Film Director Smith Sharing Secret Stash At Westwood Locale

By ANDY FIXMER

Staff Reporter

The writer and director of “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma” is opening a West Coast version of a comic book store named after recurring characters in his movies.

Kevin Smith and partner Bob Chapman have formed Silent Bob’s LLC and signed a five-year lease for a 2,210-square-foot storefront at 1045 Westwood Blvd. in Westwood Village, according to Suzanne Laff, a realtor with Beitler Commercial Realty Services, who brokered the deal. The store will be called Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash.

It will be the third attempt to open a comic book store in Westwood within the last 10 years, but Chapman said the pair would succeed where others haven’t because of Smith’s celebrity and because it will have a broader focus.

“It won’t just be a comic book store but more of a pop culture store,” he said. “If people walk in and they don’t care about comics, we want to give them a reason not to just turn around and walk out.”

Smith opened the original store in his hometown of Red Bank, N.J. several years ago. Since his first hit “Clerks,” he has slowly moved his operations to Los Angeles, and for the last year or so he has wanted to open a West Coast outlet for his store, Chapman said.

“Kevin suggested Westwood. He lives in the area,” Chapman said. “It had a lot of good attributes, too. It has a lot of foot traffic and Kevin has a large college audience, so having UCLA in the backyard was a pretty big reason.”

Smith’s store is named after Jay and Silent Bob, a popular comic duo who appear in several of his movies.

The Westwood store has a tentative opening date of June 1.

For the last six years, Chapman’s Anaheim-based company Graphitti Designs Inc. has been making T-shirts, posters and figurines for Smith’s movies and production company, View Askew Productions.

Though Chapman says he doesn’t know anything about retail, he said his background in merchandising would be a plus. But the biggest asset, Chapman said, will be Smith’s fans, who tend to range in age from 15 to 35.

“Kevin has an impact on the right demographic,” he said. “His fan base is very unique and very rabid. This will be another outlet for that.”