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To Kevin Smith:

I'm a fan.  I should say that first.  I will be there to buy a ticket for your movies.  So let me begin with some thanks: 

Chasing Amy and Dogma, the first with its startling realism and the second by its effective satire, continue to speak to today's young audiences about things they need to hear. And by portraying youth culture with honesty--the lifestyles, language, behavior, and struggles of today's young people--you get their attention and show them the relevance of the issues you address.  And you do so in an entertaining, witty, and insightful fashion. 

Chasing Amy would offend most religious folks I know, and most of my elders... but then again they would be similarly offended if they sat down in a group of today's typical teenagers.  The language and frankness of these kids can be a jolt if you haven't encountered it before.  But I hear this kind of talk all the time among folks my age and younger.  I know you're just telling the truth.  You walk into the mess and you turn your spotlight on what is important and what is true. I applaud the way that you recognized the basic need for love in each of Chasing Amy's characters, and went on to portray the importance of honesty, compassion, and forgiveness. 

With Dogma, you brought important spiritual questions to the attention of a spirituality-wary generation.  You didn't preach or condescend.  After the movie, I heard kids conversing about the difference between runaway religious dogma and the true teachings of Jesus, about the way the Church CAN be the instrument of love on the earth but more often falls into pulpit-pounding moralism. For the first time, these kids had a vocabulary and a context in which to consider that maybe it's not worth throwing the Baby Jesus out with the bathwater.  Some say we shouldn't laugh at anything related to religion; but I agree with you..."God has a sense of humor."  Dogma, like Monty Python's The Life of Brian, upholds respect for what is sacred and directs us to laugh at the flawed and often foolish ways human beings respond to God.  It challenges the hypocrisy that comes from religious zeal, yet it reaffirms the presence of God in our lives, and the amazing grace of how God could love even a foul-mouthed simpleton like Jay. 

Thus I have some affection for poor stupid Jay and his quieter, wiser cohort Silent Bob. When I walk down University Avenue in Seattle, I see dozens of Jays and Silent Bobs. Your characters may offend some viewers, but they are a true representation of many troubled young people, as comical and goofy as they sometimes are.  You do not portray them through a lens of judgement, but of kinship and compassion. While some religious critics miss the point, accusing you of "spreading the cancer" of bad behavior, I recognize that you want us to laugh at folly of Jay and Bob's behavior rather than embrace it.  And sometimes, Jay and Bob are indeed funny.

So it was with great anticipation that I bought a ticket to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back...to see where you were taking us next. 

I know you are sincere and earnest man, about faith, relationships, and social issues.  And I take you seriously as a filmmaker.  (I cheered when I read your thoughts in The New York Times on "A Man for All Seasons"...a film full of challenging ideas and brilliant dialogue.) 

But I came away from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back feeling troubled. 

I know full well you did not mean to make something profound...you said as much in interviews.  (I imagine that, after the flak the church gave you for Dogma, you weren't eager to return to serious, courageous exploration.)  And Jay and Silent Bob reminds me of the comical, zany, meandering "buddy" road movies of the past.  Audiences should indeed be cautioned: Jay and Bob deal drugs, they objectify and lust after women, they speak streams of profanity (well, Jay does anyway), and they miss almost every opportunity to be wise and loving. 

I also enjoyed the references--some subtle and some not so subtle--to other movies.   (The Reservoir Dogs moment was very well done; I'll bet a lot of people missed it entirely.)  And who won't laugh heartily to see Ben Affleck and Matt Damon humble enough to spoof themselves and laugh at their own rollercoaster careers? 

These things, and others, are very well done in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. 

But I think that this film crosses a line.  Satire spoofs human nature; it exaggerates the truth enough so we can laugh at it.  But J&SB seems to positively REVEL in their foolishness.  Think of that great buddy movie Midnight Run, in which we see two men of differing misbehaviors learn a little something from each other while on the road together.  Or Pulp Fiction: Quentin Tarantino wants us to see the folly of violent men, and yet he is careful not to bombard us with too much violence.  The Monty Python films are fraught with sharp humor about sexuality and religion, but they do not pound us over the head with the characters' obscenities and fantasies. 

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back indulges so grossly in Jay and Bob's preoccupations with sex and profanity that we are too busy absorbing the shocks to ever stop and think about whether or not these characters have anything to show us.  Good satire challenges us to think about why we are laughing.  J&SB is more likely to inspire another wave of irreverent and amoral comedies than it is likely to make us think about right and wrong. 

In an environment starved for intelligent and challenging work, why give young audiences another 90 minutes of locker-room level sex jokes without much to make this mud-trudging worthwhile?  Sure, laughter is the best medicine...but only the right kind of laughter. Some laughter is unhealthy, in that it has us mocking things that deserve better.  Jay and Bob may not have a healthy view of sex, but in Chasing Amy all of the misbehavior served to point the way to the right behavior. 

You and your more perceptive viewers know that you don't condone the behavior of dope addicts and sex-crazed chauvenists. But this movie, for its flood of clever sex jokes and foul language, is going to be a cult hit among kids who revel in that stuff.  You know full well it is going to end up in the VCRs of young kids who aren't mature enough to know how to process this humor.  They can't tell a satire from Sesame Street.  Most of them are on the same intellectual plane as the Internet talkbackers you ridicule in the film. That's like making a movie that occasionally pokes fun at the folly of pornography, and then DELIVERS a great deal of porno footage to satiate the audience's baser appetities. 

There are moments of comic genius here. The Planet of the Apes spoof is hilarious, as is the jab at Good Will Hunting. Chris Rock had me on the floor.  And there were moments of moral insight, however simple: Jay is challenged to think of a less-derogatory term of affection for his girlfriend. And yes, that opening scene makes us think about why Jay has become what he has become.  But the rest of the movie leads us to enjoy and even admire the cleverness of Jay's rude and vulgar speech, and the camera itself lingers on the women in a way that reinforces sexual stereotypes and keeps us focused on women as sex objects. 

Please do not misunderstand.  This is not hate mail.  I am not one of those bad guys in the movie that uses the Internet to anonymously slander you. As I said, I am an admirer of your work. I just think this work is misdirected and irresponsible, and I am asking you an honest question: Why did you need to bring this movie to a large audience?  There are other artists out there who long to have the resources and the opportunity to share something meaningful with the world.  Is this how you want to use the privilege and opportunity...producing slightly satirical, sophomoric comedies?  If you have to make the movie to "vent" some frustrations or just to have some fun, sure, make the movie for you and those you know can handle it. But don't hand it over to an audience that probably isn't able to read the instructions.  Don't hand this satiristic rifle to a kid who doesn't know what a gun is for.  The Scriptures do indeed say that "all things are lawful" for those who love God, but it also cautions us that not all things are profitable.  You say Jay and Silent Bob make sick jokes at their own expense, but you know as well as I do that kids eat this stuff up, think it's cool, and go out and imitate it.  Please, at least make some kind of statement that cautions parents about the need for discernment with this film.

I would encourage you, out of gratefulness for your enviable position and platform in the public eye, and out of respect for the power of the tools God has given you, to make something that is excellent next time.  There are a thousand comedians who can provoke us to easy, locker-room laughs, but you...you've got a gift for so much more.  Like the Force of your beloved Star Wars, you can use your freedom and your talents to lead us on to something good, or merely be a self-interested exhibitionist. Until this movie, I would have said you've been aspiring to be quite a Jedi.  This time, though, I feel a strange disturbance in the Force. 

Perhaps I am merely missing the point. I would love to hear your thoughts on what has troubled me about your latest film. I'm at promontory@aol.com.

Eager to see what you do next,

Jeffrey Overstreet 

D - While there are some painfully funny satirical sequences in this film, the relentlessness of the foul-mouthed humor of the central characters becomes oppressive. It's not meant to be a profound movie, but its frivolity and fun is tainted by the way the director submerges the audience in exhibitions of his characters' baser behaviors.