The 1996 indie film Drawing Flies is considered to be the “lost” film of director Kevin Smith’s cinematic saga, dubbed the “View Askewniverse”. Shortly after the two met in film school, Smith and producer Scott Mosier founded View Askew Productions to create their first project, the cult classic Clerks. Since then, there have been eight installments in the series, including Smith’s upcoming movie Clerks 3. While Smith’s projects have not always been well-received, he commands a loyal fan base that has historically shown up for him, making it all the more surprising that one of his films was lost along the way.
Drawing Flies follows a group of roommates as they travel through the Canadian wilderness. Down on their luck and days away from eviction, Donner (played by Jason Lee) suggests that the group take a trip to his father’s cabin in the woods in order to distract them from their woes. But when they arrive in the wilderness with no cabin in sight, Donner reveals his true intentions: to lead them on a search for Sasquatch.
Drawing Flies was produced by View Askew Productions but was written and directed by Matthew Gissing and Malcolm Ingram, who had met Smith during the filming of Mallrats. The film featured a wealth of Askewniverse actors, including Jason Lee, Scott Mosier, and the Jay to Smith’s Silent Bob, Jason Mewes. Ethan Suplee and Smith himself both have cameos as well, and while their characters are technically original to the story, the two are credited for their roles as William Black and Silent Bob respectively, which are the names of their Askewniverse characters. The film was shot in black and white on the same camera that was used on Clerks, giving it an aesthetic in keeping with the Askewniverse at that time. With all of its similarities, Drawing Flies was an apt addition to the View Askewniverse, but despite Smith’s rise to prominence, the film remains relatively unknown – largely because of the nature of its release.
Being a relatively low-budget indie project, the chances of Drawing Flies securing a major theatrical release were slim, even with an appearance from Jay and Silent Bob themselves. The film debuted at a handful of film festivals in 1996, garnering little attention. While Smith has acquired a reputation for the ridiculous, his work prior to 1999’s Dogma was a bit more grounded, so a movie about searching for Sasquatch may have come as something of a surprise to unsuspecting audiences. Drawing Flies was eventually released on DVD in 2002, six years after its completion, but it still struggled to gain recognition. Even those involved in its production were hesitant to promote the film. Suplee has suggested that the filming was an unpleasant experience for him, and Smith himself referred to the project as the “ugly, red-headed step-child of View Askew”.
Although the film has been more or less lost to the ages, Drawing Flies shares ample enough similarities to qualify it as the tenth installment in the View Askewniverse, perhaps now more than ever. With releases like 2011’s political horror Red State and 2016’s gratuitously absurd Yoga Hosers, Kevin Smith’s films have been becoming more outlandish with each installment, so it is somewhat refreshing to harken back to a time when visions of Sasquatch were as strange as things got.
