Kevin Smith is to Blame

This day didn't do much for me but then again, I didn't do much for it either. I have to do more for tomorrow. Unfortunately, I stayed up late last night watching a documentary of film Director Kevin Smith. Yes, dumb move. He is sort of my generation and even though I don't like all of his films, so I ended up watching two hours of his discussion about himself, the film industry, and interacting with college students on the lecture circuit. I especially enjoyed the stories about Jon Peters, Tim Burton, and Prince. It is definitely easy to enjoy the passive aggressive criticisms and observations by someone in the industry. Besides, he is very articulate and knows how to engage the audience. It doesn't hurt that most of his audience is made up of mostly pot heads.

The first time I heard of Kevin Smith was through my brother. He told me of this small film called "Clerks" that some of his friends had seen. The one scene that he thought stood out was the discussion between Dante and his buddy dealing with the construction workers on the Death Star. It is the best scene in the movie because it came off as a real discussion. These conversations are things that, with the exception of "My Dinner With Andre", is avoided like the plague in conventional films. In fact, only "Reservoir Dogs" had done it before with the Madonna song "Like a Virgin". These are real conversations that people have about the most mundane of movie trivia. Back then, this was considered cutting edge movie making. Aside from that scene, most of "Clerks" was amateurish and juvenile though I did like the line: "My job would be perfect if it weren't for the customers." I did wonder what kind of movie he would make with a real budget.

"Mall Rats" answered my question. Though I got some of the inside jokes about comic books and especially the Butch and Sundance homage with the security guard "LaFeurs, it seems that I, except for my brother, got the reference at the time. I found this to be a further confirmation of my lack of a personal life, which depressed me to no end. Overall, I found the film to be just a clumsy and uninteresting. I don't like declarative personalities. I don't like people ranting unless they are about to be killed and every character needed to be killed in that movie. I remember Kevin Smith expressing admiration for a Director I had grown to dislike Jon Hughes. It made me think that this guy was unable to keep up. Then came two movies that worked "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma".

My friend at the time, C told me about "Chasing Amy." It struck too close to home for me to watch, so I didn't watch the film until a few years later. The movie was good but by the time I had seen it, the movie's issue aged badly. Most of it is now a big deal so what kind of issue, but at the time it was cutting edge. I did think that Kevin had the kind of material and cast that made the movie work. It wasn't as juvenile as his previous films and it showed some talent in the writing, which I had wondered if he had any about since "Mall Rats". The second movie, "Dogma", is the best he has ever done. A nice story about God, faith, and religion. It didn't hurt that it had Salma Hayek dancing in a strip club in her underwear. Salma can dance. Kevin was on track to do something significant when he went back down with "Silent Bob and Jay Strike Back", which I found amusing but more of the same. It was like listening to Prince's "1999" then "Purple Rain" thinking he could do no wrong and then listening to everything after and realizing that Prince can't sing about anything other than sex, god, and death. The final blow was the animated series "Clerks", which I think that I was the only one who watched it. The show never re-aired and this is a good thing.

So now, Kevin Smith is on the bottom of the interesting directors of my generation. Tarantino followed by Linklater, Spike Lee, Rodriguez, and then Kevin Smith. All of whom have been consistently interesting. I'm sure there are others that would make a detailed list, but these are the ones that instantly come to mind. Kevin Smith is interesting and he shares some things in common. He reads comics, though I have given them up in favor of books, and is loyal to his friends. I'm sure he could have pulled a Quentin and dumped everyone who helped him reach the top–not that is a bad thing given the need to work with better people. It is a business and sometimes it is better to move on in order to get what you want done.

USA beat Honduras 2-1 and now faces Panama for the Gold Cup. We rock.


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