Filmmaker Kevin Smith has had his highs and lows over his 30 year career. But no one can dispute his impact on pop culture.

His life (the good, the bad and the ugly) is celebrated in a new documentary called Clerk, directed by his friend and fellow filmmaker, Torontonian Malcolm Ingram.

Our Bonnie Laufer caught up with Kevin Smith over Zoom to relive some memories.

Clerk is available on VOD and Digital on February 1st.

ORIGINAL-CIN: I have been interviewing you and covering your films from day one with Clerks, so we go way back. I was watching this documentary and I loved going down memory lane with you. But I was getting quite emotional. I can't even imagine what this process was like for you?

KEVIN SMITH: Thankfully, It was in capable hands. If I had to make a documentary about my own life, it just wouldn't have happened. I'm too close to it.

My friend, Malcolm Ingram who directed the movie is from Toronto. I met him in Toronto at the Film Festival back in 1994 when we were showing Clerks. Malcolm was able to line it all up and I truly commend him on what he accomplished.

Yeah, it was very ambitious. My first question to him was, “What part are you going to tell?” He immediately replied, “The whole thing.” I was like, “How do you tell the whole thing?” but he found a way to do it.

So to answer your question, I cry at pretty much everything, even when I watch The Flash. So, it's no stretch to say that everytime I watch the documentary I get crazy emotional. Mercifully, we had a storyteller who could focus on actually telling a story as opposed to getting lost in the detail or emotion of it, which I absolutely would have done.

O-C: Well, as you said you were way too close to it. There is no way you could have been objective.

SMITH: This is going to be embarrassing to admit but like, sometimes I'll wake up, at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and I can't fall back to sleep.

So, I just smoke weed, and watch the documentary and get so removed from it that I can root for that kid. And I'm like, “Oh, I hope everything works out for this guy Kevin Smith! My God, he's so earnest. He really does believe in this stuff!”

O-C: It looked to me that really nothing was left out or off limits. Your entire career from Clerks to what you are doing today is addressed in the film. Was there a big discussion before this all started where you made it clear you were a complete open book?

SMITH: Nothing was off limits as far as I was concerned. Malcolm and Sean (editor Sean Stanley) sifted through everything. There was all the footage of the movies and previous interviews and then you're going to have talking heads from people.

But the footage of me alone, I think they got about 25 hours of me talking! It amazed me how they actually got through it all

When I watched the movie for the first time I was sure there was going to be some stuff missing.

In the end, there were two things that I felt were missing, but you totally could have told the story without it.

But as I rewatched it, I was like, I don't know. When we were making the flick, Malcolm said to me, I'm not going to ask about Harvey Weinstein and I was like, “How do you not ask about Harvey, man, especially now? Now that we know everything about him and what he’s done.”

Malcolm’s reaction was, “Fuck that guy. He made his choices. His life is not your life and you shouldn't have to ruin your movie by referencing him and I'm not going to mention him.”

So we made the movie and when I watched the first cut, I only had two notes. I said Malcolm, I cried watching this film, it’s beautiful. Yeah, you fucking nailed it. But, we need to put in more stuff about my dad because my dad is the linchpin. He’s the reason I wound up making films.

I knew what the philosophy was about leaving Harvey off the table. But I felt like we were ignoring the elephant in the room. I felt if somebody watches this, they're going to be, like, “What a whitewash. Why aren’t they mentioning the Weinsteins,?” They did produce my films.

I told Malcolm that we should go back and add in stuff about Harvey, even if he just plopped it in the middle somewhere. Sadly, this mothereffer had something to do with my films, and we couldn't ignore that. This led to a huge fight between me and Malcoln. We fought many times. we’re very close, but we had a different kind of fight which was about the content.

O-C: I totally see Malcom’s point of view. But you were right. The guy produced your films. You just can’t ignore that.

SMITH: Putting Harvey in, even if it’s just a mention, I felt would make the film foolproof. As Malcolm and I were arguing over it I realized that Malcolm stopped being my friend. He was Malcolm, my filmmaker. I forgot that I was dealing with two people here. Not just my friend, but the filmmakers as well.

So we butted heads and didn't talk for a while. We had a big fight about it and then finally kind of came around to it where I explained to him that I wasn't trying to take over, I just want to put this in so that nobody says that you whitewashed me and left out the bad parts.

It was the only time during the process of making the documentary that we butted heads and when I realized I always had to respect the fact that he had a vision to get the entire story in there and it's a long story with a lot of twists and turns and a lot of projects.

I trusted him the whole way but this was the one place where I just needed to say, let me help you help yourself and my story in the process, but it worked out.

O-C: You have had many triumphs throughout your career, but also many low points. Where does your confidence come from? When you were at such a low point you picked yourself up and rebranded yourself and made it work?

SMITH: First, I have to admit defeat in the short-term. Defeat in the long term is a different beast altogether. And that's something you only learned with a long career.

After the huge access of Clerks, Mallrats came out in 1995 and tanked. I thought my career was over. Now, so many years later Mallrats is one of my most celebrated films, after Clerks.

I was there for the whole Mallrats experience and from cradle to grave and now for its resurrection and it's crazy. I couldn't have predicted it. All you can do is lean into it.

If you look at my career, particularly in the beginning, Clerks happens and instantly we set up the next thing which was Mallrats and before Mallrats came out we had set up the next thing which was Chasing Amy.

And thank God we did. Because if we had tried to setup Chasing Amy after Mallrats tanked, nobody would have given me the time of day! So I've learned, it was always making sure that I covered the future.

With Clerks I didn't believe in my talent enough to be like, all right, this is my manifest. Now. It's just going to keep happening. I'd read too many stories about first-time filmmakers who were celebrating, and then the sophomore jinx kicks in and I was desperate to avoid it.

But I did not avoid it by any stretch of the imagination. WIthin the first two years of my career, I learned to be overpraised and loved it. And I learned to be over beaten. Be the whipping boy, and I realized the truth was probably somewhere in between.

Take it for what it’s worth. Clerks isn't as brilliant as some people made it out to be and Mallrats Isn't the garbage some people made it out to be. It’s been a difficult ride, but I have learned from every triumph and every mistake.

O-C: Plus with age and experience comes plenty of wisdom!

SMITH: Oh, for sure. The older you get the easier it gets. For example, when Yoga Hosers came around, everyone hated it.

Then I go, ‘Wait a second! This is familiar, this is Mallrats. This is Jersey Girl. If I just wait 10-20 years it’s going to find its audience and nobody but me will remember what happened at the box office.

It sounds so stupid and facile, but just get up, dust yourself off. You make another thing just keep on making things and then one day you drop dead.

O-C: Well, thank god you didn’t after that heart attack scare. After going through this whole process and watching this back, what did you learn about yourself that you never realized before? What was your big “Aha!” moment?

SMITH: Honestly? It was that I wanted to be famous. If you would ask me about young Kevin Smith, he's a completely different creature and beast. I love him to death but I could always speak about him as he's a completely different person.

I don't know where the kid found the confidence to think he could get away with all this, but he did. And now I live his life because of that. If you had asked me prior to the documentary I probably would have a whole different answer.

I remember me in the beginning of my career. I was so serious and people would meet me and be like, “Are you sure you made Clerks? Because you're so self-serious!”

I thought that I was an earnest artist. But when you watch the doc, there’s a video of me that opens the film that I made when i was a kid. And I'm talking to my parents in that video, and I say, “Maybe I can bring fame to this family name.” And then I quickly go, “Although that's not important.”

But at that moment, when I watched the doc, I leaned forward because I was like, wait a second. Not only did that motherfucker plan for Clerks, he was planning for THIS Incarnation. I thought that I was something that I did along the way, not young Kevin Smith, who made Clerks.

I built on the success of young Kevin Smith and figured it out. I could be an art project. I'm going to be me for a living. THAT kid already had fucking ideas about it right at the beginning and I'll never understand.

I know that boy, Bonnie, I knew him insanely well. I was that boy and I don't understand why he thought he could do this. To this day, I still do not get it and I've seen it work. I cannot explain the fucking vote of confidence that he suddenly had, just because he saw a movie called Slacker. That just goes to show you how powerful a film can be in someone’s ife.

O-C: I guess you could say you literally owe your career to (Slacker director) Richard Linklater?

SMITH: That’s an understatement! He changed my life. I am so glad he agreed to do an interview for the documentary. Forever indebted to him! (Laughs)

O-C: I have to know, what did you initially see in Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to cast them so early in their careers?

SMITH: I knew Ben before I knew Matt. Ben just vouched for Matt, who as we all know is such a lovely guy. He was so well raised.

HIs mom is a teacher, and oddly enough, when I went on to work on Masters of the Universe for Netflix, his mom was one of the first people that pointed out that the toys were bad because they're just teaching kids violence.

I liked Matt when I met him, but Ben really talked him up even though there was no need.

Ben I fell in love with while we we're making Mallrats because of who he was on set. He was just an absolute delight and he remains that person to this day.

Ben is hands down one of the funniest people I've ever met. He's incredibly educated, very erudite, but not snobby in any way. His mom is also a teacher so he was raised well. We just connected and he spoke my language and he was so business savvy.

One of our first conversations was when he came in for the audition. I congratulated him because I had read in the trades that he had sold the script for Good Will Hunting and made almost a million bucks.

And he was like, “You read that?” And I was like, “Yeah, I think it is important to know about our business and I read all of the trades!”

He was funny, self-deprecating to a fault, and had a lot of my personality and I was just really impressed by him.

When he left to shoot Good Will Hunting in Los Angeles, he even wrote me a little thank-you note for letting him go and make his film with Matt.

I think he gets a bum rap. But I can tell you that he was and still is a stand-up guy.

O-C: You have so much going on but we are going to get Clerks III sometime this year! What can you tell us about it?

SMITH: Well.. Ben’s in it!

O-C: Of course he is! Will there be a Jersey Girl reunion? A cameo from Jennifer?

SMITH: No, I don't have a Jennifer cameo. There is a Jennifer in the movie, but not that Jennifer. (Laughs)

But believe me, there was a moment there when they got back together I was like, should I ask her to drop in? But quickly changed my mind, we already sang that tune once before.

Well, it’s pretty much done and I just showed it to Adam Goldberg, the guy who makes The Goldbergs. He does what I try to do with my work. He makes you laugh and then he grabs you by the heart in the third act.

So he came over to watch. He’s been engaged with my career since he was in film school. He's a little younger than me and he was going to NYU when Clerks hit. He kept track of my career and we just connected and became good pals.

So he came over to watch the flick, and when I came upstairs, all he could say was, “This is an incredibly emotional movie. I don't know how you did it, I laughed like crazy, but the whole last half hour of the movie is incredibly emotional.”

There's this weird effect that the movie has because of the characters, their age, and mainly because this is the third iteration of Clerks.

I've noticed it now in all of our screenings, this weird transference with the cross section of the audience where you stop looking at them, and you start thinking about you and your relationship to them, and how long they've been in your life.

People get oddly emotional, actually teary and stuff. So Adam wasn't expecting that and got really taken aback at how emotional he got. He gave me the best review that I've loved so far that I've gotten on any movie. He said, and I quote, “This film is better than any Clerks movie has a right to be!”

I was like, wow, put that on the poster. So in the fall, we'll be out on tour with Clerks III, and you can bet Toronto will be at the top of the list!

Original-Cin Q&A: Kevin Smith on his Bio-Doc, a Fight Over Harvey Weinstein and 'Being Me For a Living'

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