/Film reader Mallrat sent in this first bit of behind the scenes footage from Kevin Smith’s upcoming film Zack and Miri Make a Porno (don’t worry Kevin, it’s completely spoiler free from what I can tell). What at first appears just to be a shot of Seth Rogen riding an escalator in Pittsburgh’s Monroeville Mall, actually comes with a much longer story. Smith explains on his insanely entertaining weekly podcast the story of how everything went wrong on the first day of shooting.
“It was the first day of the shoot, we were outside the Monroeville Mall, and we had this whole sequence we were supposed to do outside. We started with cloud cover, which is perfect for what we were doing, then all of a sudden the sun came out, and that kind of fucked us for doing the remainder of the shots of that scene because it wouldn’t match at all… So when that happened, we had to abandon what we were doing and then go to a cover set which mercifully was right inside the mall.”
Producer Scott Moiser’s back up plan went into effect, and the crew moved indoors, to the Black Friday mall setting.
“Problem is, nobody really thought about moving inside, that the cover set means that we’re working in a open mall. It’s not like Mallrats where we’re shooting in a pretty much a closed mall - we did a lot of nights and stuff like that. Some days we worked and it was wide open but not a lot of traffic in that mall. But we’re shooting in the Monroeville Mall after school hours, like after three, four, five o’clock. It’s just a sea of fucking teenagers. And we have Seth Rogen from knocked up and SuperBad, who all these teenagers have seen over the summer. So it’s just a sea of cell phone cameras.” Everyone has a camera now. Shooting away, snapping away, walking up to him, snapping pictures, shooting from above and what not. And we’re shooting the scene which is a walk and talk with Seth and Craig Robinson, the dude from The Office. And people are shooting the scene a long with us on phones and shit. So much so that if our footage was fucked, we could find one of these people and ask if we could use the footage, because we lost the footage.”
Smith explains that shooting in public makes him nervous and somewhat self conscious.
“I hate shooting in public. I hate directing in public. It’s just tough. There are just more elements. It’s like there are people watching. Are they hearing the dialogue? Are they going to go spoil it online? Is that dude looking in the fucking camera? Are we catching that dude in the shot? Yelling during the shoot… there are just all these factors that makes it a pain in the ass. And I just hate directing in public because it’s just like - it’s such a stupid job. People see you doing your job and they are like ‘that’s it? he just sits there in a chair and walks over and says a few things?’ I don’t know, it just feels like a fake job to me.”
You can hear more about the string of bad luck which continued on into the second day of shooting in Episode 44 of the Smodcast.
Disclaimer: It should be noted that we can only assume that the mall sequence shown in the video above coincided with the first day of shooting, as it very well could have been a later shoot. But for the purposes of reprinting Smith’s story, we made the connection.
Photo thanks to Chris DiSabato of Gateway Associated Photographers via News Askew.
February 18th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Has anyone found a schedule of shooting locations? I’d love to be able to check out the set, even if I can’t get in as an extra.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
gah i wanna be in that process
February 18th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Kevin Smith shooting a film in a mall. How novel. Kidding, this film looks great.
February 18th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
YAWWWWWWWNNNNNN…
seriously, when is the last time kevin smith made a decent movie?
February 18th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Jerry: Not only was Clerks 2 on my best of 2006 list, but it got a ten minute standing ovation at Cannes (in front of a very tough audience), and is rated 7.8 out of 10 on imdb.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I nearly cried at the end of Clerks 2. And my theater got a standing ovation, too. Wonderful film.
February 19th, 2008 at 6:34 am
i like your jab at the “spoiler-guy”
February 19th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Kevin Smith sucks. Period. Cheap laughs for dumb people.
February 19th, 2008 at 8:16 am
I mean, really, how impressive is a standing ovation from an auditorium full of fanboy suckups? Most people like Kevin Smith because they think they are supposed to. Like he gives them some kind of street cred or something. Like I said in an ealier post, I watched Clerks II for the first time a couple of weeks ago and the only thing I can remember about it was how incredibly unfunny I thought it was. Seemed like he spent a whole 30 minutes on the script. Fuck Jay, and fuck Silent Bob especially.
February 19th, 2008 at 11:04 am
That is not from the first day of shooting. That’s about 3 weeks in. It was done on January 31st. That was the day that A bunch of View Askew board members were invited to be extras at the mall.
The setting is Monroeville, PA. Zack (Rogen) and Robinson are at the mall on Black Friday. It was extremely fun to be an extra.
For those interested in being extras, head over to nancy mosser’s casting (google it). I don’t know if they’re still asking. If you were an extra any one day, you cannot go again.
I sincerely hope that a fellow boardie didn’t post that. We were asked not to bring cameras.
Hopefully it was just a fan.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
peter,
the problem with kevin smith’s work is his dialogue. every character sounds the same - that is, every character sounds just like kevin smith. and while that was refreshing when ‘clerks’ came out, and fine with chasing amy (one of my fav movies), it just doesn’t work for me anymore.
i haven’t seen clerks II, so i can’t comment on that. but from what i understand, harvey bought this movie on-the-spot when he heard kevin say the title. no treatment, no script. so, forgive me if i’m a bit weary of it.
JS
February 20th, 2008 at 9:28 am
J- If you haven’t even seen the last movie he made, how can you ask when the last time Kevin made a decent movie was? That just doesn’t make sense.
I was an extra in the Monroeville Mall on 2 different days.
We’re in for gooood stuff, my friends.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
KTCV - you got me.
BESIDES the last movie; when was the last good movie kevin smith made?
February 20th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Besides his last movie, he also directed the great pilot for the show Reaper, aside from that, the 2001 comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was one of the best comedy movies of that year, and Dogma before that was also very good (7.3 on imdb).
February 21st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I love every Kevin Smith movie, so if you don’t like them, I’m the wrong person to ask. I love the banter, and the way the conversations flow. They never fail to make me laugh out loud.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Robert, generally audiences at Cannes aren’t made up of “fan-boy suckups”.
We go on opening night.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I used to hang out there a long time ago, was one of those teenagers he refers to, but we had a lot going in that place.