Kevin Smith

With friend and producer Scott Mosier and their production company, View Askew, Smith has since continued to write and direct cutting edge independent films such as “Mallrats” and “Chasing Amy,” for which Smith won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Smith’s fourth motion picture, “Dogma,” a satiric comedy parable about two fallen angels also featuring Jay and Silent Bob, was the second most successful independent film of 1999, behind “The Blair Witch Project.” The film garnered Smith another Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He then made a fifth foray in the View Askew universe with “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” He most recently directed “Jersey Girl” starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

In addition to his directing credits, Smith also co-executive produced with Mosier the Academy Award winning film “Good Will Hunting” as well as four low-budget, first-film efforts (including Bryan Johnson’s “Vulgar”) and a pair of Sundance-selected documentaries (“Reel Paradise” and “Small Town Gay Bar.”)

Smith also wrote and directed the animated version of “Clerks” which aired on ABC-TV and is now available on DVD. An avid comic book fan, Smith is the proud owner of two comic book stores, both named Jay and Bob’s Comic Stash, in Westwood, California and Red Bank, New Jersey. He has written comic books featuring not only his own characters (the multiple-printed Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob), but also legendary mainstays of the superhero world (the award-winning Daredevil and Spider-Man and the Black Cat at Marvel Comics, and the award-winning Green Arrow at DC Comics), and written a monthly column for UK based Arena Magazine.

Among his other projects, Smith collaborated with indie film guru John Pierson on his book Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes, a chronicle of the last ten years in the world of low/no budget film. He is also is the author of the best-selling book Silent Bob Speaks, a collection of essays he’s written over the years, that saw multiple printings by Talk/Miramax Books.

Smith was one of the first filmmakers to venture into cyberspace, establishing the insanely popular View Askewniverse website (www.viewaskew.com) in the mid-nineties, which in turn spawned a bevy of other Smith-centric sites, including his online diary entitled “My Boring-Ass Life”, found at www.silentbobspeaks.com.

The Weinstein Company