Actor Jason Mewes (aka Jay) discusses strange encounters at the Comic-Con urinals, his battles with drug addiction and potential ideas for a Jay and Silent Bob TV show. Mewes and Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob) are currently touring the country for their brutally honest and always hilarious live comedy podcast Jay & Silent Bob Get Old (tickets are still available for tomorrow’s Adelaide show!). Read our quick chat with Jason below.
Hey Jason what are you to? Just watching television. Murder She Wrote, you know that one right?
Yeah of course. Angela Lansbury, the most unrealistic detective ever. She’s amazing dude. She can solve any crime you throw her way.
So what are your favourite TV shows? Not including Murder She Wrote? From the top of my head there’s CSI: Miami, Vampire Diaries, Grimm, CSI; Vegas, Law & Order: SVU, White Collar, Warehouse 13. I love Game of Thrones. I’m into True Blood, Spartacus. I like Charmed, Angel, Buffy. I’m into sci-fi and crime dramas basically.
Is making television something you’re interested in? I’ve been telling Kevin for ages that I’d love to sit down with him and write some kind of comedy-drama. I mean, if I could do a TV show for the next ten seasons how awesome would that be? I’ve tried to sit down and jot down some ideas but I’m not as good a writer as Kevin. I don’t know why he hasn’t done it yet, I just think he has certain stories he wants to tell and he wants to tell them in movie form. I’m eventually going to talk him into sitting down after he stops writing and directing movies.
Everyone has TV show ideas kicking around in their head. Do you have any? Yeah I do. I’d want it to be some sort of comedy and I feel like I’d love to do some kind of murder mystery Columbo style where I play a Columbo type character but with more comedy involved. I’d definitely love to get the clues, investigate the murder, I love that element of it, but I’d want there to be some comedy like maybe someone goes and visits her friends at the horse farm and someone will be killed at a party at a horse farm because they want the black stallion that is worth 10 million dollars. Or I’d make it like I’ll be visiting my friends at South by South West Film Festival and someone kills the friend for the number one Superman issue that they have in their safe, and I have to go to the strip club to find the clue at the next place which is a video game tournament at South by South West, you know what I mean? Something like that would be awesome or a comic book convention. I don’t want to see anyone get killed but how cool would it be if we were going to Australia to go do a Podcast and while we’re there we go visit a couple of comic book stores and while we’re in the comic book store doing a meet and greet someone gets murdered in the back room and I’ve got to solve the crime.
Yeah totally that works. That should be the next thing that you guys do. Okay tell us about the show coming to Australia and a bit about your working relationship with Kevin, I’m sure you guys obviously love each other but have the capacity to hate each other at the same time can you tell us a bit about what to expect
Well I mean the good thing is we’ve been able to work together for so long and I think there is definitely no hatred there, it’s more about disappointment not even so much from me but with him I’ve always disappointed throughout the years with relapsing or coming to his house and stealing twenty dollars from him. Never any hate but it’s so awesome because he gave me a shot. He thought I was funny and wrote me in the movie and the movie got picked up and he wrote me in the next one and I started getting offers from there but it’s like I would have never even thought about acting. It’s been cool to be able to work with him in the movies and with the podcasts and our friendship has always been like an older brother little brother one and it’s cool cause it sort of changed in the last couple of years like it always use to be that he would pick me up or help me out with this and that and now it’s like we are straight up friends. We get to hang out and travel together and I get to bring my wife and we have Kevin’s assistant and his wife and we’re like one big family that gets to travel around and see Australia and see the UK and work together at the same time and it’s just been really really amazing.
You mentioned your relationship changing over the years because you curbed your drug use. Were you disappointed in yourself at that time too? When I’d get sober I would be but I think when I was getting messed up I was too far gone to realise it. When you’re addicted to drugs it’s crazy cause your life seriously is waking up going to score so you’re not sick and then getting high to the point where you’re just numb or out of it and then your day goes on and next thing you know it’s night time and you’re like ‘oh crap it’s night time and I’m feeling normal so now I gotta go get some more drugs’. So every once in a while I’d feel sick and be like ‘I hate this and I hate being in this situation’ and I’d be disappointed in myself for sure. It took me being sober for a bit and really stepping back to see it. But the biggest disappointment for me was delaying my goals in life and where I wanted to be. You now, I’m married now but I wanted to be married and have a kid and own a house and have a shitload of money saved. Ten years ago I wanted that and ten years later I’m only just starting. It definitely put a big gap in what I wanted in life and where I wanted to be. Not to mention the experiences and misplaced time. Like Grandma meant the world to me and she was passing away and getting older and I didn’t spend a lot of time with her because I was too busy partying. Stuff like that that I can’t get back. Now, stepping back I’m ashamed of stuff I’ve done and disappointed in things I’ve missed but I can’t dwell on it.
Another drug related question. Just based on how iconic Jay and Silent Bob are as stoner figures do you guys get offered weed wherever you go? (Laughs) Not every city but a good portion of the shows we go to we get offered weed. But the funny thing is, say Kevin and my wife want it, they like to smoke, we’ll get offered weed six out of the ten places we go and of course it’s always the city that we’re not offered it that Kevin or the wife are like ‘man, I wish we had some weed to smoke’. It always works like that. Not every city but I’d say six out of ten places we’ll get offered some weed. It’s pretty convenient.
What’s the weirdest fan interaction you’ve had? The one that always comes to mind is when we were at San Diego Comic-Con like the second or third year we went. Kevin and I had been sitting at a table doing signings for three hours and we had a break so I ran to the bathrooms and while I was pissing someone runs in and started pissing next to me and was like ‘hey man I was just in line waiting for you’ and “it’s so nice to meet you’ and puts his hand out to shake my hand. I was like ‘dude, my hand’s on my dick I’ll see you after I wash my hands’. And then he was like ‘that’s cool, I get it, I get it, but could you sign this real quick?’ So that was a little odd for me because I was standing at a urinal pissing and he wanted to touch my hand after I had my hand on my penis and I just thought that was weird.
So what do you guys have planned for the rest of the year? We have some more touring that we’re going to be doing. We have a Jay and Bob animated groovy movie that Kevin wrote the script for years ago and gave it to me to produce and get going. And I did. I took it and I started running with it and I had like fifteen minutes animated and showed it to him and he was like ‘oh my god, this is amazing’. So we’re finishing that up. Then we’re going to shoot Hit Somebody the next movie Kevin’s writing and directing hopefully in September or October. Then I’m waiting to hear about season three for Todd And The Book of Pure Evil the show that I’m on and also just more touring and stuff like that.
From your perspective why do you think Kevin wants to move away from filmmaking? Well he says he’s been doing it for twenty years and all his movies are based on certain stories he has to tell, he says. And he says he’s pretty much out of stories with regard to movies and this next one is going to be long. It’s going to be like two movies in one. He’s still debating how he wants to shoot it whether it’s going to one super long two and a half hour movies or break it up and shoot an hour and fifteen minute movie and have a part deuce. I don’t know. he hasn’t told me completely what he’s doing but he has told me that after twenty years of doing this this is the last story he has to tell.
Thank you so much for your time Jason. Awesome man, appreciate it.
