Kevin Smith: Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From A Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good

At least, not until he gets to the late chapters where he illustrates his wife’s patient, giving nature by describing a time when she bent over to let him stare at her anus while he masturbated on the back of her leg, all because she was getting ready for an event and wasn’t in the mood for sex.

Still, the bulk of Tough Sh*t is less dedicated to shock language and more aimed at illustrating Smith’s life. He tells stories from childhood and skims briefly across the well-covered first decade or so of his filmmaking career, from Clerks through Jersey Girl. Some parts of the last five years get more attention than others, and some bear more analysis: The story of him getting kicked off a Southwest Airlines plane for being, as he’s consistently put it, “too fat to fly,” is retold in great detail, down to reprinting many of the angry tweets he sent the airline afterward. But he doesn’t say anything particularly new about the situation, and his wrath and dedication to his first-person experience seems more vindictive at this point than informative. He has a right to be vindictive, given the experience, but the repetition just drags readers along on a trip they may have already taken several times at this point.

He’s more revealing about the film industry, particularly about how marketing limitations and Judd Apatow-fueled expectations sank Zack And Miri Make A Porno, and how that experience led to his auctioning-Red State–to-himself-at-Sundance stunt. Even his explanation about what he was trying to accomplish with Red State—which he saw as a Quentin Tarantino-esque movie that regularly changed gears so audiences couldn’t anticipate it—is helpful, both for decoding a problematic film and for providing insight into Smith’s aesthetic and his desire to stretch himself.

But Tough Sh*t isn’t a professional memoir any more than it’s an advice book. It’s just about presenting the Kevin Smith perspective on an assortment of events, whether he’s sniping at critics (both professional film critics and people who’ve personally offended him with unwise words, like Neil Patrick Harris) or reporting how he and his wife got together via unprotected sex when he had an open wound on his penis. Smith’s lack of internal censor or apparent caution can be gratifying: He’s surprisingly frank about the terrible experience of directing sulky, disengaged “emo bitch” Bruce Willis on Cop Out. He’s similarly frank about his long relationship with Harvey Weinstein, praising Weinstein’s early innovation and lamenting how his priorities have changed.

That unabashed directness remains a major draw for Smith fans, who also aren’t likely to be bothered by the book’s erratic nature. Narratively and tonally, it’s all over the place, delving into minor events in vast detail while skimming across major ones, and wallowing in synonyms for “fat and lazy” on one page while bragging on the next. But that’s all part of Smith’s signature ability to remain brashly confident even while putting himself down. Generally, Tough Sh*t skims the surface, falling back on he-said-then-I-said reportage while avoiding deeper insight. It’s a breezy, entertaining, crass-but-funny read that wouldn’t necessarily benefit by diving deeper into Smith’s head. But if he really wants to write an advice book, maybe next time he can focus more on how he maintains that defiant, unabashed fuck-you-if-you-don’t-like-me attitude in the face of his own self-deprecation, and how he’s managed to stay comfortably himself in an industry where few people do. For all he’s done as a writer, a filmmaker, and a public personality, that’s one of his most striking accomplishments.