Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Directed by Kevin Smith
Lifelong platonic friends Zack and Miri look to solve their respective cash-flow problems by making an adult film together. As the cameras roll, however, the duo begin to sense that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought.
24 connections found
View:
24 films that influenced Zack and Miri Make a Porno
What critics say influenced Zack and Miri Make a Porno
After convincing fellow coffeehouse counterman Delaney (Craig Robinson) to spend his money on a film as the producer instead of on a flat-screen, they put together a motley assortment of actors, aka a cast, a cameraman, build sets and plan a plot and characters around "Star Wars."
They begin with an eroticized reinvention of Star Wars, which remains one of Smith’s most exhaustively referenced obsessions.
I expected Star Wars or similar sci-fi debates amongst underachieving nerds; crassly inventive, testosterone-fueled trash talk I might require a translator to decipher; and the sometimes soft center that lies beneath the adolescent exteriors of the potty-mouth master’s characters.
True to form, Smith can be indulgent here, leading to the odd dry stretch (a tiresome geek-out digression into Star Wars porn, for one).
They are so committed to this project, which begins its life as a Star Wars parody (this is a Kevin Smith movie, after all) before morphing into a multiple-partners marathon set in a Starbucks-style coffee joint, they decide to perform the film's centerpiece sex scene.
To that end, the crew's first attempt is called "Star Whores" — "Star Wars" being a favorite subject of Smith.
Having gone soft with Jersey Girl (which is looking better all the time) only to regroup by remaking Clerks solely for the diehards, Smith here rounds up Judd Apatow 's familiars (Rogen, Banks, Craig Robinson , The 40-Year-Old Virgin's Gerry Bednob ), pairs them with his own regulars ( Jason Mewes , Jeff Anderson ) plus Traci Lords , and puts "Porno" in the title.
He is yet another version of the slackers that Rogen has been turning out since Judd Apatow cast him as one of Steve Carell's feckless friends in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
There's no Jay and Silent Bob (although Jay, Jason Mewes, does appear in another role), the film is more polished (Smith used to just throw his actors in front of the camera, but now seems to be making the effort to actually set up shots), and it even steals most of its cast from Apatow's movies -- from Rogen and Banks to supporting roles featuring Craig Robinson (Knocked Up), Gerry Bednob (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), and Justin Long (Walk Hard).
The foul-mouthed, pop-culture-and-sex obsessed guy-pals of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad are the spiritual children of Dante Hicks and Randal Graves in Clerks.
Seth Rogen, the brightest spark in Hollywood’s new-age comic circuitry (The 40-year-old Virgin, Knocked Up), is the bearded slacker who cannot pay the bills in the house he shares with platonic friend Elizabeth Banks.
Rogen is steady once again doing his young Albert Brooks thing, and Justin Long and Brandon Routh contribute memorable cameos, but Banks is the standout cast member, showing that she can add another dimension to her fun and naughty character from "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."
In Rogen's last such mismatched romance, with the comely Katherine Heigl in Apatow's Knocked Up, the obvious disparity in physical attractiveness was at least clearly acknowledged.
What more does any portfolio need than "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and this romantic comedy to demonstrate how he's turned obscenity into a cottage industry.
Zack (Seth Rogen, "Knocked Up," "Pineapple Express") and Miri (Elizabeth Banks, "W.") have been friends forever, but the twenty-something roommates have a high school reunion coming up and are in serious financial straights.
Zack (youth-market regular Rogen, star of the Judd Apatow hits Pineapple Express and Knocked Up) is a roly-poly late-twentysomething whose job is insulting customers at the Bean 'n' Gone coffee shop in the mall, where he trades observations on life with his work buddy Delaney (scene-stealing Craig Robinson).
There's no Jay and Silent Bob (although Jay, Jason Mewes, does appear in another role), the film is more polished (Smith used to just throw his actors in front of the camera, but now seems to be making the effort to actually set up shots), and it even steals most of its cast from Apatow's movies -- from Rogen and Banks to supporting roles featuring Craig Robinson (Knocked Up), Gerry Bednob (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), and Justin Long (Walk Hard).
Even considering his great work in Knocked Up , Zack is Rogen ’s most accomplished character to date, a lovable loser who uses last-ditch initiative to turn his life around and in the process discovers more than he ever bargained for.
While Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno also share such a tag, the writer/director delivers a devastating deconstruction of the male ego with this ‘penetrating’ portrait of affection and defeat.
With 1990s films such as Clerks and Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith pioneered the kind of tender raunch that, under Judd Apatow, has come to dominate American comedy.
Having gone soft with Jersey Girl (which is looking better all the time) only to regroup by remaking Clerks solely for the diehards, Smith here rounds up Judd Apatow 's familiars (Rogen, Banks, Craig Robinson , The 40-Year-Old Virgin's Gerry Bednob ), pairs them with his own regulars ( Jason Mewes , Jeff Anderson ) plus Traci Lords , and puts "Porno" in the title.
What passes for sophistication in the Smith oeuvre was in his early films, Clerks and Chasing Amy.
Jeff Anderson, best known as Randal Graves in the “Clerks” franchise, plays Deacon, a buddy who owns a camera and becomes the director.
He has barely developed beyond the point-and-shoot direction of "Clerks."
While Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno also share such a tag, the writer/director delivers a devastating deconstruction of the male ego with this ‘penetrating’ portrait of affection and defeat.
With 1990s films such as Clerks and Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith pioneered the kind of tender raunch that, under Judd Apatow, has come to dominate American comedy.
Amiable and engaging in person and a filmmaker for whom comic and movie nerds so desperately want to root, Smith makes two kinds of movies: romantic comedies and bromantic comedies, with Chasing Amy—his one legitimately great movie—the crossover hybrid hit.
What passes for sophistication in the Smith oeuvre was in his early films, Clerks and Chasing Amy.
Not quite as racy as its title might suggest, Porno is Smith's sweetest comedy since Chasing Amy.
Mallrats was a watershed experience for me in college, and while it has not aged especially well, it reconfirmed the strengths he displayed in Clerks as a storyteller, specifically his ability to mine both humor and human insight out of virtually any average situation.
With films like Clerks , Mallrats , and Chasing Amy , Smith opened a door that, about 10 years later, Apatow walked through.
A cult figure among the Adult Swim crowd, Smith has always been better at the foulmouthed and frankly sophomoric (Clerks, Mallrats) than the wistful and sincere (Chasing Amy, Jersey Girl).
It is not as good overall as Clerks II, let alone Smith’s earlier films Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma, but it will do.
This is not another "Mallrats" or "Jersey Girl", mind, but it sometimes almost feels like it is...
The established auteur who made Clerks (un and deux), Mallrats, and Chasing Amy may now be a 38-year-old husband and father who heads a successful production company, but he's still got cheap advice for schlumpy twentysomething guys like Zack.
Writer/editor/director Kevin Smith ("Clerks," "Jersey Girl") tries to latch onto the current Judd Apatow phenom by mixing his regulars with the Apatow troupe (and a couple of porn industry vets) and his instincts pay off - in casting.
In making only his second feature outside of the View Askew universe, writer-director Kevin Smith (2006's " Clerks II ") sticks with what he knows and has come up with something at least better than 2004's " Jersey Girl ."
Meanwhile, behind the camera, Smith goes through the paces efficiently enough; in fact, on a purely technical level, this is his most assured piece of direction since the much-maligned Jersey Girl.
Both Chasing Amy and Jersey Girl centered on the universal connections between people and how we all fumble and fail while making them.
Smith, for all his dirty jokes, is a genuine romantic -- but his two genuine romances, "Jersey Girl" and "Chasing Amy," starred Ben Affleck.
A cult figure among the Adult Swim crowd, Smith has always been better at the foulmouthed and frankly sophomoric (Clerks, Mallrats) than the wistful and sincere (Chasing Amy, Jersey Girl).
While Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno also share such a tag, the writer/director delivers a devastating deconstruction of the male ego with this ‘penetrating’ portrait of affection and defeat.
Deacon (Jeff Anderson, "Clerks," "Clerks II") is brought on to run the camera and auditions produce Bubbles (Traci Lords, "Open Up Traci," "Cry-Baby"), Barry (Ricky Mabe, "Isn't She Great," "Trailer Park of Terror"), Stacey (Katie Morgan, "Playgirl: Naughty and Uncensored") and Lester 'the molester' (Jason Mewes, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"), but when they arrive on set near the completion of "Star Whores" and find their warehouse and its contents under demolition the demoralized filmmakers are forced to regroup.
Kevin Smith, now thirty-eight, is the potty-mouthed boy from New Jersey who established himself as an apostate with “Dogma” (1999) and as a chronicler of the underemployed with such comedies as “Clerks” (1994), “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001), and “Clerks II” (2006).
Smith stalwarts Jason Mewes (Jay from Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) as an enthusiastic copulator and Jeff Anderson (Clerks, Dogma) as the cameraman keep things familiar.
When Chris Rock did it in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, he was making fun of angry filmmakers and hapless assistants.
Smith is a Catholic (see Dogma), which may explain a lot.
Hell, even his most controversial film—1999's Dogma—ends up reaffirming the existence of a Divine Creator…albeit in the form of a certain Canadian pop singer.
Yet nothing in this dialogue is anywhere nearly as dirty as the verbiage of the first "Clerks" (or as genuinely provocative as the debates in "Dogma").
Smith, the strip-mall Preston Sturges responsible for "Clerks," "Dogma," and "Chasing Amy," understands that porn has become the great American leveler - an Internet-fueled democracy of basic animal urges open to any entrepreneur with a digital camera.
Kevin Smith, now thirty-eight, is the potty-mouthed boy from New Jersey who established himself as an apostate with “Dogma” (1999) and as a chronicler of the underemployed with such comedies as “Clerks” (1994), “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001), and “Clerks II” (2006).
Unlike the kids in the Rooney-Garland “Babes in Arms,” they have no particular talents, and only one of them is pretty to look at, but, for the sake of the movie, they will make out in front of the camera.
Advertisement
As for the just-plain-folks angle, last year saw Jeff Bridges , Ted Danson , and their own small-stars shrugging their way through The Amateurs—and Blue Movie it wasn't, however slight an homage it was to Terry Southern 's literary wet dream in which famous faces are buried in regions nether and yon.
For all the nakedness and bizarre complications, the cast recalls the eccentric crew of Tim Burton's "Ed Wood": supportive, protective and good company.
What more does any portfolio need than "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and this romantic comedy to demonstrate how he's turned obscenity into a cottage industry.
Smith isn't as deft an observer of young adults as Judd Apatow ("Superbad," "Pineapple Express").
The foul-mouthed, pop-culture-and-sex obsessed guy-pals of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad are the spiritual children of Dante Hicks and Randal Graves in Clerks.
More significantly, even though writer-director-editor Smith has been slapping his raunchy-talking comedies onto big screens since 1994's "Clerks," it took Judd Apatow's ultra-crude, warmhearted hits such as "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" to loosen up audiences larger than Smith's cult base.
YOU'D have thought the teaming of uber-schlub Seth Rogen ( Knocked Up, Superbad) with grunge-movie maestro Kevin Smith ( Clerks, Chasing Amy) would have been a match made in heaven.
After enlisting several friends and embarking on a casting process reminiscent of The Full Monty, the couple struggle to keep the project afloat once sexual jealousy suddenly kicks in.
Advertisement
This movie could have been an effervescent neo-screwball romance, Bringing Up Baby with nut-sack jokes.
Boogie Nights (one of my favorite films of the '90s) and the 2003 Spanish gem Torremolinos 73 were both delightful (if idealized) fantasies about porn-making as a source of personal and artistic liberation.