-do obsession, featuring an all-star cast of cameos and familiar faces! And I already met with the good folks at Miramax and they're into it, so I'm hoping we'll be shooting in the summer! Never give up, kids. You CAN do anything you want in life, so long as you're patient and malleable."
We now have an update on the project thanks to a recent Q&A on Smith's podcast Fat Man on Batman. During that update, he revealed a few new details on what he is looking to do with the film and that he would start shooting it in August.
He explains that while the film is being labeled a reboot, it's technically a sequel that will feel like a reboot and, obviously, that's all done on purpose. Smith says:
"We’re doing a sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and it’s called Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. It’s us, it’s me and Jay so it’s not really strictly a reboot in the way that people think of a reboot. If you remember Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back it was a movie in which Jay and Silent Bob found out Hollywood was making a movie about them so they went cross country to Hollywood to stop that from happening. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is completely fucking different. In Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, Jay and Silent Bob find out that Hollywood is making a reboot of that old movie that they had made about them, and they have to go cross the country to Hollywood to stop it all over again. it’s literally the same fucking movie all over again. It’s a movie that makes fun of sequels and remakes and reboots while being all three at the same time.”
I've gotta say... I kinda love that idea. It's such a ridiculous idea, but it works so perfectly for these characters. Smith goes on to compare the remake to filmmaker Gus Van Sant's decision to remake Psycho.
“One of my favorite little director tricks or experiments of the last 20-25 years was Gus Van Sant, He’s coming off the heat of Good Will Hunting. He’s an Academy Award-nominated director. The film won awards. Ben and Matt won for screenwriting, Robin Williams won Best Actor in it. Gus had his pick of anything, he could do anything he wanted, and he went into Universal and he was like ‘I want to remake Psycho.’ They were like ‘Are you crazy? It’s Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho,’ and he was like, ‘yeah, but it’s a black and white movie. There’s a whole generation of kids who will never watch this movie’…. I thought that was so crazy, ballsy, he wanted to do a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, but in color with new actors. It’s a very film-school experiment. It’s something a young-buck director who’s figuring out what they want to be, does. It felt very avant-garde. Some people will argue from not until the end of time that it was absolutely fucking unnecessary, but I like that it was just ballsy. He literally just made the same fucking movie over again. Mine’s not that, we have a completely different script, but I used the script of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to build the script to Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. So there’ a van in it with three girls in it."
That certainly was a ballsy movie for Van Sant to remake Psycho! The remake ended up being terrible and I've never met anyone that actually liked it. It's so funny that Smith was inspired by that. You know what, though? In the end, I'm sure the Jay & Silent Bob Reboot is going to be a crazy fun film that fans of Jay and Silent Bob are probably going to love.
What are your thoughts on what Kevin Smith is planning for his new Jay & Silent Bob movie?
Via: CB