Posted by micknight at spider-mtc-tf071.proxy.aol.com on March 01, 2002 at 21:25:19:
First off I was hesitant to watch it just because of the GLAAD controversy and the fact that I have gay friends and I didn't want to appear homophobic or just unsympathetic because to be gay in this country is to really experience a certain predgudice (I totally misspelled that but am too lazy to fix it), but then I thought about it and thought about Chasing Amy and came to the conclusion that any man who writes an entire movie questioning sexuality and discussing homophobia (a subject which is never brought up in any media besides the leftist magazines I choose to read, where was I... oh parentheses) is far from homophobic. Even though I might have liked Chasing Amy more if the theme were more along the lines of the finger cuffs stuff, in that I mean concentrating on the double standard men place on women and the fact the madonna/ whore issue where men want a slutty woman to sleep with but a pure woman to love (which I think is bullshit, I love slutty women). The only problem I had with that film was that it did seem like it was about a lesbian girl who just needed the right man and she was cured, sort of, I'm not trying to dis here but I'm just saying what I saw because I know it was even addressed in the dialogue, it seemed like it shouldn't have been about a lesbian, but a slutty woman, does that make sense? But I don't mean to criticize because, well because I did enjoy the movie so much I decided not to pursue a career in film (something I had been planning ever since I saw Raiders everyday for a month when I was a kid) because it was like here's this guy who can write shit to make any aspiring screenwriter envious. Your dialogue and scene structure is amazing. And I like many others have criticized the look of your films, but I loved the look of Amy and I hate Soul Asylum more than any other band besides (I won't say any names for fear of offending peoples) but goddamn that theme music was perfect and it was nice to hear again in J&BSB (nice segway huh?).
So to try and end my rambling, I loved Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I thought the story was fucking hilarious, the inside jokes were great and I might be the only person on this planet who didn't laugh once at American Pie 1 or 2 but those kids in your movie were great. I have friends who have dissed your film as just dirty and stupid and homophobic but then I guess they didn't really watch it, because the way I see it is these two guys would totally act the way they do. Everybody knows characters like these, and we know that they are fascinated and obsessed with sex and even more fascinated with homosexual sex. To have these guys act in any other way would have been untrue. I don't read too deep into their motivations for the obessions with kinky sex specifically anally oriented sex, they could be in love with each other and their, or Jay's, constant talk about it could be his release or otherwise he'd have to fuck his friend.
(but then that generalizes the whole man relationship thing, and maybe if there were more man friends there wouldn't be so much violence)
I want to thank Kevin Smith for addressing homophobia and showcasing these morons as his homophobes. I think he probably faces the same shit Sarah Silverman faces when she says an edgy joke. It's like she's pointing out how ignorant and stupid racism is, but most people just hear the words and stop there, they don't really invest any further thought. Kevin does the same thing where he shows these homophobes (are they even homophobes??) as dumb kid like men, it doesn't make people go "oh that's cool, I want to be like them" but people hear insulting things, and they are insulting, and they stop there offended and pissed rather than looking at the whole picture. Also Gus Van Sant's in your movie, the guy who made "My own private Idaho" (nanu's only fine hour) for fuck's sake, I consider myself to be a supporter of GLAAD but I think they made a mistake here. I also don't want you to think this is all I took from your film because everything was great, especially Affleck and Damon talking about their films.
Anyway great work, I enjoyed it very much, watched it twice in a row and then purchased the DVD, but not from the imperialist Best Buy (imperialist like Teddy Fucking Roosevelt) but from a local comic book store because we got to support the small businesses who try and add culture to our world while the two or three corporations create their plastic bland utopia where we are all blind consumers looking for uniformity and... now that everyone has corny bumps I'll leave.
Sorry to be all Magnolia epic style here,
Thanks.