In 1995, Kevin Smith debuted his indie film “Clerks,” at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie, which told the story of two bored Jersey cashiers, was an influential hit, introducing us to the world of Jay and Silent Bob, and kicked off a career that would produce many more films and inspire even more aspiring writers and directors to come.
Now, two decades after Smith shook up the world, the New Jersey filmmaker will have his story told by Vancouver producer Felix Kay (who has worked with James Franco’s Rabbit Bandini Productions), director/writer Christopher Downie, from Scotland, and producer Brett Murray, from New Jersey (who have both worked with Kevin Smith’s YouTube channel SModCo Internet Television), to create “Shooting Clerks” a Kevin Smith biopic.
While the idea of a Kevin Smith biopic might sound crazy on paper, it’s really pretty smart. Smith was just a normal New Jersey nerd who risked everything by maxing out credit cards, and cashing in favours to make a $27,000 movie on his own. That movie, Clerks, became a hit and shot the director into the public eye. He went on to make genre classics like Chasing Amy, Dogma and even produce an Oscar-winning film in Good Will Hunting. That’s just the start of Smith’s story, which is a unique, interesting take on a tried and true arc.
The team, Kay, Downie, and Murray, known as “the SMod Squad” has been working closely with Smith, long time friend and filmmaker Scott Mosier, and other original “Clerks” cast members, to detail the struggles that Smith went through to make his own first film possible.
“We felt this was the logical conclusion, to shoot a feature length biographical film,” Downie, who first saw Smith’s “Dogma” after buying it used at Blockbuster when he was 13, told TheWrap.com “The story of how Kevin became a filmmaker is one that I’ve been fascinated by for years and I always saw it as a movie. I was just fed up waiting for someone to make it.”
Smith has officially endorsed the project, and agreed to provide narration for the film, as well as play a small role as Harry Weizmann, the Hollywood CEO who buys the film.
Still, given Smith’s busy schedule, with his new horror flick “Tusk” currently in post-production, and his plans on shooting “Clerks III” at the end of this year – he is confident his “SMod Squad” is fully capable of bringing the project to light at Sundance in 2015.
Parts of the upcoming film “Shooting Clerks” is set to film in Vancouver sometime in June.
Keep up to date with the Kevin Smith Biopic “Shooting Clerks” on social media.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/shootingclerks
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3449200/
Twitter: @FLOSproductions
Twitter: @TheFelixKay