An Evening -- no, a NIGHT -- with Kevin Smith
by Michelle Mogil
14850 Magazine > October 2001 Issue > An Evening -- no, a NIGHT -- with Kevin Smith
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To document an evening with the man known to most casual film fans as "Silent Bob" is no easy task, and I wasn't sure I was up to it. I'm not, after all, nearly as rabid a fan as most of the three or four hundred students who were already camped out on the steps of Cornell's Bailey Hall at 6:50 on this chilly October evening. Don't get me wrong: I'm a huge fan. But I haven't memorized every scrap of dialogue from every film the man's made, which is what seemed to be the primary content of the conversations swirling amongst this crowd.
As near as I can recall, my first exposure to Kevin Smith was in 1995. My husband and I took in a showing of "Clerks" at Cinemapolis in a desperate attempt to escape the mild depression of our work-a-day lives and three demanding children, and "Clerks" came highly recommended.
I immediately fell in love with the insane genius who could have conceived and written such a masterpiece, one that absolutely embraced and celebrated the mundane. Just what I needed to reaffirm my own existence. It didn't occur to me that my new-found love was the portly, bearded mute in the black trench coat and backward baseball cap who was the manic Jay's Left Hip. Didn't occur to me, that is, until I became more familiar with the man and his unique brand of humor.
Back at Bailey, the doors were to be opened at 7:30. At 7:04, with no signal I could see, there was a bizarre surge up the stairs. By 7:23, the crowd had easily doubled in size, and for the next fifteen minutes, there were several false alarms which elicited loud groans and some explosive profanity. At 7:40, they finally opened the doors, and the crowd scrambled inside to claim the best seats. Minutes passed...8:15, the crowd was nearly all seated...the rhythmic clapping and hollering began. This was going to be no Night at the Opera.
A very brave woman appeared at 8:30 to MC the show and explain the proliferation of cameras and sound equipment: Cornell had been chosen as the first in a series of four college appearances that would be filmed for a special edition DVD to be distributed by Columbia/TriStar in the spring of 2002. She assured the audience that the louder and more enthusiastic they were, the likelier they were to appear on the DVD. The response was deafening. She further admonished the crowd not to be shy about asking questions, but to first give their full name and then be prepared to sign a release. The response: "Tell Silent Bob to get his fat ass out here!"
At 8:34, Kevin Smith finally walked -- no, stalked -- out on stage. The crowd went wild. As the applause quieted, one heckler yelled out "Way to be punctual!" to which Smith replied, without missing a beat, "So, who's the bigger asshole? The guy who's late or the guy who stays?" The crowd, once again, went wild.
As the noise subsided, Kevin gazed around at the audience and proclaimed "This makes up for every chick who ever said I had a small dick." He then outlined how the evening would go: he would do a brief schtick, then take questions, ANY questions, from members of the audience, and would stay on stage until there was no one left. "Hey! I don't have class tomorrow! I can do this all fucking night!"
Kevin Smith displayed an oddly graceful mixture of modesty and arrogance; no one was safe from his well-placed barbs, least of all himself. "Your program people -- what do you call 'em here? Cornell Activities something?" (Several helpful members of the audience shouted out letters of the alphabet, "CUPB," only contributing to the confusion.) "What? CUAB? Quab? The Quab? Okay... the Quab gave me a whole bunch of cool shit. God bless 'em, they gave me a medium T-shirt.... Oh, and they gave me a Cornell hockey jersey. Extra-extra large!" And he certainly didn't leave out Ithaca's reputation for being centrally isolated. "It was kinda hard to find. You know, you got one fucking road into this place! You got this huge great college, you'd think you deserve at least two fucking lanes into town!" Pandemonium ensued.
Then the questions began. The first brave soul to step up to the mike took the MC's advice to heart. "My name's Matthew Brooks..." he began. Mr. Smith's trademark eyebrows flew up into his hairline. "Your name? You're giving me your fucking name? And what's with the fucking microphones?" A stuttering explanation came from the young man, during which Kevin placed a few more barbs: "Okay, no pressure. But keep in mind this is the first question of the first stop on my College Tour this year." Mr. Brooks pulled himself together enough to ask his question, finally: "What's a Nubian?" The jeers, catcalls, hoots and hollers abounded. Mr. Smith's response: "I will do the fucking jokes here, if you don't mind."
The evening continued in pretty much the same vein. The audience was not shy about asking, and Mr. Smith was not hesitant in answering. On why he, the boss, gave himself the all-but-silent role in his films: "I at least wanted to be in [the films]; I mean, it's my fucking film! But the truth is, I really can't act." On anti-drug movies: "Not a huge fan... because they tend to be the same movie over and over again. I liked 'Trainspotting' a lot more... because of the honesty." On "The Blair Witch Project:" "Incredible use of video in a film format." Most of his responses became long, involved anecdotes which were nonetheless fascinating and amusing, because Mr. Smith can really tell a twisted tale.
When the inevitable question about his Catholic upbringing was put forth, Kevin responded "I would imagine that, watching 'Dogma,' that would be very, very clear." But then he expanded on that. He spent eight years in a Parochial school which he admitted to enjoying. As he got older, though, he began to struggle with the tenets -- "the dogma, if you will" -- of Catholicism. He still maintains his basic faith, though: "I believe in God and Christ. I'm a very spiritual person. But I think religion gets a lot of people in trouble. Take current events, for example." He is still incredulous over the religious protests directed at "Dogma" -- "by people who never even saw the movie, for Chrissakes! It's a movie with a fucking rubber poop monster in it! Take it easy!"
And on it went. "What is your favorite film that you've done?" "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back... because it was like a high school reunion picture. Everyone came back!" Favorite scene in one of his films? "The car scene in 'Chasing Amy' where Holden is pouring his heart out to Alyssa. I really thought Affleck nailed that scene." Favorite Super Hero? "Oh, Batman. He has the most cool toys." Which Batman, though, the Tim Burton one or the Joel Schumacher one? "Joel Schumacher, definitely. Nipples and a codpiece. I love it."
He was impatient, but nicely so, with the young man who begged "I mean, what the fuck? Why Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back? Where's the message?" "Who says there has to be a message? 'Clerks' had a message? 'Mall Rats?' No... sometimes it's just nice to make a fun movie." Slightly impatient, too, with those who questioned his views on homosexuality. "Lookit... it comes down to this: this is it through my eyes. This is how I see it. I'm still not sure about my own sexuality! And I got a wife and kid! How irresponsible is that?" The young woman who questioned him on that became the victim of the audience's derision when she attempted to insert a plug for "The Dream Catcher" into her query. Hoots, hollers, jeers, catcalls. Kevin swept the rowdy audience with a satisfied air: "This is why I do colleges. They're so feral!"
On fatherhood, he waxed philosophical: "After I got over the 'Oooo...Miracle of Life... I made this...' bullshit, I gotta admit the first six months were boring! Then, around one and a half, two years old, she started turning into a little person; it started getting interesting. Our conversations tend to be pretty scatological... y'know, 'poo this' and 'poo that.' Poo is very interesting to her."
There were a few interruptions to the flow of questions, answers, and stories. At one point, near midnight, his wife Jennifer began waving from off-stage, presumably to urge him to wrap up the evening. His response was to drag her out on stage to introduce her and elicited the reaction from an audience member standing near me: "Whoa! She's hot!" At another point, he made a cell phone call to Jason Mewes in New Jersey to gloat about the reception he received at Cornell.
The friendship between Kevin and Jason is tight, or so I hope, anyway, because Kevin delighted in telling us Jason Mewes stories. "Jason's a sweet guy," he said in response to an audience question about a report wherein someone claimed Mr. Mewes "was a complete dick." "No, he's really sweet. He couldn't say a bad thing about anything or anyone...And he's really shy. I mean, he'll be standing there all 'gonna get some p----, gonna f--- that c---, gonna get that p-----, yeah'...and a girl'll walk by. Allasudden, he's like silent," and Kevin snaps to attention, eyeballs bulging. "And his eyes, y'know, his eyes'll, like, follow her without following her, y'know?" Kevin's eyes pan the stage. "Then she walks off and he's all 'yeah...gonna f--- that c---, gonna get that p----, yeah....'"
Kevin Smith will not be resting on whatever laurels have come his way thus far: "I got a kid to feed now!" Upcoming projects include a "Clerks" animated film due out sometime next year, a prequel to the "Fletch" films called "Fletch Won," again sometime in 2002, a fatherhood-type film tentatively titled "Jersey Girl" to be started in April of 2002, and, rumor has it, starring none other than Ben Affleck. Oh, and "Jay and Silent Bob will never fucking come back!" He was very emphatic on that point.
He became completely serious only once, late in the evening, when asked if there were any lines he absolutely would not cross. "Yes," he replied. "I won't make jokes about abuse. Nothing funny about it." Then, to change the subject, I suspect, he asked "Hey, can I smoke in here, or will I get arrested?" Considerable license was granted to the man, because he proceeded to light up and an ashtray was magically produced. And the questions, answers, and stories continued into the wee hours of the morning.
Turns out, we smoke the same brand of cigarettes: Marlboro menthols. So, when it finally came time for autographs, around 1:46 AM after he'd been kicked off the stage, I had him sign not only a poster for my daughter, but on impulse slid my pack of cigarettes across the table to him. "Oh, no thanks. I got smokes," he said. "No, I was going to ask you to sign 'em," I replied. "Are you kidding? You know what these things cost!" A quick flash of a grin, a flourish of his signature and I was on my way, now with a deeper impression and understanding of that man I fell in love with back in 1995 when my world was dismally sagging around me. Oh, and a cigarette pack that I can never throw away.
Kevin Smith's talk was sponsored by the Cornell University Program Board. Upcoming events include an appearance by hypnotist Michael C. Anthony at Cornell's Statler Auditorium on October 15th, and a multimedia presentation on '60s rock music by Barry Drake on November 2nd, also at Statler Auditorium.