Post by Chainsaw on Jun 6, 2007 15:42:13 GMT -5
oldschool712 said:
I love this anecdote that Kevin Smith tells about making the film:For months, I’d impressed upon Mewes the importance of learning all of his lines in advance, as this time around, we were gonna have real actors in the flick.
“What, like Ben?” Mewes asked.
“I said REAL actors,” I corrected. “Like Alan Rickman.”
“Who’s that?”
“The guy from ‘Die Hard’.”
“Bruce Willis?”
“No, man the other guy.”
“The ‘Yippie-kay-ay Mothersmurfer’ guy?”
“That’s Alan Rickman.”
“What’s so special about him??
“He’s British. And Brits invented acting. So he won’t put up with any of your ‘Snootchie Bootchies’ bullcrap. He’ll tear you up if you’re not excellent, because he’s Alan smurfing Rickman. So you’ve gotta know all your lines. We can’t be asking people to leave the set because you’re nervous, like we did on ‘Clerks’. This crap’s serious - because Rickman will go ballistic if he smells blood in the water. You’ve gotta come correct.”
So naturally, I was pretty nervous when Jason and I sat down for our first, Pittsburgh-based, one-on-one “Dogma” rehearsal, and the boy was script-less.
“Where’s your smurfing script, jerk?” I sighed.
“I don’t need it.”
“You don’t need your script for rehearsals. Right. Take mine and let’s get going.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t need it. Go ahead. Try me.”
So I turned to the first Jay and Silent Bob scene and fed him Bethany’s lines, and without looking at my script, Mewes delivered Jay’s lines in a letter-perfect fashion.
“Alright, so you’ve got the first scene down,” I allowed. “Let’s mix it up and try a scene from later in the flick.”
So I fed him his lead-in lines from the church exterior scene, and Mewes spits out the Jay responses without hesitation.
“You memorized all your lines already?!” I demanded, shocked.
“Uh-huh.”
“All of ‘em?!”
“Yeah. Everyone else’s, too.”
“Yeah, right”
“Try me.”
I read him Loki’s lines from a Jay-less scene, and amazingly, he responded with Bartleby’s lines. I was dumbfounded, to say the least.
“You memorized ALL the lines in the script?!?!”
“Even the girl parts.”
“What’re you, smurfing ‘Rain Man’?! Why’d you memorize the whole goddamn script?!”
“I don’t wanna piss off that Rickman dude.”
Best story ever, especially the part about the British inventing acting.