Tagline: He wanted it all… but he got more than he bargained for.
Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck) is young and at the top of his game as a music promoter. He is both a workaholic and a silver-tongued expert at manipulating the press. At a company Christmas party, Ollie meets Gertrude Steiney (Jennifer Lopez), a book editor for a New York publishing house. They are instantly attracted to each other, and begin a whirlwind romance that changes the course of his personal and professional life.
Bright lights, big city, baby-bottles? Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck) is a smooth and successful Manhattan music publicist who seems to have it all. When his perfect life is suddenly tragically upended – leaving him as a single father unqualified for the role – he snaps. Before long Ollie’s big city life is a memory. Out of a job and out of luck, he reluctantly moves in with his father (George Carlin) back home to the New Jersey suburb where he was raised. It is the lowest point in his life. Just ask him.
The years pass and with them Ollie’s plans for his future. Stuck in an unexciting, deadend job, he sees no way out and no way back to the life he used to love. But he adores his young daughter Gertie (Raquel Castro), and she loves their life in the ‘burbs. To her, Jersey is paradise. While renting Gertie’s favorite movie for the zillionth time one day, Ollie meets Maya (Liv Tyler), who challenges his priorities and perspective. He begins to realize that sometimes you have to forget about who you thought you were, accept who you are and acknowledge what makes you happy.
Jersey Girl is a 2004 American comedy-drama film written, co-edited and directed by Kevin Smith. It stars Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, George Carlin, Stephen Root, Mike Starr and Raquel Castro. The film follows a man who must take care of his precocious daughter in the midst of a tragedy. It was the first film written and directed by Smith not to be set in the View Askewniverse as well as the first not to feature appearances by Jay and Silent Bob, although animated versions of them appear in the View Askew logo. At $35 million, it was Smith’s biggest-budgeted project but went on to become a box office bomb, grossing just $36 million.
About the Film
“I started writing JERSEY GIRL in 1999,” says writer/ director Kevin Smith, who was working on the Clerks cartoon at the time and wanted to write “something with a little more depth to it, in order to stay balanced.” Smith explains, “My daughter was about six months old and the three of us [my wife, my daughter and I] were staying in a rented apartment for a couple of months. I was thinking about my daughter [and the responsibilities of parenting] and I went upstairs and just started writing.
After about two hours, I had the first fifty pages of JERSEY GIRL.” Smith continues, “Those first scenes, including when the twist happens in the movie, didn’t really change from that point on. They just sat on my computer for about two years until I was at a Fourth of July party at Affleck’s house. He was urging me to write something more like Chasing Amy again, something more character-driven. So I told him about the pages I had written and sent them over to him, and after he read them, he said ‘finish this – this is what we should do next.’ So, at that point I essentially started writing the role of Ollie for Ben, and by January 2002 I was finished with the first draft.”
A prolific writer whose work has spanned film, television and comic books, Smith is perhaps most famous for his creation of characters Jay and Silent Bob, two modern-day nomads who begin their cinematic journey in Smith’s Sundance acclaimed Clerks and culminate their voyage in the most recent installment of the series, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. But JERSEY GIRL marks something new for the filmmaker, as these recurring characters do not appear in the film. Smith says, “The first five movies we made were all interconnected in one way or another, the most obvious being Jay and Silent Bob. The other differences are pretty glaring in that JERSEY GIRL is not about a couple of guys sitting around, ripping about pop-culture or talking about comic books.
This is a very honest and human story. I was kind of working without a net in that it’s not filled with the jokes and the humor that are so central to my other films. Although the film begins with tragedy, there definitely is humor in the film as there is in life’s most painful situations.”
Affleck also recalls his first glimpse at JERSEY GIRL and the subsequent script. “I loved the initial pages of the story that Kevin sent me. It’s a beautiful script and in some ways very classic. There is a certain feel to the script that is very traditional and ‘PG-13,’ which is a first for Kevin Smith. But, then it also has Kevin’s sensibility, which gives it an edge and a certain perspective of the world that is uniquely his.”
For Affleck, working again with Smith [JERSEY GIRL is their fifth collaboration together, along with producer Scott Mosier] was intriguing and at the same time, a certainty. “It’s exciting to work with Kevin so many times and to see him reach and break new ground,” says Affleck. “I wanted to be included in the process. In some ways there’s continuity to it, by the mere fact that Kevin and I have worked together several times before. But, in other ways it’s a brand new experience. It’s like taking a trip to a place you’ve never been with an old friend. The history that I have with Kevin makes it nice. We’ve grown to communicate well together and share a particular sense of humor that he sort of writes for now.”
Scott Mosier agrees. The producer, who has been partnered with Kevin since the two met at film school over a decade ago, notes the difference, “We were really young starting out and I think for the first three or four films there was a little feeling of being on shaky ground. With this film it feels like we are standing on concrete.” On collaborating with Smith [this is the duo’s sixth film under the View Askew Productions banner], Mosier simply states, “We’re very good friends, and we know we have to maintain that above everything else. The way we work is kind of like the yin-yang idea. Our personalities are a little bit different so we manage to offset each other’s strengths and weaknesses. But at the end of the day, he’s the director, and it’s important that he gets what he thinks the movie needs.”
Jersey Girl (2004)
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, Raquel Castro, Jason Biggs, Liv Tyler, Matt Damon, Raquel Castro, Sarah Stafford, S. Epatha Merkerson, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith
Screenplay by: Kevin Smith
Production Design by: Robert Holtzman
Cinematography by: Vilmos Zsigmond
Film Editing by: Scott Mosier, Kevin Smith
Costume Design by: Juliet Polcsa
Set Decoration by: Diane Lederman
Art Direction by: Elise G. Viola
Music by: James L. Venable
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language, sexual content including frank dialogue.
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Release Date: March 26, 2004
Visits: 44
