Mallrats

Instead of responding on the film itself, I decided to interview my dad, who was on the crew for Mallrats, which was shot at the Eden Prairie mall in Minnesota. I remember as a young child getting to go to the set a couple of times, and this film has always been one of my favorite projects that he worked to talk about with him.

Q) What was your position on the crew?
A) I was the key grip.

Q) And about how long had you been in the business when you worked on Mallrats?
A) I had been in the business somewhere around 10 years at that point.

Q) What was it like working for Kevin Smith?
A) It was a bit of a pain. It was only his second film, and since it was a lot bigger than Clerks he was still basically a rookie. He didn’t really communicate that well with the crew. He would sometimes seem to make it a contest as to what he could do that the crew couldn’t, which I never really understood.

Q) What do you mean by contest?
A) Well, part of it was inexperience, but one example would be when his character (Silent Bob) was running down a stretch of hallway, he would sprint full speed. Literally as fast as he could, then he would be upset when the two guys pushing the 400lb dolly couldn’t keep up. He also wouldn’t let us get a head start, so we had to try and keep up with him with both of us starting from a dead stop.

Q) Were there any particularly hard scenes to shoot?
A) There wasn’t anything that was particularly hard, but one of the day-to-day challenges was that, since we were in a mall, we had to be mindful of all the glass and keeping things from reflecting of the glass in to the camera. Other than that there weren’t really any hard technical challenges. I mean we worked hard, but it wasn’t the hardest shoot I’ve been on.

Q) So do you have any memorable stories from the set?
A) Well the best thing that happened to me on set was I got to meet Stan Lee (Co-Creator of Spider Man, X-Men, and The Incredible Hulk). I got to have an actual conversation with him which was really cool, he just a regular guy.

I remember it was a first time DP on the film too, he was a sharp kid, but he didn’t know much lighting. That made it kind of tough on the gaffer and me. Especially the gaffer, the DP relied on him a lot. I’d say he is more responsible for the look of the film than the DP.

I remember one time; one of the electricians shot a roll of gaff tape with his gun in the mall.

Q) Wait, he shot a roll of gaff tape in the mall?
A) Yea, it was before everyone became so mindful of being politically correct, he would have never of gotten away with pulling something that today.


So there it is, some of my dad's thoughts on Mallrats, and the making of.