MEFCC 2017: Kevin Smith gets truthful about corporate filmmaking and his place in the industry

Director Kevin Smith had little time for the niceties of corporate filmmaking when he appeared live on a video link from LA for a question-and-answer session to close the 2017 Middle East Film and Comic Con on April 8.

"I don't even own my own properties," he said. "Universal owns Mallrats. I wanted to make a TV series but I couldn't. They didn't even know they owned it, it was that important to them.

“Jay and Silent Bob [recurring characters in many of his films, played by Jason Mewes and Smith himself] was lucky – I went to [Hollywood producer] Harvey Weinstein and said I wanted to retain rights to them. He said ‘who?’ – so I got to keep them. I saw him a while ago and he was, like, ‘How’s your Jay and Silent Bob empire?’ It’s fine.”

Smith is clearly not a fan of the “business” part of show business, as his experience on the set of one of the biggest films of recent years proves.

He was only visiting the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens – but was not happy with what happened.

"I was just visiting and they handed you a non-disclosure agreement document," he says. "It basically said don't discuss this or you'll have to give us even more money than Star Wars is already going to make anyway."

As a filmmaker, Smith is probably best known for movies that involve fairly crass humour and dumb gags. Then again, he also made Dogma and Red State (a terrible film, but one in which he at least attempted to move away from the puerile stoner humour), which railed against religion and right-wing politics respectively, so it is perhaps not surprising to find he has little love for the corporate studio system.

“My advice is don’t ever sign your own name if anyone gives you a legal document,” he says.

“I met this guy on [the Star Wars] set, and he’s like: ‘Did you just sign your own name man? Don’t ever do that. I sign Sandra Bullock every time’.

“He might have been one of these off-the -grid conspiracy types, but cool. I just sign as Ben Affleck now.

"I'm not going to talk about [Star Wars] and ruin it for anyone, but this is like a religion to me since I was a child – of course I'm going talk about how amazing it was."

Smith was also candid about his own career, and its possible limitations.

“I’ve never considered myself a director,” he says. “It’s probably the sixth-best thing I do. I’m a writer and I love editing. Editing, basically, gives you a chance to totally rewrite the film.

“I would never write a scene with five people sitting at a table – because I’m lazy and I know how much effort that is to shoot. I like to keep my stuff simple. I call it elegant, but really I just mean simple.

“A lot of people I know are like, ‘I want to win an Oscar’, well I don’t give a **** about that, I just want to get it done.

“I’ve never strived for excellence. I don’t make people do reshoots for 15 hours, I’m just, ‘Is that good enough? Right, it’s good enough, we’re done.’ And that’s done me OK for 25 years.

“I come from the indie filmmaking world. I don’t have time or money for that. I only try to make stuff I know I can pull off.”

Smith had a remarkably succinct way of describing his thoughts on his role as a director or “celebrity”, and his natural place in the world of cinema.

"I'm not that guy that goes, 'I'm gonna make a Star Wars movie'," he says. "My dream is to go see a Star Wars movie."

cnewbould@thenational.ae