Cultural icon Kevin Smith joins ‘Chicago Today’ to talk about his new documentary ‘Clerk’.
"Bennifer" is getting a reboot as Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez rekindle their romance, but the man behind the couple's moniker is also stepping into the spotlight.
Kevin Smith, longtime director who worked with the couple in their "Jersey Girl" film, told Chicago Today he was the first to create the couple's nickname.
In fact, Smith, said that might be his biggest claim to fame.
"They better put that on my tombstone," he said. "'Here lies Kevin Smith, guy who wrote Bennifer.'"
Smith, who was in the city last week for a screening of his documentary "Clerk," said the couple's rekindled romance is "hope for all of us."
"You know, they were adorable - we were making that movie, that's when they were first falling in love and it's always inspiring, being around people who are falling in love," he said. "Like here are two people that were together and then life took them in two different directions, they had two different lives and then somehow life brought them like back together. If there's hope for those kids, there's hope for all of us."
The cultural icon who paved his way with films such as Clerks, Dogma, Mallrats and Chasing Amy is also making headlines of his own for the new documentary about his life, telling "Chicago Today" that one of his favorite experiences in his entire life took place in the Windy City.
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He was in the city in 2012 for a tour of a "Jay and Silent Bob" reboot, the second stop of the tour, when he said fan response exceeded his expectations.
"You would have thought that I invented deep dish pizza," he said. "People were like ecstatic and through the roof, so much so that I wiped the dust off my feet from New Jersey. I'm like, there was no reaction like Chicago... that was the night that I was like maybe I should live in the Midwest. Maybe I'm an Illinois type person."
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It's a theme for Smith and the city, he said, adding that when he and his wife visit the city "the recognition factor for me was off the chart."
"Me and the wife go shopping and walking up and down Michigan Avenue and I swear you man the recognition factor for me was off the chart with the amount of people who are like 'Kev! Hey Kev! Kev!' and I was like 'Oh my God, these people know me, these Chicagoans."
