From NJ PBS studios, this is NJ Spotlight News.

- Hello, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Joanna Gagis, Briana Vannozzi's of.

Coming up, New Jerseyans speak out on the most important issues of the day.

Whether we should pump our own gas, have alcohol at our movie theaters, or get a tax break for having pets.

And later, did you know New Jersey has a state museum filled with history, including an exhibit for our 250th anniversary?

We'll get you an inside look.

But first, is New Jersey becoming Hollywood East?

We talk with actor, writer, director, and Jersey native Kevin Smith to get his take.

That's next.

Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Long before Hollywood became synonymous with the movies, New Jersey helped give birth to the film industry.

Now, with major studios taking shape across the state, New Jersey is once again emerging as a filmmaking destination, and few filmmakers are more closely tied to the state than Kevin Smith.

His 1994 indie classic "Clerks" was shot here on a shoestring budget, and since then, he's continued to put Jersey on the map by putting Jersey stories on the screen.

I recently spoke to Kevin Smith about the industry today and his recent efforts to keep people going to the movies with his local theater, Smondcastle Cinemas in Atlantic Highlands.

Here's that conversation.

Kevin, great to have you on.

You became a New Jersey icon and really a household name with some of the movies.

You made your first movies in the 90s, movies I grew up with, Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, the Jay and Silent Bob movies.

These bring me back to high school.

What are you up to these days?

I am, you know, trying to keep relevant.

That's the thing I had no idea.

I wish I'd have known before I started my journey into entertainment, which began oh, 33 years ago when we started making Clerks in 1993.

But I wish I'd known then, because I would have told young Kev, if you get what you want here, if somebody buys this movie, anybody, you know, if you, if they acknowledge your filmmaker, like you seem to think you are, just know that what follows it is a chase for relevancy for the rest of your life.

You have to figure out how to make total strangers care about you enough to invest themselves in your work or whatever it is that you do so that you don't have to go working at the convenience store again.

So it's like that's... Yeah, how much has that chase been fun for you or been pressure for you?

What a great question.

Now, if the chase was horrible, like I do it because I'm lazy by nature, but you don't notice it so much because you're doing the thing you love and whether you're getting paid multi-millions or even like five figures, six figures.

You're getting paid to like make pretend.

So you're breathing that rarefied air.

So for most of my career, like I didn't notice that.

It's only later as relevancy slips away.

The older I get, I've been doing this 32 years.

So, you know, whether you like my stuff or not, it's like, well, he has been around for a red hot minute.

And that works in your favor sometimes, but it also works against you.

You become the establishment.

I started my career as like, you know, outside the establishment.

So, you know, later in life, it's about how do I make them care about me now?

And, you know, so it's a bit more of a struggle now than it was when I was younger, but the sweetest struggle.

Excellent point, which is just like, what else would I do?

It's two things I always say to myself whenever I do something, whether it works or doesn't work.

Number one is, um, you wanted this.

Oh my God, you wanted this.

You changed the entire shape of the universe to make this thing happen.

So don't be disappointed with the results.

You got what you wanted.

Enjoy it.

And then the other thing I always say is what was the alternative?

Like what would you have done if you didn't pursue this, whether it worked or not, like to live with it in your head and heart and knowing that you could have done it and could have accomplished it, but you didn't even try.

Like what was the alternative?

I had to do the thing.

Well, you say you, you, you know, you're trying to make people care.

You're at a point right now where you're trying to make people care in a different way.

You opened Smodcast Cinemas in Atlantic Highlands at a time when movie theaters are struggling to get people in their seats.

Bring us to your current challenge of trying to get people to care about going to the movie theater.

How do you do that?

How do you get them in the seats?

My childhood friend, lifelong friend, Ernie O'Donnell, reached out to me post-pandemic and said, "They're closing Atlantic.

That's our movie theater."

It was called, when we were kids, it was the Atlantic, and then it became the Atlantic Islands Twin Cinema.

And then they added three more screens.

It's a multiplex, but a Frankensteinian multiplex.

Most multiplexes, you build a big cement block, and it's got a bunch of theaters, big parking lot.

This was just a single screen house that slowly expanded over decades into a multi-screen multiplex and whatnot.

So when, you know, this is the movie theater that I went to as a kid.

This was my temple, you know what I'm saying?

And like I've said many times, I never learned anything about myself sitting in a classroom and I damn skippy didn't learn anything about myself sitting in a church.

Most I ever learned about who I am, I learned sitting in the darkness of that very movie theater, looking up at the great white mirror and seeing like life reflected back.

So the idea of letting it die was anathema, like, oh, no, we can't let this happen.

And so me and Ernie and our friends got together like the Goonies and saved the theater.

But it was the worst financial decision I ever made in my life.

Oh my God, there was a reason this theater was going under.

Like you don't need a multiplex anymore, let alone one there.

They got theaters not too far away with better seats.

- Yeah.

- How?

- How you turn it around?

- I'm here to find out.

I was hoping you could tell me for heaven's sakes.

We've been doing this five years and we had to go non-profit 'cause the theater will never make a profit for heaven's sakes.

So what we do that's different at Small Castle Cinemas is I show up once, twice a month and then we do fun programming.

So like, you know, for, um, we did a, we do the stop, start screening.

So we'll show mall rats and we'll show the opening scene.

And we, because I own the movie theater, we could pause it.

And then we get up and tell every damn story I can remember about the making of just that one scene.

So it's gratifying work keeping the theater alive.

Buzz hard work, man.

There are theaters with more modern seats within driving distance of our theater.

We have like one of the best projection systems in New Jersey and stuff.

But our seats are the same seats that I sat in when I went to see Friday the 13th Part 2.

That's how old the theater is.

When we shot my movie... Sure, go ahead.

Let me jump in because I want to ask you about the industry as a whole.

Because we see New Jersey, listen, a lot of people think of Hollywood, right, as the kind of the epicenter of the film industry.

But at a time it was New Jersey.

And at a time, again, perhaps it is New Jersey.

We've got Lionsgate, we've got Paramount has a studio, 1888.

We've got Netflix that just bought, recently bought Fort Monmouth.

How do you see the industry changing to make it perhaps easier for talent on this side of the coast to create movies, to be in movies?

What do you see and what decisions should filmmakers be considering when they decide where they want to make their movies?

New Jersey becoming the epicenter of film again is gratifying for a longtime Jersey resident who knows that the industry began in New Jersey.

Thomas Edison, one of the inventors of motion pictures, had the Black Mariah studio.

They used to make film in New Jersey all the time.

So it left for a long time.

At one point, they're running away from unions and whatnot.

And then also because the weather out West is really nice.

But in a world where, you know, the dollar rains, they're gonna go anyplace.

Movie industry is gonna go anyplace where they can get a rebate.

And truth is, Jersey has the fattest, sweetest rebate right now.

So as long as that rebate maintains, you know, Jersey will continue to see all the film activity that Atlanta has enjoyed for the last 10 years when they had their big rebate.

And once that rebate kind of went away or the rebates started getting bigger elsewhere, like overseas, we lose a lot of productions overseas, it'll dry up.

But right now, Jersey's committed, man.

I think they put in for 10 years at least of these rebates.

So nobody can take it away.

And that means something.

That's one of the reasons Netflix is like, all right, we'll buy Fort Mommoth and build our soundstages here.

The only thing that's confounding to me is at least it's Netflix and Netflix is one of the studios that continues to make content, as they call it now today, all the time.

Netflix has all the money.

But building soundstages is just anathema to me.

I'm out here in Los Angeles, in the heart of Hollywood, where most of the sound stages are completely empty right now.

And that's not just because we don't have the tax rebate that Jersey has, but a lot of movies don't need to film on sound stages anymore.

You know what I'm saying?

So Netflix building a bunch of stages in Fort Monmouth is great.

It's going to create a lot of jobs and whatnot, and they're committed to staying there.

They're putting a lot of money into it, so I can't see them going anyplace else and whatnot.

But as long as Jersey has that rebate, that tax incentive rebate, which you, the taxpayer, pays for and stuff, remember, like you are helping to finance the movie industry and whatnot.

So with all this, with all this giant, like everyone being like, film is coming back to New Jersey.

It ain't coming for free kids.

It's coming out of your taxpayer dollars.

But the good news is bringing lots of jobs with it and all the hype.

Oh my God.

Everyone's talking about New Jersey again, in terms of being the epicenter of production and whatnot.

So it's a hard time to be a Jersey filmmaker.

New Jersey never had a shortage of talent, right?

We've seen so much talent come out of New Jersey, but maybe now they have a place more local where they can exhibit that talent.

I've just a little bit of time left that we have.

How do you see yourself as a supporter of the film industry, big picture, Netflix, streaming, and trying to keep local movie theaters alive?

yours in particular, but I'm sure others as well.

Can those two exist at the same time?

Absolutely.

Netflix at this point is in competition for us.

It's a public utility, you know what I'm saying?

It took the place of normal television, which that was replaced by cable TV.

So it's the standard by which most of us get our information, Netflix, and of course, YouTube and whatnot.

You can't compete with those the same way movie theaters couldn't compete with the golden age of television when it started drawing people away and stuff.

So you learn to live with it.

I mean, I have Netflix.

It would be weird for me to be like, "Ooh, these streamers when I pay a monthly bill because I like to watch it at home as well."

Doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to kill a movie theater.

And as long as you put some love and attention into a movie theater, you know, I found my path by which I can help, which is like, Hey, remember Jane's on Bob?

We're showing those movies come out and I'll tell you about them.

That's, that's how I can keep that theater alive and keep the dream alive and keep live exhibition going and stuff.

Because watching a movie theater, you know, watching a movie in the theater with a bunch of strangers, as the lights go down, having that collective experience will never go away.

It's just going to get pricier is really all it comes down to.

Not at Smart Castle Cinemas though, where you can see a brand new movie for $12 every night.

We are not paid to pay for that advertisement.

But you're right.

There's nothing like sitting in a theater with a bunch of strangers who you don't know and sharing that experience together.

We have to leave it there.

I wish we could talk so much longer.

Kevin Smith, director, writer, actor, and of course, owner of Smart Castle Cinemas.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Great to talk to you.

Thanks for having me.

If you're from Jersey, you know better than to pump your own gas, and a new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll finds that most of us want to keep it that way.

Voters also weighed in on a potential pet tax credit and whether alcohol should be served at the movies.

Some of the answers may surprise you.

I recently sat down with the executive director of the FDU poll, Dan Cassino, to break down the numbers.

This conversation is part of our Under the Dome series.

Dan, it's great to see you.

If someone were playing the game, you know you're in Jersey when?

The answer might be you don't have to pump your own gas.

You recently polled residents about it.

How do the voters feel?

Is this something we still want?

You know, we've been pulling this for 20 years now.

And every time we think, well, maybe next time will be different.

And look, things might be different now.

We are now the last state where you don't have pump your own gas.

Oregon gave up the ghost.

And we pulled this 15 years ago.

Our former director said, well, we should probably do this again in the summer to see if our attitudes change based on the seasons.

And this time we did pull in the summer.

We did pull it 15 years later.

And things have not changed at all.

64% of voters in New Jersey say that they want to keep the system as we have now, where someone has to pump your gas for you, full service.

Only 23% say they want to change things.

You know, this is something New Jersey voters want, they have always wanted.

And at a time where everything is up for grabs, everything, you know, everything is changing all around us, it's good to know some things are stable, like people in New Jersey do not want to pump their own gas.

Yeah, I am among them and when we look at the how it breaks down among gender and even age, I fall right into those categories.

How does it break down though?

Because that is where you saw a little disparity.

Yeah, so we've seen this before where women are more likely to support the status quo of self full-service gasoline more than men are.

We actually don't know what that is.

It could be that women, this is a safety issue for women.

That's the way it's been marketed in the past.

But it also could be that men like doing stuff with their cars and this is something to do with the car.

So men are more likely to say they want to do it.

The other side is age.

And actually this is one that surprised me was that the people most supportive of full-service gasoline are the youngest voters.

And I think that might be because they don't know how to pump their own gas.

I know I've got a 16 year old son.

He has never pumped gas in his life.

So I can imagine him saying, "Yeah, no, we should keep system the way it is and maybe just not drive to Pennsylvania."

Yeah, and some of us have stories of putting diesel fuel in our cars because we're so not used to pumping our own gas.

A story for another day, but by all accounts we don't want to get out of our cars.

You also polled about something that I find a little bit surprising, somewhat humorous, but for all the pet owners out there, there is a bill on the table that they could potentially see a tax credit for having a pet.

First of all, can you tell us about it?

And then what do the people want here?

- So this is a bill that's in the state assembly, it was proposed by Republican down in Jackson, and it would give a $300 tax credit, so not a deduction.

Deduction is when you reduce the amount of taxes you're paying taxes, the amount of income paying taxes on.

this is a credit.

So it actually just reduces the amount of taxes you owe or increase the size of your refund $300 for having a cat or dog.

And those are the weird exceptions in the bill, but this would give that tax credit to anyone who owns a cat or a dog and up to $600 extra tax credit for veterinary bills.

Now I put this in the poll thinking, well, this is an issue of public debate.

This is in the state legislature.

It's important to inform the state legislature what the public wants.

If I didn't think it would get much support, honestly, and it winds up, it turns out voters actually like this.

45% say they support this idea.

41% are opposed.

You know, it seems probably pet owners like the idea of getting more money.

You know, from a tax policy perspective, maybe not the best way to spend taxpayer dollars, especially since people own pets tend to be richer on the whole, not the group that needs tax cuts.

But you know, people like money, they like their pets, so why not?

Yeah, this comes at a time when we've seen big debate and finally something moved through in the final budget for a tax credit for seniors.

We can't figure that out yet in a way that keeps everyone happy.

So I think pets, I'm not sure how that bill moves through, but that's a conversation also for another day.

This one, hey, if you've got kids and you've got to go sit through some insufferable movies, I could understand the push here, but you took a poll to see whether or not people want movie theaters to sell alcohol.

Do they?

Yeah, so this is actually a bill that's already moved through the state assembly.

It's in the state Senate now, and this is a big push from movie theaters.

They've been suffering from much reduced attendance in movie theaters since the pandemic and the rise of streaming and they say we're gonna go out of business unless we have new revenue streams and what's been suggested they'd be allowed to buy liquor licenses at a reduced rate.

Now in some cases movie theaters already have liquor license but they buy them from the municipality that they're in and those can be very very expensive.

This bill would allow movie theaters to buy liquor licenses for $200,000 or $150,000 depending on how much local liquor they're buying.

And this is movie theaters like it, but voters do not.

So when we asked voters about this, 58% are opposed, only 39% in favor of it.

This is a big deal because this is already in the state senate.

This is some of the most important stuff we do is let the state legislature know that voters don't like this.

We know that the Murphy administration in its last year really pushed for liquor license reform.

It wasn't until we got a whole lot done on that.

And it seems like there is just kind of a congenital aversion to changing the liquor license laws.

Voters in Jersey kind of like the way things are.

We also have seen... Well, it's a bit complicated too there, right?

Because people who do own liquor licenses in New Jersey, especially in municipalities where there are only a handful to give out, have paid top dollar, right?

They paid premium dollars for those licenses.

And so I know some of the argument there, when Governor Murphy at the time proposed it, was that this isn't fair to those who've invested their life savings.

Is that part of why the voters in your poll were opposed to it?

You know, I think that might do it, but I'm not sure how much voters really know about this.

We know New Jersey is the home of the most expensive single liquor license ever sold.

You have 2.1 million dollars for a liquor license in Short Hills.

And a lot of movie theaters have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for liquor licenses.

But I think it really is much more about behavior inside of movie theaters.

You know, people already kind of forgot how to be in a movie theater and they have their phones out or scrolling and texting while they're in the theater.

And I can't imagine adding alcohol to the mix is gonna make things any better.

executive director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll.

Good stuff.

Thank you.

- Thanks for having me.

- "Under the Dome" is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

- Finally tonight, as we continue to celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary, we take a look at the New Jersey State Museum.

Not many people know it exists, but it's located right next to the state capitol, and it offers a unique glimpse into the centuries of history from right here in New Jersey, including significant people and events that contributed to the founding of our nation.

I recently spoke with Margaret O'Reilly, Executive Director of the New Jersey State Museum, about all there is to see there.

Margaret, thanks so much for coming on the show.

We have this gem of art and history right in our state's capital.

Can you tell me about the New Jersey State Museum and what it offers?

Sure.

Thanks for having us today to learn about the State Museum.

We've been around since 1895.

We're one of the oldest state museums in the country.

We have collections in archaeology, cultural history, fine art, and natural history.

And all of that is pulled together by a wonderful education staff and programming that brings it all together and brings it to life for New Jersey's lifelong learners.

New Jersey has so much culture, so much natural history, and I know that many of the exhibits demonstrate that.

Can you talk through some specific, some examples of some of our culture and history that are on display there?

Sure.

At the moment, the whole state, in fact, the whole country is celebrating America's 250th anniversary.

So we have some wonderful exhibitions that talk about what happened during the revolution, how those those documents, those actions from those patriotic folks back then impacted what we do today.

So we really hope folks will come and see that exhibition that we did in partnership with the New Jersey State Archives.

You can see New Jersey's original constitution.

You can see New Jersey's copy of the Bill of Rights.

And that'll be here through January.

We also have exhibitions in natural history.

So you can see New Jersey dinosaurs.

Who doesn't love a dinosaur?

So folks come in and see those.

And you can see scientists working in our laboratory at the same time, doing real science in real time.

We also have exhibits.

- Yeah, just can we touch on that archeology piece a bit because New Jersey is so rich with prehistoric specimens and it's not something that people always connect as right here in New Jersey.

- Right, in fact, that's our paleontology program, not our archeology program.

But, yeah, folks don't realize that this was one of the places that dinosaurs were discovered in the early part of excavation for dinosaurs.

The Haddonfield dinosaur was discovered in South Jersey by the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, but we have a cast of that dinosaur here, and that's New Jersey's state dinosaur.

And if you ask any five or six-year-old, they can tell you the names of all the dinosaurs that roam New Jersey.

So we invite adults to come and visit and find out about those treasures as well.

I know there's also, Margaret, a lot of history here in New Jersey beyond, you mentioned the 250th anniversary, but there's other history as well.

Can you talk about World War II and some of the artists who came from that era?

Sure.

The State Museum has a wonderful collection of American art.

We highlight New Jersey artists and New Jersey scenes in that story and if you walk through our galleries it's a history of American art and if you look at particular time periods like post World War II, a lot of artists had to leave Europe and come to the United States.

They were fleeing persecution, they were fleeing what Hitler was doing so they were coming here and they were bringing their ideas which were much more avant-garde than American ideas at the time.

And you can see in our galleries where those artists influenced American artists and American art and things changed at that point after World War II, the post-1945 era as lots of art historians call it.

And art became very different.

It wasn't bucolic, it wasn't those landscape scenes that we used to see previously.

Art changed in very exciting and explosive ways and you can see that right in our galleries.

>> I know that there are beyond just the exhibitions, there are programs that the museum offers.

Can you talk us through what we might find in some of the different seasons of the year?

>> Well, throughout the year, families, individuals, school groups can find all kinds of programming here.

It's all object-based.

Everything we do is related to the collections that we offer.

So you can come and learn about the science programs I just talked about.

You can learn about Native Americans, the Lenape, the original people, the indigenous people that were the inhabitants of New Jersey before the European contact period.

You can come and learn about the history of New Jersey through objects.

And you can have an astronomy lesson, go to our planetarium and learn about astronomy.

All of our programs for school children meet the core curriculum standards of New Jersey.

And so we're really pleased that nearly 40% of our attendance is school groups.

But there's plenty for families, there's plenty for individuals.

During the summer, we have drop-in programs every day.

Come and make some crafts with us.

See a planetarium show during the week.

And we have lectures on science and history throughout the year.

How many people, I know this is a hard question to answer, how many people still don't know about the New Jersey State Museum?

Don't even realize all this history that's right there in the Capitol.

I think lots of people don't know about the State Museum.

I think they think of the big museums in New York and Philadelphia, but here's this gem that's been around a very long time that has world class collections, world class research, and world class programs right in their backyard.

And the wonderful thing about the State Museum, it's free.

Admission is free to the State Museum.

So in these days when costs can be high for folks, we're certainly a great resource and a great value for families.

>> When can people come?

What are the hours for anyone who's watching this and says, "Hey, this is a great thing for me to do with the family or just by myself."

>> We are open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m.

to 4 45 p.m.

and on weekends parking is free in the lots behind and adjacent to the State Museum.

>> All right, there it is right there.

Margaret O'Reilly, Executive Director of the New Jersey State Museum.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much, Joanna.

That's going to do it for us for the entire team here at NJ Spotlight News.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

Thanks for being with us.

We'll see you next time.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Learn more at rwjbh.org.

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