I pretty much have my cool about me when I meet celebrities. Kevin Smith is on my shortlist of celebrities that I would turn into a babbling drooling loser over if I ever had the chance to meet him. I daresay I have a hetero-mancrush on Smith and for a million reasons. The guy has dabbled in so many types of movies that all appeal to me on a deep level save one – Science Fiction.
Well it looks like Smith will be taking a shot at scifi in a Father/Son relationship story.
The film will reference other sci-fi movies and revolves around a father-son relationship. Smith has nodded to the genre in his earlier work, which includes “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” and the fantasy comedy “Dogma,” but has never made a sci-fi film.
Smith said he’s looking forward to exploring new character dynamics as well as outer space.
“All the relationships in the flicks I’ve done before have been either a guy falling for a girl or two dudes hanging out in a ‘bromantic’ comedy,” he said. “I wanted to explore a father and son.”
The indie-minded Smith is aiming for a budget in the $45 million-$50 million range, which would be his biggest to date.
This might be why Hollywood just loves this guy. His budgets look minuscule (still more money than I will ever see) compared to the Rush Hours, Spidermans and Supermans out there. Smith has his hits and misses, but he is never in shortage of offers or work.
I would really dig seeing a scifi movie that is simply scifi for atmosphere and focus on a relationship story. In most relationship movies writers just seem to say “this isn’t about spaceships” so they just toss it in New York and call it dramatic realism. I think there can be a great dynamic to having a dramatic story set in space for no reason other than to say people won’t have to stop having relationships just because we live on the moon.
That being said, I would also love to see some scifi epic with Smith in charge. Sometimes I look at movies and do my armchair analysis (not film school or trained) and feel that I could do better. We all do it. I think Kevin Smith does the same thing. Watch his clip about being asked to write a treatment for Superman (Giant Fucking Spider) and how he calls bullshit on the stuff that doesn’t work.
No one is saying he is perfect =coughjerseygirlcough= but he has more geek of the flavour of you and I than some people who get hired for movies that are intended to appeal to the geeks.
Its about time Smith does SciFi.
