My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (78 page)

It’s a bummer that the Buddy Christ — meant as a symbol of a non-judgmental, forward-thinking, fictional version of the Catholic Church — is being linked to something like this. God-willing, it doesn’t go further than this.

In the midst of something like this, you’d think I wouldn’t hawk merchandise.

And yet... the
Clerks II
DVD is 22 days from release...

Sucks Less

Tuesday 24 October 2006 @ 3:40 p.m.

For the record, I shouldn’t be teaching anybody anything. No right-thinking university would hire me to be the instructor for any subject, unless it was...

a) How to Down a Box of Pre-Sweetened Cereal in a Sitting Or...

b) How to Avoid Any Physical Exertion Beyond Strolling to the Shitter Hourly Because You’ve Eaten Far Too Much Pre-Sweetened Cereal (a class that’d have a post-studies course called Sedentary Alternatives to the Hourly Bowl March Including, But Not Limited to, Empty Pre-Sweetened Cereal Boxes You Can Keep By Your Bedside; students would only pass once they handed in their thesis, entitled Toy Surprises: Good Wiping Material or Too Harsh for the Hole?).

That being said, UCLA has brought me on as a visiting professor this semester.

Naturally (or bizarrely, as some of my critics would point out), it’s in the School of Cinema and Television — a field I know a thing or two about (as I’ve watched many movies and TV shows). So, for the last month, I’ve been spearheading a class called Sucks Less, with Kevin Smith, in which we produce a weekly TV show entitled, ironically,
Sucks Less, with Kevin Smith
. It starts airing this Thursday on MTVU (the college-campus only arm of the Viacom-owned Music Television empire), as well as on
MTVU.com
and, in an uncharacteristic-for-me nod to what’s being called “new media”, also on the Amp’d Mobile phone. This means we’re producing episodes, webisodes, and mobisodes — which, while sounding ambitious as fuck, simply means we’re producing one show that airs on three different platforms. Eat your heart out, Dick Wolf.

How did this all happen, you ask? As far as I can remember, it all came down as follows.

About six to eight months ago, I was talking to someone at MTV about working on the Movie Awards show. They’d asked if I was interested in writing or producing, and I responded that, while very flattered, I was not the right guy for the job: I’m an old man, completely out of touch with the current MTV generation. If you had a gun pointed at my head, I couldn’t name a single VJ beyond Kennedy

— who, I’m told, hasn’t been a VJ in about a decade.

“My tastes, for better or for worse, fall far outside the mainstream,” I argued. “And if I could write/create for the mainstream, I’d be one of those successful filmmakers. So, really — you guys want someone else.”

“Yeah, but we like your sensibility.”

“But my sensibility isn’t in line with the masses.”

“What makes you say that?” I was asked.

“I’ll bet you’re trying to get Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as hosts.”

“We are,” they replied.

“Okay. I’d rather see David Cross be the host. You’re voting for the most popular kids in class, I’m voting for the class genius. And there’s nothing wrong with your instincts; I just don’t share ’em.”

“Fine. But there’s gotta be something you can do in the MTV family. We’re edgy, too. Have you ever seen
Wonder Showzen
?”

(I hadn’t, at that point, but since that conversation,
Wonder Showzen
has become one of my all-time favorite programs. That exec wasn’t kidding, either:
Wonder Showzen
defined the term ‘edgy’.)

“What about MTVU?” they continued.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the campus-only version of MTV. They actually play music videos, along with some short-form programming. And the college audience is your audience, isn’t it?”

They had a point: I like college. Never really attended one all that much... or finished any, for that matter. But still, I like college. I used to like to visit my ex-girlfriend at Carnegie Mellon when she attended, years back. I dug walking around the campus, seeing people preparing for the next stage of development — the one I had such a hard time committing to myself. I liked hitting the library and watching laser discs in the media center while my ex was in class (the CMU library is where I first saw
Citizen Kane
). And most of all, I liked the cafeteria: the place where you could eat sixteen bowls of Apple Jacks, two donuts, a bagel, and six glasses of orange juice for, like, four bucks. There’s just something about a college campus, y’know? Particularly when you don’t have to be there and aren’t sweating writing a paper or making a class on time. It’s why I do so many Q&As every year: I just dig being on a college campus. College? I like it. And college kids? I like ’em even more.

So I was introduced to Ross Martin and Brian Decubellis, the guys over at MTVU, and I hit ’em with an idea for a short-form program I could host out of Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash called
For Those Who Can’t Get Laid
— a tip show that’d provide a list of upcoming movies/music/comics/events college kids might not know about. They went for it, and then came up with an even better idea: rather than simply produce it in-house at View Askew, we set it up over at UCLA and make an accredited course out of it, with the students actually fulfilling all the various production roles. They get experience, make connections and earn college credits, we get cheap labor; everybody wins.

Once Department Chair Barbara Boyle and UCLA were on board, two more players entered the field: Amp’d Mobile and Rory Kelly. Amp’d offered to underwrite the entire course, in exchange for the rights to air
Sucks Less
on their mobile phones (side by side with other original programming, like their
L’il Bush
cartoon).
Sleep With Me
director Rory Kelly, a long-time UCLA Film instructor, graciously signed on to be the teacher-of-record (while I have a pair of doctorates from two different universities, they’re the honorary kind that apparently don’t qualify me to be a ‘real’ teacher), so with complete funding and a legitimate teacher in place, we were off and running.

So me, Rory, MTVU Brian, a pair of UCLA animators (whose spiffy title sequence cartoon kicks off every show), and fifteen grad students with various production concentrations (directing, producing, screenwriting, cinematography) have hunkered down to come up with six episodes of what stopped being called
For Those Who Can’t Get Laid
(UCLA wasn’t comfortable with that title) and quickly became
Sucks Less
— a bi-weekly, eight minute, student-produced extravaganza that starts airing this Thursday, 26 October, on MTVU,
MTVU.com
(where most of you will wind up watching it, no doubt), and the Amp’d Mobile phone.

If you dig the show, I can take very little credit: it was, from first to last, the students’ production (consequently, if you hate the show, I get to dodge that bullet as well).

As for being a teacher... well, that’s something I’ll be able to address more thoroughly once we’re done with the course (second week of December). But thus far? I’m digging it (though not nearly as much as I’m digging the cafeteria).

Don’t forget to check out the episode this Thursday, on
MTVU.com
.

I mean, Jesus — it’s only eight minutes.

I am a
Manchild

Tuesday 14 November 2006 @ 2:56 p.m.

So it looks like I’m gonna be doing a TV pilot...

But, oddly enough, it’s not a show I’ve created; it’s a show I’ve simply been cast in. And, like anything in life, there’s a story behind it.

A few weeks back, Brent Morely — one of the agents at Endeavor — called to say: “There’s this Showtime pilot I want to send you to take a look at, because I think you’d dig the sensibility.”

Every few months, scripts get sent my way from various studios looking for a rewrite or comedic punch-up, but I haven’t done one since
Coyote Ugly
— probably because, after all my work on that script, they hired a director who, naturally, wanted to bring his writer aboard the project, and almost all of my stuff got shit-canned. Generally, the scripts just sit on a pile near my desk for close to a year before they hit the trash — which isn’t a statement on the scripts themselves as much as as statement about my lack of interest in rewrite gigs.

When it hit the pile, the
Manchild
script caught my eye because a) the script was very slim, and b) the cover letter said nothing about rewriting. I was directed to read with an eye toward the role of Paul.

An acting gig? Were they kidding? I’m not an actor.

So while Jen was sitting on the bedroom couch reading a book with Harley, I sat on the other end of the couch and started leafing through the
Manchild
script, curious as to why anyone would think of me in conjunction with this show.

Then, I laughed. Out loud (or LOLed in the parlance of this medium).

Jen’s head immediately snapped up from the kid’s book and she stared at me, agog.

“Really?!” she asked, stupefied. “It was a pretty funny line,” I explained.

Her reaction was based on the fact that I rarely laugh at anything on the page. Sure, I can split my sides at something like
Arrested Development
or the latest Carlin album (or
Borat
, I’m promised — I haven’t seen it yet); but when it comes to scripts, it’s rare that I react aloud at all (even at my own shit).

So I go back to reading, and within a few minutes, I laugh aloud again.

And again.

And again.

It was a truly funny script. And the part they’d earmarked for me to look at was a really funny character in a script full of funny stuff.

So I called Agent Brent back and said: “I’d do this, sir. In a heartbeat.”

I met with the show creators, Robb and Mark Cullen (
Lucky
and
Heist
), as well as Darren Starr (show producer) and Stephen Gyllenhaal (show director and father of Jake) a few days later, found them all to be good guys, and suddenly, we were off and running.

We shoot the pilot in December, after I finish this other, two-day acting gig on a feature. If Showtime digs the pilot, we go to series two months or so after that. With twelve eps a season, it means I’m out of the directing game (which should please some folks) for only about four months out of the year.

I don’t know how Showtime will position the show (if they pick it up), but it’ll be a nice addition to their schedule alongside
Weeds
. It’s frank, crude, honest and funny: kinda like the flicks I do, if all the characters had high-paying jobs. While it’s based on the BBC show of the same name, from what I understand (never having seen the original), the Cullens kept the premise and title and rebuilt everything else. The original was compared to
Sex and the City
, so it makes sense that Darren is involved.

The only daunting aspect is that I’m surrounded by real, honest-to-goodness actors (James Purefoy, John Corbett, Paul Hipp). Thankfully, I got my first taste of acting beside real actors (the Silent Bob stuff barely counts) in
Catch & Release
(in theaters this January), so I’ve already got a bit of experience feeling inferior all the time (shit — I’ve got a lifetime of experience in that department, to be honest).

It should be an interesting exercise that, if the show works as well as the script, will turn into a sweet side-gig for me. At the very least, I’ll learn a thing or two about acting; at the most, I’ll have something to do four months out of every year, and be proud as punch to be involved with one really insightful and fucking funny show.

To say I never imagined something like this for myself is a gross understatement; this gig really, really comes out of the blue for me. But when someone hands you something as engaging and hysterical as the pilot for
Manchild
and says, “We’d like you to be a part of it”... Jesus, saying no isn’t an option.

Hopefully, y’all will tune-in when (and if) we go on air.

You all wear t-shirts, have dead-end jobs, and live in your parents’ basements

Sunday 26 November 2006 @ 2:31 p.m.

That’s what
Orlando Sentinel
film critic/blogger Roger Moore thinks, at least.

Yes, on almost the same day that the
L.A. Times
gave me a nice shout-out for doing something original with new media, via the
Sucks Less
mobisodes...

... Mr. Moore, in one of his latest blog entries (on a blog he calls ‘Frankly My Dear’; get it? he writes about movies, and that’s a line from a movie), described (rather dismissively) the audience that’s into my stuff (aka, you folks)...

The blog is at:

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_movies_blog/2006/11/kevin_smith_the.html

Have a read...

Nice, right? Aside from the condescension that drips from painting a three-color portrait of who he thinks digs my flicks (t-shirt-wearing basement creatures like A.O. Scott of the
New York Times
or the father of Auteur Theory Andrew Sarris), Rog manages, as you read, to get in a fat joke. Class act, that Roger Moore.

But let’s set aside, for a moment, poison prose that aspires to
New Yorker
magazine wit but falls clumsily into Ain’t It Cool News Talkback bile: how can this clown make an unsubstantiated, easily-refuted claim like the following and still call himself a journalist?

He wrote that, though Harvey and Bob Weinstein were “probably” happy with what
Clerks II
made at the box office, my last several films have done nothing to “ensure” my ongoing career.

Let’s analyze this sentiment: how DOES one ensure a career? Well, two factors loom largest: audience and earnings. Let’s assume Roger’s not suggesting I don’t have an audience, as his piece is predicated on bitch-slapping mine while begrudgingly admitting they exist. Roger, then, must be speaking about the financial track record of my flicks. So if we take his meaning of my last “several” movies to mean, say, the last three (
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
,
Jersey Girl
, and
Clerks II
), couldn’t the man have done a simple Google search to check whether he was on sure-footing in suggesting I’m hurting for business?