But really being a father pretty much kicked into gear. It’s also a desire to see if I can work without a net, without working with the familiar, relying on references to the other movies and stuff like that; nice to make a movie that kind of stood on its own, because I didn’t even know if I could. Five movies in, all I knew is I could make movies that were interconnected, and I was happy to do it and I would do it until the day I died if I could. But I was curious, like, God, could I do it? Could I make a movie that doesn’t refer back to other movies and just stand there by itself?

LS: Although you could say Liv Tyler’s character probably could insert into those other films fairly easily.

KS: Sure. Absolutely. But I was kind of relieved that when the credits roll, Jay and Bob haven’t shown up. Nobody mentions Julie Dwyer. S*** like that. Yeah, she could easily fit into their world and vice versa, but it was nice that it kind of stands alone.

LS: Talk about working with a child actress and the special challenges you faced.

KS: It cut down on the amount of smoking you could do on the set, which was kind of a bitch, because I like to smoke a bunch on the set; the amount of language you could hurl around on the set in terms of harsh language. I’m cool with cursing in front of my kid, but somebody else’s kid, maybe they’re not raising their kid that way so you can’t really do that.

And it’s also like you’re losing out on shorthand that you would have with grown-up actors, or actors that you’ve worked with before. It’s really easy to direct Affeck because I’ve worked with him five times before. Same with Carlin. I’ve worked with him three times. Easy to direct him. Mewes, Jason Lee, Matt Damon—you know, any of those cats that come back.

It’s more difficult working with actors you’ve never worked with before because it takes a little while to develop the shorthand. And it’s much more difficult to do with a kid because you don’t even have shorthand, no matter how deeply you get into it. You’re not dealing with somebody who speaks your language yet, and you’ve got to really kind of jump down to their level to relate to them and ask them to relate s*** that they probably wouldn’t do in real life, or say things that they would never say.

So it requires a lot. It took about midway through the movie for me to get to a completely comfortable place with her, and then we were off and running. But you know, you have to get over s*** that you never have to get over with other actresses, with her being like, ‘I don’t like boys." And it’s like, ‘You’ve got to hug Ben in this scene and kiss him.’ She’s like, ‘Oooh, boys are gross. I don’t want to hug them and kiss them.’ It’s like, ‘Look. Just f*****’ pretend, you know? Believe me, you’re wise not to want to get involved with this f*****’ dude, but I really need it for the role."

So there’s little s*** like that that I’ve never had to deal with before. So she was really a dream. She was always game. She wasn’t one of those kids full of attitude and whatnot. She also wasn’t one of these kids who was raised from the f*****’ embryo to go out there and be an actress—not like one of those JonBenet types where you’re like, ‘This is creepy.’ She’s just a real little girl who like one day expressed that she wanted to act and her parents brought her out there to do it. She hadn’t done any feature work yet, and that’s kind of what drew me to her. Initially I was drawn to her because she looked like Jen. She had this kind of Jennifer Lopez look about her. Looked like she could be her kid.

Also because when she read it was very natural. She wasn’t like dimply and s***, and all Shirley Temple-d out. She sounded like a seven-year-old. Sounded like a little kid. And when they get to be about seven, they’re just not really impressed with adults anymore. It’s like they’ve been to the circus and they don’t give a f*** about clowns anymore. So they’re starting to get into the real incredulous place where they’re like, ‘I know you’re lying. All adults lie.’ So they’re not whimsical and stuff like that. They’re just very matter-of-fact. And she had that in her delivery.

LS: The obvious question with this film has been whether or not it can withstand the fallout from last year’s Gigli fiasco. What’s your take on how that might affect Jersey Girl?

KS: I used to think maybe it might. I think what it meant was that when Gigli bombed, we’d never have a number one opening for this movie. So I kind of got used to that really quickly. Pre-Gigli I was like, ‘Hey, depending on when we open, we could open at number one conceivably.’ After Gigli that was never going to happen, so I put that out of my head and then it didn’t bother me so much.

The movie is a strong word-of-mouth movie. It may take a little bit to get people into the theaters. The bad taste of Gigli might still be in their mouths. But once they hear that she’s (Lopez) not in it that much, and once they hear what the movie is kind of about - it makes you feel good and s*** like that; go home smiling, if you’re a certain type of person, particularly if you’ve got a kid. I think the word of mouth will kind of defeat that s***. But thankfully it was never designed to be one of these where you’ve got to make sixty, seventy million in the opening weekend because you’re gonna drop substantially. It’s a movie that could have legs and playability.

So at that point it was like this is no big deal. What it does is that it really sets us up to be the come back picture, right? First off, it means I don’t think we’ll ever get as poorly reviewed as Gigli, by virtue of the fact that- at the very least, somebody will be like, ‘Well, it ain’t Gigli, but it ain’t good.’ At least they’ll never be like, ‘F***, you thought Gigli was bad?’ But it also sets you up to be the comeback because people are like, ‘Hey, Affleck’s good again,’ or some such s*** like that. Which is cool for me because then that means that I can hold it over his head for a few more years—because I’ve been holding that Chasing Amy s*** over his head for years. I’m like, ‘Dude, I put you on the map. You’ve got to come back and do some s***.’ So if we saved his f*****’ ass this time around, I’ll make that dude work for peanuts from now on. Just be like, ‘Dude, you owe me.’

LS: This film must be, to you, a nightmare scenario of being a parent.

KS: Very much so. My secondary nightmare. Because now obviously the wife lived through f*****’ childbirth, so I don’t have to worry about that. The prior nightmare is always (that) something’s going to happen to the kid. You stop worrying about your own death and it’s all about something happening to the kid. And it’s like that line in The Godfather, where no man is truly free once he has a child or something—I’m paraphrasing. That’s the one that really f*****’ keeps you up at night and s*** and makes you lose more hair than you’re already losing. But when I first thought of it, yeah, I think every new father has that moment where they’re like, ‘what if I had to go through this alone? What if I’d lost her and I was with the kid, just me and the kid?’ How do you raise one love of your life after you lose the first love of your life?

So it did kind of came from there. When I was done writing, I told the wife, ‘This movie is a total valentine to you.’ And she was like, ‘What are you talking about? I die in the first fifteen minutes and then you end up with Liv Tyler.’

LS: How much of George Carlin’s performance relates directly to your own father, who passed away recently?

KS: My father was a more expressive man, more affectionately expressive than Barton Trinke (Carlin’s character) is. But George had never met my dad, so it wasn’t like him going, ‘I’m going to play your old man.’ Definitely a lot of nuances in my father and that character. He did a really good job—they’re two completely different people—but he did a really good job of kind of channeling a dude he never met, in some places. I told him from the get-go, ‘There’s only one moment you’ve got to nail, and the rest doesn’t matter to me. And it’s the moment at the end at the bar.’ And he f*****’ knocked it out of the park. And everything else was great too.

So he was kind of happy to be able to do something where he wasn’t just a comedian. I think he always wanted to be an actor, and he got into radio and then subsequently comedy because he wanted to act. And you know, he’s been given parts along the way, but all we’ve seen are the funny parts and s***, and I think he wanted to show his chops off. His dream role was to play a clergyman who strangles six children. I was like, ‘I don’t know, dude. Call Mel Gibson.’

LS: Jersey Girl is a bit of a visual departure from your other films as well—beautiful and glossy, shot by the great Vilmos Zsigmond. What was your relationship like?

KS: The first impression you get when you watch it is, ‘This looks great. There’s no way this dude made this movie because it doesn’t look like any of his other s***.’ And then you see the DP and it makes sense, because he’s a fantastic lighter. The dude really knows how to f*****’ light. But more than that, he’s also a very creative DP. And as much as you tell him what you want to shoot, he gives you a suggestion where your f*****’ jaw hits the ground, that’s more brilliant than anything you could ever think of. So immediately you’re like, ‘Let’s skip my s*** and do that.’ You tend to lean on a creative DP and learn a lot from a creative DP. And by midway through the shoot I was kind of on the same wavelength with him where I would just suggest s*** that I had never suggested before.

LS: Are you a hands-on technical director in any way? You strike me as being more about writing and performance.

KS: I’m really performance. I’m not the dude that’s out there with the light meter and s*** going, ‘Bring it up, bring it up.’ Only on Dogma did I start learning the camera lenses as well. But I don’t even use the terminology because it sounds so f*****’ insincere coming out of my mouth. So I just tell them, ‘Use that lens where it’s like this.’ So it was a really good working relationship. He’s from the old school, and kind of like into the auteur theory: it’s DP and director, and everybody else is f*****’ way down the line, way secondary. And I don’t really work like that—I lean on everyone else much more. Lean on (Scott) Moser (co-producer), lean on my script supervisor quite heavily, and I’ll be like, ‘What did you guys think?’ It’s always usually by vote; ‘Everyone feel like we can move on? Let’s move on.’ I think Vilmosz felt sometimes like that was just not the way he wanted to work; like, ‘Look. Never mind these people. It’s you and me. What do we think?’ To me it’s like, we all make the movie. Everyone’s name goes on it. So everyone is just as important as my f*****’ role. I’m just the guy who pulls the trigger.

LS: You mentioned Scott Mosier. About Jersey Girl, he has said that with the first three or four films you were on shaky ground, and you’re finally on concrete this time. What does that mean?

KS: I think by this point in we get it now. First few times around, it’s just like- first one, you’re working in a vacuum. It’s like free film school: let’s try this, let’s try this. Second one you can’t believe somebody gave you money, let alone six million. Third time we were up at bat it was like, ‘Nobody gives a s*** about us anymore because of the second one, so we’re trying to prove ourselves again.’ And the fourth one we were like, ‘Wow. I can’t believe they gave us money again.’ So the fifth one you kind of get it: ‘As long as we make the money, they’ll give us money.’ And you also become more confident in terms of as a filmmaker.

I never get to that level of confidence that I think a lot of these cats have, because I’ve met other filmmakers and these cats live and breathe it, and I’m still like, ‘Yeah, but they might fire us after this one.’ I mean, I don’t know anyone that gets fired from a movie they wrote, with the exception of Kevin Jarre (who) started writing Tombstone, and he got s***-canned. That’s the only writer-director I know who got fired. But you just always feel like somebody’s going to reveal you to be a sham and a fraud and a f*****’ charlatan, you don’t know what you’re doing and the emperor has no clothes, then they’ll stop letting you make movies.

I still feel that to this day. There’s still this level of, I’m not really sure of what I’m doing. I’m not sure that I’m good at what I’m doing. And I think there’s a healthy bit of trepidation there. It’s not paralyzing or crippling where it’s like I can’t make a f*****’ decision, it’s like this level of, ‘Well, obviously I have something to prove so I better go out and do it.’ It keeps you in the right frame of mind. You don’t get very comfortable, you don’t rest on your laurels. So I don’t know that there are big enough laurels to rest on at this point.

LS: Do you feel a lot of studio pressure when making a film? How much free reign do you have on your sets?

KS: The first one we made on our own, so we had complete f*****’ free reign. Mallrats we made with Universal, and they tinkered a lot in pre-production, we kind of mellowed the script out and kind of hammered out some of the rougher edges, which I’m not too fond of. In terms of the Miramax experience, between Harvey and Bob, they’re two very different methods. Bob is involved from conception all the way up to execution. In post he leaves you alone, because he like, ‘Well, I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen every frame of the dailies.’ So he’s comfortable. Harvey doesn’t get involved, at least in our stuff, until post-production. (He) leaves you alone all through development, leaves you alone through production, and then when you turn in the first cut, that’s when he starts paying attention.

Generally, neither way is better or worse, and all are pretty good. Even Bob, when he was involved, it wasn’t like, ‘Do this, do this, change this,’ he’s just the dude who’s on top of it. He’ll call you up the next day after he gets the dailies and tell you what he thinks of everything you shot and he’s familiar with almost every frame of film, whereas Harvey is only familiar with what you cut the film into. But we’ve been able to work really well with both. They have given us complete free reign, more so than I would have expected.

LS: From a writing perspective, is it easier to write gags and comedy or more serious stuff?

KS: Honestly, the s*** that’s not gag-oriented is easier, I think, because that’s my natural inclination, that’s what I lean toward more. The gag writing is actually more work—not a lot more work, but it definitely requires more thought.

LS: How often does the gag stuff actually come up in improvisation on the set?

KS: Very rarely. We kind of go from the script, and it’s all kind of written out in advance. Every once in awhile something kind of wonderful comes out where you’re like, let’s do this. On Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, there’s this one moment where Mewes is about to light saber fight, and he did this thing where he whirled it around and did this pose, and then was like, ‘Dude, what if I turn the thing off and then take a hit off it, and then turn it back on?’ And I was like, ‘That’s f*****’ brilliant. Let’s do it.’ But that’s very rare that it happens. Now Chris Rock would come on, and I generally don’t like people ad libbing, but when Chris Rock ad libs, it’s pretty funny. Some things wind up staying in the script. Same with Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell is a really funny guy, so if he does something insanely funny that wasn’t on the page….

LS: There’s some very funny stuff about Will Smith in this film, and he turns up for a late cameo that’s a riot. How did he respond to being sort of lampooned in the film, in terms of how much was making fun of him versus having fun with him?

KS: He got it. His manager certainly got it, because when he called after he read the script (he said), ‘At first I didn’t know why you thought Will would want to do this because it just makes fun of him. But then he shows up and he’s the pimp by the second half of the movie. I liked it.’ And then he passed it on to Will and he ended up liking it. I think he was kind of on the fence about it because nobody really likes to play themselves, particularly if you’re not doing a really insanely heightened version of yourself. Like on Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, you’re asking Ben and Matt to do versions of themselves that just don’t exist, obviously a joke. But this performance is kind of close to who Will is. You’re not asking him to do something so outlandish. So I think for him he was a little bit on the fence. He wanted to do it but he thought it might be too arrogant to play himself, but then Ben and Jen called him up and talked him into it. Ben called him up and was just like, ‘Dude, do it. This dude wrote me into a movie as myself once and you come off much better than I do.’

LS: You’ve got a bold sense of humor and are unafraid to take on serious targets like sex and religion, as well as lampoon beloved bastions of pop culture. Are there ever repercussions?

KS: Yeah, like am I ever afraid Andrew Lloyd Weber is going to show up and try to kick my ass? Nah, in this movie there are really no hard targets. They’re kind of easy shots. It’s not like, ‘Oh my God, he f*****’ mocked the American institution that is Cats.’ At this point nobody gives a s***. You kind of make the jokes, and if they fly, they fly. Those jokes are no-brainers. They always work at somebody else’s expense. It’s the jokes that aren’t at somebody else’s expense that tend to fall flat because it’s really subjective. You find it funny but maybe other people don’t.

LS: What’s the funniest thing that didn’t make it into one of your films?

KS: There was a joke that I thought was great and they cut it out—Mallrats—I mean, it wasn’t great, but I liked it and I thought it was funny. The running joke is that Jay and Bob are supposed to keep running into Gwen, Joey Lauren Adams’ character, and spying on her in changing rooms throughout the mall. And the final one is with them looking at her through a peep hole while she’s getting changed, and Silent Bob starts jerkin’ off and shoots over the top and f*****’ it lands in her hair. And you see her character for the rest of the movie, her hair is matted with f*****’, you know, man gravy. And the studio was just like, ‘You can’t do it. Cum in the hair, man? Nobody will see that movie. It’s totally crude. It won’t play.’ So they hammered it out. And then years later f*****’ There’s Something About Mary put it on the poster.‘ I’m like f*****,’ ‘Hey…what?’