View From the Phlipside - Kevin Smith

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Last week at the Sundance Film Festival movie director Kevin Smith was interviewed about his next film
 "Hit Somebody".  During the interview he dropped in that the movie would be his last.  For some that sent tremors through movie news.  At the end of the day I'm not sure why.

If Kevin Smith never makes another movie (which is unlikely for a variety of reasons) what would be his cinematic legacy?  To be honest it's a very mixed bag.  Probably at the top of his list you would find the movies "Dogma" and "Clerks" without a doubt.  "Chasing Amy" was also generally critically enjoyed and made a lot of money.  But then Kevin's movies usually make a lot of money (although not always, see the 10 million dollar loss on "Jersey Girls") but that's because he makes them for so little money it's almost impossible not to make a profit.  "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" also made a lot of money but I don't know that it deserves to be included at the Dogma/Clerks level.  14 movies in roughly 10 years.  Clerks won a couple of major festival awards but that's it on the big time movie award front. 

So what does that really leave us with?  Clerks is an interesting, rather bizarre little movie that Smith made on a budget that might buy you a decent mid-sized car.  It took Cannes and Sundance by storm.  He would return to the characters and locale four times.  His slacker icons of Jay and Silent Bob have their place in pop culture but I don't see them as the kind of archetypes that you hang your reputation as a great director on.  Dogma is a brilliant and controversial movie is on a whole different level from pretty much anything else he's done (he got three death threats based on the film).  But once you get beyond the fans of what is referred to his Askewniverse movies what else is there?  There's a bit of a cult, some promise that doesn't seem to have been fully realized, and a couple stand out movies.  Smith really seems to struggle when he wanders away from his Silent Bob cast and locale, and he seems to have mined that vein to extinction.

So again where does that leave us?  Smith says that he'll help other people make movies.  That could mean doing some writing or maybe producing.  To be honest perhaps Kevin Smith's most impressive professional credit might be his ability to create movies on controllable budgets.  So if the time has come for Kevin to give up making his own movies so be it.  As with so many his star burned brightly but only for a little while in the Hollywood sky.


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010