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Welcome to our exclusive recap of the history-making Stash Tour & Grand Re-Opening! This event was in lovely downtown Red Bank, New Jersey, on Saturday, March the 6th, 1999. Kevin Smith and the View Askew crew thought it would be a good idea to hold an exclusive grand re-opening of the new and improved Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash exclusively for his web-baesd fans. In addition to a fun-filled two hours in the Stash, featuring many special guests and surprises, guests were also treated to a two hour tour of the area featuring many of the sites that View Askew made famous: The Quick Stop, RST Video, Posten's Funeral Home, & the Marina Diner. What follows is a recount of what your fearless News Askew webmasters, Brad & Chris, experienced in our few days in the land of Askew.
After a fairly uneventful 3 hour journey from Central PA, we rolled into town around 9:00 PM and immediately checked in at the Marriott Courtyard's front desk. Class operation they've got there, as always. We were given a nifty "Stash Bash Preview", put together by The Marksman, which featured all the details on the weekend's events, including tour group times, area accomodations, and step by step directions on taking the tour yourself. Very nice! We also heard some rumblings from the hotel bar, and assumed some of the fans had already arrived and settled in. So, after a quick remote update from our room, it was down to the hotel bar to see what was goin' on.
When we got downstairs, we found a nice-sized crowd of around 30 or so View Askew fans gathered around & chatting. Many of them were News Askew fans, as well, which was nice...We spent the next few hours talking, drinking, and eating...And had a blast. Everyone we met was great. We'd go down the list of names, but we'd hate to slight anyone, since we met a TON of you this weekend, but rest assured, we appreciated you taking the time to stop and say hello. It was great meeting all of you, and we'd like to say thanks again for supporting the site! After things closed down upstairs, we headed up to the room, had a nightcap with a couple of the folks still standing, then decided to call it a night. Saturday was gonna be a LONG day, after all!
The alarm went off (making a horrible sound) around 7:30 AM...After hitting the snooze a couple times, we eventually managed to roll out of our respective beds, have a quick breakfast, clean up & get ready. After a quick drive into town (the hotel's only about 5 minutes from the Stash, if that), we nabbed the first open parking spot we saw, and started our trek up Monmouth Street. Saturday was a slightly chilly and overcast day (we'd soon discover that some cold, ugly rain was on its way into the area). It was a strange sight, walking by the old Stash and seeing it no longer there, but we knew that soon enough we'd be feasting our eyes upon a bigger, better, cooler place, and that all would be right with the world once again. Rounding the corner onto Broad Street, we also noticed the famous View Askew logo was no longer in that famous office building window, since the office too had moved into new digs since our last trip over the Summer.
A small crowd had already gathered in from of the Stash, including none other than Jay & Silent Bob themselves, Jay Mewes and Kevin Smith! Kev immediately recognized us and welcomed us...We chatted for a few minutes about the goings-on at the hotel last night, and then Kevin urged that we go in to check out the place, which was being protected from prying eyes by a dark blanket hanging over the door.
The new Stash is an amazing sight to behold. The entire place is FILLED with View Askew memorabilia, mostly one-of-a-kind stuff, so much of it, in fact, that it seemed like we saw something new every time we took a second look. High ceilings and track lighting make the place feel very open and comfortable. The counter's found immediately on right upon entry...This is where you'll normally find Walt or Bryan faithfully at their post. The left wall of the Stash features the New Release racks, followed by the obligatory action figures, rare to find toys, and some hard to find VHS tapes. Glass cases featuring some of the really expensive stuff, including those nifty Star Wars collectibles, as well as signed cassettes of the Jersey Trilogy, soundtracks, and tons more, can be found running up the center. By the way, this place seems to go back FOREVER, it's definitely longer than wider, but don't get us wrong, it's plenty wide as well. Basically, in a nutshell, this comic shop has it all. Even WITHOUT the View Askew merchandise and props it'd be a sweet place, the extras add to it even more.
Now, for the cool stuff: We're not going to get into the Dogma stuff, since most of it's gonna be under wraps until the flick premieres, but we'll tell ya this: Lots of Mooby and a couple of nifty statues and sculptures from the flick. Draw your own inferences from there! As far as classic stuff, how about Jay & Silent Bob's costumes from Mallrats (including the famous Batman outfit)? Speaking of Mallrats, you'll also see the actual wooden toy train that Silent Bob slipped on during one of his many attempts to foil the evil LaFours. Oh, and here's a good story: Remember that "NEW NEW NEW!" sign from Clerks that was above that silly girl's head who asked about the new releases? Kevin stopped at RST earlier in the week to make the tour arrangements, and lo and behold, what sign was STILL being USED at the place? You guessed it. Kev plunked down some cash and, long story short, you can see the sign on the Stash walls now.
Oh, and speaking of the walls, artwork galore! You'll see a ton of the pages designed exclusively for use in Chasing Amy, some unique newspaper articles (one from Dogma), book covers (Boregasm!), and more framed costumes. A mock-cityscape outside of 3 faux windows hangs about halfway up the right hand side of the place...A very cool touch. All of the famous Oni Press books are lining a border that winds around a good portion of the store towards the celing. Above that, more costumes, props, posters, and artwork. Finally, two Sony TV's pipe down from the ceiling, in the front and back left corners of the store, play Clerks, Mallrats, and some special material (more on that a little later...)
As promised, I had my LeClair jersey on, so myself and "Silent Chris" as he became known during the day became pretty easy to spot. We spent quite a bit of time chatting with folks from groups 1 and 2, it seemed that most of the folks who got their tickets early were also News Askew fans. Cool! We had a blast taking in the scenery of the Stash while meeting some of the faithful site readers. Kevin soon came back to see what we thought of the place, naturally, we were swimming in everything around us, and we told him that we were quite impressed. Soon after that, Kevin was greeted by an ever-growing crowd of fans an autograph-seekers, an event that would happen many times throughout the day; As always, the guy was more than gracious to sign everything placed in front of him until everyone was satisfied. He's gotta have a sore writing hand today!
Group 1 members continued to trduge into the Stash in amazement during the opening 30 minutes, slowly tooling around the shop and soaking up the splendor. A plentiful of Dunkin Donuts and juice was stacked in front of the shop, soon to be replaced by a steady suppy of pizza and soft drinks and lunchtime approached. Food was abundant. No one left hungry, and there was hardly ever a wait to get at the grub. Again, a seemingly tough task that the event crew pulled off flawlessly. Kudos!
About an hour into each group's "Stash time", Kevin jumped up on a chair and asked for everyone's attention. As the TV monitors in the joint went blue and the music went silent, everyone stopped what they were doing and wondered what was in store. Kevin then proceeded to welcome & thank all the guests of the event: Himself (because hey, without him, we wouldn't have been standing there), his lovely fiance Jen, Walt, Bryan, The Event crew of Jimmy, Joe, Amanda, and Nanci (more on those great people in a moment), Ming, and even us (though we felt humbled being grouped in with the greats, but it was still cool of the guy to remember us all the same!). He normally asked a couple questions of how everyone thought of the tour, and if anyone didn't think it was worth the thirty bucks (of course, no one felt slighted). Then, he asked everyone to pick a monitor and get ready for a few things he had to show to the group.
We'd gathered that at least the imfamous Dogma Trailer would finally be seen by the guests, and we weren't wrong. We'd seen the trailer that Kevin & Scott cut together over the summer, and loved it, so we knew it would go over HUGE! The crowd grew completely silent as the words "DOGMA TRAILER" appeared on the screen. What followed was the approximately 3 minute full trailer, the first half featuring a very cleverly cut together summary of the film's plot line, as told by several of the characters; the second half scored by a booming soundtrack and tons of the non-stop action that takes place in the film. Kevin let us know that this indeed will be the trailer that we see in theaters towards the end of summer. There is NO WAY someone can see this trailer and NOT want to see Dogma. It's truely a masterpiece in itself. After the trailer, a short, 20 second teaser of incredibly fast moving images, and only a score (no dialogue or sound effects) was presented as well. This should hit theaters around June if all goes well, and again makes the viewer yearn for more. Up next, a quick teaser for a View Askew production we've been hearing about for a couple years now: Bryan Johnson's "Vulgar". It runs about 20 seconds. It reveals nothing from the film, other than it'll certainly live up to its name! And we'll leave it at that. Fall '99 was the proposed release at the end of that one.
The earlier groups were also treated to two unearthed videos from the Clerks auditions. The first clip featured Jeff Anderson reading for the role of Jay, in a lewd and silly scene that never made it into the final cut of Clerks! It was hilarious to see Jeff fumble through the lines and proclaim how nervous he was! The audience at the Stash concurred that ultimately, the part of Jay went to the right person. Kevin also played a clip of Brian's audition that won him the part of Dante, a humorless yet impressive reading that sealed him the role.
Next up was one of the big surprises of the day, to us at least: Something Kevin said that Scott Mosier had cut together for an event that was to take place 2 months before Dogma opens: The re-issue of Clerks! The all black-and white trailer starts out with a classy look and feel, featuring classic bits of black and white films, and states "In the tradition of classic black and white films...comes the re-release...of a film that's not so classic". The screen goes black and we hear Dante's famous lament, "I'm not even supposed to BE here today!". Then, classical music and a montage of famous Clerks scenes appear, interspersed by the placards "Remember The Magic" and "Believe Again", eliciting uproarious laughter and applause from the crowd. "Same Crappy Picture, Same Crappy Sound. Clerks: The Not So Special Edition", the trailer proclaims. GREAT stuff! We hope they can pull it off. We'll follow up that story on News Askew, for sure.
To round off this great group of clips, Kevin finally displayed something else we'd yet to have seen - Some test special effects shots from Dogma. The first group of shots feature Ben Affleck's flapping angel wings during a descent in front of the church towards the end of the film. They look absolutely AMAZING. The studio's doing a fantastic job with these, folks - VERY realistic looking. Trust us! Finally, we learn that some of Noman's shots are being changed from a guy in a suit to an all digital creature which, while in his prelimiary stages only, is shaping up to be a fantastic piece of work. Dogma's digital effects will no doubt take this film to a new level, and increase the enjoyment factor even more. Color us impressed.
After the videos were over, we had a chance to talk to Jimmy Palmiotti, who does the fantastic inking work on the DareDevil series as well as a ton of other non-Askew comic duties (including being the founder of Event Comics, for Pete's sake!). Jimmy was a really cool guy - We managed to chat about a ton of stuff, including deadlines, why movies like "Virus" really sucked, and the daily grind. The guy's funny as hell, too (he sported a "Hello, my name is SATAN" nametag most of the day. Jimmy brought Amanda Conner, the artist of Painkiller Jane, along for the ride. She was also very gracious and fun to talk to - At one point we got into an argument that comics are mostly still a "guy thing" and started to ask some of the females in Kev's autograph line what their thoughts were. Jimmy commented that "Do you bag your comics?" isn't the best pickup line when you're trying to meet chicks.
Joe Quesda, DareDevil's penciler and Event Comics co-founder, arrived soon after Jimmy along with his wife to be, DD's editor, Nanci Dakesian, and came up to us to say hello. The guys had recently comped us a bunch of cool signed Event swag, so we had some thanks to give. Plus, we'd been communicating through e-mail for a while, and it was nice to meet face to face. We asked Joe how the biz was going in general...As a whole, he said the comics industry was struggling at the moment, but that it was cool to be having the success they were enjoying with the Marvel Knights series. We also learned that Joe was doing some filler work at the moment, since Kev's script for DareDevil issue #7 is running somewhat late. By the way, expect DD #6 in a week or two!
It's great to see a nice bunch of people that are having so much success, and enjoying what they do (even though they all seemed BEAT by the end of the night, rightfully so). We enjoyed spending a good part of the day messing around with the Event gang -- They made for some fun conversation and helped the day to be even more enjoyable. Thanks, everyone!
From this point on, things seemed to go in a 2 hour cycle, with similar outcomes. Throughout the day, groups continued to shuffle in and out of the Stash. The tour bus loaded in the back. Everyone was given their free t-shirt on the way out. By the way, no special shirt was created for this event, the shirts were given from the Stash's own stock of shirts currently for sale...A Stash Gala pin featuring the cartoonish Jay & Silent Bob was given to all guests to commemorate the event. The calm between groups was always quite welcome and peaceful. Kevin would normally chat with Joe, Jimmy, Walt, Bryan, & Jen during the downtime and take a much needed break. We'd take the time to sit on the bench towards the back of the store and rest the legs and feet a little bit...Being up and around for about 10 hours straight DOES take its toll, after some time! We can't imagine how tired Kevin & The Event gang must have been from the constant activity on their end, as well.
During one of the subsequent breaks, we thought it'd be a good time to make some purchases and get caught up on some swag: We each picked up the released versions of the Jay & Silent Bob figures (these things are SWEET, folks!), some of the Oni books with alternate covers, and just some basic catching up (since we prefer to buy the View Askew comics directly from Kev, to make sure the money's going to the right place!). After all, what's a good trip to the Stash without making a purchase or two, or ten? Everything at the Stash was 10% off for the event, which was cool, but we still managed to drop about 80 bucks a piece! Hell, it's worth it, though. This stuff is great. And we'll never get tired of pushing that Jay button and hearing him shout "Nagga Noooonch!" and the like.
Most of the stuff sold at the Stash on Saturday wasn't signed, simply because everyone was there to do it personally, on the fly, which is much cooler in our opinion, anyway! We've gotten so much stuff signed by Kev lately, and a ton of stuff the Event gang was kind enough to shoot our way, so we didn't have the heart to ask for anything personalized for us yesterday. I did manage to get a DareDevil Trade Paperback from my pal Chad signed with some funny stuff by Kevin, Joe, and Jimmy, which was way cool. Thanks guys!
Vincent Pereira chatted with us for a while about the editing work on Dogma. First of all Janeane Garofalo's part in Dogma is still quite intact, contrary to the rumor we reported on the other day. Vincent says only about 2 lines of dialogue have been removed from her. So, while her part IS small to begin with, it's no smaller than originally intended. Vincent also confirms that Kevin has indeed managed to cut the 3 hour workprint to 2:07 without removing ANY plot points or sequences. By just removing dialogue, he's maintained the entire story and impact, saving almost an hour at the same rate. Man, this flick is gonna be TIGHT! We hope that you'll all be able to see what was cut someday though, since we think everything we saw last summer is definitely stuff that the fans will enjoy.
Speaking of that, Vincent confirms that the Mallrats Special Edition DVD is on track for a release sometime this summer. Among the revelations, a few easter eggs will be included, as well as the ENTIRE 20 minute lost introduction, followed by all the other changes the film needed due to losing that intro. Vincent is seeing that this disc is PACKED to the limit with everything, including the already announced commentary (in which the cast discusses what went wrong with the film, and why it suffered at the critic's hands), a documentary focusing on similar subjects, the previously mentioned lost scenes, alternate takes, the famous Buttercup video, and more. We're hoping to get our hands on a test pressing here at News Askew when it's ready - We'll have a full review of that if/when it happens.
Also, A Better Place fans take note: Vincent's also working on the A Better Place DVD: He's packing this baby as well, hoping to include 2 "flashback" scenes if he can get them ready in time. They sound fantastic. It's nice to have this guy on our side working on the View Askew DVD's! If this is any indication, the Dogma DVD will be a sight to behold.
A few late arriving special guests also took the time to stop in and do some signing, meeting, & greeting: Earnest O'Donnell, a.k.a. Rick Deras, and John Willyung, a.k.a. Cohee Lundin! I chatted with Earnest for a little while at the front of the store...Nice guy! Jen also chatted with me for a bit about how great the house was working out, and reported that little Harley Quinn is doing well! She was very kind and pleasant, and did a great job keeping order both inside and out front of the joint.
By about 7:00 or so, when the final group was about to enter the store, we decided it'd be a good time to call it a night. Kevin had asked if we wanted to jump on the last tour bus, since we'd yet to take any of the tours that were held during the day, but it was pretty dark and we heard Brian worrying about how it might be tough to see a lot of the sights, since it had gotten quite dark by this time. We also heard they lost Jay in the midst of the last tour - After a stop for a few six packs and some cocktails in the back of the bus, Jay asked to be let off at a local bar, and no one had seen him since! We'd seen most of the area sights on previous trips to the area, so, while the idea was tempting, we decided that we were pretty beat...So, after saying our thanks and goodbyes to the Event gang, Kevin, Vincent, Ming, & Jen - We took that sad walk out of the Stash, while that final group was beginning to file in for the final act before dropping the curtain on the day...
In closing, thanks to EVERYONE for a fantastic weekend. Kevin: You did it again! It must be nice to know that you can become a professional events coordinator if you ever tire of making movies. Jen: The most efficient and pleasant bouncer we've ever met. It was a tough job guarding that door and keeping the crowds outside at bay. You made it look easy! Bry & Walt: You guys ran a tight ship, kept those stacked lines moving at the register, and made sure that the swag never dried up out on the floor. Good job pulling the whole thing off without a hitch. Joe, Jimmy, Amanda, & Nanci: Thanks for taking time out of your incredibly busy schedules to spend the entire day with us! You made a ton of fanboys and girls happy with your signatures and great conversation (including ourselves). It was a pleasure finally meeting you all! Jay & Brian: Bang-up job on those tours. Folks were RAVING about the level of energy and entertainment that you put into all 6 of the treks. Sorry we didn't get a chance to chat more, but you seemed busy enough! Finally, all the fans: Thanks for coming to the event, and a special thanks to each and every one of you who stopped to chat with us schlubs with all the REAL celebs lurking about! It was a pleasure to finally meet those of you that make doing this site on an almost-daily basis so worthwhile. We'll see you at the next one! Oh, and for those of you that took pictures of us: If we look good, post them everywhere, but if we look silly, we hope you'll have the decency to burn them immediately.
