Harley Quinn Smith, Johnny Depp and Lily-Rose Depp co-star in “Yoga Hosers,” the new feature film by Kevin Smith. Below, the cake that Cake Boss Buddy Valastro made for Smith’s birthday appearance at the the Count Basie Theatre in 2010.
The last time filmmaker/ actor/ Smodcaster/ writer/ King of Most Media Kevin Smith commandeered the Count Basie Theatre for a public birthday celebration, it was with an August 2010 Q&A session that saw his milestone 40th and magnificent head immortalized in buttercream by a fellow Jersey celeb soon to establish Red Bank cred: “Cake Boss” Buddy Valastro.
The multi-platform cult figure (and self-described “fat guy who got thrown off the plane”) may have left Leonardo for Los Angeles years ago — but as he approaches his 46th birthday, he returns to the borough of his birth; the town he gae its big-screen close-up in features like “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma;” a burb that sits at the nexus of the comix multiverse courtesy of the Smith-owned Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash and the AMC TV series Comic Book Men.
For Your Oscar (Mayer) Consideration: In perhaps the meatiest role of his acting career, Kevin Smith plays a Nazi bratwurst in “Yoga Hosers.”
When Smith takes the Basie stage next Tuesday, he’ll bring the audience-interaction skills that have made him the most in-demand public speaker and film director this side of John Waters — and as a major bonus feature, he’ll be presenting the sneak-peek premiere of his latest feature-length epic, “Yoga Hosers.”
The second entry in a projected “True North” trilogy — and a followup to the 2014 body-horror black comedy “Tusk” — “Yoga Hosers” shifts the camera eye to that previous film’s supporting characters Colleen and Colleen, a pair of blonde, yoga-hooked convenience store part-timers (think Canadian teen corollaries to Dante and Randal of Smith’s locally lensed breakthrough “Clerks”) played by the director’s daughter Harley Quinn Smith and Lily-Rose Depp, herself the offspring of Johnny Depp and French popstar-spokesmodel Vanessa Paradis.
When not despising their after-school jobs at the “Eh-2-Zed” or obsessing over an invitation to a senior party, the Colleens are somehow enlisted to employ their yoga-warrior training in a battle against an ancient evil, whose manifestations include an attack by “foot-tall Nazis made of bratwurst.” Paradis and Depp the Elder (following up his triumph in 2015’s “Mortdecai” with a role as a Quebecois hunter of evil entities) co-star in the frantic scenario, which also boasts supporting turns and cameos by Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, comics kingpin Stan Lee, and (as a malevolent multi-pack of “Bratzis”) Kevin Smith.
Tickets ($25 – $37) are still available here for the 8 p.m. screening of “Yoga Hosers,” followed by a live Q&A session with the birthday-boy filmmaker. Take it here for more info on the new film, scheduled for general release on September 2.
