Mr. Smith, you once said that you don’t even want to win awards — you’re just happy to be having fun, making movies with your friends. Is that true?
(Laughs) Honestly, it's half true! But I want the Oscar shout out when you drop dead and you’re in that memorial video. That's my best chance at getting on the Oscars. And by that point, it's all bittersweet. I mean, look, I love the Academy Awards, when I was a kid, I was a pop culture fan, I loved finding out what's been nominated. But it never seemed like any place I'd ever be, and I still feel that way. So yeah, I do feel like my best shot is when I drop dead and they'll probably show a clip from Clerks. And that’ll be the night when, for like 30 seconds, people reconsider me. But no, I never entered this business, or thought about making any art because I want somebody to give me an award for it. I don’t care about the trophy, I wanted to be seen.
What do you mean by seen?
I just wanted to be seen, to be heard, to be understood. I’ve always said, the three most important things to us as human beings: food, sex, and to be heard. Those are the things we crave the most, that give us a sense of community, of warmth, of belonging.
Do you feel seen these days as a filmmaker?
Absolutely. With all my movies, I feel seen in one way or another, even when people hate them, because it's like, well… They saw it. (Laughs)
“Film and TV is so slick and well-made, and I just don’t belong there. My stories are not fanciful, they’re personal to me and they wouldn’t exist without me.”
Does it help that your films are so personal and often draw from your own life and experiences?
It’s funny when people are writing about me, they’ll say, “This is his most personal movie to date,” and I can't argue with that. But at the same time, they've all been personal because I'm not very creative or inventive, so I do just steal from my real life and go from there. With Clerks, what I had was the location, it was a movie that was born location first, I had access to the Quick Stop because I worked there, so I thought, “Okay, I’ll make a movie about being here.” Me and my friends bought this movie theater Smodcastle Cinemas Atlantic Highlands, and I was like, “Okay, I have this theater, I have a location, it looks old as shit so I’ll make a period piece set in 1986.” And that’s how The 4:30 Movie was born, you know, the story of my youth, my first date at the theater where I spent most of my childhood.
It’s definitely an almost universally relatable experience, even if it wasn’t based at a movie theater, we all have a special place we spent loads of time at growing up.
Right, we’ve all got our town square. So I think that's why some people gravitate toward what I've done. It’s sort of like… You know when you watch the Olympics and you see somebody who maybe isn't as good as everybody else there, but you think, “Oh, that kid's got a lot of heart.” That's me. I've always been the heart player, which is nice way of saying, he shouldn't be there — but he is. You watch most film and TV and it’s so slick and well-made, and I just don’t belong there. That’s for better people than me to do. My stories are not fanciful, they’re small stories, they’re personal to me and they wouldn’t exist without me.
Apparently seeing the Linklater film Slacker for the first time is what made you realize that films don’t have to have big stories, that nothing really even needs to happen.
You’ve got to care about minutiae! I remember reading a review for Pretty in Pink that said, “Sometimes you just want to kick back in a movie where the biggest crisis is whether or not they're going to go to the prom.” That always stuck with me. And I was a kid, that was in 1986, but that review stuck with me because it was like somebody gave me permission in that film review that a movie could be about something as universal, as basic, as banal as a date. Take what’s relatable and make it universal… That's kind of what I've tried to do my whole life. That's what most of us as filmmakers try to do. And I think I've learned on The 4:30 Movie more than any of my other films.
“My job is just: here I am going through all the effort of trying to recreate a moment that most people have had in their life. That’s the joy of it, man.”
Why is that?
Well, this is the first movie I've done in a long time where I wasn't stoned, you know, the whole time I was crisp, clear, wide awake, and for the first time, I was on the set driving. I wasn’t a passenger in my own car letting the other guy drive. I was driving and I realized what my job is. I've had these moments that happened to me in real life that were transformative, wonderful, emotional, and quiet — and they shaped who I was and what became my job. And I realized that we go through all this trouble, create all this artifice, ask people to pretend to be somebody they're not, put them in costumes and get millions of dollars just to go and capture a moment so that I can present it to the audience and be like, “This happened to me. Anything like this ever happen to you? Do you feel this like? Does this hit you?” My job is just: here I am going through all the expense and the effort of trying to recreate a moment that most people have had in their life. That's the joy of it, man.
Does it worry you that your “everyday life” films are competing against big studio films?
Of course there's a movie business, and they seem to be having fun. But it doesn’t mean you can't have fun too. There's a professional hockey league, but it doesn't mean you and your friends can't have a pickup game of hockey. I hope my work is letting other people know that if I can do this, you can do this too. Express yourself, go out there, and do it. I live in an era where that is the case with TikTok, YouTube, even Twitter and Instagram. It’s a nation of people that express themselves. We live in a world that I dreamed about when I was a kid. And I'm not saying I helped bring it about, but I really feel like being honest, being authentic, showing people your journey, not hiding it… It’s more useful to be real.
So you have hope for the future of independent, small-scale filmmaking?
There will always be space for these kinds of films, so long as you make space for yourself. The key to my job for 30 years in this business, has not been waiting for somebody to tell me I could do a thing. It's been nice when I have and somebody was like, “Here's some money. Go do a thing.” But if I waited for like, a studio or waited for the market to tell me that I could do a thing, I never would have done anything! Sometimes you just have to do it.