Filmmaker Kevin Smith presents his most personal film to date with The 4:30 Movie, a coming-of-age story - set in the summer of 1986 - that follows three sixteen-year-old friends who spend their Saturdays sneaking into movies at the local cineplex.
When one of the guys invites the girl of his dreams to see an R-rated film, all hilarity breaks loose, as a self-important theater manager (Ken Jeong) and teen rivalries interfere with his best-laid plans. Justin Long, Rosario Dawson, Jason Biggs, and more contribute outrageous characters to this poignant comic valentine to moviegoing and the youth of the '80s.
Shot in Smith's Smodcastle Cinemas in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, the movie has the same vibe as Clerks and is full of fun nostalgic Easter Eggs and pop culture references. It's also a relatable tale which features star-making performances from its four young leads: Austin Zajur, Nicholas Cirillo, Reed Northrup, and Siena Agudong.
Earlier this week, we sat down with Smith to learn more about why he wanted to make The 4:30 Movie and how owning his own theater ended up being a huge part of that (he also explains how that mirrors Clerks).
After taking a deep dive into the nostalgia factor and why he believes audiences will enjoy the movie - which is now available on Digital platforms - Smith talks about Easter Eggs referencing some key moments in Hollywood history. Among them is one of the protagonist's arguments that no one will ever pay to see a Batman movie (three years before Tim Burton's adaptation became a mega-hit).
You can check out the full interview with Smith below.
Excellent f***ing background there, man. C’mon, look at you. So well-poised. That’s one hell of a collection of Spider-Man. I can tell you hate him so much.
[Laughs] Thank you. It doesn’t compare to yours. There’s a lot of stuff I’m going to be looking back at after this.
That’s just all Kevin Smith scripts and books. That shit’s boring [Laughs]. It looks like a Bruce Wayne room, right? Like, somewhere there’s a head you open and this shit opens and reveals a Bat-cave or some shit.
Well, I’d love to look through it as a fan of yours. I had a great time watching this movie and I think anyone who loves film will remember their first time going to the movies or their first R-Rated experience. Were those memories what really drove you to tell this story?
Honestly, the first thing that drove me to tell the story is that we bought the movie theater two years ago. This movie theater in New Jersey is the one I grew up going to with my father and my friends and whatnot. It started as single screen, became two screens, and today, it’s up to five screens. We’ve got five different screens of various sizes. It was in trouble post-pandemic, of course, like most theaters, struggling and about to close. Naturally, if they were gonna sell, it was not going to remain a movie theater. Those two buildings would become condos. Me and my friends came in and this is our theater we grew up going to. It was like, ‘Alright, let’s try it.’ Owning a movie theater should be the end result. The thing I’m heading toward without knowing it. I never thought about being in exhibition, but here we are man, let’s go for it.
Once we had the place, when you look inside, nothing has been f***ing changed in decades. Cinema #1, the big theater, the 230-seater, has the same seats I sat in when I watched Friday the 13th Part 2. As long as you keep the camera looking inside the theater not looking out and as long as everyone’s outfits match the seats, you get away with a cheap period piece. Instead of doing something where because we own the movie theater, we make a movie about people working there like Clerks but ushers, I’ve never worked in movie theaters so that would feel like stolen valour to me. But I have sat in the audience since I was a child and throughout my childhood, we did that thing every parent encouraged: ‘We’re gonna drop you off at noon, pick you up at ten, and you see as many movies as you want and only pay for one.’ Theater hopping was a big part of our weekends as kids. I’ve got a movie theater so I can make a movie about hopping around just like the way we did when we were kids.
Honestly, if you reach back, the audience is kind of there for it already. They’re willing to give you the benefit of the doubt even if you are Kevin Smith. People love sentimental journeys, people love nostalgia, and in this instance, you’re talking about the universality of hanging out with your friends at the movie theater. I’ve still got a few more years to pluck that string because there’s a whole generation of kids that ain’t gonna have that memory to look back on as much as me, as much as you, as much as even my mom. She watches this movie and remembers all of that stuff. It was because we had the theater itself kind of like with Clerks. Because I worked in a convenience store, I said, ‘I could shoot a movie in here’ and that dictated the story. Same thing here. I’m not gonna say, ‘People like this movie as much as Clerks’ but they seem to like this movie more than anything I’ve done in a while and people reference, ‘Hey man, there’s a Clerks thing going on here.’ For the rest of my life, any time I do something remotely watchable, people will be like, ‘It’s like Clerks’ [Laughs] as opposed to, ‘It’s like Yoga Hosers.’ [Laughs]
That’s awesome to hear.
The theater brought out the magic of this movie. Since you’re trying to capture a movie about being in the movies without sitting back and watching the movies which is traditionally what we do in a movie theater, when you’re a kid and you spend as much time there as you do, other things go on as well. It becomes the centre of your life and we were able to extend that into this magical day movie that’s just soft as a kitten. There’s no edge to this thing whatsoever. As a filmmaker, I was like, ‘Who the f*** is gonna like this?’ I honestly felt this is only for middle-aged people like me who remember going to the movies and thinking no kid is gonna like this because there’s not a single cell phone in it and nobody Tiks or Toks. It turns out you can’t second-guess the audience. Thank God I make a movie for the same reason every time: I want to see it. Everything else is then trickle-down and I was desperate to see this and are like, ‘Yay, good job.’
Yeah, I had a great time with it for all the reasons you said and more. One was nostalgia, so for you as a writer with the benefit of hindsight, you drop in those lines about people never paying to see a Batman movie, a dig at post-credits scenes, and Star Wars on TV. How much fun is that?
Believe me, as a writer, I know it’s the lowest-hanging fruit and I’ve seen a few reviews that say, ‘He goes to that well many times in this movie.’ It’s undeniably fun to have characters in the movie predicting the future. We live in the future. It’s one of my favourite tropes from movies made in the present about movies set in the past. The one that always leaps to mind is Cameron’s movie, Almost Faomous, when they had Jimmy Fallon as a tour manager talking about Mick Jagger still being on stage doing it at age 50. Moments like that you get away with when making a movie set long before. They were fun. I’ve sat and watched it with audiences and naturally, those moments are where the audience laughs the hardest. And it’s not in abject mockery, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we were so innocent then.’
The 4:30 Movie is available on Digital on October 1, 2024!