It’s no secret that Kevin Smith loves filmmaking. Despite some initial plans to put the camera down over a decade ago, he’s kept at it for over 30 years, from the indie darling Clerks that first put him on the map to Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Tusk, Red State, and many more installments in his View Askewniverse and beyond. All the while, he’s discussed film and pop culture aplenty through his podcasts, Q&As, and just about wherever else people will listen to him. He loves cinema so much, in fact, that he’s even willing to talk about movies with a room full of dogs. Now, Collider is excited to share a new video that shows exactly that as part of an adorable charity collaboration between Hera the Dog Vodka and Much Love Animal Rescue for National Pet Day on April 11.
The surreal footage opens like a normal conversation with Smith, who reflects on 1998 when “Chasing Amy is doing well, Good Will Hunting is doing well, and we get greenlit for Dogma.” Released the following year, Dogma marked the fourth installment in the filmmaker’s View Askewniverse, following the high-stakes comedic adventure of two fallen angels, played by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who find a loophole to get back into Heaven and a group that bands together to stop them before they destroy all of reality. While he starts discussing the making of the controversial classic, the camera pans to show his audience — a small pack of canines of different breeds just doing their own thing. Some look happy, others look bored, but when Smith mentions how the studio “ruined” his fantasy comedy by putting Affleck in it instead of actual dogs, one particular pooch looks sadly at the camera as if wondering what could’ve been with an all-dog cast.
Fortunately, this project has a mostly dog-filled ensemble. Eleven shelter animals took part in the filming of the promotional video alongside Smith, listening as he dropped “Hollywood pearls” and asked them what the deal was with all the panting. He even pitches them on Clerks 4: Still Clerkin’, much to the apparent approval of one German Shepherd. Producer Todd Milliner told Collider that the silly idea was born out of a previous collaboration with Smith and a desire to make something that plays both to his talents and his status as a rescue dog dad. It also just made sense considering Hera the Dog and Much Love’s commitment to finding animals their forever homes.
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“I was already working with Kevin on a show at NBC and got to meet his rescue dogs, so we knew he was both a huge dog lover and someone who can talk — at length — about filmmaking. When we teamed up with Much Love Animal Rescue and Hair of the Dog Vodka, it just clicked: what if we let Kevin do what he does best… but with dogs? We had a script, which Kevin politely ignored, and then he improvised for hours. What you see is the result of Kevin being Kevin.”
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
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🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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Kevin Smith’s Authenticity Made the National Pet Day Collaboration Work
Though Smith brings the star power, the dogs are the real heart and soul of the project, who happen to improvise just as well as their human co-star. Fellow producer Paul Velten said the goal wasn’t to necessarily direct the dogs, but let them do their own thing around the filmmaker as if they were just hanging around being pets. “We also wanted the dogs to feel like what they really are — your best friend, your therapist, your ride-or-die,” he added. “So the idea became: let’s just hang out, talk about what we love, and see what happens. Turns out, dogs are a very supportive audience.”
Still, it can’t be understated how important it was to have someone like Smith who really understood the cause of helping dogs and the organizations that find them homes. “It’s everything,” Milliner responded. “We always look for people who genuinely care about the cause, not just people who can show up and hit their mark. Kevin already loves rescue dogs, so there was no selling required.” Authenticity can go a long way towards giving real credit to two organizations that can talk the talk when it comes to caring for the creatures that roam the streets.
The Los Angeles-based Much Love is a non-profit powered by volunteers, who help to rescue abused, neglected, and homeless animals, and provide them with care, training, and housing until the right family comes along. From their opening in 1999, they’ve found places for over 3,500 animals, though the last year has been one of their most trying, with the LA wildfires increasing the burden on shelters amid a surge of strays across the city. Hera the Dog, meanwhile, has married award-winning vodka with a mission of supporting shelters, donating 6% of all proceeds to facilities in need, and donating $70,000 and 16,000 pounds of pet food to local rescues in need. Owner Julia Pennington also has 25 years of experience working in an animal shelter under her belt, making the goal all the more personal. In Velten’s eyes, this campaign necessitates real care and a real commitment to match that of the organizations themselves, even if it means doing something as goofy as talking to dogs about Dogma:
“Yeah, you can’t fake this stuff. We’re asking people to give their time and actually care, so they have to be invested from the start. With Kevin, we just gave him the space to do his thing — improvise, riff, go off-script — and that’s where the magic happens.”
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Much Love and Hera the Dog’s Campaign Features an Inclusive Adoptable Dog Cast
Casting the dogs wasn’t as simple as rounding up a selection of the cutest furry friends possible. All of Smith’s talented co-stars featured in the video come directly from Much Love, and they’re all adoptable. Milliner revealed that it was a key tenet of the production for the dogs to be representative of the animals that could be found at the rescue. “Much Love Animal Rescue brought a group of adoptable dogs, and that became our cast. We wanted it to be real — these are dogs you could actually meet and take home.” As Velten added, like strays themselves, these dogs came in all shapes, sizes, and states of being, yet all with big hearts and enthusiasm to be on the cozy little set. “And it was a full range — big, small, chaotic, chill. We had dogs with disabilities too — a blind dog, a deaf dog, one missing a leg — and they were all living their best lives on set.”
Despite how many canines were in one place, they managed to be quite chill and respectful of Smith while he discussed movies. Handling that many animals is still a little chaotic, though. “Honestly, there were more dogs than we could even fit on camera at times,” Milliner recalled. “It turned into a bit of a party.” Velten seconded that notion, calling the shoot “A very well-behaved party… powered entirely by treats.” “And the occasional filmmaking advice from Kevin Smith,” Milliner concluded. No matter how producers pulled it all together, it made for a fitting cinema-themed promotion that feels appropriate for both the director and for two organizations looking to do good in and around Los Angeles.
National Pet Day arrives on April 11. Check out the video in the player above and visit the official Hera the Dog Vodka and Much Love Animal Rescue websites for information on how to support both organizations and, in turn, help some animals become someone’s loving new pet.
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