Clerks (1994) was a simple, grainy black-and-white indie movie about slackers working in and hanging out at a convenience store in urban-wasteland New Jersey, written, produced, and directed by 24-year old film student Kevin Smith (who happened to be working at a convenience store at the time). That minimalist beginning spun into the Askewniverse, a complex, interconnected, endlessly self-referential series of movies, tv shows, comic books,video games, and everything else imaginable, starring the same group of actors mostly playing the same characters.
Askewniverse mainstays Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith) began as standard stoners, smoking or selling marijuana, hitting on ladies, and being idiots. As the movies, animated tv series, comic books, music videos, and cameos multiplied, they moved into more bizarre terrain: they avert Armageddon and meet God, become the prophets of God, try to sabotage a film that depicted their characters badly, become the comic book characters Bluntman and Chronic, sit on the Jedi Council in the Star Wars universe, and help Santa Claus make toys.
They were intensely homophobic, littering their speech with "that's gay, dude," insulting guys by suggesting that they have gay sex, rejecting ladies who have had lesbian sex, being attacked by gangs of evil lesbians, starting gay rumors to humiliate their enemies. They even subdued a villain by tricking him into going into a gay bar, where he would be gang-raped by the evil gays. Granted, Jay sometimes mentioned an attraction to men, but Silent Bob's look of utter disgust silenced him.
Kevin Smith always claimed that he was parodying homophobia, not promoting it. I didn't agree. So I've seen only a few of his movies, not enough to really understand most of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019).
It's been 20 years since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), and the stoner dude couple is way old -- "the oldest guys I've ever met," still hanging out at the long-boarded up convenience store, selling weed. When they discover that their characters are being co-opted in a new Kevin Smith movie, they decide to go to a Bluntman and Chronic fan convention in Hollywood to stop it. On the way, they discover that Jay has an 18-year old daughter, Millenium Faulkon (a Star Wars reference). They join her deliberately diverse girl-power posse (a Syrian refugee, a deaf African-American, and a Chinese podcaster), who have reasons of their own for going to the convention.
The adventures, by turns touching and ludicrous, probably reflect scenes from the previous movies.
On the way, Jay learns what it means to be a Dad (and Silent Bob learns what it means to be a Dad's heterosexual life partner). There are two speeches about how family is everything: "When you have a child, your story ends and theirs begins." Or, as Jay says during the final crisis, "I don't mind dying today, because I know a little piece of me will live on in my daughter."
The guys don't chase any ladies -- that part of their lives is over (although the female manager of a fast-food joint drags Silent Bob into the restroom for sex). The gangs of evil gays have vanished, and so have the homophobic slurs, except for an occasional suggestion that an enemy "sit on a dick." There are many suggestions that Jay and Silent Bob are having sex, but they deny it, "except for that one time," and of course masturbating together. They meet two lesbian couples without recoiling in horror, and Justin Long's character seems to be gay -- he gives them his Grindr screen name.
There are cameos from nearly everyone in the Askewniverse, playing either their characters or themselves, or both, plus some recognizable 1990s tv stars: Brian O' Halleran, Jason Lee, Val Kilmer, Tommy Chong, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon (top photo), Jason Biggs, Keith Coogan (who is looking more and more like his grandfather, Jackie Coogan, Uncle Fester on The Addams Family)
All of them are shockingly old, grizzled, chunky, not at all the teen hunks and muscular leading men we remember from the 1990s. Their world is gone; their stories are over; it's time for the next generation to take over.
No doubt the new Askewniverse will be more diverse and gay-positive.
Did you ever see "Chasing Amy" (1997) Kevin Smith more"mature" comedy about the life long bromance between Holden (ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) is challenged when Holden falls for Alyssa ( Joey Lauren Adams). There is a gay character in that one and one nice unexpected male bro kiss.
ReplyDeleteNo, but they mention it in this movie. The lesbian character -- or actress -- is now in a same-sex relationship, and Holden -- or Ben Affleck (I often couldn't tell if they were playing the characters or themselves) has named his daughter Amy, so he's still "chasing Amy," so to speak.
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