Smith - Shootin the sh*t with kevin smith: the best of smodcast

THE BEST OF SMODCAST

Illustrations by Michael Macari

THE BEST OF SMODCAST

ISBN-13 9781848569423

Published by

Titan Books

A division of

Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St

London

SE1 0UP

First edition September 2009

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Shootin the Sh*t With Kevin Smith: The Best of SModcast

copyright 2009 Kevin Smith. All rights reserved.

Front and back cover photo Albert Ortega.

Illustrations 2009 Michael Macari.

The publishers would like to thank SModcast producer

Ken Plume for his invaluable help with this book.

Visit our websites:

www.titanbooks.com

www.quickstopentertainment.com/category/smodcast/

This book contains transcriptions of live conversations, as heard on the podcast SModcast. These conversations are for entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in this book are not necessarily those of the publisher, and the publisher accepts no responsibility for inaccuracies or omissions, and the publisher specifically disclaims any liability, loss, or risk, whether personal, financial, or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, from the contents of this book.

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

BOOBERTY!

For Jen because she lets me candidly share with strangers so much of my life. It doesnt sound like a big deal til you realize its her life as well. I have a very cool wife, is what Im saying.

Ken Plume SModcasts own Jam Master Jay, the mix-master general, whose audio presence, sadly, doesnt translate to print. But aurally? Without him? We sound empty.

Elliot Greenburg He taught Scott and I how to use the equipment very important and necessary step in podcasting or any electronic venture.

Ming Who always makes sure Scott and I are floating somewhere through cyberspace.

Dont be fooled by my name on the cover. I didnt write this.

Well, I wrote this the intro. But the rest of it? I didnt write it. I didnt even transcribe it from the original recording.

There is no author, really, and yet, somehow, Im not a plagiarist. If Im guilty of anything, its simply wanting to talk to Mosier more. Thats the not-so-secret origin of SModcast, the podcast I do (almost) every week with my longtime friend and producer, Scott Mosier: it was born out of a desire to spend time with Mos in a non-work capacity.

I first met the young Scott Mosier way back in 1992 on our first day at the Vancouver Film School. In contemporary parlance, he looked like that kid from Twilight all the tween girls cream over. But back in 92? He just looked like Luke Perry.

At first glance, I assumed I wasnt gonna like him. Look at this fuck, I muttered to myself, mean-mugging Mosier during our class orientation. All leather-jacket-wearing, well-groomed, dual citizenship-carrying cool, whos probably never had to beg for a handy. I hate him.

Within the first two weeks of school, we were coupled-up for a class exercise that eventually forced us into conversation. I wish I had total recall of the exact words we exchanged (I like to remember it as Ben Kenobi introducing us, la the Phantom Menace trailer; the trailer, okay? Not the actual movie), but I know where the conversations eventually went: hysterical, interesting, fucked-up places. For the next five months, Mos and I spent lots of time together, bonded by a similar sense of dry humor and, every once in a while, dopey outsiders-dying-to-get-in industry faux-speak (for a short film project, we named our production company Post Party at Spagos a joke which wasnt even that funny then, and certainly shows its age now).

I dropped out of film school midway through the eight-month program, but Scott (and our longtime cinematographer Dave Klein) stuck it out. Months later, they both joined me in New Jersey to shoot a no-budget flick about a guy who works in a convenience store.

From the moment Clerks was picked up by Miramax, Scott and I became inseparable. The mini-major would send me to fifteen or twenty festivals over the next few months and Scott attended every one of them with me. We flew all over the world, showing our flick, Q&A-ing afterwards, building a city-by-city awareness for our theatrical release date in the fall.

Understand if you will that it was an age of magic and wonder: our first film had been picked up by THE premiere art-house distributor of the era, and we were being courted for more work by other studios as well. I had a dream, and Mos helped me forge it into reality. I was longing to be heard to get my voice out there. And this veritable stranger Id known less than a year helped make it happen. Do you understand what a gift that is aiding someone on a vision quest? I loved the man about as much as you can love someone you have no interest in fucking. Scott was my hetero life-mate.

After the January 94 to November 94 Clerks film festival road show, the flick came out thus signaling not only the end of our grass roots tour, but the start of our next movie as well: Mallrats. After that, there was Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, etc. And with each flick, we began spending less and less time together outside of work. The majority of our conversations became project related and we afforded ourselves very little time to simply hang and be friends like we used to. I got married in 99, he did the same a few years later, and then the time we spent together outside of work pretty much ground to a halt altogether.

And thats the way it went for a while. Until I had the idea.

Id often wished Id taped an interview with my father before he died. Shit, just a recording of his voice, even so generations from now, our family could possibly hear the gentle inflections of the patriarch. But more than that, I wish I had him telling some stories. I couldve maybe gotten him to spin some yarn about a time long before I was even a late-night urge in the fall of 69 (I was born August, 70); just a record of who he really was, yknow?

And that, in turn, got me wondering how many more people I was ever going to lose without putting em on wax, so to speak. I couldnt shake the idea that all of these characters in my life had millions of unrecorded stories about who they are, as well as the mundane events that shaped them.

So with very little fanfare, I asked Mos if he wanted to start doing a podcast together for one of my websites, quickstopentertainment.com, with the idea being that itd give us at least an hour a week to hang out and bullshit about anything but our work. Surprisingly, the normally press-and-public shy Scott said yes. Even more surprisingly, he came up with the name; a name I immediately wanted to hug.