What's the deal with Kevin Smith and Minnesota?

BY CHRIS HEWITT
Movie Critic

Kevin Smith admits he has a Minnesota thing.

The evidence is irrefutable. The writer/director/actor shot "Mall Rats" in Eden Prairie and also plans to make half of his next film in Minnesota. Minneapolis band Soul Asylum supplied music for many of his films, including his first, "Clerks," and its sequel, the inventively titled "Clerks II," which opens Friday. Smith directed Cottage Grove's Seann William Scott in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." He's obsessed/irritated by Minnesota's freakiest, weest pop star (for Smith's thoughts on Prince, go to www.prince.org/msg/7/156607). And one of the key actors in "Clerks II" is South St. Paul native Trevor Fehrman.

"I don't know what it is," confessed Smith when he stopped in St. Paul to sip a Dunn Bros. iced tea and promote "Clerks II."

Ferhman says he knows: "Good taste."

Actually, "good taste" is a phrase no one's going to use in the same sentence as "Clerks II." In fact, no one should use that phrase in the same county as the movie, which features, among other indignities: befouled fast food, a man/beast sex show and highly specific talk about various bedroom activities and the order in which they should or should not be performed.

That's the sort of thing fans of the first "Clerks" would expect, and Smith was determined to deliver. He financed the first movie — an autobiographical comedy about convenience-store clerks Dante and Randal and their usually stoned friends — with credit-card debt. That catapulted him into a career that has included "Chasing Amy," "Dogma" and the misbegotten "Jersey Girl," which was both a bomb and the nail in the coffin of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez's timeless love.

"Fans of the first movie would come up to me and say, 'Don't drop the ball,' " says Smith. "Jeff Anderson (who plays Randal, who hangs out in a convenience store in the first film and in a fast-food place in the second) wound up being oddly protective of 'Clerks,' even more so than me. He said, 'Why would you want to f—- with that? People love it, and why would you want to ruin what they fell in love with in the first one?' So I told him, 'Let me write it. And if you still feel that way after you read it, we'll put the script away.' "

"Clerks II" is opening in a theater near you Friday , so Anderson obviously changed his tune. "He had his doubts, but, on Day 3 of shooting the film, I showed him some scenes we had shot, and then he said, 'This movie could be really good. Don't f—- it up."

Smith says he was oddly confident that he'd be able to get back into the "Clerks" vibe, even though it has been 12 years since he pulled his last shift as a convenience-store clerk. The secret? Sleep deprivation.

"I was really gung-ho about returning to Dante and Randal. But then, a couple days before we started, I got all wiggy and thought, 'What have I gotten myself into?' " recalls Smith.

To unwig himself, he decided to watch "Clerks" again, early in the morning before the first day of shooting, to remind himself "of all the stuff that had become legendary about the characters." And he kept up the momentum throughout the shoot by editing "Clerks II" at night, shooting during the day and sleeping pretty much never.

"Clerks II" brings back most of the characters from the first film, including Smith as the not-entirely-silent Silent Bob, but it introduces a new one: Rosario Dawson ("Rent," "Sin City") as Randal and Dante's fast-food boss. Smith has become fond of Dawson.

"This character she plays, if she existed and if there were any remote chance she'd be into me, she would make me think about leaving my wife," says Smith. "Rosario is so beautiful, and she is so great in person. Her presence in this movie totally elevates it. She puts so much life into every scene, even when she doesn't seem to be doing anything special."

Dawson was in the first scene Smith shot on the first day of "Clerks II," a scene he says got the movie off to a "charmed start. I love collaborating with people, getting everyone's ideas," says Smith (which is why you'll never see the "a film by Kevin Smith" credit on his movies, which he believes minimizes the contributions of the hundreds of other collaborators).

So, Rosario Dawson, if you happen to be Googling yourself and you run across this story on the Internet, Smith wants you to be in his next romantic comedy.

"Oh, I would work with her again in a heartbeat," says Smith, who's hoping to sign Dawson to shoot the film this winter.

In, of course, Minnesota.

Chris Hewitt can be reached at chewitt@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5552.

South St. Paul's Trevor Fehrman

Trevor Fehrman says acting in "Clerks II" was "one of the best times I've had in my life." But he's not so sure he wants to keep acting.

"I'm keeping my options open," says Ferhman, who plays virginal Elias, who works with Randal and Dante at a fast-food joint. The son of Greg and Jeanne Ferhman of South St. Paul, Fehrman, 25, is a writer, and he has completed three years of computer studies at California State University-Long Beach.

A 1999 graduate of South St. Paul High School, Fehrman also appears in the upcoming straight-to-DVD film "Now You Know," which co-stars Kevin Smith. He says it was a fun project but that it may have spoiled him.

"Working with Kevin is great because there's this sense of collaboration," says Fehrman. "But there aren't a lot of other people that I like and that I feel like I want to work with."— Chris Hewitt