My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (42 page)

I talk to Joe Quesada for about twenty minutes and apologize for not just being late with the script, but for also not returning Joe’s emails two months back. Rather than eat on Marvel’s dime, Mewes, Bryan, Malcolm and I retire to the Morton’s bar, where we can smoke and eat. Bry and Malcolm chow down while Mewes and I shoot back to the hotel for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s auction.

I arrive with the auction in full swing. Joe’s ducked out of the Marvel dinner to auctioneer a few items, one of which is an appearance in a comic book called
Powers
(which Mike Oeming draws on a regular basis). Inspired by our earlier meeting, not to mention the good cause, I bid it up and close the auction out at two grand, the whole time trying to figure out who I’ll give it to as a Christmas gift.

Mewes and I head outside to smoke, and fifteen minutes later, I’m pulled back in to play auctioneer on some stuff. I do about ten items, then, right before I go, I add an auction: a walk-on in
Clerks 2
. It also goes for two grand.

I head back to the hotel where I change my soaking wet, sweaty shirt. Then, Mewes and I head downstairs to the poker tourney.

Every year, Gareb Shamus, the creator and publisher of
Wizard
, the Comics Magazine, hosts a poker tournament, with a percentage of the gate going to charity, and the rest of it going to three or four winners. Feeling chuffed from my earlier, online tourney win, I’m ready to play all night. Mewes and I get separated and sat at different tables.

Mewes is the first knocked out, betting big on a pair of pocket aces, only to get rivered by Seymour (our Con Buddy and Security Man) with the flush. Ten minutes later, I bet heavily with a pair of pocket eights, only to have the comics writer Brian Michael Bendis knock me out of the game with a pair of nines.

Since it’s so early, Mewes and I collect some other dudes who donked out too (like über-artist Jim Lee) and start a side game for real money. Our table swells to ten by midnight, and we play No Limit ‘til 5:30 a.m. with Jim, Gareb, Dynamic Forces owner Nick Barrucci, and a bunch of other folks. I’m getting tremendous cards, and close out the night a big winner, with $730 from my hundred buck buy-in — essentially thirty bucks more than the second place winner in the tournament won (first place was two grand).

I head back to the hotel, check email and the board, write to Jen, then go to sleep around 7 a.m.

Saturday 6 August 2005 @ 10:31 p.m.

I sleep ‘til two-ish, when I get up, do the morning shake drink, and sign some stuff Malcolm’s brought over. Malcolm tells me business is brisk at the booth: we’ve sold out of the tons of stuff I signed the night before, as well as the 900
Wizard
World Chicago exclusive Kevin Smith InAction Figures.

I watch some
Chappelle’s Show
, take a shower, talk to Jen on the cell, then head over to the Con for my Q&A panel.

As it is every year for the past six I’ve been attending the Chicago con, the Q&A is packed, with nary an empty seat in the big room (which, Fred informs me, is four-hundred seats bigger than it was last year). I’m supposed to go from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., but we’re all having such a good time, I go ‘til 6:30 p.m. instead, with the only negative aspect of the show provided by me.

In the course of telling a pretty funny story about working on
Catch & Release
, I use the phrase “nigga” to refer to Tim Olyphant, in the phrase: “Nigga, this ain’t
Deadwood
and you ain’t the sheriff.” Too much Chappelle-watching for me, it would seem. While I obviously didn’t intend it in any kind of racist context and no hush fell over the (largely white) room when I uttered it, I still feel badly. Dave Chappelle I ain’t, nor do I — who’s never been at the receiving end of a profiling, never been discriminated against, and never took any shit because of the color of my skin — have the right to employ the “N” term as even a colloquial term of endearment. Sure, I’ve been profiled, discriminated against, and took shit all my life because I’m overweight (which is still something of a minority in the aesthetic-obsessed culture of the US), but let’s face it: fat ain’t black. At the end of the day, I’ve prospered plenty in white America, and being white certainly didn’t hurt.

The gay community co-opted “fag” as a means of taking the malicious power out of the term when used against them by homophobes, but I don’t use “faggot” loosely either. Just because some of the black community has appropriated the “N” word for much the same reasons doesn’t mean that I can use it too, even in a non-racist fashion (if there’s even such a thing).

Sometimes I get carried away with my deep love for all things black and forget that I’m not black myself. Saying Jesus was black in
Dogma
doesn’t make me black. Being called a “whigger” throughout high school because of my unfashionable early embracing of hip-hop (particularly Run DMC and Public Enemy) doesn’t make me black. Wearing Fubu doesn’t make me black. Identifying with black folks doesn’t make me black. Wanting to be black most of my life doesn’t make me black. Nothing will ever make me black (although, when I first learned that my mother had been adopted and learned, further, that she had no idea who her birth parents were, once the initial shock wore off, I immediately started fantasizing that somewhere in my bloodline I might have some black in me, as it would explain a lot).

So, to anyone in attendance at the Q&A that day, whether you were offended or not, I apologize. Rest assured, it’ll never happen again.

I will, however, continue to use the term “motherfucker” as liberally as I can, even though it, too, is a term I got from the black community (from Chris Rock, particularly; Rock’s use of “motherfucker” makes it sound like the most poetic adjective/noun ever invented).

By the time the panel ends, the Con’s over. I’d mentioned not ever being able to walk the Con floor during the Q&A, so with the floor closed, Seymour escorts Malcolm and me around, and — for the first time in six years — I get to see every booth. I make a checklist of stuff I want to pick up tomorrow when the show opens, then head back to the hotel room, where Bry and Mewes are watching
The Longest Yard
.

Malcolm goes to sleep, Mewes and Bry head out to the
Wizard
wrap party, and I chill out in my room, playing Ultimate Bet for the rest of the night, watching
House of Wax
. I talk to Jen for a bit before she heads to a dinner with Chay back home, then fall asleep watching a PBS documentary about the history of pop music.

Sunday 7 August 2005 @ 10:33 p.m.

Wake up, drink a shake, then talk to Jen for a bit, before heading over to the Con for my noon to two signing at fountain in the Rosemont Convention Center. I do my time, then head to the green room for a general update interview with
Wizard
’s Richard Ho. Afterwards, I hit the booth and sign for another seventy-five folks and find out that the additional four cases of Kevin Smith Exclusive InAction Figures that were discovered buried at the booth have also sold out. We’ve sold out of so much merch at the booth that I wind up tagging InAction figures that aren’t even me (discovering that, if I sign the Jen/Missy figure “had her” they go pretty quickly). I say g’bye to Bry, Malcolm, Chappy and Gina, and shoot back to the hotel with Seymour to collect Mewes and pack up for our trip to the airport.

We check in, head to the gate, and board. I play Tetris and listen to Luther Vandross’s ‘Don’t Want to Be a Fool’ on iPod repeat for the entire flight to Jersey.

Mewes and I touch down in the MotherLand around nine, collect my bag from baggage claim, and shuttle over to the car rental joint, where we grab an Explorer and head to Highlands, rocking out to the iPod the whole way.

I drop Mewes off at his family’s place, then spin past the house I grew up in before heading toward Red Bank. I call my mom, who’s in Jersey as well, down in Toms River with my sister. Virginia and her kids have been visiting from Japan for the last two months, so I’m gonna be able to catch her before she heads back to Kobe later in the week.

I check into the Marriott Courtyard (fuck you, they got free internet) and immediately take a load of laundry down to their coin-operated washer/dryers. I head back upstairs and call Jen, and we wind up getting into some steamy phone sex, after which I play some UB and go to sleep.

Monday 8 August 2005 @ 7:36 p.m.

Wake up around ten, take a shower, and head to Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, Red Bank to see Walt and sign a bunch of merchandise.

Clete Shields comes by to deliver the bronze bust of Dad I had made for my mom, which turned out great. We chit-chat for awhile before Mewes pops in with some of his friends to say hi. He grabs me an iced tea from Starbucks, and then heads off. I pay Clete, finish signing all the books, figures, and posters, and head back to the hotel to get ready for the
Reel Paradise
première in NYC.

My sister Virginia calls to cancel Mom out of the première, as she’s not feeling that well. I call Ming to see if he’s already left for NYC, but he’s well on his way. So I head up, solo.

Drive in to the city via Holland Tunnel and arrive an hour early, which is some kind of record for me. I park and head to the Tribeca Cinema, where I find Runshouse, Koala, Ralphy, Diff, Lithmick, and Magentalai waiting outside the theater. We all bullshit for a while, later joined by Ming.

Mark Tusk (the former Miramax acquisitions maven who brought
Clerks
in) shows up, followed by indie über-lawyer John Sloss. Shortly thereafter, John and Janet Pierson arrive, closely followed by Bob (he who discovered
Clerks
) Hawk, and it suddenly feels like a high school reunion.

These are the people who’ve been with me since the ground-up — the folks who I credit with keeping me honest for twelve years. Pierson, particularly, has been my sounding-board from the jump — a decade-spanning confidant whose approval I’ve always sought with every flick I’ve done since
Clerks
.

That’s what makes tonight so special. It’s the culmination of three years worth of me trying to give back to John what he gave to me. Without Pierson signing onto and selling
Clerks
, you would’ve never heard of the flick past Sundance. Without Pierson involving me in his seminal indie tome
Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes
, I might not have as much indie cred as I’ve sustained these many years. Without John jumping aboard
Chasing Amy
as an exec producer, Harvey might not have given us the $250,000, following the
Mallrats
debacle (or, at the very least, we might’ve been forced to make the Drew Barrymore, David Schwimmer, John Stewart version of the flick). He’s been much more than just a mentor and guru to me, lo these many moons; he’s also been one of my best friends in the world.

So when John had asked me, years ago, to invest in his dream of going to Fiji and purchasing what he calls “the world’s most remote movie theater”, I couldn’t write him a check fast enough. And when he had the idea of turning that experience into a flick, I included the budget in my overall Miramax deal when I re-upped three years back. And it wasn’t all just a way to say thank you to a guy I owe so much to; it was also because I believed in his vision. And that vision became the Steve (
Hoop Dreams
) James-directed
Reel Paradise.

John, Janet, Georgia and Wyatt (their two kids and the scene-stealers of the flick), Steve James and I head inside to do some press pics while the crowd is loading in. We then intro the flick, and since there isn’t an empty seat in the house, we head over to the bar side of the De Niro-owned Tribeca Cinema (formerly The Screening Room).

John, Janet and the folks from Wellspring (the distributor) head off to dinner, but since I’m not eating, I chill out at the theater bar. Sloss stays behind with me and we bullshit ‘til the group gets back, then watch the Pierson Family/Steve James post-screening Q&A.

For the rest of the night, I pretty much chill outside the theater and do press, taking about a half hour off to talk to my other godfather, Bob Hawk, about Malcolm’s doc,
Small Town/Gay Bar
which he loved and is highly recommending to Sundance (which is a great thing, as Bob also highly recommended
Clerks
to Sundance, back in ‘93).

By one in the morning, I’m tuckered out and ready to head back to Red Bank. Former Poop Shooter Jeff Wells shows up and takes a pic of John and I before I go, then I hug all the usual suspects goodbye, head back to the garage, get the car, and talk to Jen on the cell as I drive home.

I get back to the hotel and check email and do board stuff ‘til I go to sleep around four.

Tuesday 9 August 2005 @ 8:18 p.m.

I wake up late, shit, shower, then head down to Toms River around two in the afternoon.

My sister’s been back in the States for the last two months, but I haven’t been east to see her because I was up in Vancouver all summer. A Kobe, Japan resident, she’s come home to have her autistic daughter, Sabine, tested, to gauge the progress she’s made in the two years since she was first diagnosed. Virginia and her husband Eric have been flying over therapists and specialists to help Sabine develop her language skills, as the five year old’s at the end of the autism spectrum that allows for the greatest chance of developmental breakthroughs.

My mom, who’s delved deeply into real estate in the wake of my father’s death, bought a pair of houses down in Toms River a year or so back, so Virginia’s staying with her kids in one of them (her husband after being here a month had to fly back to Japan for work).

Since I’ve never been to the Toms River house that my Mom shares with Judy (a woman Mom grew up with who was our ‘Aunt Judy’ growing up; the mother of my ‘cousin’ John — the guy who played Cohee Lundin) when she’s not down in her Florida house. I call Mom when I get near the Toms River exit off the Garden State Parkway for more exact directions.

I pull up just as my brother Don (in from Florida, where he runs the Online Stash fulfillment center) pulls up with Andy (my mom’s nephew-in-law).