Actor and producer Jason Mewes and actor, writer, podcaster and director Kevin Smith have been portraying the characters of Jay and Silent Bob respectively since they first made an appearance in Smith’s directorial debut, “Clerks,” in 1994.

The lovable, yet highly inappropriate stoner duo have also appeared in Smith’s films including “Mallrats” (1995), “Chasing Amy” (1997), “Dogma” (1999), “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001) and “Clerks II” (2006). The characters were also animated for the ABC television series “Clerks: The Animated Series,” back in 2000. Smith has even recently talked about there being a “Clerks 3” in the works soon, too.

Actor, writer and director Kevin Smith (right) and actor and producer Jason Mewes (left) reprise their roles as Jay and Silent Bob in the new film “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.” To help promote the film, Smith and Mewes have taken it on the road and are screening it in theaters for audiences across the country and sticking around for live Q&A sessions following the screenings. The tour, dubbed the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” Roadshow comes to City National Grove of Anaheim on Sunday, Dec. 8 and The Theatre at Ace Hotel on Thursday, Dec. 12. (Photo courtesy of the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” film)

Actor and producer Jason Mewes reprised his role of Jay alongside actor, writer and director Kevin Smith’s role as Silent Bob in the all-new “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.” To help promote the film, Smith and Mewes have taken it on the road and are screening it in theaters for audiences across the country and sticking around for live Q&A sessions following the screenings. The tour, dubbed the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” Roadshow comes to City National Grove of Anaheim on Sunday, Dec. 8 and The Theatre at Ace Hotel on Thursday, Dec. 12. (Photo courtesy of the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” film)

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Actor, writer and director Kevin Smith (right) and actor and producer Jason Mewes (left) reprise their roles as Jay and Silent Bob in the new film “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.” To help promote the film, Smith and Mewes have taken it on the road and are screening it in theaters for audiences across the country and sticking around for live Q&A sessions following the screenings. The tour, dubbed the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” Roadshow comes to City National Grove of Anaheim on Sunday, Dec. 8 and The Theatre at Ace Hotel on Thursday, Dec. 12. (Photo courtesy of the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” film)

Actor, writer and director Kevin Smith has reprised his role as Silent Bob alongside actor and producer Jason Mewes who has dipped back into the character of Jay in the all-new “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.” To help promote the film, Smith and Mewes have taken it on the road and are screening it in theaters for audiences across the country and sticking around for live Q&A sessions following the screenings. The tour, dubbed the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” Roadshow comes to City National Grove of Anaheim on Sunday, Dec. 8 and The Theatre at Ace Hotel on Thursday, Dec. 12. (Photo courtesy of the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” film)

Actor, writer and director Kevin Smith (right) and actor and producer Jason Mewes (left) reprise their roles as Jay and Silent Bob in the new film “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.” To help promote the film, Smith and Mewes have taken it on the road and are screening it in theaters for audiences across the country and sticking around for live Q&A sessions following the screenings. The tour, dubbed the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” Roadshow comes to City National Grove of Anaheim on Sunday, Dec. 8 and The Theatre at Ace Hotel on Thursday, Dec. 12. (Photo courtesy of the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” film)



But for now, Jay and Silent Bob are back in an all-new film, “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot,” which originally hit theaters via a series of Fathom Events in October. Mewes and Smith had so much fun making the film for a couple of months in New Orleans that they decided to get the gang back together and take the film on the road, screening it in front of live audiences in theaters across the country and hosting special Q&A sessions afterwards where the fans can ask them whatever the heck they want.

The “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” Roadshow comes to City National Grove of Anaheim on Sunday, Dec. 8 and The Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles on Thursday, Dec. 12 and Smith said that seeing the movie in this capacity is truly the best way to enjoy it.

“I’ve seen it now for 24 stops and watching it with the audience every night, it’s a religious experience, man,” Smith said during a recent phone interview at a tour stop in Colorado. “It’s transcendent. It’s like going to see ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and it’s crazy interactive because you’re surrounded by like-minded individuals who are really connected to this material.”

The movie is the sequel to “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” that features a slew of cameos and special guests including Jason Lee, Brian O’Halloran, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Shannon Elizabeth, Tommy Chong, Justin Long, Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen, Rosario Dawson, Kate Micucci, Joey Lauren Adams and Chris Hemsworth.

Smith also reports that the film also serves as mini-sequels to “Clerks,” “Mallrats” and there’s a “big ol’ ‘Chasing Amy’ sequel and a little taste of a ‘Dogma’ sequel in there just in case this was the only time we ever got to play in this universe again,” he added.

Smith said he’s had people come up to him on this tour and tell him that they’ve named their kids after characters in his films or that their first date was going to see “Clerks” in the theaters and now they’re celebrating their 25th wedding anniversaries.

“These are people who have been with us their entire lives,” he continued. “Even weirder, we were in Nashville and during the Q&A there was like a 16-year-old girl who got up to talk and I was like ‘Man, what incredibly irresponsible parent introduced you to our stuff?’ And he was like ‘I’m right here’ and her dad stood up.

“We’re meeting people who have passed us down to their kids, which on one level you go ‘You know what, who would share this nonsense with a child?’ But on the other side of that, I see it. My father used to bring me George Carlin records when I was a kid, long before I should have had them. So we’re being passed on like a legacy item. The same way my old man would say ‘You should listen to this’ or ‘You should watch this’ because it was funny. So seeing people our age makes sense, but when we see the kids coming through, that’s thrilling.”

“Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” is also about different generations. The movie brings Jay and Silent Bob, who are stuck in the mid-’90s, face-to-face with Generation Z as Jay finds out he has a teenage daughter, Millennium “Milly” Faulken, who is played by Smith’s real life daughter and actress, Harley Quinn Smith. Smith said there are plenty of jokes about nepotism in the film and he actually got the idea to cast his own daughter as Jay’s kid in the film from fans on Instagram.

“Every time I’d post a photo of me and the kid some wiseacres would be like ‘I don’t know, bro, she looks more like Jay than Silent Bob, you should talk to Jason,’” he said. “So I stole that idea and just said ‘Fine, she’s Jay’s daughter’ and it just turned out great.”

Though he is a bit biased, Smith said his daughter truly helped shape this film and was an essential character because she was so believable. She had just finished her role as Froggie in the Quentin Tarantino film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” before she came down to start filming “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.”

“She came in with lots of confidence and like ‘I worked with a real director, dammit!,’” Smith said with a laugh. “But she had some very specific ideas of who her character was and that helped the movie. She is who she is and she makes her own decisions, but she grew up to become an actress and that tickles me to no end because we might have a second generation in this business. I thought I was a fluke, or a one-off. How great would it be if I was just the beginning?”

For Mewes, he said it was surreal to act alongside Harley Quinn, who is now 20, since he knew her when she was “still into ponies and unicorns and stuff.” He also said it was also cool to have his 4-year-old daughter, Logan, and wife, Jordan Monsanto, make an appearance in the film and really make it a family affair as it also features Smith’s wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith.

“The whole experience was just great,” Mewes said during a recent phone chat. “Having the family there and filming in New Orleans, it was like camp. We brought back Jason Lee and I hadn’t seen him for a few years and each person that came through … it was exactly like summer camp. You don’t see anyone for a long time and then all of a sudden you’re spending weeks together.”

Playing Jay isn’t such a stretch for Mewes since Smith actually based the character on him and the various things he’s gone through in his life. Doing the roadshow he’s heard from fans that people love Jay and Silent Bob so much because they remind them of their own friends or they can relate to the duo being “hetero life mates.”

“For me, playing Jay, it’s more about like getting to go back to camp,” he said. “I’ve been asking Kevin for years to shoot another Jay and Silent Bob movie. Not because I needed to put on the Jay costume and be Jay, but it’s because I knew how fun it would be. I’d get to spend two months with my friends, hanging out, making pretend and make believe, getting out these old costumes and running around doing stunts and just having fun. That’s why I get excited every time I get to play Jay.”

Smith, who suffered a massive heart attack and nearly died in 2018 while doing stand-up shows in Glendale, said that all of the love and the response he’s gotten from the audience along this tour makes him feel like he did die and he’s woken up in heaven. He heard from a fan named Tim who stood up during the Q&A and thanked him for his movies, adding that he was an orphan and had a difficult time getting placed in a home. Tim told Smith when he was 18, if he hadn’t found a foster parent, he knew he’d just be cast out into society with nothing and nobody, so he had planned to kill himself. Eventually he did get placed in foster care with a man he bonded with over “Clerks” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.”

“He said, ‘That man became my dad and that saved my life,’” Smith said, his voice cracking as he got emotional reliving the moment. “He said ‘I know I’d be dead right now, but I found someone who cared about me and invested their time in me and it had everything to do with your flicks.’ Stuff like that rips your heart out.

“We’re just making goofy-ass stoner movies and you never think they’ll have a profounder effect on somebody other than they may laugh,” he continued. “All of this is overwhelmingly wonderful. Aside from listening to the audience applaud and laugh, hoot and holler, they get up and they use their time not to just say ‘Hey, help me make a movie’ or ask us for access to things, but they just want to say thanks. It’s crazy. This tour has made me feel like I must be about to die because it’s so warm and wonderful and that’s rooted in 25 years of people investing in you as an artist and, man, it’s just crazy.”

‘Jay and Silent Bob Reboot’ Roadshow

When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8

Where: City National Grove of Anaheim, 2200 East Katella Ave., Anaheim

Tickets: $39.50-$49.50 general admission and $125-$150 for AXS Premium tickets

Information: AXS.com

Also: 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 12 at The Theatre at Ace Hotel, 929 S. Broadway, Los Angeles. Tickets are $25-$49.50 general admission and VIP tickets are $199.50 at AXS.com