These days, porn is on everyones mind it seems. From wholesome young kids in school, middle aged working women joking at the office, to creepy old perverted men working lonely 3rd shift security jobs. So why should Kevin Smith be any different?
Kevin Smith is the writer/director of Clerks I & II and many other funny, successful flicks. He tells the average males down & out loser stories better than most, and has an empathy for that kind of character.
So it is of no surprise that his latest flick, "Zak and Miri make a porno", a 25 million dollar budgeted feature from the Weinstein Co. is going into production January 2008 in Pittsburgh Penn.
kevin calls it "a love story. Zak and Miri just want to make a good old-fashioned dirty movie because they are in deep financial trouble and need to raise money fast.”
The film will star Seth Rogen (knocked up) and Elizabeth Banks (The 40 year old virgin) along with Jason Mewes (kevin's long time side kick "Jay" from Clerks I and II and Jay and Silent Bob go to hollywood fame). There are several other key pieces of casting not yet revealed. Kevin Smith stated: “I can’t wait to reveal the rest of the cast. A key piece of the puzzle just fell into place yesterday, and it’s a genius bit of casting. This is gonna be fun”.
Is this movie a gamble? I think not. Porn is everywhere. Porn is legitimate. It's not something dirty, hidden under your uncles bed anymore. Porn has become so acceptable to the masses that the average person can talk openly about it at the office, or see references to it on network television on a daily basis. This is all thanks to the Internet, which from day one, has fed the porn hungry masses and has brought hardcore pornography into practically everybody's homes.
kevin never hid his love of porn. Starting from Clerks I, with the video clerk ordering despicable porn titles such as anal rump rangers in front of a horrified women patron, to Clerks II where they put on a full blown donkey porn show. Porn references were always littered through out his scripts. Anyone that was paying attention could see where he was heading with all of this.
If anyone can pull this off, a main stream, big budget flick about porn, Kevin Smith just might be the man to do it. He has the average mans sensibilities. He knows how to speak to, and reach his audience. With this movie, Kevin has just decided to take his love of porn and the average persons love of porn, to the next logical step.
Is this the first big budget mainstream porn movie to reach the masses? No... It has been done before: National Lampoon's "Barely Legal" released in 2005 was about 3 high schoolers that made their own porn and it did alright business, but it wasn't a huge success.
The Weinstein brothers are no dummy's. They know the time is right to make a blockbuster out of a main stream movie about porn, and Kevin Smith is the perfect director to help bring it all together.
This does bum me out a little, because I have been threatening to make a mainstream comedy about the porn world for years. Leave it to Kevin Smith to beat Craig Amabello to the punch.... But he has far more experience and skill at these things than I do. This is what I get for sitting on my ass and not actually getting to work on MY script and start shooting MY own movie about the porn world..... A world in which I am most intimately acquainted.... But I'm sure there's room for several blockbuster movies about porn and I am hoping that mine will be one of them!
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