For those out there who saw this headline and thought their dreams had finally come true, get ready for a major disappointment. MTV Movie News spoke with director Kevin Smith about his two new films, Red State -- a horror film that revolves around a fanatical religious leader, and the comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno. First up is Zack and Miri, and that's where Dawson comes in. Smith told MTV, "I wrote [the role of Miri ] for Rosario Dawson, I'd be kind of flabbergasted if she didn't do it". Unfortunately, when MTV contacted Dawson's reps they said that, "no deal is in place at the moment" -- with the emphasis on "the moment", I would expect. The comedy centers on two old high school friends who meet up at their reunion and decide to go into the amateur porn business, and the film marks the first time Smith has written a female lead.

Last month, Erik had news of a script excerpt released to Entertainment Weekly, but at the time no casting had been finalized. Now, Smith has confirmed that long-time co-star Jason Mewes, and Clerks alum Jeff Anderson are both signed on to appear. Smith had worked with Dawson on Clerks II and the two seemed to hit it off. Considering Dawson seems to be a bit of a comic book nerd herself, I am sure they have plenty to talk about. Smith is planning on having Porno done by Christmas, and then he's off to start shooting Red State in February or March of next year. Since Dawson's other commitment, Poor Things, might have hit a snag, she could have some free time coming up in her schedule.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
-- The Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians 13: 11

Jerky, grainy black-and-white, the ugly grind of a low-paying job, the zombie-like stumble through a life unlived: Clerks II opens exactly like 1994's Clerks did, with nervous and harried counterworker Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) heading to the Quick Stop for another day. In Clerks, Dante found the shutter's locks jammed with gum -- a story point springing out of the economic reality that Smith shot the film in his real neighborhood variety store after-hours. In Clerks II ... well, the good news is that the shutters aren't locked (in no small part thanks to Smith's ability to command bigger budgets); the bad news is that years later, Dante is still slumping in to open the same damn shutters.

There's worse news for Dante -- a career change (or, rather, lack-of-career change) that's put him and his gum-snapping, blithely obnoxious best friend Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) under the same roof of employment, as well as romantic complication, existential angst and a peer group made of equal parts dimwits and dickheads. All of this is bad news for Dante, but its good news for us, as viewers, insofar as Clerks II is the best film Kevin Smith's made in quite some time, in part because it's got a certain sense of wistfulness and hope to it, along with the dick jokes. Clerks II is actually heartwarming -- or, rather, as heartwarming as any film that includes the phrase 'donkey show' can be.

And we live in an era where you can have a heartwarming film include the phrase 'donkey show' -- in no small part thanks to Clerks, which clumsily-yet-firmly paved the way for a wave of appealing, appalling comedies at the box office: From There's Something About Mary to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, films with foul mouths and big hearts have become more and more possible. Clerks II may occasionally be rankly sentimental -- no more so than in Smith's endless, near-unendurable end credit acknowledgments -- but it has more than a spoonful of medicine to help the sugar go down.

Now and then, you go the long way around, come back to where you started ... but where you started isn't where you started, because you changed on the journey. That's the underlying message of Clerks II, which opens Friday nationwide; in many ways, it's the underlying metaphor for Jeff Anderson and Brian O'Halloran's return as Randal Graves and Dante Hicks, the lead characters from 1994's Clerks. On a bright, clear day in San Francisco, Anderson and O'Halloran talked about working with writer-director Kevin Smith, returning to their best-know work .. and, surprisingly, inital reluctance to the project. As part of the pleasure of Clerks II is Anderson and O'Halloran's interaction and vocal cadences, we're presenting this interview as an audio file, which you can download right here.