Writer-director Kevin Smith wants everyone to know how sick Harvey Weinstein makes him.
By: Patrick McGuire
Smith recently told Business Insider in an interview that he was surprised to receive a phone call from the controversial movie executive back in the autumn of 2017. As he mentioned, the pair had not spoken since 2008 when they had worked together on the forgettable Zack and Miri Make a Porno, featuring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks. Fourteen years earlier, Weinstein had purchased Smith’s movie Clerks.
“I said, ‘Hey, how are you?’ And he goes, ‘You know, we have ‘Dogma,’ (starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) I just realized, and we got to get it out there again,'” Smith, whose Jay and Silent Bob Reboot will debut in October, told Business Insider.
“I said, ‘We do! People online are always asking where they can get it,'” Smith said. “And he then goes, ‘You know, that movie had a big cast, we might even be able to do a sequel.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah man, right on. I might think about that.’ And he was like, ‘We’ll talk.’ And a week later The New York Times story breaks. I felt sick to my stomach.”
“I don’t know if that call even happened, and if it did, that there was any expectation other than making a creative business decision; it’s what Weinstein was well known for,” Weinstein’s spokesman Juda Engelmayer told Business Insider. “He was starting to circle the wagons,” Smith told Business Insider about Weinstein. “It was him looking to see who was a friend still because his life was about to shift completely. And I used to be a defense guy. I wrote a piece in Variety on how he’s still got the edge when people would go after him like, ‘Harvey’s lost his touch.'”
As Smith said in the interview, “Of all the people who have gripes against that individual — whose name used to be so easier to say — mine is a minor one and doesn’t come close to their real world issues. But the irony of having the one movie that’s about faith and spirituality locked down because of the situation that takes it out of public view is not lost on me.”
He continued, telling Business Insider, “You know, it sounds like he’s got legal bills. referring to Weinstein’s upcoming trial in January for rape and sexual assault charges. “That’s an asset you can sell to somebody.”
