Kevin Smith Says Clerks 'Began My Career' 30 Years Ago, While Mallrats 1 Year Later 'Killed' It

Kevin Smith is recalling how Chasing Amy resuscitated his once-failing career.

" Clerks began my career; Mallrats killed my career," the longtime filmmaker says in the newly released documentary Chasing Chasing Amy , which chronicles much of the making of and controversy surrounding his 1997 sleeper hit starring Joey Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck .

Speaking of the latter film — his third, after 1994's Sundance Film Festival hit Clerks and then the less-successful Mallrats in 1995 — Smith, 54, says, "So you got me needing to do something to stay in this business, or else we were out."

"That's a big part of where [Chasing Amy] comes from. And then, of course, Joey," he continues of Adams, 56, whom he met on the set of Mallrats and was dating at the time. "Chasing Amy without Joey would've been a soulless husk, like an idea."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.

Of course, Smith's career didn't stall again after Chasing Amy. He went on to make over a dozen more films, including his most recent, The 4:30 Movie .

Clerks alone spawned two sequels, released in 2006 and 2022. And though Mallrats wasn't well-received and was considered a box-office bomb, the movie, with a cast that included Jason Lee, Jeremy London, Shannen Doherty, Jason Mewes, Adams, Affleck and Smith, has gone on to garner somewhat of a cult following in the nearly three decades since its release.

In fact, Smith even revealed back in April 2020 that he had finished writing a sequel to the latter film, titled Twilight of the Mallrats, during the early days of the COVID-19 quarantine.

"Thanks in part to the #Quarantine , I finally finished a funny first draft of '!" he shared on Instagram at the time, along with a photo of the script .

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!

Smith explained, "25 years after the original, Brodie Bruce will be back for an unnecessary sequel set against the Mallpocalypse! Rene, Willam, Gwen, Brandy, T.S., Trish, Mr. Svenning, LaFours and the rebooted are the returning 'Rats in an Askewniverse imagining about what happens when the sidewalk sales end, and 'happily ever after' is easier to say than live!"

He added that while Jay and Silent Bob is some of his "favorite conceptual comedy" that he's "ever written," the script for Twilight of the Mallrats is "silly, sentimental and sweet."

"At 98 pages, the story moves like a brakeless bullet train!" Smith wrote.