A few days ago I talked about Rosario Dawson and her return to the View Askewniverse in the upcoming Clerks 3. In that piece, which you can read here, I spoke about the resurgence in Smith’s movie making career. He has four films in the barrel that I’m aware of, three of which are based on conversations he’s had in podcasts on his Smodcast network. “Tusk”, and the tentatively titled “Holy Christ” are both based on conversations Smith had with Scott Mosier on Smodcast, but yesterday Smith posted that he had finished another screenplay based on a podcast conversation. This time from his podcast, Edumacation with Andy McElfresh, who also co-wrote the script and will direct one of the movie’s episodes.
“Comes the Krampus” is the title of the new flick, it will be a Christmas horror anthology along the lines of “Creepshow” according to Smith. The movie will consist of five smaller stories revolving around the Krampus. The Krampus is like Santa’s evil twin that their parents kept locked in the attic. The Krampus looks sort of like Santa, if Santa were a demon who rather than reward good kids with presents, instead captured particularly naughty children and took them back to his lair to eat them.
In addition to sharing the writer’s seat, Smith will be sharing the directorial seat as well. According to his post. The movie will be comprised of episodes titled The Krampus vs. the 3rd Grade, Hitler’s Krampus, Mask Maker, The Proposal, and The Bad Babysitter. They will be directed by Andy McElfresh, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Carol Banker, and Jennifer Schwalbach respectively.
When Smith started focusing so much of his time on podcasting I worried it would be the end of his movie career. I wasn’t complaining, I’m a huge fan of his podcasts and in reality I get a lot more laughs out of weekly episodes than I would waiting for a movie every couple of years. Happily, it’s been just the opposite, the podcasts seem to be helping him create more movies. It makes sense, Smith essentially sits down with his friends and colleagues for hours each week and brainstorms. Those brainstorming sessions are uninhibited and recorded for posterity. It seems only likely that some of those sessions would produce good ideas. Smith seems to agree, he often encourages others to create, it’s on of the reasons I like him, and he’s not afraid of sharing the tactics that work for him. Smith closed his recent post with the following, “Go record a podcast, kids. Don’t cost nothin’ but time and the potential yield is limitless.” Seems like good advice, you can’t argue with results.
The continuation of Smith’s podcast movie era however, will have to wait, Clerks 3 is next up to bat. Smith stated he plans to begin filming on April 7, with “Comes the Krampus” directly after. If you’re interested in listening to the source material for “Comes the Krampus” you can find it here along with more podcasts than you could listen to in a lifetime.