You can go back to the mall with Kevin Smith on April 20, and you don't even have to leave the comfort of your own home to do so.

Smith, the Highlands-born filmmaker, author and podcast impresario, will host a live watch party on Facebook during a streaming screening of "Mallrats," his 1995 comedy classic, at 8 p.m. Monday, April 20, with the event raising funds for coronavirus pandemic relief efforts.

"This is right up my alley," Smith told the Asbury Park Press. "Hanging out with a bunch of people that like my old movies? That’s all I ever do.”

The Facebook "Mallrats" screening is part of the Focus Movie Mondays, where Focus Features will stream a film from its library every Monday for free on its Facebook page, www.facebook.com/FocusFeatures.

Every screening will include a link to donate to the Entertainment Industry Foundation's COVID-19 Response Fund.

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“Help where you can, but if you can’t don’t worry about it," said Smith. "Not everyone can help, some people need to be helped. If you’re one of the people that needs to be helped, kick back, watch, enjoy the show. Don’t hit that donation button, don’t even think about it.”

Smith tells us he's 20 pages away from completion on the screenplay of the latest iteration of a potential "Mallrats" sequel, "Twilight of the Mallrats."

With unemployment skyrocketing as the economy is hit hard by the affects of the global coronavirus pandemic, the retail-set "Mallrats" sequel-in-waiting can't help but be informed by the current crisis, Smith said.

His in-the-works screenplay is “being reformed, as we speak, by the pandemic, by coronavirus, because clearly this is something that affects us going forward, from now through all time.

"Nobody’s forgetting about this. This isn’t a minor blip in the history of humanity. Everything we do from here on in in the arts that reflects life is going to include this time in our history. It’s not like you can ignore it or something like that.”

Smith's no stranger to hard times; he suffered a massive, life-threatening heart attack in 2018. His advice to anyone struggling through these current trying days? Make something.

"You can record a podcast, you can build a bench, you can create a charity fund," Smith said. "The act of creating something is the antithesis, the exact opposite, to destruction. So when we’re surrounded with so much destruction, it’s very therapeutic to create. It’s just standing in the face of adversity and being like, ‘Yeah, as everything crumbles around me here, I’m going to produce something.’

"It doesn’t have to be art, it’s whatever you feel like you can bring to the conversation. And I don’t mean create more negativity by let’s go online and (complain) about this. Look, everyone’s got it bad and stuff. Create in this moment, that is a great way to deal with destruction.”

The "Mallrats" sequel would be another chapter in Smith's View Askew interconnected cinematic universe that was launched with 1994's "Clerks."

The filmmaker, who returned to the View Askewniverse with 2019's "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot," also announced last year that he was at work on a third "Clerks" film that would reunite him with fellow original series stars Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes.

'This is where everything started'

Smith will return to his former Monmouth County stomping grounds thanks to SModcastle, a 50-seat theater and live podcast recording space set to open in same building in the Leonardo section of Middletown that's home to the Quick Stop convenience store immortalized in "Clerks."

"This is ground zero of the View Askew universe, this is where everything started," said Ernie O'Donnell, the "Clerks" actor and longtime Smith cohort who is a partner in the SModcastle venture with Smith and Rajiv Thapar, whose family owns the Quick Stop.

SModcastle is currently hoped to open in late July, O'Donnell said. It will host recordings of podcasts from Smith's SModCo podcast network as well as unaffiliated series in addition to comedy shows, film screenings and other events, with Smith expected to attend about once a month, O'Donnell told the Asbury Park Press this week.

The site could also be home to staged readings of Smith's unproduced work, similar to his 2019 presentation of his unfilmed "Clerks 3" screenplay at the First Avenue Playhouse in Atlantic Highlands.

"He's got plenty of material that people would love to hear," O'Donnell said. "Just off the top off my head ... there's obviously 'Ranger Danger,' there's obviously 'Superman Lives,' there's some comics that he's written and other movies and television series that really haven't been out to the public.

"So he's been talking about possibly bringing a lot of that stuff here and reading that stuff, also live, which I think would be really cool since nobody's ever heard that kind of stuff before and they're always asking."

Alex Biese has been writing about art, entertainment, culture and news on a local and national level for more than 15 years.