How a Conversation Between Strangers Changed Kevin Smith’s Life
Kevin Smith claims that over the last 10 years, he’s made a better living talking about making movies than he has by actually making them. The Red State and Tusk director says that he decided to center his career on his gift of gab when he overheard two festival-goers talking after a screening of his now-cult classic debut, Clerks.
“During the festival route, we were at the Houston WorldFest. We had a screening, it went great, and then we did a long Q&A afterward,” Smith recalls on the latest episode of Post Mortem with Mick Garris. “When the Q&A was done, [producer] Scott Mosier and I went outside—we were cigarette smokers then, so we were having our cigarette. People can’t see us because we’re behind the door, and I hear two random strangers having a conversation. One goes, ‘What’d you think?’ And the other guy goes, ‘I thought the movie sucked. But the fat guy was funny after!’”
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Smith says that hearing those comments changed his life.
“Right then and there, I was like, ‘I reached him! I didn’t get him with the movie, but I got him by talking after the movie,’” he explains. “There’s a second bite at the apple for me, here. If I don’t get ’em with the movie, I can put on the charm offensive afterward and maybe win them with that. So, the next time around, they’re like, ‘Well, I didn’t like the last movie… but I did like when he told the story, so maybe I’ll check it out.’ I kept that going because it felt like decent insurance.”
Drawing inspiration from filmmaking books by Spike Lee, and even from the bloopers included in the credits of The Cannonball Run, Smith began “pulling back the curtain” for fans so frequently that it became a trademark of his public persona. In fact, telling making-of stories became his main motivation for making new films at all.
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“Telling war stories about how things come together—humanizing stories about the actors you see in other movies that are actually funny—that became more appealing to me than making the films themselves,” Smith says. “I was like, ‘Well, I guess I’ve gotta make the movies so that I have something to talk about when I go out and speak!’”
“I didn’t give a fuck about listening to some actor talking about what it takes to play this, that, or the other,” he continues. “I wanted to hear from the filmmaker about how hard it was to make this shit happen, and the joys [of filmmaking]. We make these things and we know what a Herculean effort it is to get anything done in this business. Nursing an idea to reality feels amazing, so you want to tell everyone that story.”
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