1 of 4 | Siena Agudong and Austin Zajur star in Kevin Smith’s “The 4:30 Movie,” available on digital platforms Tuesday. Photo courtesy of Ralph
Bavaro/Saban Films
NEW YORK, Oct. 1 (UPI) — Dogma, Clerks and Chasing Amy writer-director Kevin Smith says his 1980s-set film, The 4:30 Movie, celebrates a type of cinema-going culture that is sadly dwindling in the time of cellphones.
“When we were kids, we congregated,” Smith, 54, told UPI in a Zoom interview Monday. “The movie theater was our church, the center of the community, the town hall.”
“You’re stuck in a room with 150, 200 other people you maybe don’t know, but you’re all there for the same thing. We want to watch this thing. We want to be entertained. Kids today, they’re siloed. It has been that way for a good decade or more, where everything they need is right there in their phones.”
Smith said he isn’t knocking people for finding a sense of community online.
“But meeting people in the real world, having real-world conversations? These are starting to be like lost arts for a certain generation,” he said, joking that some young viewers might see his latest film as science-fiction.
“Part of me was like, ‘Is any modern kid going to get this movie?’ It shows a world where nobody’s looking into their phone. Everybody’s looking into each other’s eyes. It opens with this seven-minute, phone conversation. When was the last time anybody ever had a seven-minute phone conversation in the real world?”
Available on digital demand platforms Tuesday, the film is a coming-of-age story set in New Jersey in summer 1986.
It follows Brian (Austin Zajur), who after a lengthy phone call on a landline tethered to his kitchen invites his crush, Melody (Siena Agudong), to see a movie he already promised to go to with his guy friends.
It is loosely based on Smith’s own teen experiences at his local cineplex.
In real life, Smith and his friends bought that Atlantic Highlands theater two years ago, renamed it Smodcastle Cinemas and shot The 4:30 Movie there.
“When we bought it, one of the first things I thought was: ‘We have a set. This is a free location and we can make a movie here,'” Smith said.
He said he didn’t want to go the route of his convenience-story comedy, Clerks, and tell the story of the employees who worked at a specific place, however.
“That’s stolen valor,” he quipped. “I’ve never worked in a movie theater, so I’m not going to pretend I ever did.”
Instead, he decided to make a movie about going to the movies and the feelings of excitement, escapism and camaraderie that went along with that.
“I’ve spent years in movie theaters, particularly when I was a kid,” he said.