Filmmaker Kevin Smith is growing up. "Jersey Girl," his sixth film, dispenses with the comic book references and in-jokes his fans have come to expect — and it's his first to be rated PG-13 instead of R.
Or, as Smith puts it: "That means it's slightly less naughty than the others."
"Jersey Girl," which opens in theaters today, was originally rated R, but Smith and Miramax Films appealed to the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board and managed to get the more family-friendly PG-13.
"I admit that there's some pretty frank sex talk in there," Smith said by telephone from New York, "and a few things that might push the envelope — but come on, this isn't an R-rated movie. Especially when you see some of the things that do get a PG-13 these days."
If Smith sounds a little testy about the ratings mini-controversy, it's probably because "Jersey Girl" is such a personal project for him. In many ways, the story mirrors changes in his own life.
Ben Affleck stars as Ollie Trinke, a music-industry publicist who loses his job, and when his wife dies during childbirth, finds he must raise his daughter alone.
"OK, so a lot of it has been fictionalized," said Smith, whose wife (former USA Today journalist Jennifer Schwalbach) is still very much alive. But the couple does have a daughter, Harley Quinn, who was born in 1999. "Fatherhood and marriage really changes you. Suddenly you find yourself thinking about things that are more serious than 'Star Wars' and comic books. It's one new set of worries after another."
This material marks a huge change for Smith, whose films have been pretty heavy with pop-culture references and low-brow humor. So he's hoping that longtime fans of his work will "come along with us for the ride. It's time to grow up, guys. And if you think that by doing something this serious I'm selling out, you're wrong. There are still a few things in there for the people who supported us through the lean years."
Smith said he's been mulling over "Jersey Girl" for quite awhile. In fact, 50 pages of the script were actually written with Bill Murray in mind as the lead. But longtime pal Ben Affleck cornered him at a Fourth of July party and asked if Smith had anything he was working on that Affleck could be involved with. "As it usually happens in this industry, I started to realize that this would be the perfect project for Ben," Smith said. "It's something that's so different from all these big action movies he's been making, and something to show just how talented the man can really be."
Speaking of talent, Smith believes he's found a lot of it in 7-year-old Raquel Castro, who co-stars as Gertrude "Gertie" Trinke, Ollie's rather precocious daughter. "We saw so many talented young ladies in the casting process, but Raquel was the one who stood out. And it sure doesn't hurt that she looks so much like (Jennifer Lopez, who has a brief role as Ollie's wife)."
Smith also has high praise for George Carlin and Liv Tyler, who play Ollie's father and potential love interest, respectively. "Man, what can you say about Carlin? He's a stud. And Liv is every geek's fantasy girl." (And Tyler's bespectacled character is clearly modeled after Smith's real-life spouse.)
"Not to sound too full of myself," Smith said, "but it's the one time where I've really felt confident about the final product, where I've really been confident in my abilities as a filmmaker."
He credits at least some of that to his cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who received Oscar nominations for "The River" and "The Deer Hunter," and won for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." "When we started," Smith said, "I sort of took a back seat to him, let him suggest our shots. But as we went along, it eventually got to the point where I was actually telling him what to do, which is a huge change for me."
Miramax apparently agrees that this is Smith's great leap forward. Based on the strength of "Jersey Girl," the studio has given Smith one of its most ambitious projects to date, the superhero adventure film "The Green Hornet." "That was my plan all along — trick them into thinking I know what I'm doing, and then just go crazy when they give me something really big to do," he said with a laugh.
Smith is a huge fan of comic books and the superhero genre in general. In addition to writing books featuring both Daredevil and Spider-Man for Marvel Comics, he's also written black-and-white "indies" that feature some of the characters from his "View Askewniverse." "Ah, man, what can I say? You can't take the boy completely out of the man.
"I haven't grown up completely."
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com