On July 21st Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2 will hit the theatres. The reason I’m writing about this is that I expect it to be pretty funny and that Smith has done creative online marketing. Smith has a very active online presence and has come up with a pretty novel gimmick for his new film.

Clerks 2 revisits the characters of Dante, Randal and Silent Bob. Still working the same job and going nowhere until they have to adjust from a fire that burns down the convenience store and video shop. They then are forced to get new jobs at Mooby Burger and realize their lives are rather sad. There is also a romantic angle in the story between Dante and the Mooby manager.

Smith has done a lot of online promotion for the new movie. The promotion and his use of downloadable commentary are discussed in a recent New York Times article. On his site, clerks2.com, he has a launched a contest to challenge fans to place the Clerks 2 banner on as many web sites as possible. Smith offers the winner a short role in his next movie. The site includes behind-the-scenes streams and interviews. But the most interesting thing discussed in the article is Smith is providing a free commentary download from iTunes. The idea that Smith is aiming for is that you’ll download the commentary onto an iPod then see the movie again.

The downloadable commentary is pretty clever but not new. Several DVD’s and television shows have offered this in the past. Currently SciFi’s hugely popular Battlestar Galactica has commentary that can be downloaded from SciFi.com’s Battlestar Galactica page. This could give a new way for writers and directors to connect with their audience.