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Kevin Smith trades emo flicks for buddy romp in Cop Out
By Andrea Miller | Wednesday, February 17, 2010 | Interviews | () Comments | Add a Comment
Bruce Willis and Kevin Smith

Bruce Willis and Kevin Smith on the set of Cop Out. Photo by Abbot Genser.


Known as the early-‘90s poster boy for indie films made on impossibly small budgets, New Jersey’s favourite son Kevin Smith has made a career out of writing and directing wordy, crass, autobiographical meditations on the lives of navel-gazing twentysomethings whose routine pastimes often involve smoking pot, fornicating, leafing through comic books and trading obscure pop culture references.


It naturally came as a surprise to everyone, then, when he decided to follow-up 2008’s raunchy love story Zack and Miri Make a Porno with a buddy cop movie starring, of all people, Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan and, for the first time, direct a movie he didn’t write.


Call it maturity or the yen for a new challenge but after being sent the script by Jeff Robinov, the head of Warner Bros., Smith decided maybe it was time to say yes to someone else’s film after saying no for 15 years.


“I re-read it with an eye for directing it and thought, ‘Wow, I could pull this off,” the ebullient writer/director shared with Cineplex while in Toronto recently. “I narrowed it down to three action sequences that are outside of my comfort zone. Basically, I was like I just have to apply myself and the rest of the movie is in my wheelhouse – two dudes sitting around, talking to each other, that’s all I do! Based on that, I thought maybe this is achievable.”


And, as Smith notes, getting to direct action movie stalwart Willis and in-demand funnyman Morgan doesn’t just fall in directors’ laps every day. Besides the acting pedigree and the support of a big studio who were, according to him, “so Miramax in their approach”, Smith had personal reasons why making Cop Out made sense for him.


“It got me sentimentally, cause I was like, man, if I would have made this movie while my father was alive, my father would have been like, ‘Oh, you do make movies for a living’,” he says with a laugh.


“All of the stuff I ever made, he couldn’t identify with. My father would often be like, ‘Kevin, does it count as a movie if you talk about other movies in the movie? That's what you do at home.’ The script was very much the movie that he had taken me to see many times in my youth. I connected with it there sentimentally, and honestly, that’s why I did it. I did it cause my father would have loved this movie.”


Watch the trailer


Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis
A stakeout to remember: Morgan and Willis in a scene from Cop Out. Photo by Abbot Genser.

Whether or not Smith fans, used to his brand of self-referential dialogue particular to the incestuous View Askiewniverse (named after his production company), will fall in love with his version of a shoot ‘em up flick remains to be seen. As to whether or not this film is by and large still a Kevin Smith flick, well, even he isn’t entirely sure about that one.


“It is and it isn’t. It depends on your school of thought,” he ponders.


“If Kevin Smith directs it, does it make it a Kevin Smith movie – yes – but if Kevin Smith didn’t write it, does it make it a Kevin Smith movie cause he’s more known for being a writer? Oddly, when you watch the movie, yeah, it's there…I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes – the writers did a great job and wrote a beautiful script – but when you’ve got two very, very funny people at your disposal, I’m not hamstringing them.”


Smith blithely admits that this film isn’t going to redefine the genre or make people see Bruce Willis as a different type of actor but, then again, that’s not likely why audiences would watch a movie like Cop Out and not why he signed on.


“What are we making here - a buddy cop movie. We’re not making Schindler’s List,” he deadpans.


“We’re playing with a convention and a genre. Let’s open the movie by being like, we know, we know we’re not being original but we’re going to try to make the most original version of this formula you’ve ever seen, or at least something different.”


And though indisputably a departure for the former Sundance darling, considering where he is in his professional and personal life, going back to the solipsistic well wouldn't seem as honest.


“When I make films, I rip open my chest and put my heart on a plate and go like, ‘What do you think?’ But now I’m over my hardcore emo feelings. I made Chasing Amy to let go of [the character of] Holden. I have nothing to complain about, really. I have a wife, a child, and other than being gigantically fat, which I’m obviously comfortable with, I really have no problems.”


“Cop Out is a popcorn movie, sure, but it’s a heart player.”



Cop Out opens in Cineplex theatres February 26. Revisit classic Kevin Smith with these titles.



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