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The Thresher had the opportunity to talk to Smith while he promoted the viewing. The following is an excerpt from that conversation.

Thresher : Clerks had an obvious target audience, namely college-age males. Mallrats seemed to be a departure from that, in the sense that it was aimed at a larger, more general audience, and Chasing Amy seems a return to the cult following you had on Clerks. Have you decided that you found your niche?

Smith : I think we made a departure from that [ Clerks ] audience, inasmuch as the subject matter is a little beyond them ... or potentially alienating. We started dealing in homoerotic themes and romance in general -- just a love story is kind of different from what we've done before. I mean, people dated in Clerks and Mallrats , but it wasn't like what this movie is.

There was initially a fear: "Are we going to alienate the core audience?" But there are enough jokes in Chasing Amy to keep them around. I think the first half hour of the movie kind of plays like the two movies we made before, and then it takes a gentle shift. So as far as going back, I think after Mallrats, we just didn't give a shit anymore, like how wide or small the audience was. That there's any audience at all is just worth it. I don't think I'll ever consciously make another commercial film. ...

Thresher : Sexuality is apparently the theme of Chasing Amy . What inspired that?

Smith : I think it just kind of grew out of dating Joey [Lauren Adams]. I wanted to write this movie about falling in love, what happens when one falls in love and how it's not always idyllic. At the time I started writing the flick, I had been thinking a lot about the lines of sexuality, who draws them and why we adhere to them.

The thing that always flabbergasted me, that I've always found the most astounding -- if you have two girls, and they are just friends, and one night they cross the line, and get gay with each other, the next day there's no fallout, no repercussions. It's such an old story. You hear it all the time. They'll tell you about it. They'll tell their friends about it. Girls have no problem talking about it -- guys like to hear those stories, and it's all fine and good.

And if you switch that around, if you have two guys who are good friends, and one night they get a little gay, forget it.

You can't turn around and tell a story like "I was hanging out with Bob the other night and we just got drunk, and I sucked his dick." It would alter the way everyone perceives you -- suddenly you become bisexual or gay. It's not the same with chicks. A perfectly straight woman can come off with a gay story, "Yeah, I was with Susan, and I ate her out" -- and nobody thinks she's gay or bisexual.

With men it's completely different, and I found that so curious. Why do we perceive it that way?

Thresher : Have you had pressure from Miramax to "lighten up" any of your films for the mainstream?

Smith : We got a lot of that on Mallrats , but it wasn't like dealing with the devil. What they said made sense at the time. They'd be like "in order for your stuff to reach the widest possible audience, why don't you alter it here and there?" It seemed like a logical argument, so we're like "OK."

Thresher : Have you thought of doing a departure from comedy or trying a new film style?

Smith : Dogma is [a new style]. It's a movie that always occurs to me as forward motion -- it's very plot heavy and everyone is moving towards the final goal. Stylistically, it's very special effects-oriented and cerebral -- not so much cerebral as it is talking about smart things. Visually, it's kind of a stretch for me. There's enough comedy in it that I'm comfortable with it. I think Chasing Amy is as close to drama as it gets for me.

Thresher : You say you're planning on writing a sitcom for Jason Lee, co-star of Chasing Amy and Mallrats . Is writing for TV different? Have you approached it differently?

Smith : We haven't even started. You get a feel from the executives -- they are always kind of bracing you, "this is different than movies," and I just don't see why that has to be. I don't want to shoot in front of a live studio audience. I want to shoot the show like we do a movie -- go out somewhere on location and shoot a 16mm TV show.

It'll take some getting used to, but I think we could do it less expensively than if we did it in the studio. It's a matter of being able to jump in with your vision, because they hire you for a reason -- they're like "we like what you do," and hopefully they like what I do for TV, and hopefully they'll go along with it. Like everything in life, it's a negotiation. They'll give a little, I'll give a little. This is my perception of what the show is, this is the studio's perception of the show is, and somewhere in the middle is what the show will be.

Thresher : What was it like to direct your girlfriend, Joey Lauren Adams? Were there any rough or difficult moments?

Smith : It was very relaxed. It was nice. It had its moments, like, "Oh, god, we're dating." ... We were on the set, and we were shooting the interior [of the] hockey rink, the crowd scene and the whole crowd, and I had said "we're shooting this blah blah blah this way," and I was sitting way down by the monitor, and they were way up in the stands, and she just screams over -- she didn't understand why she was doing something and she yelled out "why?" and it's like "'cause I fucking said so." And just in that moment you want her to be the actress, and she was a little bit of the girlfriend.

I'm uncomfortable shooting in front of a large crowd -- nobody likes to direct in front of a crowd. Just the idea of directing is so artsy-fartsy anyway -- vision and all that crap. It's also kind of embarrassing. You have people listening to you and perhaps saying, "What's he talking about?" or "Does he know what he's doing?" Things happen better in small rooms. ...

Thresher : The Oscars are a sign that independent films are "in" right now. How does that affect you?

Smith : It doesn't affect us in the least, since we're not up for an Oscar. As for the attention that independent filmmaking has, I think it's more negative than positive, because now you are in the spotlight -- what if you start churning out really bad indie films?

People think independent is synonymous with good or classy, and there are just as many bad independent films as bad mass-produced studio films. I think, "Let it be the subculture that it is rather than mainstream."

People go, "Oh, I saw an independent movie -- I went and saw Shine, " and suddenly they're hip. That's the other thing: they've tapped some independent films -- they're fine, but I wouldn't go nuts about them. I thought Shine was nice. It played like a really well-done TV movie, marginally better. I didn't see it as Oscar-worthy.

Thresher : What are your filmmaking inspirations?

Smith : On Clerks and Mallrats , I definitely pulled a lot from other people, or I saw other people's stuff and was really jazzed by it. On Clerks it was Hartley, Spike Lee and Richard Linklater, and on Mallrats it was John Hughes and John Landis.

Chasing Amy is the first flick I don't see anybody's influence on but my own. It was like I was able to go back and take a look at my two films and draw inspiration from those. It's nice to not feel like "this is in the style of" or "in homage to." It's completely mine.

As a filmmaker, you're the sum total of every movie you've ever seen anyway ... but you have to realize that we make different movies. [Some directors are] far more talented or far more visually talented than I'll ever be or even ever have an interest in [being].

I do something and apparently do it well, and I respect that, and hopefully, they see it and respect it. There's no hero worship any- more. ...

Thresher : What do you have to say to aspiring filmmakers?

Smith : Lock up the script. ... [The public] will forgive you for not having enough money for the flick -- they'll forgive you for a lot of things. But where a lot of independent films go wrong is with the script. The key to low budget film is dialogue, because dialogue is very inexpensive to shoot. Make it interesting. Make it good.

Even performances can sag as long as the script is tight, so it's all about locking up that really great script. Go ten drafts if you have to, make everybody read it, and make everybody be honest in their reactions before you head out and spend thirty or forty thousand dollars.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the April 11, 1997 issue.