The totally dope/metal Kevin Smith Appreciation Thread

Everything about that trailer says: Don't watch me.

 

Not to me. The trailer must be talking to you in some strange language...

 

Kev's been re-uploading episodes of his Screen Junkies series "What's in the Box?", which are short silly fun.

 

MTV interview with Kev, Mewes and Harley:

Kev tells about working with Affleck again. And, of course, starts crying.

 

I somehow totally missed that, before "Jay & Silent Bob Reboot", there'll be Mewes' directorial debut "Madness in the Method" coming out in just about two weeks.

 

Here's another great interview:

 

The trailer seems silly, and like a rehash, and feels incredibly 90s, but it still made me giggle and I'm looking forward to it.

Just glad both Smith and Mewes are still with us, that didn't always seem like it'd be the case.

 

You mean, this scene is out? Or else they'll need a smaller culvert pipe.

 

What exactly is Jeff Anderson's beef with Smith? Jason

 

I don't think it's a personal beef, but that Anderson just doesn't want to go back and "taint" the legacy of "Clerks". He took some convincing to make "Clerks II" back in '06. Smith never went into too much detail (he actually tries not to name him now-a-days, only that one without whom the movie wouldn't work didn't want to do it).

Anyway, this week's Classic BabbleVision is a really classic one, episode 32 from back during the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club era.

 

SDCC panel:

 

Watching this this morning got me thinking that Kevin Smith would be nothing without his male partners. He made his movie career standing alongside Jason Mewes, then in between films he made extra money sitting next to Ralph Garman, and now his career has been revived while sitting and standing next to Marc Bernardin. Without some other guy to react to on camera he might never have made it out of Jersey.

 

Now the official version of the SDCC panel:

Really?! That's what you took away from a panel where barely anybody but Kev got to talk?

But seriously, that's simply not true. I understand the idea, because Kev certainly prefers to have somebody beside him, but besides the fact that he's primarily a writer/director, he is also a great crowd pleaser all on his own. Before he started podcasting, he did those "Evening with" Q&A sessions that even sold on DVD and were very entertaining. Plus, he did that stand-up special where he had the heart attack, and that was funny as shit.

 

Yes, Kevin Smith by himself can be hilarious, but he couldn't have made a unique career out of being a rambling stoner. First, he wasn't a stoner when he first started making movies, and second Cheech and Chong already did that, and did it better. What brought him fame was being the schlubby Teller to Mewes's foul-mouthed Penn, what kept him famous was teaming up live with radio personality Garman, and his Fatman on Batman and Fatman Beyond podcasts with Marc have opened up new opportunities for him. Kevin Smith on his own with verbal diarrhea is funny, but his partnerships are his bread and butter. He himself would tell you he's at his best when he's playing with others.

 

Okay, yeah, that's mostly true, but it's also true for almost everybody. I mean, just taking the other guys you mention, God knows where Mewes would be today without Kev, I'd never have heard of Marc, and Garmy would just be an occasional nameless voice on Family Guy for me. Now, Marc may have become a professional TV writer without Kev, but I'm pretty sure the attention he got through the podcast (and especially once they started doing it before the live audience) surely boosted his ego enough to finally try. And Ralph has talked about how the Babble-On inspired him to start the Ralph Report and make his living on that after he lost his radio job (and while the radio job might have made him a local celeb, Babble introduced him to an international audience, many of whom followed him to the Report).

We all depend on others. Cheech depended on Chong and vice versa, Penn certainly depends on Teller (and he repeatedly said so), I depend on my co-workers, etc.. Everybody depends on others. And if your as stoned as Kev usually is, I've just blown your mind.

 

Sorry, I'm a t-totaller, so hearing "People who need people are the luckiest people" doesn't even make me shrug.

And I'm also sorry to say, but Smith's partnerships with the others are not equal, and Smith's fame and notoriety exist at levels way out of proportion to his actual contributions to them, and again, he'd be the first person to tell you that.

Yes, Mewes would not have a movie career if Smith hadn't cast him in his first movie and made partners of their characters, but Smith's acting contribution was to stand there mute and react to Mewes's work, and that's still his level of participation. And while he is not mute, that's also the level of participation he has with Garman and Bernardin. They entertain and inform, he reacts. You say Garman was just a faceless voice to you before Babble-On, but he was a faceless voice on a Prime-time animated sitcom created by Seth McFarlane, which job indicates he managed to be a little more than a local personality on his own. And Marc Bernardin was an acclaimed entertainment reporter for a couple of decades before he even met Kevin Smith. Partnering with him was beneficial to his switch to TV writing, but absolutely not necessary. And Kevin Smith himself has talked about how little he does when he directs a movie. One of things he loves about directing "Flash" and "Supergirl" episodes is that all he has to do is walk onto set and say "action" and "cut" because everything else is laid out and set up for him, while he directs movies by essentially doing the same thing, with the addition of having the stars watch the scenes they just did on monitors and directing themselves for the following takes.

The bottom line is Kevin Smith has been extremely fortunate in his life to have worked with tons of incredibly talented people, starting with his male partners, and the contributions they've made to furthering his career are demonstrably greater than his contributions to theirs, to the point where, as you pointed out, in an hour and change long SDCC panel he could be on stage with an actress with two hit series under her belt and an actress from a Tarantino flick and still be the center of attention for most of that time.

But here's the thing: the reason there was a panel at all was to promote a film he couldn't have made without his first partner, because the whole problem of a character named "Silent Bob" is that you can't make a talkie centered on a character that normally doesn't talk. It's called "JAY and Silent Bob" for a reason.

Look, I get it. This is a thread about appreciating Kevin Smith, and I do appreciate him for what he's given me entertainment-wise, but I'm not going to ignore how he did it, especially considering he himself talks about how he did it constantly.

 

I think there might be a misunderstanding here. I'm not suggesting that Kevin Smith is a wholy self-made man that all the other guys just latch onto. But I'm reacting to your posts which make it sound a bit like Kev is some kind of leech exploiting his friends.

Now, true, Marc does the work on Fatman Beyond, but as he has repeatedly stated, that work consists completely in copy- and pasting entertainment news from the internet. All the other stuff, the stories they tell, the comments they make, the answers they give to the audience, those are improvised. Really, Fatman doesn't appear as a very hard podcast to make to me.

And, true, Ralph prepares the segments for Babble, but to say Kev just sits there and reacts is understating his role there. He participates in segments like The Germans (love that one), he has bits all his own (Bane, Sexy Kev), he tells his stories, and while his reactions are improvised, they are still often enough very funny. Just because it's improvised doesn't make it less of a contribution. And most of the show seems improvised to me on both Kev's and Ralph's part.

True, Kev's character in the Jay & Silent Bob duo is mostly, well, silent, but he has been talking in each of his movies. And even when he's not talking, his facial expressions are fantastic. Not to mention that Kev wrote all those movies. I don't quite get why you count the preparation work of Marc and Ralph on the podcasts in their favor, but don't count the writing of the movies in Kev's.

The hardest podcast to prepare seems to me were those Edumacation Pub Quizes that Andy McElfresh prepared the questions for. Maybe that's why they only lasted for a couple of episodes.

 

But talking about the Ralph Report, Garman has put a free episode on YT, so if you weren't sure about paying the minimum 3 bucks a month for a subscription, you can get a taste here:

 

New Fatman Beyond, recorded on Tuesday.

 

Just found this, Kev interviewing Mewes, Brian O'Halloran and Mickey Gooch Jr. about "Madness in the Method" on the IMDboat: