2022_09_New_Jersey_Monthly

SUPER HERO
Director Kevin
Smith in his comic
book shop, Jay and
Silent Bob’s Secret
Stash, which he’s
owned in Red Bank
for 25 years.
PEOPLE
Jersey State of Mind
Director Kevin Smith proves the Garden State is not just a quick stop as he returns to launch a film
house and reboot his original, cult-classic film, Clerks. By Ed Condran
PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF JOSH ROUSH
Kevin Smith will once
again reside in New
Jersey. The Red Bank
native will still be
based in Los Angeles,
but Smith is returning part-time to
hang in the Highlands, where he came
of age during the ’80s.
The writer/director/actor recently
purchased the Highlands’ Atlantic
Movie House. “I just bought the movie
theater where I watched movies as a
kid,” Smith says in a call from his Los
Angeles home. “The theater comes with
a living space above it. It’s a dream come
true for a fat kid from New Jersey who
spent his childhood at the movies. I can
just go down in my bathrobe and watch
the latest releases on my screens.”
Smith, who is the opposite of his character
Silent Bob, cheerfully provides end-
less details about his theater. The venue,
which is a stone’s throw from the Shore,
is a charming, five-screen theater that
originally opened in a garage in 1912. The
Movie House became a theater in 1921.
“It’s like home to me,” Smith says.
The Atlantic Movie House may not be
Smith’s only Garden State purchase in
2022. Smith, who owns Red Bank’s ubercool
comic book shop Jay and Silent
Bob’s Secret Stash (named after characters
from Smith’s films) is trying to strike
a deal with the owners of Leonardo’s
Quick Stop—the shop where he worked
and shot the iconic Clerks a generation
ago—to buy the convenience store.
While shooting Clerks 3 in 2021,
Smith was completely blissed out while
once again working at the Quick Stop,
albeit in a very different capacity. “It
was like the fantasy camp of a lifetime,”
Smith says. “I was back doing my favorite
thing, which was hanging out, and this
time, making a movie. I loved being at
Quick Stop when I was 20. I just hated
working there. This time, I didn’t have to
ring up any customers. It was like having
your own Death Star set up.” (For the
uninitiated, in Star Wars, the Death Star
is the Empire’s ultimate weapon.)
Smith, 52, remembers what it was
like to toil at the convenience store before
the cell phone and Internet era.
“I would bitch about being there,”
Smith recalls. “Then we would close
at 10:30 [pm], and after we lowered the
steel shutters, we would hang out until
three in the morning talking about movies,
hockey and comic books.”
It would have been easy for Smith to
move on from filming at Quick Stop for
Clerks. Building a Quick Stop set would
SEPTEMBER 2022 NEW JERSEY MONTHLY 39