I'm on the 'Affleck was joking' bandwagon. That being said, Smith does take a lot of jabs at Ben and seems to have the attitude that Ben 'owes' him. Actually, Kevin Smith owes a lot more to Affleck. After the Good Will Hunting oscar, Affleck could have easily decided not to keep coming back to do low budget teen flicks with View Askew, but he did.

And if you go by scale, Smith has been milking Jay and Silent Bob merchandise more than Lucas has with Star Wars. Say what you will about Episodes 1-3, but they aren't nearly as self serving and hawkish as Jay and Silent Bob Strike back. I swear that movie was just made to push the DVD sales of other Kevin Smith movies.

D

Jersey Girl did not bomb. It underpreformed. For a $35 million film, it made $25 million. Whereas Gigli is a true definition of a bomb as the film made $10 million on a budget upwards of $80 million.

i wonder, how in the hell did gigli cost 80 million bucks to make?

sounds kind of high, but I bet JLo got 10 mil and Affleck got 10 mil and Smith got 5 mil before the script was even finished

^Pretty sure Smith wasn't involved with Gigli.

I think Smith's merchandising is probably a very small fraction of his livelihood, and is done more as a vanity thing than anything else. His comic book store is probably not a moneymaker. I'm sure this is an okay topic for some ribbing, and Smith is probably thankful for some publicity. And if Affleck is acting weird, it's probably because he is promoting a crap movie and he knows it.

I really liked Smith when I was in high school, but he is treading water these days. He's trying to find new relevance, and it's tough for him. Smith pioneered dirty jokes, but Trey Parker has taken them and used them as social commentary, which is the transition Smith failed to make in Dogma.

What he said. ^

Kevin Smith has NEVER been about dirt jokes to me. And I don't really like most dirty jokes. Maybe that's why I don't own Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but I do all the other films.