It’s been a long, strange trip for Jason Mewes. The unlikely movie star got his start playing a brash, offensive drug dealer in a tiny independent movie called Clerks that unexpectedly became an enormous success, critically and otherwise, that shot him and writer/director Kevin Smith into the limelight of 1990s independent cinema. 20 years later, Jason Mewes is still playing that same immature mischief-maker in the new animated release Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie, now available on Video On Demand. And this time, Jason Mewes is also a producer.
We talked on the phone with Jason Mewes about his new duties behind the camera, what happens when you pee on a toilet paper roll, the secret to good podcasting, his great low-budget horror film Bitten, what the hold up is with Clerks 3 and how his friendship with Kevin Smith continues to evolve.
Jason Mewes: You were saying, “Long time coming, Jay and Silent Bob’s Cartoon Movie…?”
CraveOnline: At least as superheroes. I’ve been wanting to see that since the comics.
I know. I’m excited about it. It turned out way better than I expected. For me. Kevin [Smith] sent me this script that he had, he had written the comic and then he had written the script and it had been sitting around for a while. I was telling him that I wanted to try different stuff, I want to try to direct eventually, I want to try to produce and stuff. And he gave me this script and said, “Go do whatever you want to do.” So I got the animated Steve Stark from Canada and we started running with it, and we got a bunch of awesome people to be involved. Neil Gaiman, Ralph Garman, Tara Strong, Eliza Dushku, Stan Lee, and not only did all of those people chip in, honestly, after we animated it and did the voices they elevated the characters and the movie all over. Altogether, it just was elevated moreso than I expected so I’m very excited and happy with how it turned out.
I’m curious. How did you get Neil Gaiman? It seems like an unusual role to get him to play. I mean he’s British, but beyond that.
Honestly it was Kevin. Kevin knew and I guess had done work with him in the past and I’ve got to say he got him. There was a lot of the people I made phone calls [to cast], and if it wasn’t people I knew and attempted to get, luckily Kevin was able to get some of these other awesome people that chipped in. Yeah, it was all Kevin for Neil Gaiman. 100%. Even while I was there, Kevin met with him and he recorded Gaiman’s stuff, whereas a lot of the other actors, I set up… My wife and I, Jordan, who runs the company and stuff, her and I set up the times for the sound and voice-overs and everyone came in, and most people we dealt with but Neil, Kevin dealt with. But again, it was exciting for me even moreso, because I couldn’t be there while he was recording, so I got to listen to it after and it was… yeah, he just was awesome.
When you’re doing an animated movie you can have the actors together or you can do them all separately. Did you have to record them all separately to accommodate everyone’s schedules?
Yes, yeah. Pretty much everyone we did separately because of scheduling and all that. But it worked. It worked out. Eliza came to my house. I have an isolation booth and a little sound… My garage is converted to a little sound booth, isolation booth, and she came here. It was cool. We just worked it out to what we could with, with their schedules, because again no one got rich from it so everyone pretty much just did it as a favor and to be part of Bluntman & Chronic, Jay & Bob cartoons. So that was, again, very awesome and such.
Do you use your sound room for podcast, or do you record music in there? It’s cool that you have one all your own.
Well we’ve done some podcasts. We were doing podcasts in it for a bit. I was doing Mewes News and we were doing the podcasting in there. Then Kevin, he got his own… I guess I can tell, it doesn’t matter. “Man Caves” is a reality TV show that called Kevin and said, “We want to do a Man Cave for you.” He said, “Well I podcast constantly. Can you do a soundproof podcasting room in my office?” So they did. So now we’ve been doing the podcast at his house. But I have an agency for voice overs and cartoons and such, so they always send me auditions, and the cool thing is instead of driving out to Santa Monica – I live in Hollywood – depending on traffic it can be an hour drive. So it’s nice, because I can just do my voice-overs here and I can send in my auditions, or I’ve already done the cartoon and I’m just doing some new stuff, some new dialogue or ADR, whatever you want to say.
So it’s nice. It’s nice to have. We lucked out actually. When we bought my house, the guy before me actually had took the garage, soundproofed the whole garage, but an office in the front, the whole entire room’s soundproofed and he built an isolation booth inside the garage. So it’s pretty awesome I have to say. The house is awesome AND they have an isolation booth? This is too perfect. [Laughs.]
I do a couple of podcasts. What do you think the trick is to a good podcast? What’s your secret?
I only do one, I only do [Jay and Silent Bob] Get Old really, but being around Kevin… I think for me it’s mainly the beats. Kevin and I just sit and riff a lot and tell stories, the Smodcast Kevin’s been doing or four or five years is just talking, but I think having the beats of like, “Okay, if we’re talking for an hour and we’re talking about the most interesting thing in the world, it’s going to end eventually.” It’s a two-hour podcast or it’s an hour-and-a-half podcast, whatever it might be, I like having beats to be like, “Okay, this is not getting interesting anymore, so let’s talk about such-and-such,” you know?
My podcast, when we do a live show, especially when it’s live, you can’t just [be] like, “Oh, we sat there for ten minutes in silence, or that wasn’t funny so we’ve got to edit it out, and we’ll put it out without that.” Especially the live shows, I mean for me, it’s like, “Okay, jot down some notes.” We usually just open up and chitchat, and that sometimes that goes for ten minutes or five minutes, and sometimes that goes for 20 minutes. But when we’re done chitchatting I’m going to tell a story about this, or I might want to talk about this.
So I don’t know, I feel like Kevin’s podcast, the Smodcast, same thing. I’ve listened to them live, they usually do it at home, and it’s like the same thing. It’s really just whoever wants to talk about anything, is interesting. Whoever wants to tell stories about growing up on a farm. But as long as they have an hour every podcast, as long as they know they’re going to have something to talk about the whole time and beats, that there’s this, and then we’re going to talk about this, and then we’re going to talk about that, and then boom, that’s the end of the podcast.
I think that’s really it. You can talk about anything. You can talk about trees and grass and farming, but I feel like if you have beats to talk about stories and tell those stories and make sure they’re not too long so that people are like, “Oh, okay, we’ve been listening to you talk about this sheepherding for 25 minutes… it’s not interesting anymore.” Does that make sense? [Laughs.]
That makes total sense. Back to the movie for a second, there’s something in the movie that I can’t help but wonder if it’s based on a true story: urinating on a toilet roll to see it expand. I didn’t know you could that. Is that a thing?
Oh, the toilet paper? For sure. I’ve got toilet paper and peed on it and whatever might have happened, it blows up. I don’t know why I did this in the past, but it’s like the tampons, right? You throw ‘em and they blow up. Weird things you try, experimenting as a teenager. For me, anyway. I can talk about myself. I guess not everybody. [Laughs.] It’s true, it’s true. I don’t if anyone ever goes… I don’t go into a public restroom and pee on the toilet paper roll, because I just feel like that would be cruel for the guy who comes in in a rush and sits down and looks over and the toilet paper’s all peed on. That wouldn’t be very nice. [Laughs.]
That would be kind of fucked up. Funny though.
Yeah. That’s like my worst fear. It is, even at home. Not peeing, but not having toilet paper at home? I remember years and years ago, I was living with Kevin while we were shooting Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I won’t mention the girl’s name but I was dating this girl and I was getting up every day and we were working ten hour days. I said, “Please, I want to ask you, we’re almost out of toilet paper. Just please make sure we have toilet paper when I get home, and toothpaste, and maybe go runs some errands,” because she didn’t work. I worked all day and she sat home, which was fine, but I figured she’d do some stuff. I got home and I remember going and running to the bathroom because I had to go to the bathroom bad, and being stuck there. We had no toilet paper, and we broke up after that.
That was the last straw.
That was the last straw. There was other things that added up to that of course, but that was sort of the last straw for me. [Laughs.]
That is a betrayal, that’s what that is.
You know what I’m saying? You’re home all day watching soap operas, which is fine, while I work, I’m not against that, but at least get us toilet paper. Please.
Well, toilet paper is for everyone. It’s not like coffee, where maybe you don’t drink it so you don’t think about it. You’re going to need that toilet paper too!
Exactly. Exactly.
There’s a film of yours I saw once and I’ve wanted to talk to you about it forever because it was really good. You were in a movie called Bitten, which I think was re-released as Vampire Apocalypse?
Yes!
That was a damned good movie. I don’t even know if I have anything to say other than that. I just wanted to mention it in the interview so people will see it.
No, thank you. It’s funny because more and more, we do our podcasts and people have been mentioning it or they’ll tweet about it, say, “Hey, I just watched it, I liked it,” and actually just was calling the guy. […] It was a Canadian film I did with a director, I’m still in touch with him, he’s a friend of mine now, we’ve become friends after the movie. I e-mailed him recently and said, “Hey man, more and more people see the and everyone – a lot of people, not everyone – seem to dig it.” I said, “Why don’t you find out who made it and if it’s possible, do a second one.” [Laughs.] Because you know, at the end I turn into a vampire and I’m in the basement, so I’m like, wow, we can roll off that. Who knows what can happen after that. But anyway, it was a fun movie. It was a lot of fun and it was great. Yeah man, I’m glad it finally got out.
The funny thing about these movies is like, some of these movies I do, they make them and they’re editing and I sort of hear what’s going on. They’re almost done editing and they’re doing the sound and they’re doing this, but then it’ll be like two years later and I won’t hear anything and all of a sudden people will be like, “Hey man, I just saw the movie on Netflix!” or “It’s on DVD, I just bought it!” It’s interesting because I almost forgot about it, and then all of a sudden it’s out and more and more people seem to be watching it and digging it, so we’ll see what happens. I think that would be a fun to do a second one for, so we’ll see what happens.
Speaking of sequels, is there still talk of Clerks 3 or is Kevin really distracted with the Krampus and stuff?
Well, no. I mean Clerks 3 I think is the ultimate… I know he wants to do it really bad, and it’s not not being done because he’s like, “Oh, forget about that one, let’s do this one. Let’s do this one.” It’s more because it was just politics with the Weinsteins. [They] have the rights and they get the first pass and they got the script but they were waiting and they didn’t answer him and so then he did Tusk because while we’re waiting here on Clerks, why not start making this movie?
So then after the movie was done, Tusk and stuff, and he’s editing and doing all that, he heard back and they were like, “We need to get the budget lower so get the budget lower and then send it back to us.” So then that took some time and part of the process, and he sent it back and he’s making Krampus, and he’s waiting. He might have heard, honestly, about Clerks, whether they’re going to do it or not do it or someone else is going to do it.
I know he’s not going to let up [on] doing it. He really wants to do it and so do I, and we talk about it here and there about, “Hey man, hopefully we can do it at the end of the year, maybe, if we get the budget down to the right thing.” It’s just a bigger budget than the other ones have been, and so I think… I don’t know, I just think someone’s going to have to really want to do it and it will be processed. Because then he has to find out if all the cast wants to do it, which is… not all the cast, really, but Jeff [Anderson] and really Brian [O’Halloran], you have to have them of course.
I’m not saying they’ll say no but it just seems like there’s a lot more work involving it and so while he’s waiting on getting all the ducks in a row he wants to make movies. He doesn’t want to just sit and wait.
I’m kind of wondering how expensive it could possibly be. This can’t be a $200 million space opera, right?
Oh, nothing like that. Nothing like that. […] But I know that the first one was this amount, the second one was six million or something? Or five, or four? So I just think that Weinsteins are like, “Wait, the first one was this, the second one was this, the other movies are all this amount,” I just think… I don’t know, but definitely not a hundred million. [Laughs.] Not even fifty million!
But times have changed, man. Times have honestly changed. I feel like either people are making a million, two, three million dollar movies, or they’re making Captain Americas, Transformers. Even for me, getting auditions or meetings for movies, I don’t get many movies where people are like, “Hey, we’re going to do this $25 million or $35 million movie.” I feel like it’s either like, “Hey we have $2 million,” or “We have $100 million.”
It’s funny though, because Clerks was made for the cost of an inexpensive car.
Yes.
And now it’s like, “How dare they ask for $5 million?!” It’s funny to me.
Yeah, it is. And again, the thing is, it’s great honestly. I’ve read the script and hopefully it all falls into place because honestly it’s amazing. It’s like the first and second one combined with like, I don’t know, like Mallrats. I don’t know. There’s a lot of fun in it and goofiness, just like the second one and the first one, but there’s some seriousness in it. I cried and I laughed out loud, and it’s a really good script. So I hope that it falls into place. I think ideally Kevin is hoping that he does Krampus and then he’ll be able to do Clerks at the end of the year or at the beginning of next year.
I’ve been watching your movies since the beginning and it’s been great watching you guys grow up in those movies, and watching you deal with issues that relate to you when you’re really young, and then relate to you when you’re 30 and trying to figure shit out.
Yeah.
I’m curious to see where you can go now that it’s a few years later. I want to know where you are in your lives and what issues you’re working through.
I mean now, it sounds weird, but for me, I’m not saying it’s “an issue” but it’s definitely a big change for, is of course it’s the sober thing and staying sober. And I’m not saying it’s hard, an issue, but I think the podcast helps. I’ve been going to meetings, I’ve been doing all that. But again, I’ve been working on keeping myself in that place and then being married now, it’s different. Now I can’t just be selfish and think of myself, I had to figure out who I was. We’ve been talking about having kids, but not necessarily yet but in the next year or so I’d like to have a kid. So it’s sort of, again, issues but it’s sort of growing up.
I don’t know, Kevin… he’s had things going. He’s super into, after Red State, doing the podcast and touring with the Groovy Movie and all the different stuff, and now he’s back into of course writing movies. He has Krampus and he has another script he wrote, he has Clerks. I think he’s really diving back in, and now I’m producing this movies with him. Him and my friendship is crazy because over the past three years or four years, we’ve known each other 25 years but we’ve really grown closer.
A good way to explain it is like I feel like he’s always been an older brother to me, because I’ve been you know, I always mess around, messed up with drugs and off drugs and on drugs, and he’s always been like an older brother. In the past four years we’ve been like business partners and best friends, do you know what I’m saying? It’s been interesting. It’s been an interesting journey.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
