The microbudget film went on to win awards at Sundance and Cannes, and made Smith an indie film cult hero. In many ways, however, little changed for Mewes. Even after performing as Jay in the 1995 feature “Mallrats,” the actor went back to roofing, as well as pizza delivery. “I was delivering pizza and people were like, weren’t you in a movie?” Mewes said.
The two continued to work together, appearing in films (many directed by Smith) and TV shows. Through much of that time, Mewes struggled with heroin addiction. “For years, I was back and forth,” he said. “We’d do a movie and I’d come back home and take care of my mom, and I’d get strung out again. Kevin would come get me to do some film or something, and see I was a mess. One time he threw me in rehab. Another time, Ben [Affleck] put me in.”
“Kevin was always there for me,” Mewes continued. The one incident where Smith couldn’t help, Mewes said, was when he showed up at Smith’s door on Thanksgiving, strung out, hopeful for a meal. “He couldn’t let me in the house, because his daughter was old enough to know what was happening,” he said. “I had blood running down my arms.”
Soon after, Mewes entered rehab once again. As a creative means to try to keep Mewes sober, the two launched the podcast “Jay & Silent Bob Get Old” in 2010. “It was essentially an intervention podcast,” Smith said. Mewes has been clean ever since.
In 2013, Smith began writing a script for “Clerks III,” which included a character’s nervous breakdown, a theater shooting and the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. “It was very, very dark,” said O’Halloran, speaking by video call. “It was very powerful, but in a very different, non-‘Clerks’ way.”
