Jay And Silent Bob Are Best Friends And Business Partners In Real Life

As far back as the late-90s Smith had identified the magnitude of the problem and entered Mewes into a series of drug rehab clinics, even getting him to live with his family, but nothing seemed to work for long. After one lengthy stint of sobriety last decade Mewes relapsed following back surgery in 2009, and it was then that Smith stumbled upon the idea for the Jay And Silent Bob Get Old podcasts. The regular recordings are almost like a ‘weekly intervention’, the pair appearing onstage and discussing at length (amongst other things) Mewes’ ongoing quest to stay clean and healthy. The podcast quickly gained so much traction touring around the States that eventually they began touring it overseas, and after their inaugural Australian visit in 2012 — which was recorded and released on DVD as Jay And Silent Bob Go Down Under — they’re returning once more, in the process proving categorically that sometimes laughter really is the best medicine.

"That’s how the podcast started — I had a relapse and Kevin asked why."

“Oh I loved it, I loved it,” Mewes enthuses of the first Australian sojourn. “That’s why we decided to video it, because we’d never been so besides the actual podcast we were doing I’d never seen the country. Even just walking around exploring was fun, it was a blast.”

It’s a whole new experience seeing Smith and Mewes in the flesh after so long seeing them on the big screen inhabiting their bizarre characters — does Mewes enjoy appearing live and getting up close and personal with his fans?

“I do, I definitely do,” he continues. “Getting up onstage and feeding off the energy of everybody is pretty awesome. I didn’t expect it, because especially when we first started, the first eight episodes were Kevin talking and his perspective on our friendship and us working together and the first movie we shot and all that, and it wasn’t until the eighth or ninth episode that we really started telling stories and getting into it and moving into bigger venues and travelling — it’s awesome, I love it. We’ve had some big gaps in-between live podcasts when we were shooting [2014 film] Tusk and [impending 2015 film] Yoga Hosers and we weren’t able to schedule live shows, and people were wondering what was going on, so we did a couple of home shows and it’s just not the same. Just going out amongst the crowd afterwards and chit-chatting with people and being onstage and feeling the energy and vibe from everyone is awesome.”

Whilst there’s plenty of laughs to be had the podcasts also have their serious side — helping Mewes stay clean — and he doesn’t mind having to put so much of his personal life in the public eye to achieve this objective.

“I wasn’t sure what to expect in the beginning but I feel like it came easily, just us starting to do the show and getting in front of people and being open and honest with stuff and getting the reaction we got — although definitely in the beginning I’d say I was a little wary of it,” he admits. “That’s how the podcast started — I had a relapse and Kevin asked why and I was explaining that I wasn’t accountable and didn’t want to talk about it, and he wanted to do the podcast and said, ‘I think you should tell everybody and be accountable to whoever comes to the shows and listens’. In the beginning I was, like, ‘I don’t know, what if people are mean or whatever?’ I think in the beginning it took a little while for me to start opening up, but as soon as we started those first eight episodes where Kevin told a lot of stories, then after that me continuing to tell the stories, it just got easier and easier, and by about the twentieth episode it just seemed natural and smooth and not at all difficult to say what’s on my mind or what’s been going on.”

And although it wasn’t meant as an altruistic concern, there was an almost immediate positive flow-on when fans began to take inspiration from Mewes’ public battle and apply the hard fought lessons to their own lives.

"I had a guy coming up and saying, ‘Hey man, I’ve been sober for just over a year and it’s because I started listening to your podcasts’."

“Over the course of the last three years or so there’s been a handful of people [who have told me such stories], and it’s been pretty awesome because I didn’t expect that,” he tells. “Kevin would say, ‘I think you should put it out there and I think it will help you to talk about it and not forget’, but I didn’t expect it to have any effect on other people. For example at the last couple of shows we’ve done I had a guy coming up and saying, ‘Hey man, I’ve been sober for just over a year and it’s because I started listening to your podcasts’, and then I had another woman coming up with her son which I thought was awesome — this older woman with her twenty-year-old son came up and started crying and gave me a hug, and was, like, ‘Thank you, I’m so glad you’re doing good and you’ve really helped my son when he listens to your podcasts’. 

“When you hear that it feels amazing, because I didn’t expect that part of it — when we started it wasn’t about helping people it was more just for myself — but helping others does help me. When there’s tough times I don’t want to disappoint anyone or let people down — I’ve had bad dreams where I’ve woken up and been, like, ‘Oh shit, we’ve got shows this weekend and I’ve got to tell everyone that I drank!’, but it was really me just waking up from a dream where I was drinking in my dream. It’s interesting.”

It has to be amazing having a mate like Kevin who’s looking out for you all the time?

“Definitely, it’s been awesome,” Mewes marvels. “When we first started hanging out I was thirteen or fourteen and he was eighteen — I was friends with Bryan Johnson from [reality TV show] Comic Book Men, I knew him through my brother — so at first all those guys hung out and didn’t even really want me around because they thought I was just a little kid, so to see over the years where our friendship has been and how it’s grown has been awesome. 

“Before we started the podcast — which is another thing that’s happened that I didn’t expect — he was just like an older brother and would help me out when I was in jams and just always be there for me, and it’s been cool because now we’ve started the podcasts we hang out more and talk more and share more and I’m not hiding things from him and all that. We’ve gotten closer, and now our relationship is like best friends as well as our business relationship — we work together and have a company together — while for many, many years it was more, like, ‘There’s my good friend Kevin, he’s like an older brother to me’ type shit.”

Looking to the future, there are sequels aplenty in the pipeline and both Smith and Mewes will be spending plenty of time in character as Jay and Silent Bob, much to fans’ excitement.

“Hopefully everything goes as planned, I’m excited about it too,” Mewes laughs. “I’ve got to read both scripts — Mallbrats and Clerks 3 — and they’re awesome. It looks like we’re going to be doing Mallbrats first and hopefully everything goes smoothly and we start shooting in October. Clerks was our first movie but that was just us at home with a bunch of friends, so Mallrats was our first studio movie and first movie where we were getting paid and had crew people and cast members and we were staying in a hotel — it was really surreal. It was a real studio movie so to me it was my first movie, and it will be awesome to do Mallbrats because it will bring back that nostalgia of, ‘We’re doing this again, 20 years later!’ It will be cool.”

"They’re taking time and putting money together to make the movie about the movie."

There’s even a biopic in the pipeline called Shooting Clerks which is about Smith and Mewes, recreating the pair’s exploits making Clerks with their mates on a shoestring budget. Smith and Mewes both have cameos in the film, but the fact that the crew behind it are already responsible for a number of other short biopics about the pair — and that accordingly there’s a Scottish actor named Chris Bain whose career so far is limited exclusively to roles where he’s playing Mewes — seems incomprehensible to the man himself. 

“First they did Get Greedo (2013), this story about when Kevin would pick me up and we’d go looking for toys to distract me and stuff when I was trying to get sober — that was awesome to sit and watch, I couldn’t believe it,” he says excitedly. “It’s surreal to me that people liked our movies and our back story so much that they’re taking time and putting money together to make the movie about the movie. 

“To this day I wasn’t planning on acting, and for me to still be doing this is so random. Even after we shot Clerks I went back to working doing roofing and construction and stuff — just doing jobs I didn’t really like to get by — and then Kevin said to me, ‘Hey, Miramax just bought [Clerks] at Sundance and now I’m going to be doing three other movies and I’m writing our characters into it!’ Then after Mallrats I got an offer to do an independent movie called Drawing Flies (1996), and that’s when I thought, ‘Wow, maybe this is something that I can do for real. Hopefully I don’t have to go back home and roof!’ So to be able to do the podcast and travel and attend the conventions I go to and shoot more movies and have someone playing characters of us and stuff, it’s just surreal and amazing.”