Mooby's at First Ave's Depot Tavern
Kevin Smith, the director behind Clerks and Mallrats, brought his fast food pop-up Mooby's to Minneapolis this week, based on the fictional restaurant from his films, and it's a smash sold-out hit. We asked Dana Wessel, former Go 96.3FM talent and all-around Huge Fan of Kevin Smith, to chat with the filmmaker about coming back this summer, his feelings about Eden Prairie Center, and (possibly) bringing a show to First Ave.
"Who knows?" Smith jokes. "Maybe the second half of my career is all about food."
These are some juicy cuts from the recorded Zoom conversation, and you'll find full audio of the conversation below. If you don't expect that there will be some F-bombs dropped, you don't know this work.
On the sold-out burger pop-up: This was one of our strongest markets, outside of Jersey, which you would expect because Jersey is the cradle of civilization for all this shit. But the Minneapolis turn out was so strong, that I would not be surprised if we were back in the summer time. ... But whoever we are doing it with, it's going to be community based, it's about keeping the restaurant open and shit, it can't just be about that we're going to sail into town, pirate out a lot of money and then fuck off. [Of note, they dumped the Beyond Burger brand for the Mpls pop-up and used local Herbivorous Butcher for the non-meat patties, and partnered with Indeed Brewing for a special Mooby's beer.]
Shutterstock
Kevin Smith
On why they didn't go back to the Eden Prairie Center for the pop-up: The fact is that First Avenue reached out to us, and we were like, oh my god Minneapolis! And then there was a brief second of like, oh that's where the mall is. Naturally, if someone at the mall reached out, like BANG no brainer. ... But life is long and if we come back in the summer, perhaps we set up at First Avenue and we satellite at the mall for one day.
On bringing it full circle this summer: They might let us meet indoors again, that means I can play First Ave ... like maybe they let fifty percent in or something so that me and Jay can do the Jay and Silent Bob Get Old [podcast] from there and we could literally get up to do the dance that The Time taught us and the whole fucking world comes full circle.
On getting older: I'm 50 now for heaven's sakes, I've been doing this 26 years. Money has never been the motivator. [...] The older one gets, the more one thinks about legacy and shit like that. I love being authentic, and people being like, "Oh my god, he's the same fucker," for better or for worse. All that shit means something to me. Every day, I've got to create a little something more interesting or else they'll lose interest in what I'm doing. I'll never be relevant again like I was in the 90s, but in order to stay in the hearts and minds of the people that do support what I do, you can't tell the same story over and over again, you've got to reinvent the story. This was a reinvention of the story I never saw coming–like, the backdoor restaurateur... Which sounds dirtier than I meant to say.
There are so many more jewels and nuggets of Kevin Smith wisdom, (a Marky Mark reference, a tease out about future projects) real fans will want to give this a listen:
