Kevin Smith, taking questions while baked

A few weeks ago, Decider solicited questions from readers for filmmaker/writer/comic-artist/dude Kevin Smith in advance of his appearance at Carnegie Hall this Wednesday night. We picked out the best five and sent four of them to Smith to answer over e-mail. The last one will be asked to Smith himself onstage on Wednesday. Below is what Smith sent us back in response...

Before we begin, I apologize in advance to those of you who enjoy my enthusiasm for hockey: There's gonna be a dearth of hockey references in my responses. Not saying I've lost my enthusiasm for puck at all; merely that, just as there's a time and a place for off-color comments, there's a time and a place for allusions to and analogies made with historic hockey figures and terminology. Sadly, the answers that follow might only merit attention if you're into scrotum jokes and observations about rectal discharge.

Full disclosure: I blazed moments ago (cue catty "Wow—he's just as unfunny high as he is sober…" comments all A.V. Club cine-snob talk-backers can be counted on to provide below).

1) As you embark on directing your newest film [A Couple Of Dicks, currently in production] from a script you didn't write, what are you discovering about yourself as a filmmaker and storyteller? —from Jeffrey T. Leonard

Thankfully, I had a test run on directing material I didn't originate when I shot the Reaper pilot a couple years back. When the crutch of my whimsy-to-reality-to-DVD involvement with the script was removed, I was really surprised to discover that I relied on different muscles. For years, I've been a writer-director—which means I normally live with the characters/story/"vision" of a flick from the moment I dream it up to the moment you buy the DVD. Due to this paternal bond with the script, I can only ever shoot the flick I saw in my head when I was writing it. Since I didn't write A Couple Of Dicks, that luxury (and, let's be honest, sometimes curse) wasn't available to me. I haven't been "seeing" this movie as long as the writers (the Cullen Brothers) have. And oddly, because of that, I wind up leaving myself open to far more collaboration and impromptu ideas. Not talking about ad-libbing (although there's a fair amount of that, considering Tracy Morgan and Sean William Scott are involved), but more just the organic changing idea of what the script is versus what the movie can be.

For example: If I'd written this script, it'd be set in some 'burb in Jersey or Pittsburgh. The Cullens originally set the Dicks script in Los Angeles, then moved it to New York. And since shooting in Manhattan was gonna be pricey and exhausting, I opted to stick to the outer boroughs. Now, being an outer-borough movie becomes a thematic concept that runs through the flick: the omnipresent isle of Manhattan in the background of almost every shot reminding our heroes that they're not high hats. But had I written the script, I wouldn't have been open to that epiphany, which becomes as important to the flick itself as the script or the bi-weekly latrine cleaning in the honey-wagon. Directing someone else's script allows you to (temporarily, at least) remove your tunnel-vision-jackass straw boater and open up to all ideas, any ideas, every idea.

I guess that's the biggest difference: You can sorta let the movie happen organically amid gathered master craftsmen instead of forcing it to look and sound like it did in your limited imagination when you first conceived it. And what I'm hoping is that I walk away from this flick being able to add another tool into the trick bag, y'know? I'd directed the Reaper pilot after Clerks II, and Zack And Miri Make A Porno directly benefited visually as a result. And I've seen what Dicks looks like so far: Nobody's gonna believe I directed it. But I can't wait to take everything I learned/am learning/will learn on this and put it to work on whatever the next flick I write is gonna be. I'll be operating at such an unusually proficient (for me, at least) level, I might surprise you and accidentally pull together something cool again.

Either that or we're all gonna discover together just how untalented I've always been. Yay, togetherness.

1b) Are you finding it difficult to feel as passionate about a story and characters when they didn't originate in your head?

I find it harder to be the final word as much as I do on the flicks I write and direct. On the View Askew movies, since I'm the author, I can always say, with absolute certainty, that my opinion on any creative decision isn't simply opinion; it's fact, truth, and the way it has to be for everything in the picture to work.

But I find when I'm interpreting someone else's script, it's more difficult to say shit definitively. I usually defer to the writers, asking Robb or Mark, "What'd you guys see/hear in your heads when you wrote this moment?" Some would say I'm not acting passionately, then—as I'm not wrestling the material away and making it my own, all else be damned, auteur like a motherfucker. But, c'mon—look at my body of work: Even if you hate it, you've gotta admit I've always been passionate about writing. Passion dictates I involve my writers in the shooting process. And if that means being less auteur-minded and way more collaborative, then where's the downside?

2) If there is one story or lesson that you could pass on from your experiences with George Carlin, what would it be? —from Greg Mulholland

I loved just being around Carlin. George had this insane work ethic that I've always tried to emulate. I figured he was the most intelligent person I'd ever met; if I was gonna ape/steal from someone, ape/steal from the best.

But you couldn't steal from George because he was a giver. Even after he died, Carlin found a way to give some more: He gave Jersey Girl back to me. Seriously. He loved his work in/on that flick. Even when I'd kick the shit out of the movie after it fizzled at the box office, Carlin maintained that we'd all done admirable work that I shouldn't be selling out on just because Bennifer happened. It wasn't 'til George passed that I realized Jersey Girl wasn't an utter mistake. At the very least, it gave George a chance to act. This was a man who'd always wanted to be an actor, and he got a chance to tackle his meatiest role in Jersey Girl. I'm glad I was able to give him the opportunity to be the guy he'd always dreamed of being: actor George Carlin. It was the least I could do as a way of saying thanks for all he'd given me over the years, whether we knew one another or not.

3) Many celebrities seem to guard every shed of privacy they can get their hands on, yet you have always been a very accessible public figure. With a SModcast, a blog, your Evenings With series, and a Twitter, your life seems to be an open book. What drives you to let people into your life in such an intimate way? —from Emmanuel Smith

I don't know any other way to be, really. Once media was created that allowed a dialogue to open between filmmakers and audience, there was no way I couldn't embrace it. This is a communications medium, film. We do this to get a reaction and hear what people have to say about our work. It's enormously flattering when someone (or lots of someones) are interested in you enough as an artist to wanna know about your life and opinions beyond the actual work that brought you to their attention in the first place.

Take the blog, for instance (which I've slowed down on considerably): A member of our message board community asked what I did all day long when I wasn't making flicks. Naturally, I assumed he/she wanted a moment-by-moment breakdown on my waking hours that day, down to the multiple shits and other mundane aspects of the day. Call it a warts-and-all approach to the question. But when I posted it, people liked the insight into the daily-doings so much that they encouraged me to keep going. So I started sharing EVERYTHING. And that blog (eventually put into book form by Titan) became a New York Times best-seller (My Boring-Ass Life).

We have a symbiotic relationship, the fan base and I. In a weird way, they get to live vicariously through me, since I'm the tubby kid who made it good, who comes across less like an artist and more like your buddy who suddenly won the lottery of life. They see how I "handle" it, and they're into the fact that it would appear I'm the same person now as I was before I started making films. Plus, I inspire them, in that "If a guy like that can make it, then maybe I can, too" kinda way.

What I get from the fan base is unconditional support. They may not like all the flicks I do, but they'll give each one a shot—which is the most you can ask for from any audience. Contrary to what the haters think, the fan base doesn't lounge around like a giant caterpillar, taking hits off the hookah of my collective body of work; they're normal people with normal lives who just relate to what I write/say. And the relationship doesn't end at the theater: These are folks I play poker with. I spend my birthdays with them (onstage or at a home-made prom). I played hockey against and beside them just last week in Brantford, Ontario, at Walter Gretzky's 3rd Annual Street Hockey Tournament. It makes sense we'd all get along, as we share a common interest: Kevin Smith films. But, Jesus—you can only talk about those for so long. And when the "Then what'd Jason Lee say?" chatter dries up, you find they're more friends than fans.

But that all stems from honesty. So, sure—I have a tendency to "overshare." But it's brought so many cool people into my life as a result that it's worth the lack of privacy.

The only aspect of my life I tried to keep guarded as long as I did was my Wayne Gretzky fandom. The guy represents a lot to me, and I was worried that—once I shared that on something like Twitter or in a SModcast—it'd become shtick, and I'd lose a genuine interest in something outside of my world or the movie biz. Had to think long and hard before I did that Gretzky SModcast, because as far as I was concerned, that was REALLY pulling back the curtain on my life and who I am. I didn't sweat telling the stories about fucking my wife for the first time with an open sore (long, seriously romantic tale), or relating the painful epic of my anal fissure; I sweated sharing my Gretzky interest. Something's wrong with me.

4) A lot of young pop-culture whores were influenced in our teen years by the Jay and Silent Bob movies. Influenced may not be the correct word, but Mallrats and Clerks taught us that there were others like us out there, obsessed with cartoons and comic books and the like and seemed to cater to our specific tastes in a way that we had not experienced before. Meanwhile, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks II kind of had a sad way of mirroring the depressing effects of giving up those youthful pleasures in favor of growing up, and I suspect also your growth as a filmmaker and an individual. So my question is: Are we going to be seeing any more films in the Jay and Silent Bob universe, and, if so, will they be further beaten down into compliance by society and its expectations of adulthood? —from Mike Smythe

That is such an observant and (to paraphrase Sailor Ripley) rockin' good question.

I love the Askewniverse films. I've been accused of loving them too much. That's like being accused of loving your child too much. I'm so glad I spent the first 15 years of my career making those flicks.

But I'm done now. I think we all are. Even Zack And Miri was stretching it a bit. Here's why…

I'm not a young slacker anymore. I was a young slacker for exactly 10 minutes, a decade-and-change back. Once I saw Slacker, I knew what I wanted to do with my life: make films. No slacker, I—been hustling ever since.

But with each year breathing this rarified air, I get further and further away from my ability to write from the disenfranchised point of view. I mean, it's been a long time since I felt disenfranchised, because I'm so fucking franchised: DVDs of me talking at colleges, toys, T-shirts, crap-cetera, crap-cetera. Fuck, I'm so franchised; there were even two Jay And Silent Bob's Secret Stash stores at one point. It's tougher to write for unhappy people who're looking for happiness because I haven't been unhappy in 15 years.

Zack And Miri was me emptying the tank on the kind of movie I'm known for making. I don't have it in me anymore. Besides, Apatow does sorta the same thing, only way more commercially successful. He can take it from here (as if he was waiting for an invite). I'm out of the dick- and fart-joke business for the time being. Don't worry: If you like that stuff and your concerned, we'll have nothing in common anymore, I can assure you that—should I live so long—my interest in writing dick and fart jokes will return eventually. Life's cyclical like that. Fifteen years after the last time I played goal in street hockey, I'm suddenly back into it. So fucking strange the directions life takes you. Or doesn't take you.

Post-Zack And Miri, I had what I assumed was an emotional breakdown, but was really just growing pains. I was simply confronting and accepting the fact that I didn't have any more of that kind of movie in me. And since that was the only kind of movie I ever did, I was suddenly staring into the abyss of "Who the fuck are you if not the Clerks-Guy or Silent Bob?" But a February trip to Toronto for some sold-out Q&A gigs at the Roy Thomson Hall turned out to be a victory lap of sorts. There was a mini-Me film fest held at the Bloor Cinema, where I did half-hour post-screening Q&As after all the Askewniverse flicks. I got to watch the last few minutes of each with an audience, and for the first time in my career, I was able to look at the flicks with a bit of distance—more as a craftsman than an author. I was able to see all the flaws and put each flick into perspective. Then I took to the stage, chatted about them, took a bow, and knew as I exited that I was officially done with not just the Askewniverse, but bromantic dick and fart joke comedy in general. Happy to watch 'em; don't have 'em in me anymore. If I wanna get gross and silly, I'll do so in SModcast.

Next up, I wanna make a hockey movie based on a Warren Zevon song that Mitch Albom wrote the lyrics for. One year ago, I had no idea I'd be itching to make a period hockey flick, let alone be itching to make a period hockey flick while in the midst of directing a Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan buddy-cop movie from a script I didn't create.

Thank Christ for weed, is all I'm saying: It's sometimes the only prism through which to view such an odd, fat life.