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"Clerks II" latest among crop of movies that celebrate fanboys |
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Written by KRT
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Friday, 21 July 2006 |
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 Are you a fanboy?
If you are, you'll know just what to do with this article about a small cadre of comic-book, fantasy-novel and genre-movie obsessives who have transformed Hollywood: among them Kevin Smith, Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, the Wachowski brothers and Sam Raimi.
Save it. It could be worth money.
In mint condition, of course.
"I grew up reading comic books," says Smith, who famously subsidized his breakthrough movie, "Clerks," 12 years ago by selling off his comic book collection. "My characters, like me and my friends, like to sit around and talk about pop culture."
"Clerks" (1994), whose characters are back for an encore in "Clerks II," opening Friday, is not only a movie made by a fanboy, it's one of the first movies about fanboys.
When Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson), two slacker store clerks, aren't discussing sex in the most graphic possible terms, they're discussing pop culture. For instance, whether the contractors hired to build the Death Star in "The Empire Strikes Back" were killed when the space fortress exploded.
And "Clerks II," which has the now thirtysomething duo working at a fast-food restaurant, takes up precisely where "Clerks" left off. This time, Randal is arguing with a new, even nerdier clerk (Trevor Fehrman) about whether "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" is fit to be spoken of in the same breath as the "Star Wars" movies.
"There's only one return — and that's 'Return of the Jedi'," Randal pronounces.
Fanboys — also known in less-friendly circles as geeks and dweebs — care about this stuff.
"They're people who can passionately discuss the things they're passionate about," says Harry Knowles, whose Web site Ain't It Cool News, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is fanboy central.
Fanboys are nothing new, of course. Trekkies, sci-fi and fantasy lovers, superhero cultists, rabid collectors of all kinds, have been part of the landscape for decades.
What's new is that the oddball kids who go to conventions, collect plastic figurines and put comic books in plastic sleeves are now making $270 million movies like the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy for other fanboys.
"I guess every generation has its entertainments, or things that fuel its engine and inspire it," Smith says. "Now you have people who grew up reading comic books making movies, people who grew up watching TV making movies, people who grew up watching movies making movies."
It's a brave new world for fanboys.
With fanboy-friendly movies like "Spider-Man" (which grossed $403.7 million) and the "Lord of the Rings" series ($1 billion-plus, collectively) connecting with audiences in a big way, Hollywood is developing a new respect for the guys with tape on their glasses. Word on the Sunset Strip is that these supposed "losers" with their "Star Wars" collectibles have their fingers on the pulse of the public far more than the suits in their front offices.
Which is why geeky Web sites like Ain't It Cool News are consulted by Hollywood executives, and high-profile fanboys like Knowles are feared by Hollywood brass and kowtowed to by fanboy directors. "Hostel," the $47.3 million-grossing thriller, actually began as a (very morbid) conversation between Knowles and director Eli Roth.
"We started talking about the sickest (things) we'd ever seen online," Knowles recalls. "I wondered if there was anything you can't get online. You can get sex online. You can get drugs online. Can you go somewhere and kill someone you don't know just for the act of killing someone?"
A Web site out of Bangkok, he claims, offered to set visitors up with a chance to murder someone for $15,000 (money to be paid to the victim's survivors). "That became the genesis of `Hostel,'" he says.
Knowles — a 34-year-old son of a comic-book storeowner who launched Ain't It Cool News from his father's basement in Austin, Texas — is an oracle to many in the 90210 ZIP code. In an upcoming movie called "Fanboys," Knowles is actually a character.
"It's about a group of four fanboys who try to break into Skywalker Ranch to see an early print of `The Phantom Menace,' because one of them is dying of cancer," Knowles says.
Given the energy and single-mindedness of fanboys, it was only a matter of time before some of them broke into Hollywood.
Peter Jackson, who made "The Lord of the Rings," is a fanboy. His three "Rings" movies, like his later "King Kong," were not the work of a jobber director but of a lifelong fantasy geek who grew up on Tolkien and Ray Harryhausen movies and staked his career to realize his dream.
Quentin Tarantino is a fanboy. The onetime video clerk brought his passion for B movies and obscure Asian action flicks to such films as "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and the "Kill Bill" films.
Sam Raimi ("Spider-Man" "Spider-Man 2"), the Wachowski brothers (the "Matrix" movies), Robert Rodriguez ("Sin City") — all fanboys.
And what of Kevin Smith — who has written comic books, named his daughter Harley Quinn after a DC comics character, and opened his own comic store (Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash)? Need you ask?
"My generation, we sat around talking about sex, and we talked about pop culture," Smith says.
Fanboy directors are not only fans themselves, but also — unusual for Hollywood players — they tend to stay close to their fanboy audience. They aim their movies at the fans first _ counting on them to spread the buzz to the wider audience.
Most of them blog, correspond and e-mail. They encourage fans to vet their work. The DVD edition of "Lord of the Rings" contains several minutes' worth of alphabetical, single-space thank-yous — thousands and thousands of names — to fans who weighed in during filming.
Fanboy directors, in other words, are precisely not the kind of people who would tell fans — as did William Shatner in the famous "Saturday Night Live" skit — to "get a life."
"I like hearing from the people who support us," Smith says. "I want to find out what's on that person's mind."
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