Kevin Smith knows you probably wont seeYoga Hosersthis weekend, and thats okay.
How did that come about?
KEVIN SMITH: I think really it just came out of a fear-based place.
Credit: Darren Michaels
I thought Itd be cool to make a whole movie with those kids.
Nobody wants to see this movie but you.
But Im a middle-aged man, I just turned 46.
I dont have much time left.
As long as you get your investors their money back, theres nothing wrong with that.
Mallrats, my second movie out of the gate, taught me that.
The message was clear, and there was no internet at that point.
The audience for this movie doesnt exist.
I remember that was 95.
Now, thats the movie most people talk to me about.
it’s possible for you to never tell.
Which Im kind of hoping that happens withYoga Hosers.
Thats kind of been the philosophy of my whole life.
Thats the sexy part of it.
I understand the place for that.
Its fun, thats how the business works.
Arts life is told over a long period of time.
Im happy to sit here 22 years afterClerksand still be able to referenceClerks.
That movie made an impact and it aged well.
But oddly enough, if you have a shty job, you have a shty job.
That translates over decades and generations.
So I dont invest as much in the opening.
I know where my true strengths are, and its later on.
The movie will find its audience; its a waiting game.
I get the immediacy of the box office.
Money is important, Im not dismissing it, but longevity is the key.
So how does the final version ofYoga Hosersmatch up to your original vision for it?
It got pretty damn close.
Its a movie about teenage girls fighting phallic monsters as written by one of their fathers.
You dont have to be Freud to figure this fing picture out.
Its more like a live-action cartoon, the closest Ill ever come to making a superhero movie.
He was playing it more like Joel Grey inCabaret, so he wasnt doing a bunch of impressions.
So I had to scramble to redo the third act.
And if I cast Ralph, I get to cast Al Pacino and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Adam West.
So it changed from the original conception.
Boy, it always changes.
It was gonna be moreFriday the 13ththan anything else.
So I re-conceived it.
We did an episode of a podcast called Yoga Hosers.
I took the name and the idea of a Canadian yogi whos very pleased with himself and misuses yoga.
It was informed by a bunch of different sources.
Im never like man, you shouldve seen the other version.
What was it like for you and Johnny Depp making a whole movie with your daughters?
Well I cant speak for him, although he seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.
For me, it was heaven.
I was actually trying to move away from filmmaking a couple years back.
I was like, Maybe you had your run and thats cool.
So the fact that suddenly she was into it, made me into it again.
Thats something I hadnt thought of.
Plus, I could give her a film school education.
Rather than sending her to college, I could be like look at this.
This is what you want to do?
This is the greatest trade and tech school in the world, being on a movie set.
It really did it for me in a way where Im like, yeah, Ill make movies.
But periodically, my interests and the audiences interests will be on the same page, and itll work.
