Exclusive: Jason Mewes Talks Jay And Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie

Jay and Silent Bob have appeared in many films. They made their debut in Clerks and popped up several more times before headlining a film of their own in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.Next, they’ll be starring in their very own animated film. Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie sees the duo hitting the lottery and using the money to become super heroes.The film is written by Kevin Smith and produced by Jason Mewes, and it parodies the superhero film craze in exactly the fashion you expect from the duo. Jason Mewes took some time to talk to us about the film and plans for where Jay and Silent Bob will head in the future.ComicBook.com: How did the idea of the movie come together?Jason Mewes: Kevin [Smith] had written it a while back. I wish the actual script and characters and all that was my idea, but they were Kevin’s. The way the animated movie came about was, I was telling Kevin that I love what I do, I love acting and doing different stuff, but I wanted to try to widen my horizons at producing and maybe eventually directing. I’m interested in the business as a whole wanted to produce first and maybe work up to directing or writing. But what do I do first? I don’t know. He gave me the script and said he had written it a while ago and said, “Why don’t you try to do something with it?”I’ve known Kevin for 25 years, so I was stoked because I can’t get a script until we were going to shoot something. He never lets them leave his house unless they’re being made. It’s nice that he trusted me with the script in the first place, so I got excited and starting thinking about a plan and I thought maybe I could pitch it around, but I don’t think he gave it to me to pitch around as, like, Toy Story that’s going to be on a thousand screens.At first I thought maybe I could just do seven or so minute episodes and I’d get my money together, do a seven minute cartoon and then, if people liked it, I could do more. I got the first seven minutes done and showed Kevin and told him my plan and he really liked it. He wrote the script and he knew it but he still laughed at the combination of the animation and the script. He said don’t put it out as a seven minute cartoon, why don’t you finish it and do a full animated movie? And I said, if we do that how about we tour with it? And he agreed. So I talked to the animator, Steve, and my wife, Jordan, and, luckily, she’s way smarter than me, and there’s stuff I knew how to do and stuff she knew how to do and she wrote the checks. So the three of us, me Jordan and Steve, team up and we just kept working on it.ComicBook.com: How did the director, Steve Stark, get involved?Jason Mewes: He actually had animated a Smodcast, one of the stories from Smodcast, and sent it to Kevin and said “Hey, I’m a fan and I wanted to show you this,”and Kevin asked him to do more. So they’re talking about wanting to be superheroes and he’d take the dialog and animate it. So, I knew him through that. He went above and beyond what I epected, besides just animating and taking this script and adding our voices, a lot of these little, small things are him, like if Jay winks or Jay makes a hand gesture or a facial expression. That was all Steve and I knew he really knew how to take these characters and bring them to life with these animations. So, I called him up and asked if he was interested in doing these cartoons and then I called him back and asked if he felt like doing this as a full movie.Jason Mewes: Were there any particularly superhero movies you were looking forward to skewering?Luckily, Kevin and Steve were involved in that sense. Honestly, I like all of them over the years, even way back to The Punisher with Dolph Lundgren and the first Fantastic Four movie. The effects and the movie itself weren’t that great, but to be reading comics since I was 12 and then see them on the big screen, it was just awesome to me. So, I love all superhero movies. It’s awesome because I feel like Bluntman and Chronic, being a parody of all these different characters, there are still more characters I would have liked to throw in but we had limited time and funds. I’d love to throw in tons more, but I figure we can always do that in part two and part three. Kevin threw in the bit with the Turtles and Kevin pops up as himself and says, “Mutant turtles are from Earth and not from Mars!” And I think we’re going to use that in the second one and tie-in other parodies. Me and Steve have already been going over ideas for two. Kevin wants me to write the second one.ComicBook.com: So there’s definitely a sequel in the works?Jason Mewes: There’s definitely a second one. We’re working the script. There’s a rough draft of the script as it is right now where Jay and Silent Bob go to the future and the past to stop Michael Bay from ruining our childhood favorites. There’s a little bit of X-Men, and Doctor Who, and giant robots, and parodies of those movies. I’ve got to go through a few more passes and have Kevin tweak it and then we need to figure out what to do with it, if we finance it ourselves, we’re not sure yet.Not sure if this will definitely stick, but right now we’re calling it “Jay and Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie Twovie.”ComicBook.com: There are a lot of high profile cameo appearances in the film. How was it working with them? Did any of them surprise you?Jason Mewes: All of them were funnier and brought way more to it than I expected. Eliza Dushku blew it away, Tara Strong doing the voice of Cock Knocker, I knew they would all be good but, after hearing them and putting it to the animation, it all came out way better than I expected. I knew it would be fun and fun to watch with the parodies and all that, but every actor was just fun and very giving. No one got rich or anything and they were all part of it. They all gave it 100%.There’s the whole Neil Gaiman character, he plays “Alfred” to Chronic and Jay. His bits were great. Him talking to Jay and Bob, and there are just some really funny sequences when we’re being captured by the League and we cry out to him, “Hey we need your help!” All his bits are really funny because it’s the total opposite of him being our help, he just takes no crap. Our interactions with Neil are just fantastic.There’s that and I really, really love a scene where we’re being chased and Chronic is fighting Cock Knocker and he falls over and his pants falls down and he starts talking to Cock Knocker and asks if she want to get a BJ, and just the way she says “EXCUSE ME!” It’s a great interaction.ComicBook.com: Thanks you for your time. Any last words for the readers?Jason Mewes: Enjoy the movie and keep an eye out for the second!