Later at the coffee shop where Zack works, he finds a hidden camera his boss installed, and decides to use it to replace their film equipment.

Later the next evening, Zack and Miri are about to discuss their reactions to the scene, when their apartment's electricity and water service return.

The rest of the actors and crew reveal that they pooled their resources to pay one month of the couple's bills and are throwing them an early wrap party.

Three months later, Delaney goes to see Zack, now a goon in a costume letting people shoot him with paintball guns during Pittsburgh Penguins hockey games.

It was intended to be a follow-up (not a sequel) to Chasing Amy that would have starred the trio from that movie, Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, and Joey Lauren Adams and to be set in the View Askewniverse.

When he pitched the series to TV networks, they all rejected the idea believing that the kind of material handed to them can never happen on television.

[5] Kevin Smith originally wrote the film to be set in St.Cloud, Minnesota, where he had previously shot Mallrats, and where he had stated a desire to shoot again.

However, for budgetary reasons, Smith opted to shoot in Pittsburgh, and re-wrote the script to take place in the suburb of Monroeville.

[6] The female lead role was written for Rosario Dawson, but she was unable to accept the part, as she signed on to film Eagle Eye, whose shooting schedule would have conflicted with Smith's.

[11] One of the main cast members also has Pittsburgh-area roots: porn star icon Traci Lords (who played Bubbles in the film) is a native of Steubenville, Ohio, located about a half-hour drive west of Pittsburgh.

[17] It attained the rating for "strong crude sexual content including dialogue, graphic nudity and pervasive language".

In his online diary, Kevin Smith insisted it was strictly a teaser, mentioning, "There ain't a frame of footage in this puppy that's in the actual flick, so feel free to watch it without fear of 'spoilers'.

[24] A poster for the film released in September 2008, which suggests the title characters are performing oral sex on each other, was prohibited for use in US theaters by the MPAA.

Despite this restriction, many media outlets refused to run the poster, or any ad that includes the word "porno" in the title, including a number of newspapers, TV stations, cable channels, and city governments, some of which responded to complaints about the ads at baseball stadiums and city bus stops.

The site's consensus reads: "Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a modest success for Kevin Smith, due in large part to the charm of Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks.

[33] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune said the film "pushes its R rating pretty hard, though as with most Smith characters this side of Silent Bob, there's a lot more raunch in the talk — the sheer, voluminous, often hilarious verbosity — than in the action.

"[34] A. O. Scott says Smith "has been tinkering with the dirty-mind/soft-heart combination for quite some time, forming a link of sorts between the humanist sexual anarchy of John Waters and the smutty Victorianism of Judd Apatow."

According to Scott:[35] [I]n spite of an avalanche of verbal filth (and a smaller quantum of the visual variety), Zack and Miri is not very shocking at all.

He and his characters revel in dialogue that riffs on body parts and bodily fluids, but Mr. Smith's stories are bathed – metaphorically!

So Zack and Miri Make a Porno, in spite of its sometimes tiresome, sometimes amusing lewdness, follows a gee-whiz romantic-comedy formula that would not be out of place on the Disney Channel.

Granted, this revelation occurs while they are having sex in front of a camera, but it is so sweet and predictable that these potentially tawdry circumstances hardly matter.Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and stated that, "Somehow Kevin Smith's very excesses defuse the material.

[30] Smith was "convinced the film would grasp a piece of the raunchy-comedy box-office success that had flowed freely to Judd Apatow the previous year for Knocked Up"; when it did not, Smith criticized Harvey Weinstein for not spending enough to market the movie, an allegation Weinstein denied, noting he spent $30 million marketing the film.

Smith confirmed that Long was reprising his role as Brandon and that the move was meant to retcon the earlier film into the View Askewniverse.

A song by the band Live titled "Hold Me Up", which Smith has said he has been trying to use for over 13 years, appears in an "emotional scene" with Zack and Miri.

It was actually in the film for the first test screening, but Live decided they wanted to hold onto it as a potential single off their next album (which would follow Throwing Copper).

[41]The song does not appear on the soundtrack CD, and would not be available on a commercial release for another decade until Live announced a 25th-anniversary reissue of Throwing Copper, with "Hold Me Up" as a bonus track.

An older song by mc chris, "Fett's Vette", was also used in the film, as well as "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground and Jermaine Stewart's 1986 hit "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off.

At the time of its release, Kevin Smith claimed the film did not take place in the View Askewniverse, and consciously tried to avoid any connections: View Askewniverse staples Jay and Silent Bob make no appearance, and Smith went so far as to not feature the Nails cigarette brand that was a recurring brand in the films.

Though the character is never named, due to being owned by the Weinstein Company, Smith confirmed this appearance is him retroactively adding Zack and Miri Make a Porno to the View Askewniverse.

[46] In a deleted scene from Clerks III Jay mentions having a cousin named Lester who is a former adult film star, and has since switched to OnlyFans.