Jason Mewes had a nine-to-five job in construction when he first appeared on film as Jay, the foul-mouthed convenience store stoner who became an accidental pop-culture icon.
“It's something I never knew,” Jason says. “I did ‘Clerks’ and I went back to work as a roofer, and it was nice when the movie got picked up by Miramax.
"Then Kevin [Smith, aka Silent Bob] tells me he wrote me in the next movie, ‘Mallrats’, then ‘Chasing Amy'. He just kept writing me into movies and it wasn't until after ‘Chasing Amy’ and ‘Dogma’ that I started doing other movies.
“I didn't expect it,” he says of the fame that’s come with the legacy of Jay. “For me I was just having fun with my buddy who had written a character for me and was shooting a movie. I didn't know that 25 years later people would be handing the movies down from one generation to the next.
“So it's pretty amazing; it's amazing that it's been around and stuck in people's hearts, and they've passed it on and on again. It's not something I expected and I feel very lucky and honoured that it's lasted.”
Jason is heading to Australia for the Supanova Pop Culture Expo in Brisbane and Adelaide this November. It will only be Jason’s third trip here and he says he’s excited to have more time to meet fans and explore Australia. “I’ve never been to a comic book convention out in Australia,” he says.
“Kevin and I have been there twice now with ‘Jay & Silent Bob Get Old’, our podcast, and both trips were amazing and I had such a great time.”
While the character of Jay is perhaps best remembered for catchphrases like ‘snootchie-bootchie’ and his love of drugs, Jason’s own experiences with addiction led him on a well-documented path to self-destruction.
Now six years sober, Jason says the conventions are also an opportunity to connect with people who have found solace in his own story of redemption. “It's a big part of why I like doing the comic book conventions,” he says. “The shows are cool because I’m a comic book fan myself and I collect statutes, action figures and all that. But then I get to interact with all these people and there’s always an interesting experience.
“People come up, and one woman will be crying and tell me her son is an ex-junkie and I saved his life, ‘and I’m like 'what?' People who listen to the podcast and are struggling with drugs, and people from the military say they watched ‘Jay & Silent Bob’ every night while they were out in Iraq or Afghanistan.”
In addition to being a beacon of comedy to stoners everywhere, Jason is also working on his first film as director, ‘Method In The Madness’. He says the project is progressing well, with one shoot already wrapped up, and another planned following his appearance at Supanova. “We just finished our LA shoot and we did that with Judd Nelson which was awesome, he was great.
“So now we go to London and finish three weeks there after I get back from Australia. I think we've got some really good stuff and I feel really good about it, and some other people have said some nice things and that I’m doing a great job, so it was nice.”
