By David Peisner

Made for just over $27,000 back in 1994, Kevin Smith's first film, Clerks, helped take independent film into the mainstream. The tale of a couple of overly clever, underachieving convenience store clerks had virtually no plot or action but lots of pop culture-strewn dialogue. While far from stylish, the black-and-white film filled with blow job jokes established Smith as someone with a definite voice -- kind of a Catholic Woody Allen from Jersey.

There were high points (Chasing Amy, Dogma) and low points (Mallrats) among Smith's next four films, but all spoke with the same everyman voice. These were films driven by the sort of ideas people hash out over beers at three in the morning. Smith's willingness to make detailed references to his personal passions throughout his films made him something of a hero to comic book geeks, Star Wars fans and anybody from New Jersey. While other art house directors were referencing high-minded auteurs, Smith was putting it down for defiantly lowbrow filmmakers like John Hughes and John Landis. It's not that he didn't know his Fellini from his Kurosawa, it's that he wasn't afraid to admit The Breakfast Club and Animal House mean more to him. In a segment of the industry that often prizes elitism, Smith's career has been a triumph of egalitarianism.

Then came Jersey Girl. The film -- with Smith mainstay Ben Affleck in a rather conventional Hollywood melodrama about fatherhood -- utterly lacked cynicism. Heavily influenced by his marriage to an ex-USA Today reporter and the birth of a daughter, Jersey Girl took a brave step away from Smith's filmmaking comfort zone -- no snarky diatribes, no Jay and Silent Bob and few laughs. Released at the high point of the Bennifer backlash, Jersey Girl took a critical and box office beating.

So when Smith describes his latest film, Clerks 2, as "kind of like Clerks and Jersey Girl mixed," there's reason for concern. In reality, it's a pretty apt description. The sequel transposes the slackers from Clerks into their 30s, their dead-end jobs and unbelievably foul mouths intact. The plotline is fairly conventional. Whereas the sentimentality of Jersey Girl felt "manipulative," Smith admits, "Clerks 2 has as much sentiment, but it's tempered with ass-to-mouth jokes, so you get away with it."

In person, Smith talks like a character in his films -- his long, winding, gloriously lewd monologues are rarely censored, occasionally insightful and usually entertaining. Chain-smoking on a couch in his Atlanta hotel room, Smith spoke to Playboy.com openly about the Lois Lane factor, dissing Prince and finding his own dick.