View Askew Productions

+The Black Label

Background
View Askew Productions is the independent production company of Kevin Smith founded in 1994. He is well-known for his cult classics - such as Clerks - which often found success on home media. All View Askew Films are distributed by Miramax Films, the only exception being Cop Out (distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures).

1st Logo (October 19, 1994)
Nicknames: "Vulgar The Clown", "That Dirty Clown!", "Perverted Clown", "Creepy Clown", "Fat Ugly Clown", "Pennywise's Little Brother"

Logo: On a grayish-white background, we see a crudely drawn, very fat, and very ugly clown walk across the screen in a cheap manner (complete with foot slippage, and he briefly gives the middle finger a couple times during his walk cycle), encounter a small, chubby boy mindlessly playing with a ball throughout the animation, pats him on his head, and then enters a changing booth. After a few seconds in there, as the music builds up, he steps out—clad in only stockings, platform shoes and a black thong with his back turned. His body, of course, is not a good sight to behold. He turns around (still has the clown hat and makeup on, along with clothespins on his nipples), and is holding a clapperboard, and is standing next to the boy with his hands covering his private area, perhaps a little too close with a very smug smile. The changing booth abruptly falls downward to reveal "View Askew Productions" in the Ad-Lib font, arranged quite weirdly on a filmstrip, like this:

View Askew Pro• duc• tions

The boy continues to play with the ball in the exact same way throughout the logo.

Trivia: The clown in the logo (Vulgar) was used as a trademark for Kevin Smith's business at viewaskew.com for several years. He even had his own movie in 2000.

FX/SFX: Intentionally low-budget 2D cartoon animation.

Music/Sounds: Low-budget synthesizer music that ranges from a weird happy-go-lucky calliope when the clown is walking to the weird looking boy. Then, a few pizzicato bass violin notes (while the clown's still behind the changing booth) to vaguely sexy Dixieland-style brass (when we see thong-clad clown), to this rather weird 5-note brass fanfare with a tympani roll and a cymbal clash at the end (which may remind you of "Moog Statement 14" by Andy Clarke (the Worldvision fanfare, without the WHOOSH)).

Music/Sounds Variant: On the original first cut of Clerks, the logo is silent.

Availability: It's only on one film: Clerks. Later films up to 2004 favor an in-credit "A View Askew Production". Despite its subject matter, it was still kept (surprisingly) on FX's print of Clerks, after the 1987 Miramax Films logo.

Editor's Note: This logo is infamous to the logo community due to the logo's obscene subject matter and humor. People in general may find this logo to be scary (especially if they are afraid of clowns), or may just be turned off due to its' subject matter, or may even find it funny (particularly if they are fans of Kevin Smith's humor and movies.) The animation is also pretty cheap and low-budget, though this was obviously done deliberately, thus making it all the more funny.

2nd Logo (March 26, 2004-)
Nicknames: "CGI Jay and Silent Bob", "Snooch to the Nooch!"

Logo: On a light gray background, a hole made of filmstrip is shown with the words "VIEW ASKEW PRODUCTIONS" arranged to fit the circle. All of a sudden, a CGI version of Silent Bob smoking a cigarette appears from the bottom of the circle with an old handheld camera, while Jay jumps out from the left, with a beret on his head and holding a clapperboard with the camera scope hanging from it. Both are in their forms from the short-lived "Clerks: The Animated Series" TV series. Silent Bob leans over and looks into the scope on the camera, while Jay prepares to clap the clapperboard and yells "Snooch to the nooch!" Unfortunately, Jay winds up accidentally catching Silent Bob's necklace in the clapperboard, and after he claps the clapboard, he pulls it back, flashing the "devil horns" sign with his hand. Since the necklace is caught on the clapperboard, he accidentally strangles Silent Bob, causing him to fall out of the circle, either dead or unconscious, and hit the floor. Jay looks down, sees what's happened, and steps out of the circle, a camera scope slips out and falls off the clapperboard as he does so. He then starts to walk away, whistling nonchalantly, but then zooms off-screen cartoon-style, leaving the clapperboard, which falls to the ground as we fade out.

Variants:


 * On Jersey Girl, the text "TEN YEARS OF MAKE BELIEVE 1994-2004" appears below.
 * The closing variant has an illustration of the logo, depicting Jay and Silent Bob in their Clerks: The Animated Series designs. The letters and background are red here.

FX/SFX: CGI animation.

Music/Sounds: Music (composed by James Venable) consisting of two stings for when Bob and Jay show up, along with a funky little tune as the rest of the logo goes on. Also, all of the expected sound effects are there. And yes, Jason Mewes does Jay's voice. The closing logo has Jay saying "Nooch," then chuckling.

Availability: Seen on Jersey Girl and Clerks II.

Editor's Note: A big improvement over the first logo, with very good cartoonish CGI animation, yet it still retains Kevin Smith's trademark humor without getting too raunchy.

3rd Logo (October 15, 2019-)
Nicknames: "Return of Vulgar the Clown", "Return of Jay and Silent Bob", "Less-Perverted Clown", "View Askew All-Stars", "25 Years of Cinematic Silliness"

Logo: On a grayish-white background, we see the black-and-white Vulgar the Clown from the first logo, already wearing his obscene outfit (with stockings, thong, platform shoes and clothespins) and holding a clapperboard, but now designed in a noticeably more cartoonish manner, walking towards a changing booth (again ala the first logo, complete with cheap foot-slippage walk cycle), but just as he approaches it, the changing booth falls over and a color animated Jay comes out, running over Vulgar. Following him is Silent Bob, along with characters from many other View Askew movies (including a couple other incarnations of Jay and Silent Bob, such as in their superhero outfits from Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, and their original black-and-white versions from the first Clerks film.) After the last of the crowd of characters trample Vulgar, he gets up on his knees as we zoom up to a medium shot of him as he gives a stereotypical cartoonish "dazed" expression with his tongue hanging out, to which a white circle with black outlines containing the words "VIEW ASKEW" fades in around Vulgar's head (ala the 2000 View Askew Television logo). Then Vulgar smiles in awe with a wide-eyed look, as the text "25 Years of Cinematic Silliness" fades in below, with "25" in a black bold font and the rest of the text arced in a black cursive script.

FX/SFX: 2D Flash animation (looking somewhat primitive, but probably intentional.)

Music/Sounds: It starts out with a rearrangement of the weird calliope theme from the first logo, but then it segues into a brassy rock tune when Jay appears to trample Vulgar, and plays throughout the rest of the logo.

Availability: So far only seen on Jay & Silent Bob Reboot.

Editor's Note: Some may be surprised to see Vulgar the Clown again, but this is still a fun (and much better animated) homage to the first logo and the company's filmography.