The rise and fall and rise of Kevin Smith's <em>Mallrats</em>

This time around, however, the film boasted a cast of "proper" actors including Jason London, Jason Lee, Shannen Doherty, Ben Affleck, Claire Forlani, and Michael Rooker as well as Jason Mewes and Smith, reprising their Clerks roles of Jay and Silent Bob. Released in October 1995, Mallrats was savaged by critics — Roger Ebert declared it "sad" — and barely made $2 million, less than the far cheaper Clerks. He said, "It’s a shame that Miramax bought Clerks, because I was going to buy it for Universal." I said, "Oh, that would have been great." He said, "Yeah, I would have let you keep 75 percent of the movie." And I said, "75?" And he said, "Nobody f---s a a dead guy in a Universal movie." And I said, "Fair enough." So, he goes, "What are you doing next?" And I said, "We’re thinking of doing a movie called Mallrats." And he was like, "What’s that?" And I said, "Clerks, but in a mall." He goes, "You’re going to come out to Hollywood, because Disney&apos;s going to fly you out, that&apos;s what they do. So, when Jason was done with his audition, Don Phillips was like, "Do you want him to come back?" And me and Scott Mosier (Smith&apos;s regular producer) were like, "Well, he&apos;s a really good guy, I don’t think he’s right for the part, but bring him back, because he’s fun to talk to." We kept bringing him back because we didn’t know anybody in Los Angeles and we just thought he was a nice guy. But he came out and absolutely crushed, man, and he was a delight.I remember Jim Jacks, the producer, said, "There’s a guy coming in today and I don’t want him in the movie." I said, "Who is it?" And he goes, "Ben Affleck. He was in Dazed and Confused and he&apos;s got a real potty mouth." He goes, "There were a lot of ‘f---s’ and curses in that script already and then Ben threw in like hundreds more." So, I said, "Well, there’s a lot of cursing in our script." He goes, "Yeah, and if you bring this guy in, he’ll keep adding more curses, so I don’t want him in the movie, he&apos;s got a potty mouth." I said, "Okay." So, Ben came in and the day he auditioned was the day they announced the sale of Good Will Hunting to Castle Rock. I said, "Why are you auditioning for this movie, man?" And he&apos;s like, "I still want to act!" I was like "Alright, man, let’s see what you got." He was big. Universal wanted either Seth Green or Breckin Meyer as Jay. I said, "Yeah, but the part of Jay is based on this guy Jay and he played Jay in Clerks." They were like, "Well, that’s not really acting." I remember Breckin and Seth felt awkward about having to audition for Jay’s part because they were like, "He’s really funny in that Clerks movie, I don’t want this part." Ultimately, Jay had to come prove himself and audition multiple times. You&apos;ve got to remember, this was the first time I had made a movie with others. The first time we made a movie with a budget, that was Mallrats, that was where we learned what the rest of our lives would be like. We weren&apos;t wrong, we were just early." I go, "What does that mean?" He goes, "You’ll see, this movie’s funny, it’s just we were a little bit too early with it."KS: He was absolutely right.