Week of February 2, 2006, Issue #537
COVER
All this, and Kevin too
By PAUL MATWYCHUK
The best movie Kevin Smith ever made is arguably one he didn’t even direct.
The film is An Evening With Kevin Smith, a 2002 DVD that compiles the best moments
from five epic Q&A sessions Smith conducted during a 2001/2002 speaking
tour of American universities.
Some of the questions from his fans inspire quick one-liners (when asked if
he ever considered making a science fiction film, Smith replies that he’s
already made one, Chasing Amy: “Go ask any lesbian,” he says, “and
she’ll tell you that would never happen”), while others inspire
rambling, hilarious anecdotes about working on the unproduced script for Superman
Reborn, being hired by Prince to come to Paisley Park and direct a documentary
about his new CD, and witnessing firsthand the legendary exhibitionist exploits
of the teenaged Jason Mewes (Silent Bob’s companion Jay).
The audiences are sometimes rowdy (as Smith wearily observes, no one at these
events ever yells at Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen to whip out their cock),
but Smith calmly handles them all with a grace and good humour that’s
pretty much irresistible. The disc sold so well that a sequel, filmed in Toronto
and London, is due for release later this year.
“I’ve had all sorts of people come up to me and say, ‘I don’t
really care for your movies but I love that DVD,’” Smith says over
the phone from the Los Angeles offices of View Askew, his production company.
It’s very early on a Friday morning, and Smith’s side of the conversation
is peppered with occasional yawns—but you can hardly blame him if he sounds
tired. He’s newly returned from the Sundance Film Festival, where he was
plugging two documentaries (Malcolm Ingram’s Small Town Gay Bar, which
he executive-produced, and Kirby Dick’s exposé of the MPAA, This
Film Is Not Yet Rated, in which he appears as an interviewee); he’s gearing
up for the imminent release of Clerks 2, a sequel to the microbudgeted 1994
comedy that put him on the map in the first place; and he’s getting ready
to do another Evening With Kevin Smith marathon in Edmonton’s Winspear
Centre this week.
Vue Weekly warmed him up with some questions of our own. Here are some of the
highlights.
Vue Weekly: You’re the only film director I can think of who spends this
much time on the lecture circuit. When did you start doing these gigs?
Kevin Smith: The Q&As organically grew out of doing screenings for the movies
at festivals and whatever; after the movie’s over, you’d do a talkback.
And after Mallrats came out, in October/November ’95, I started going
to colleges and showing uncut footage from the movie and doing Q&As. But
somewhere around ’99 or 2000, I stopped showing the movie altogether and
just did pure Q&A action. They’re always pretty interesting; in the
last four years, I don’t think I’ve done one that was less than
four hours. The longest one was seven hours.
VW: That sounds absolutely exhausting.
KS: Maybe it is for the audience, but it doesn’t really bother me. I mean,
by the time you hit the fourth hour, you start losing a good percentage of the
audience; people are going, “I’ve heard enough.” You get to
see who the really hardcore fans are—or at least the people with apparently
nothing better to do.
VW: How would you compare the questions you get from fans to the ones you get
from “professional” interviewers?
KS: Well, when you’re being interviewed, it’s about sound bites,
right? You can’t really speak in paragraphs unless you’re doing
one of those really extensive interviews. But onstage, someone can ask a very
simple question that’ll lead to, like, a 45-minute response that will
kick into three sort of unrelated stories that somehow all link up. It’s
a lot easier to jump into storyteller mode when you’re doing a Q&A.
Whereas if you keep doing that during an interview, people will eventually stop
wanting to interview you.
VW: Tell me about Small Town Gay Bar [a profile of two isolated Mississippi
gay bars], which sounds like a fantastic idea for a documentary.
KS: It’s a really great premise, isn’t it? I remember when Malcolm
showed me the first 15 minutes or so that he’d shot, and I was just like,
“I can’t believe no one did this before!” And I was so happy
that Malcolm did it. He’s been a friend of mine for a long time, and he
struggled for a while to find his own voice as a filmmaker, and when he came
out and accepted the fact that he’s gay, it suddenly gave him this wonderful
clarity of vision after living in denial for such a long time. If you look at
the two movies he made prior to coming out—Drawing Flies and Tail Lights
Fade—they’re movies made by a filmmaker who doesn’t yet have
a clear voice of his own, who’s going, “What do people want to see?
I’ll do that.” And then you see Small Town Gay Bar, and you go,
“Oh my God, this is what he was meant to do.” It played phenomenally
well [in Sundance]; people were laughing and clapping and crying—it was
so wonderful to see Malcolm get that, because normally he’s a guy who
doesn’t get much consideration at all.
VW: What’s your relationship like these days with the gay community? I
ask because there’s a fascinating exchange you have on the Evening With
Kevin Smith DVD with this lesbian who takes you to task for what she sees as
the message of Chasing Amy. Do you run into that kind of response at these events
very often?
KS: No. That was such a weird, rare occurrence. Especially with Chasing Amy;
I don’t think anyone’s taken me to task for Chasing Amy in quite
some time. But it was totally fine; anything that leads to a long response is
fine with me because I mean, that kills, like, 20 minutes, half an hour. And
also, if someone does have an issue, you want to hear them out and see if you
can clear up your point of view. [In the case of that woman,] she just seemed
to miss the point of the movie. The idea that the movie maintains the old chestnut
that all a lesbian needs is a good fuck from a good guy is a notion that we
deflate in the movie; we put that sentiment into the mouth of Banky, the character
who’s set up in the movie as the idiot, the guy who doesn’t have
a fucking clue.... I would love to find out, though, if she committed [to lesbianism],
or if she was in her first or second year at college and experimenting with
it. Did she commit 100 per cent to the gay lifestyle or is she now dating some
fucking frat dude? You never get the follow up on some of these people.
VW: This Film Is Not Yet Rated is about the inner workings of the Hollywood
ratings system. Does the MPAA still give you a hard time? For instance, you
always hear that they go easier on name directors and films that have the backing
of bigger studios. Has that helped you any?
KS: Well, the last time we went to them was with Jersey Girl, which they gave
an R rating, and I was fucking blown away. I mean, that’s a pretty tame
movie; it was 180 degrees from the previous movie we brought to them, Jay and
Silent Bob Strike Back, which they gave an NC-17 and which we then had to trim
to get it down to an R. So we finally got them to pin down what they objected
to with Jersey Girl, and it was a scene with Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler in a
diner talking about masturbation. And I don’t know if you’ve seen
the movie, but it’s the most tepid, clinical discussion of masturbation
that I could have possibly done—you could have gotten away with it on
Friends or one of those fucking sitcoms. But they gave it an R because of one
the raters said she wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting in a movie theatre
with her 16-year-old daughter watching Liv Tyler talking about masturbation....
Thankfully, they overturned the R on appeal, but the whole process is just a
pain in the ass. I’ve just given up; with Clerks 2, we knew there was
no way we’d get anything less than an NC-17, so early on [producer] Harvey
Weinstein said, “Fuck, let’s just go out unrated,” and I went,
“Yay, man.”
VW: There’s a list on the Internet of the movies with the highest “fuck”
counts, and Jay and Silent Bob comes in at No. 20, just ahead of True Romance
and a couple of slots behind GoodFellas. Are there writers who you admire for
their ability to use swearing really well?
KS: Not really. There are people who I admire for their ability to not swear
at all. Bill Cosby, back in the day, pre-Cosby Show, cut five, six, maybe 10
albums, none of which have a single swear on them and they’re hysterical.
But I guess I’m not as talented as Bill Cosby. [Laughs.] Or at least Bill
Cosby pre-1980. But my attitude is, if it makes your characters sound more authentic
and you’re not just throwing out pottymouth words for the sake of saying
pottymouth words, then it’s fine. I mean, I’m 35—saying “fuck”
doesn’t give me a rebellious thrill anymore. It’s just the norm.
That’s just the world I live in and that’s the world I like to write
about.
VW: Have these marathon Q&A sessions, talking about yourself for four, five,
six, seven hours at a stretch, ever led you to a deeper understanding of yourself
or your movies?
KS: It does sometimes make me wonder, “What the fuck is my problem? Why
can’t I just do two hours and get off the stage?” I think I tend
to overcompensate in life in general. When you grow up fat, you always think
any positive attention you get is a break. Plus they pay you a bunch of money
to do these Q&As and then they charge people a bunch of money to come see
it and I just feel like I’ve gotta give them their money’s worth,
so I tend to overstay and never think that maybe there’s such a thing
as too much of a good thing. Hopefully people will come out; being Catholic,
there’s a lot of guilt that comes with taking a cheque to come speak.
Right before each show I always think, “This’ll be the one where
nobody shows up, this’ll be the one that totally sucks.” So God,
I hope this isn’t the one. If nothing else, I’ll finally get to
come to Edmonton and check out that massive fucking mall. V
An Evening With Kevin Smith
With Jason Mewes • Winspear Centre • Fri, Feb 6 • 428-1414