Interview. Clerks II.

With Sean Axmaker's night-and-the-following-day interview with Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson, the Dante and Randal of both Clerks and Clerks II, we leave off updating this entry and pick it back up again here.

"[W]hat makes Clerks II both winning and (somewhat unexpectedly) moving is its fidelity to the original Clerks ethic of hanging out, talking trash and refusing all worldly ambition," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "If anything, the sequel is more defiant in its disdain for the rat race, elevating the white-guy-doing-nothing prerogative from a lifestyle choice to a moral principle."

"Is it cosy Gen X nostalgia gone mad?" Nope, decides Kevin Maher in the London Times, "Clerks II is not just some haphazard retreat from failure. It is, instead, a bold and essential move for [Kevin] Smith's career."

The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips: "While the sequel cannot match the original, it's important to remember: The original really was original, a remembrance of things not long past and an evocation of how some of us yakked and daydreamed and spent a misspent young adulthood."

The Stranger's Andrew Wright: "Smith's calculated return to his roots feels, for the most part, like a pre-moldy artifact that has lost most of its freshness or shock value in the era of YouTube and message boards."

Update: Ray Pride introduces the hell out of quite a conversation: "Almost 7,000 loquacious effing words from Kevin Smith about Clerks II and his adventures into growing up, 'interspecies erotica'; how his movie got an R rating on the first pass and why it shouldn't have; how strange it is to share the MGM logo with The Wizard of Oz; the origins of a sexual practice graphically described in the movie, shorthanded as 'ATM'; the story of 'Oh!'; and the famous man who doesn't get Silence of the Lambs references. Swearing, graphic sexual language, and Weinstein Company financial strategies follow, along with third act spoilers."

Update, 7/27: Kevin Smith is bloggin' mad and not gonna take it anymore - now he's irked with an LA Weekly writer.



Posted by dwhudson at July 21, 2006 4:55 AM