Interview: Kevin Smith and Harley Quinn Smith on Yoga Hosers, critics, and hanging with the Depps

Kevin Smith: It started in childhood when I was 5, my parents took me to Niagara Falls, they had honeymooned in Niagara Falls before we were born. So after Niagara Falls on their honeymoon, they drove over to Montreal because it was around Expo (67). So years later, I’m 5, they decided to take what I guess was a reunion tour – years later, I honestly feel like my old man was like, “Let’s go back to all the old places we fucked in Canada,” because that’s what it feels like later. As a kid, it felt like they were just taking us to Niagara Falls, but I honestly later in life put two and two together. They put us up in a helicopter ride over Niagara Falls and didn’t go with us, and that was so uncharacteristic of my parents, and I think it’s because we all shared the hotel room, and my father was like, “This is the only time I’m going to have to do what I wanted to do when I came up here, which is have sex with my wife.”

So, I fell in love with Canada when I was a kid, and then that continued with the love of SCTV and Bob and Doug (McKenzie), and then later on Degrassi as well. So you know, I was just talking to the kid, when they stamped my passport, it said, “times 27.” And she was like, “What is that?” And I was like, “I have no idea.” She goes, “Maybe it’s the amount of times you’ve gone to Canada.” And I was like, “Nah, I’ve been to Canada way more times than 27.”  From showing Clerks at The Toronto Film Festival in ’94 to now, I pretty much go up at least four times a year, all across the country. So you times that over like, 20 years, that’s like 80 trips. And she was like, “Jesus christ, why don’t you just move here?!” And I was like, “I tried at one point, but they were talking about charging me double income tax.” I don’t make enough to support myself in the U.S., let alone in the U.S. and Canada.

I seriously looked into citizenship, because it’s just something I always thought would be fun. Like Scott Mosier, the guy that I do Smodcast with, and he produced my earlier and better movies, he is a dual citizen. And I was like, “Man, I would kill for dual citizenship!” And I was kind of hoping that sooner or later they’d just give it to me, like every once in a while you get a college degree even though you didn’t finish college. You give a speech and they’re like, “You’re a doctor you son of a bitch!” I’ve got a few doctorates at home, so I was hoping they would bestow citizenship on me that way. Like, “You talked about Canada so much we’re going to make you an honorary citizen.” It hasn’t happened yet, but under the kid Trudeau anything is possible now, it’s a magical time here.

Does Johnny Depp share your fascination with Canada, or does he not get it?

Kevin Smith: Oh, his thing was like, “I’ve shot a movie in Quebec, so I’m very familiar with the accent.” And he goes, “And I have an internal dimmer, which means I can dial it up as accurate as you want, or dial it down as stupid as you want.” And I was like, “To be fair sir, we’re not looking for accuracy. It’s a live action cartoon, just make it as fun as you want.” So his inspiration was obviously both Clouseau and Colombo. It was very Clousombo, if you will.

When he first read the script for Tusk, he was like, “I know that accent, I’ve got an ear for it, I was around it for a whole movie.” He wanted to do it correctly, but I was like, “Do it fun.” So he just went crazy with it, and became our cartoon. And in Tusk, some people are like, “That cartoon doesn’t work.” But in Yoga Hosers, they’re like, “Oh, that cartoon makes sense.” So he was the one carry over element, as well as the girls. Tusk is kind of like a Hammer House of Horror film, but this plays more like an 80’s cable movie or something like that, that’s what I was kind of going for. So he seems to dig it here very much, but we oddly enough didn’t even step one foot onto Canadian soil for either of these movies yet! First one was North Carolina, the second one was Los Angeles, and mostly people go vice versa, like they’ll go up to Canada to shoot for Los Angeles, but one day I’ll hopefully get to shoot up here. I directed The Flash in Vancouver, so that brought me up here, but I haven’t directed one of these weird Canadian movies here.

Harley, what was the experience of making this movie with your dad and your best friend like?

Harley Quinn: Very few actors get to say that their first movie experience was spent alongside their friends and family and they were practically handed a script, like, “This is for you!” Which is so rare, and I’m so lucky to have had that happen so smoothly and I chose a majority of the cast, which is also very wild. So the entire thing is kind of like a dream, and when I say it out loud it sounds very ridiculous and so privileged, and it was absolutely a very rare situation, but it was the most amazing experience I could have wished for.

What’s the latest on Moose Jaws, the final film in the True North Trilogy?

Kevin Smith: I met with the folks at Creative Saskatchewan, and they put aside a little bit of money for us, should we be able to shoot up there, because there’s no tax rebate in the province. But the idea of being able to shoot Moose Jaws in or near or around Moose Jaw or of course Regina, the city that rhymes with fun, would be fantastic for us. So, it’s still on the table. My American financing just looks like it’s now coalesced and come together. Now the only question is when to shoot, ’cause I go back to Flash at the beginning of September, that takes about a month, and then there’s this other thing I shoot in October. So it might be between those, or in November, hopefully. We can’t do it in the summer because we need an empty camp, a kid’s summer camp is where it’s set. So, in the fall is fantastic.

How much of your real relationship with Lily-Rose made it into these characters?

Harley Quinn: I would say that we’re not like the characters in real life, but the relationship is very similar. We’ve been best friends since we were in kindergarten, so a really long time. We hang out all the time, we laugh. We do everything the Colleens do except fight bratwurst men that are my father. To prepare for it, we looked to people we know to find the most annoying aspects of a teenage girl, and then compiled all of the bad qualities that a teenaged girl could possess and then put that together. And then, at least for me, I just built an entire person because I didn’t want to be playing myself at all. I often compare my character to Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls, but with a lot of annoying teen aspects. Lilly Rose’s character is much sharper than mine, but she has a really good heart, and she just wants to make her best friend happy.

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Have you come full circle with Yoga Hosers now that you’re back at the convenience store? 

Kevin Smith: Well, I mean yea. They were in the convenience store in Tusk, that’s the only reason they’re in the convenience store in this. But my wife saw it first before I ever noticed it, ’cause I liked the scene with the girls in the convenience store in Tusk, obviously so much so that I was like, “I’ll go and make a whole fucking movie about it!” And when we shot the scene for Tusk, that was the last thing we shot, the girls in the convenience store, that wrapped the movie. I would constantly show everybody the scene with the girls in it, like that was my favourite scene. I kept showing my wife, and she was like, “Kevin, one of the actors in that scene came out of body. I love her more than anything on earth, and I can’t watch this one more time.” And I was like, “Why can I? Why do I love this so much? Is it because they’re wearing those smocks, and they kind of look like hockey jerseys, or is it because they say ‘aboot,’ and that’s still funny to me?” And she goes, “You just don’t see it, do you? It’s two people standing behind a fucking convenience store counter.” And I was like, “Oh god, you’re right. It’s Girl Clerks, isn’t it?”

I like those girls, and I grew up taking that kid to the movies, dragging her ass to like, all manner of movies that were not…I did take her to Fight Club when she was like 2 weeks old. But she was quiet, she didn’t make any noise. I took her to Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Iron Man and stuff, and one day my wife was like, “It’s adorable, you think she likes these movies.” I was like, “Of course, she does, those movies rule.” And she’s like, “No, she likes that you like them. And she likes going to the movies with her Dad, but those movies aren’t for her.” She’s like, “How could they be? They’re about a bunch of dudes doing heroic things. Where are the girls?” And I was like, “Well, you know, fucking Pepper Pots.” And she goes, “Great, he’s got a girlfriend.”

She’s going, “Take her to see Iron-Woman, Bat-Woman, Spider-Woman.” And I said, “Those don’t exist.” And she goes, “Well, that’s a problem.” So, for years, I felt bad. I used to take her to all the Marvel stuff, and then I was like, now I can’t because my wife kind of spoiled it. But the kid would still go, and I would still look for the movie my wife described. Like, Pitch Perfect is one of those flicks, but I was just looking for something where two girls just hang out with each other, that’s it. Just like Clerks was two dudes hanging out with each other. And I couldn’t find it. And you can either curse the darkness, or you can light a candle. And I am a filmmaker, it’s ridiculous for me to be like, “This kind of movie doesn’t exist!” That’s a call to arms to fucking make it. That’s not a curse, that’s a blessing. You find something that hasn’t been done in this best of all possible worlds, with all the many opportunities and fucking possibilities of storytelling? To happen upon something that nobody’s done – just chase it, follow it through. As long as you keep the budget low, and make sure everyone gets their money back, who is it going to hurt, besides your career, potentially. But like, you’ve been trying to hurt your career since the beginning, so have at it, have fun.

I used to be real afraid to just make whatever I wanted to make, and then in the middle of my career, I got really kind of fucking guarded about it, in terms of like, “Now I have a career, I don’t want to fucking lose it,” and so you start making safe choices and shit like that. And now, I’m kind of back to square one about my career, where I’m like, “I don’t care. I just want to see the movie.” That’s how my career began. Clerks wasn’t the beginning of like, “This is how I’m going to chart my 10-year career,” not at all. Now I just make movies that I want to see. And knowing that you’re an audience of one, you can’t be sad when other people don’t follow you across the bridge. Tusk is rarefied fucking breathing, Yoga Hosers even more so. You’re breathing, ironically, at a farther depth than on Tusk, it’s tougher to get a lungful, because you’re asking people to cross a very small bridge. It’s like, “Do you remember 80’s movies, like fucking Critters and shit like that? Well, imagine if you mixed that with Strange Brew and some girls, that’s what this is.” It’s like, 9 people in the world who desperately want to see that movie, but I happen to be one of ’em. So, I can put it together, I have the means to do that. Some people dream about shit, and they just fucking let it die a dream. If I’m willing to take the lumps, which is motherfuckers being like, “This shit is stupid,” I’m like, “Thank you,” and I get to watch the movie that I want to watch. So sometimes it’s worth it man. This was definitely worth it, especially because I got to do it with my kid. So at that point, you’re living as an example to the kid. You don’t want to be like, ‘Well, I could do this, but I won’t because I’m afraid what people will say about it.” It’s like, “Oh my god, this will be fucking fun!”

Is it freeing or overwhelming that you can actually bring forward any crazy idea now and people can actually see it? 

Kevin Smith: It’s amazing. You know, if I had any guts whatever, I could turn to my audience for crowd-source financing and stuff. But right now, I can still get financing in the real world. There are people who like what I used to do, or grew up on what I used to do. They’re like, “I saw Clerks, and it made me do what I do, and now I’m rich and I want to invest in your art,” and suddenly you’re like, “OK, but this is my art now, it’s fucking weird!” And they’re like, “I don’t care, this is fun.” Cats just like to go on the ride with you as well man. And there’s something freeing about not giving a shit. You’ve got to understand that it’s not for everybody, but the people it’s for, it’s like religion. Just like when I was a kid, I couldn’t convince but two people I knew out of 50 to watch Strange Brew. And the people that did were like, “Yeah, it’s alright.” And I’m like, “You’re out of your fucking mind! This is religion!” There will be people who feel that way about this movie, and they’re younger.

This movie’s core audience is tween girls. I saw one at Indy Pop Con in Indianapolis, it was really fucking sweet. This little girl stood up at the Q&A, and I was like, “Holy shit, I didn’t know you were here,” because I was cursing the whole night. I’m telling butt-fucking jokes and there’s a 9-year-old girl. And I was like, “This is going to sound weird, but you’re who I was thinking of when I made the movie. Not exactly you, that would be creepy, but that some little girl would be clicking through cable one day or fucking Netflix, and see a poster with two little girls standing next to each other, and be like, “Oh, I’ll watch this.” And I was like, more than anybody in this whole world, I want to know what’d you think about it? And she goes, “I like it when the girls hit things with sticks.” And I was like, “I’m putting that on a fucking poster. That is exactly what I want to hear.”

And so you get moments like that, but the price you pay for it is – we went to Sundance and had like five killer screenings, but critically you wouldn’t know it man. Critically, they were just like, “He’s a fucking idiot, he’s lost his mind.” I get it, it’s not for everybody. I’ve seen other movies that people let go more lightly – I did pick a fight with critics years ago, so from now until the end of time people will always fucking be like, “Hey dick.” But, that’s also part of the fun for me, ’cause it means I’ve got to make something spellbinding in order for a motherfucker to get over themselves, you know what I’m saying? I don’t crossfit train or anything like that, I would never do that, but in my world, it’s kind of a similar thing, as much as like, you can exercise normally, or you can exercise in an extreme fashion, where it’s just like, “Alright, I’ve fucking salted the earth and spoiled the well, now who likes me?” And the ones that still like you, you realize like, they were fucking there for you from the beginning. And the ones that hate you, now you get to spend the rest of your life trying to win ’em back.

It’s a bizarre game to play with your career, but I’ve had a long enough career now where it’s fun to be able to do shit like that. And if they kick me out of movies I’ll just go podcast the rest of my life, and if they kick me out of that I’ll just go to TV for a little while. I get to jump from thing to thing at his point. I diversified my portfolio a little while ago so if people ever get tired of me in one place, just like Whack-a-Mole I can pop up someplace else and do something more appetizing in that arena. But for now, running around with her – I’ve been press touring with my fucking dopey kid, it’s crazy. I get to text her like, “Are you ready, we’re going to do press?” I never imagined texting my kid that. Prior to this, I would text her shit like, “Lock the front door, put the fucking dog out.” I got to spent time with her in a way that I was never going to spend time with her probably in my life. She got to see who I really am, when I’m not like, being somebody’s parent.

What was it like killing untold numbers of mini versions of your father throughout the movie?

Harley Quinn: It’s fantastic, it’s pretty therapeutic I must say. I try not to fight that much with my dad in real life, and it’s really easy because we’re basically the same exact person. I fight more with my mom, bickering and stuff, but with my dad I just kind of keep it to myself. And sometimes it builds up, so getting to fight him was a wonderful experience. I think it was good for our relationship.

Yoga Hosers is available on Blu-ray and VOD now.