My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (77 page)

The Red Bank Stash Signing: A Day That Will Live in Infamy

Tuesday 8 August 2006 @ 12:13 p.m.

With the Rolling Roadshow screening of
Clerks
being the next day, I figured a
hundred, maybe two hundred folks would show up at the Red Bank Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash signing we’d scheduled for Monday.

To put this into perspective, when I hit puberty, and my dick grew no bigger than it had been in grade school, I figured one day, I’d enjoy a penile growth spurt that’d put me on a par with the dudes in porn who sported more impressive cocks.

In short, I’m an idiot.

When I showed up at the Stash at 2:45 p.m. yesterday (the hotel where I was staying had temporarily shut the water off around noon, prohibiting me from showering on schedule to make the 2 p.m. signing start in time), I saw a line that stretched far deeper into the heart of Red Bank than I’d anticipated.

By the time I started signing at 3 p.m., the official head count outside was over two thousand.

By the time I signed for the last guy (whose sentiments made my morning), it was 4 a.m. today.

Between those two points, there was a moment that kind of defined the whole day for me: Walter pulls me aside at one point and informs me: “The cops are saying there’s a woman outside who showed up around four/five, and she’s bitching about the line being cut off. Bitching in a big way. Bitching enough for the cop to suggest we have her escorted off. What do you think?”

It’s at this point that I’m thinking: “Has it really come to this?”

“Is she right after the cut-off sign in the line?” I ask. “She’s further back,” Walt explains. “There’re about two hundred people after the cut-off mark. She’s in the middle of that group.” “What are two hundred people doing standing in a line that’s been cut off?” Walt had no answer for that except “What do we do about The Screamer?”

And after a moment’s fancy of the
Asbury Park Press
headline that might read “
Clerks
-Guy Has Fan Rolled by Cops”, I say to Walt: “Let’s move the sign. Put it at the end of the two hundred people.” “You’re kidding,” Walt sputters. “I don’t see what else we can do.” “We’re gonna be here ‘til the wee hours.” “If we’re lucky.”

We weren’t lucky. It wound up being a thirteen-hour signing. It broke our previous record, set September ‘04, when we opened the Westwood Stash and had a dual
Clerks X
/
Jersey Girl
DVD signing that lasted from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. the next day.

Nobody (not the folks who showed up or even the folks in charge) anticipated a crowd that large. This was the first event that the Red Bank Police made us hire an off-duty uniform to patrol (at $56 an hour). This was the first event at which the View Askew message board folks made up maybe two percent of the folks in line, with the majority of the crowd being MySpacers. It wasn’t a cluster-fuck, but it was certainly a quagmire of sorts. And yet, thanks to your patience, we got through it in one piece, staying ‘til the last man (and woman) got their shit tagged.

Kudos to the Secret Stash crew — Walt, Ming, Mike Zap and Jeff — who kept it all moving fairly smoothly. Kudos to Jen for spending hours outside, glad-handing and chatting with the waiting crowd. Kudos to all the folks in line who waited upwards of thirteen hours. Kudos to the town of Red Bank for not shutting us down once they saw the sheer volume of the crowd.

If you showed up, waited as long as you could, and eventually threw in the towel... man I completely understand. I’ve read posts on our message board from people who made it through to the bitter end, and from a few folks who were bitter about not making it to the end.

I’m a big fan of the people who dig our stuff for the obvious reasons (they keep me employed and they improve my self esteem), but sometimes, an event like this illuminates the not so obvious reasons I love my audience: they are pretty fucking devoted.

But not devoted enough, mind you, to get naked for me. In all those two thousand plus people, you’d imagine at least one couple would offer to put on a private fuck show for me. Y’know — like a “I love
Mallrats
so much, that if you lock that front door, the wife will lean me over the BluntMobile and bang me with a strap-on for your amusement.” That shit never happens to me. What fucking gives? Where’s the Goddamned respect, ya’ selfish fucking pricks?

Many thanks, all, for making a fat kid from Jersey feel loved, yet again. It helps to salve the wound left by that complete and utter missing penile growth spurt I’d expected in my youth.

Dirty Words Under the Stars

Wednesday 9 August 2006 @ 10:18 a.m.

Last night, the Alamo Draft House-created/Netflix-sponsored Rolling Roadshow hit Red Bank for an outdoor screening of the original
Clerks
.

We packed the house. 2,500 people were allowed into the fenced-off ‘theater’ and another 1,000 plus had to be turned away. Brian O’Halloran (Dante) and Marilyn Ghigliotti (Veronica) were in attendance, and limited edition Roadshow-themed posters were sold.

It was a pretty cool crowd. Granted, there were some not-so-great questions at the pre-show Q&A I did, but it was all good and damn fun stuff.

Many thanks to Pat Menna and Mayor McKenna for giving the screening a home in Red Bank after Middletown Township unnecessarily gave us the boot from Leonardo. The show started at 7:15 p.m. and everyone was cleared out of the Marina by 10:30-ish, with no reports of the bad behavior the Middletown authorities were worried about. It’s a shame, as it would’ve been really cool to watch the flick right across the street from Quick Stop itself, however, with the giant screen being backed by the river and a full moon, I can’t imagine a prettier setting for such an ugly (aesthetically) movie.

Thanks to Tim League and his Rolling Roadshow crew for making it all happen. Thanks to Ming and Ian, who were the Roadshow’s local reps. Thanks to John and Janet Pierson for being instrumental in getting
Clerks
on this year’s Roadshow menu. Thanks to Netflix for sponsoring this year’s fest. And thanks to all who came.

I can’t impart this emphatically enough: if you get a chance to attend ANY of the Rolling Roadshow screenings over the next few weeks, GET YER ASS THERE! It’s a pretty incredible experience.

Now let’s all start bugging Tim about doing
Mallrats
in the parking lot of the Eden Prairie Mall at next year’s Rolling Roadshow tour.

Crawling Out from Under a Rock

Monday 28 August 2006 @ 2:35 p.m.

Hey, all. Sorry for the absence of blogging as of late, but I just got home from traveling abroad with
Clerks II
. We hit Australia for premières in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as the Edinburgh Film Festival in Scotland where our little flick won the Audience Award, beating out fest-circuit faves
Little Miss Sunshine
and
An Inconvenient Truth
.

Speaking of festivals, who’s up for attending one?

The Movies Askew Fest!

That’s right — the year-long Movies Askew Contest is wrapping up with a one-day screening of all twelve finalists, and if you’re in or near Los Angeles, you can be a part of the fun! Come chill with us at Cinespace on 6 September, from 6 p.m. to midnight. Kick back, watch some incredible short films, and get drunk as a skunk as we crown the 2006 Movies Askew Champion. Thousands have entered, but only one of twelve will walk away with the Grand Prize Package, which also includes a position on the next View Askew film!

Thursday 7 September 2006 @ 7:38 a.m.

The Movies Askew Fest went off without a hitch, and a good time was had by all (for anyone wondering, Cinespace is a phenomenal place to throw a party, man). The panel of judges was made up of Richard
Donnie Darko
Kelly, Jason Mewes, Scott Mosier and me (and the entire audience for the Audience Award).

And the winners were as follows...

Audience Award — Elias Matar’s “Chingaso the Clown”

Special Recognition Award — Scott Rice’s “Perils in Nude Modeling”

And the Grand Prize Winner — Duane Graves’ “Up Syndrome”

A compilation of all the finalist’s short films is on YouTube, called ‘Movies

Askew – Finalists Montage’.

Thanks to everyone, auteur and audience alike, who attended.

In MySpace-related news, like a total uncouth fucktard, I shot past my 100,000th “friend” without giving him a shout-out.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Josh.

http://www.myspace.com/chickenlegman

A day none of us thought would ever come...

Tuesday 12 September 2006 @ 3:25 p.m.

Uber-Producer Scott Mosier is legally off the market.

On Friday, 1 September Scott Mosier married Alex ‘Cookie’ Hilebronner in a small, Van Nuys courthouse civil service. The pair met on
Jersey Girl
(proving to the critics, once and for all, that
something
good came out of that much-maligned flick), and tied the knot on the fourth anniversary of their first date (i.e. — the first time they boned).

For anyone who knows Mosier, the news of the nuptials was akin to peace in the Middle East: it’s something we thought we’d never see. Scott had long maintained a staunch “I’ll never get married” position — so much so that it would’ve been less shocking had Mosier announced “I’m suddenly turning gay” than “I got married”. That Cookie was able to change Mos’s mind is nothing short of miraculous, and speaks volumes about her charms (both emotional and, one would suspect, sexual).

Join me in extending a hearty Congrats to the happy couple.

Terror and Pleasure are incredibly subjective

Wednesday 13 September 2006 @ 2:41 p.m
.

Since many of us spend so much time on the internet, we tend to forget that life is NOT made up of absolutes. Often, we read about how this movie sucks or this person’s career is “over”, and because it’s in some form of print, defended with such vitriol and bluster as to put the Founding Fathers’ passion for liberty to shame, we tend to buy it as truth, or at least as a common consensus. But if
Snakes on a Plane
taught us anything this summer (other than what happens when moth-erfuckin’ snakes take over a motherfuckin’ plane), it’s the following: what often passes for a majority (at least on the internet) barely constitutes a blip in the real world. The most hyped movie since
The Phantom Menace
, tipped to earn 30 to 40 million in its opening weekend, performed like almost any other “thriller” or horror movie: respectable, but not earth-shattering (and relative to its hype, written off by most Monday Morning Quarterbacks as an “under-performer”..

There are no absolutes, folks. Life is a subjective experience, different for all of us. What’s rapture (in the euphoric sense) for some is Rapture (in the Biblical sense) for others. Universal truths are few and far between.

Which is why I’m so fascinated by this clip...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSGJKYuLkNk

Taken from the security camera of a theme park ride, it succinctly exemplifies what I’m talking about: two people share a common experience and react as differently as if they had just, respectively, ran amuck in a hostess sample room and broken out of a window in Hell.

More than that, though? This clip is really, really fucking funny.

Friends — there’s only one absolute in the world: the grave waits for us all. But as long as there’s stuff like this to watch in the interim... well, then I can’t complain.

Anarchy in the UK:
Clerks II
Opens on Friday

Tuesday 19 September 2006 @ 5:09 p.m.

I haven’t seen the clip in question (nor do I even know who the man is), but a fella named Ross with a TV show in the UK apparently took a dump on my l’il
Clerks II
. It’s caused a bit of an uproar over at the home site’s message board, but really — what can you do? Not everyone enjoys my brand of whimsy.

Still, with whatever he said, the guy seems to be in the minority over there.

Empire
gave us four stars.

Total Film
gave us five stars.

Future Movies
liked us.

The Sunday Times
ran a thoughtful piece when we were released Stateside.

Film Focus
had really nice things to say.

Maxim
(UK) is into it.

The delightfully named Eat My Cheese, Please gave us five stars in a pretty wonderful review.

MTVUK gave us props.

Scotland on Sunday
(
The Scotsman
) did as well.

Sunday Mirror
mostly dug it.

Film Stalker
was surprised.

TNT Magazine
is in the hizzy.

BBC.co.uk
(the online home of the offending reviewer’s network, I’m told) disagreed with their on-air guy.

News of the World
gave us four out of 5 stars (yet still somehow managed to bash me in the process).

Tom Brooks from BBC’s
Talking Movies
and
Heat
magazine (from what I understand) gave us a strong review.

Clerks II
opens in Blighty on Friday. If you’re across the pond, give it a look-see.

Jesus... (Literally!)

Monday 2 October 2006 @ 2:46 p.m.

Dogma
, our fourth film, resulted in me getting into all sorts of trouble with a group called the Catholic League. Seven years later, that’s all a distant memory:
Dogma
hasn’t been the focus of religious ire in close to a decade.

Until now. And this time, it ain’t Christians who’re up in arms.

Buddy Christ has turned up in Iraq, on posters and pamphlets that mysteriously appeared in Baghdad’s Sadr City, following a joint US/Iraqi operation. Local Shiite residents have taken offence.

“If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny,” said a coalition spokesman, Major Will Willhoite. The guy’s got a point.