The Jay And Silent Bob Halloween Crossover We Never Got To See
Kevin Smith is the director who inspired a generation of film lovers with his auteur brand of lowbrow humor and abundant references to the worlds of comics and science fiction. He's also well known for introducing the instantly lovable pair of dirtbag stoners, Jay and Silent Bob, played by Jason Mewes and Smith respectively.
The two friends were instant hits after their appearance in Smith's breakthrough film, "Clerks," a black-and-white affair that followed two grocery store employees and their friends in an unexpected merging of art-house cinema with off-color comedy.
Now, Smith is dishing out the inside scoop on the history of his filmography in a new book entitled "Kevin Smith's Secret Stash: The Definitive Visual History." Thanks to the "Clerks" director himself, we've learned not only about the movies that did get made, but a few that didn't. One such movie that never materialized would have been a Jay and Silent Bob "Halloween" crossover that Ben Affleck reportedly called "so stupid it would absolutely f***ing work."
Jay and Silent Bob almost squared off against Michael Myers
According to ScreenCrush, Smith's new book tells the story of a "Halloween" crossover that never was. During the production of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," Dimension chairman Bob Weinstein suggested a movie in which Jay and Silent Bob would encounter a variety of monsters. According to Smith, Weinstein saw numerous parallels between Jay and Silent Bob and legendary comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Since Abbott and Costello had done crossover movies with Universal Monsters characters such as Frankenstein, Weinstein thought Jay and Silent Bob should have a similar film.
Since Dimension couldn't use the Universal Monsters due to copyrights, Weinstein suggested using characters such as Pinhead, Michael Myers, and the children from "Hellraiser," "Halloween," and "Children of the Corn." Writes Smith, "Bob wanted me to write a movie where Jay and Silent Bob meet all these monsters."
The reason it didn't end up getting made is that Smith was approaching a new phase of his career, one in which he wished to leave behind the puerile sensibilities that had brought him to the forefront of auteur cinema in favor of "the business of serious filmmaking." He would go on to direct "Jersey Girl," a box-office flop that reached admirably for the more mature elements of drama but was panned by critics as "sentimental hokum," even though some, like Roger Ebert, gave it much more favorable coverage.
Kevin Smith returned to his comedy roots with films like "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," and reprised his role as Silent Bob alongside Jason Mewes in future films, but we'll never know what could have been in that "Halloween" crossover. Few things sound as delightful as the prospect of Jay saying, "Snoochie booches," to Mike Myers.