The Always-NSFW Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes Catch Up in Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Podcast

With 1994’s Clerks, Kevin Smith opened up the flood­gates for inde­pen­dent­ly pro­duced, micro-bud­get, dia­logue-inten­sive, curs­ing-inten­sive movies by, for, and about a cer­tain stripe of feck­less Generation‑X twen­tysome­thing. These pic­tures show­cased more aggres­sive­ly foul­mouthed (but, in their way, more ener­getic) ver­sions of the over­grown kids and/or stalled adults whose mean­der­ing lives Richard Lin­klater had dra­ma­tized in Slack­er three years before. (Watch Slack­er online here.) Clerks hit when I had­n’t yet grown out of com­ic book-read­ing pre-ado­les­cence, though I do remem­ber becom­ing aware of Smith’s work from an ad on the back of, yes, a com­ic book. The page adver­tised Mall­rats, Smith’s big-bud­get Clerks fol­lowup; in its cor­ner posed a pair of smirk­ing young long­hairs. “Snootchie bootchies,” read an inex­plic­a­ble voice bub­ble ema­nat­ing from the thin­ner of the two. I had to know: who were those guys? The zeit­geist now rec­og­nizes Jay and Silent Bob, the out­ward­ly dumb but star­tling­ly wise drug deal­ers played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith him­self, as hav­ing stolen Clerks’ show. (You can watch one of their fin­er moments in Mall­rats above.)

Smith used the char­ac­ters in Mall­rats as well, and went on to write them into sub­se­quent movies like Chas­ing Amy, Dog­ma, and of course Clerks II and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, their pres­ence uni­fy­ing all these sto­ries into one coher­ent real­i­ty. Cinephiles argue over whether Smith has deliv­ered on his promise as a direc­tor, but some fans think the man has found his true voice as a pod­cast­er. Today, on his own pod­cast net­work, he hosts a stag­ger­ing array of shows, includ­ing SMod­cast, SMoviemak­ers, Hol­ly­wood Bab­ble-On, and Fat Man on Bat­man. Jay and Silent Bob Get Old (Web — iTunes — RSS feed) reunites the 42-year-old Smith and the 38-year-old Mewes for reg­u­lar con­ver­sa­tions about adult­hood, fame, and strug­gles with sobri­ety (in Mewes’ case) and weight (in Smith’s), always fea­tur­ing the most vul­gar jokes imag­in­able. If you haven’t caught up with these guys since the nineties, have a lis­ten to their pod­cast’s so-very-Not-Safe-for-Work first episode above. They’ve even got back into char­ac­ter for Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Car­toon Movie, which begins its road­show across North Amer­i­ca on April 20.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.