My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (73 page)

Next up is our second Brit of the evening, which means we’re gonna hear more poetry the way it SHOULD sound: fucking gay. He’s another stage actor, but from the British stage, which means he’s better at it than Kathy Bates, simply by virtue of his nationality. You’ll probably know him best as Doctor Nigel Townsend on NBC’s
Crossing Jordan
. Party people, let’s hear it for... STEVEN VALENTINE.

Our next reader is as important an LA fixture as the Hollywood sign. But unlike the Hollywood sign, she’s not nearly as old, and you’ll never find empty forties or used condoms lying at her feet. She’s a writer and columnist for the
Los Angeles Times
, a host of
The Book Show
on PBS, a regular contributor to
Morning Edition
on NPR, a winner of five Emmys, four Golden Mike awards, and a pair of Pulitzer Prizes. But more impressive than all of that? They named a hot dog after her at Pink’s. Give it up for the lady in the hat... PATT MORRISON.

Next up, we’ve got a lady who once gave a piano concert on a freeway overpass in downtown LA. The author of several books, including the semi-autobiographical
A Year in Van Nuys
, she’s another NPR regular whose KCRW show
The Loh Life
was cancelled in 2004 after she said the word fuck on air, proving that America truly is the home of free speech. For her recent one-woman show
Mother On Fire
, the
LA Times
dubbed her “The high priestess of Los Angeles humor”. For her appearance here tonight, we dub her simply... SANDRA TSING LOH.

Our next reader was on a show my grandmother used to refer to as ‘her stories’, the daytime soap
The Young and the Restless
. She once spoke candidly in
Rolling Stone
about her affection for vibrators, and as a result, fans started sending her sex toys in the mail. I’m pretty sure my grandmother sent her the three-speed, gyrating rabbit, batteries included. She’s on screens right now in
The Sentinel
so I’m sure she appreciates you all sitting here watching this shit instead of buying tickets for her flick. But she’s best known as the wandering wife Gaby Solis on the hit ABC show
Desperate Housewives
. Take your hands out of your laps and put ’em together for... EVA LONGORIA.

We’ve saved the best for last, folks. Our second living legend of the evening is a man who fronted not one but two insanely influential bands. He does my house more honor than I fear my house can bear. Living history will stand here in a minute, but first, I’d like to read a note he sent to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when he declined, on behalf of his band, to attend their induction: ‘Next to the Sex-Pistols, rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. We’re not coming.’ So imagine our surprise when he said yes to this fucking thing. Ladies and Gentlemen, and other cunts, never mind the bollocks here’s... JOHNNY ROTTEN.

To say the event was a howling success would be an understatement. Every reader held the audience’s attention rapt. It was a great crowd, too — all whooping and hollerin’ and whatnot (the open bar might’ve had something to do with it, natch).

Some highlights of the evening...

— Sitting at a table on the deck with Johnny Rotten on my left and Stan Lee on my right, and listening to them have-at one another. Always a gentle joker, Stan was saying, “I can’t understand a word this guy’s saying,” about Johnny, and Johnny was hissing, “Listen, Dad — you don’t know who you’re dealing with. I’m Rotten.”

— Jeffrey Tambor wrapping up his set with a dryly delivered “I’ll read one more piece, because I’ve got two more poetry events to hit before the night’s over.”

— Finesse Mitchell, doing a pair of impromptu poems entitled ‘Mapquest Don’t Know Where This House Is’ and ‘Goddamn, This is a Nice House’. As funny as he was, he wrapped his set up with a really moving poem entitled ‘There Was Ugly in the Church Today’. That guy’s totally cool in my book.

— Stan Lee, working without a microphone, reciting three not-short poems from memory, and then humorously editorializing at the end of each. He was all prepared to do ‘The Raven’ from memory as well, but decided to hold onto it ‘til next year’s event. The man, mind you, is eighty-four fucking years old — and yet, he owned that room. The crowd loved him.

— Kathy Bates, riffing on my intro, saying: “Now I wish I’d brought the other poem I wrote with me: ‘Big, Luscious Dicks’.”

— Carrie Fisher, sweating the event once she heard the intro and some of the other readers, insisting she only came prepared with one short poem. Then, when it was her turn, she took the mic and said: “Sherlock Holmes used to say that the mind can only house so much information. And when new things are learned, old things get pushed out. But this is something that I’ve been able to hold onto for a long time.” She paused, and then began: “General Kenobi — years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars...” Yes — she did the entire “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi” speech from memory. Brought the cheering house to its fucking feet, she did.

— Mary Lynn Rajskub doing not just a really funny excerpt from her forthcoming, one-woman show, but also an extended hysterical intro about being in
24
, famous and not knowing shit about computers.

— Steve Valentine rocking some Shel Silverstein, then following it up with reading some morbidly funny epitaphs he’d found online. And if that wasn’t
enough, he capped his presentation off with a pretty wicked card trick, reciting patter from a 1930s magician, set to a rap beat. He killed.

— Eva Longoria, post-introduction, saying “You mention liking vibrators in one interview, and it haunts you forever.”

— John ‘Johnny Rotten’ Lydon launching into what seemed like a blistering, anti-abortion screed (“Bodies”. at a room full of terrified parents, calling one of the audience members out when she uncomfortably chuckled by saying: “Is this fucking funny to you?! Are you an animal?” blaming all of us for electing George Bush and then dismissing petrol-centric politics with: “This is what you need oil for,” while rubbing his asshole over his pants and then patting a balding dude in the front row’s head, Benny Hill style, adding “Or this,” and then finishing up with an a capella version of ‘God Save the Queen’ with the audience singing along. Fucking amazing.

In terms of a fundraiser, the whole thing couldn’t have been cooler. Big props to my wife Jen for pulling it all together, with massive help from PTA head Russell Milton and Daniella, his classy-ass British wife (and the person who suggested getting Johnny Rotten in the first place). All I did was monkey-it-up as the emcee; THEY did all the hard work. And man, was it worth it; truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Clerks II
Movin’ On Up!

Friday 12 May 2006 @ 10:56 a.m.

Clerks II
is coming out EVEN EARLIER THIS SUMMER!

In a ballsy move that says “Fuck you: we’re a five-million-dollar flick and we’re coming out in the fucking middle of the summer, bitches!”, Weinstein Co. has upped the
Clerks II
release date from 18 August to 21 JULY! The wait is now almost a month shorter, folks!

Why the move? Getting into Cannes changed everything. Since the film will have its world début on 26 May, the Weinstein folks thought it’d make more sense to get the film out there sooner, rather than later. They found a weekend in which there wasn’t any flick that directly competed with the movie for an audience, and staked their claim.

Now, we’re opening against some pretty big flicks (
Lady in the Water
,
Monster House
), but nothing that’s appealing directly to our core audience. So while we’ll never open at number one (those two flicks alone are pretty mass-appeal movies), we stand to make a decent chunk of change and wind up somewhere in
the top ten.

Good news for me, great news for anyone who’s been patiently waiting for
Clerks II
to open.

An Eight-Minute Standing Ovation!

Saturday 27 May 2006 @ 10:42 a.m
.

Last night, we debuted
Clerks II
at the Cannes Film Festival.

With all the vitriol surrounding some of the press screenings of flicks there this year, I was pretty terrified
Clerks II
, also, might be greeted by a chorus of French boos (and I ain’t talking about champagne).

However, after last night, I say “VIVE LA FRANCE!”

When the flick ended and the credits started rolling, a standing ovation began that lasted a full eight minutes. It was surreal and wonderful, and it just kept going and going. I looked to Harvey (Weinstein, our boss), that old Cannes war-horse, to see if the cast and I should start heading out of the theater: as it was two in the morning and the applause wasn’t showing any signs of stopping. But from two aisles back, he responded with a waving “no” finger at me, mouthing the words “Don’t move”. So we all stayed put.

By the time the credits ended, I figured the audience was done applauding as well.

But they weren’t.

They just kept on clapping. And thankfully, not only did Zack and Joey get the whole thing on tape to prove it all happened (watch for it in a new Train Wreck video blog, up this weekend), but Roger Friedman over at Fox411 was there as well, documenting what I have to say was one of the twenty most amazing moments of my life.

The applause finally stopped after eight minutes. Harvey was over the moon about it. “In my thirty years of coming here, I’ve never seen a standing ovation last that long at a midnight show in Cannes,” he said. “Ever.”

En route to the theater, I prayed that the notoriously fickle Cannes audience wouldn’t boo the flick. During the screening, I prayed that the film would keep playing as gang-busters as it had been playing up ‘til that point, and that the audience stayed with us, rather than succumb to mid-flick naps. After the screening, I started praying that I never forget that insanely special moment that I shared with Jeff, Brian, Rosario, Mos and Jen — when time seemed to stand still, and at the world’s most famous film festival, we all stared wide-eyed (and wider-smiled) at a room-full of cats staring back at us (with equally wide smiles and palms cooked red from non-stop applause) who really, really “got” what we were trying to communicate with
Clerks II
.

Life comes down to a few major moments. Last night was definitely one of them.

The Kansas City Test Screening of
Clerks II

Tuesday 6 June 2006 @ 2:01 a.m.

So tonight, after dodging the bullet for months now, we had our first (and only) test screening with a general audience for
Clerks II
.

Let me say a few words about test screenings: I hate them. Fuck, do I hate them. I don’t mind the actual screening portion, where you’re sitting there with an audience watching the flick and listening to their reactions; that part’s totally cool. It’s when the screening ends, the lights come up, and the folks in charge start handing out survey cards for the audience to fill out...
that’s
when shit usually goes south for me. And even worse, twenty or twenty-five people are kept behind to take part in what’s known as a ‘focus group’, where they’re asked pointed questions about the movie (“Did you like it?” and “What didn’t you like about it?” and “Would you recommend it to people, and if not, why not?”. and the filmmakers are forced to hide in the back of the theater and listen to an audience eviscerate something they’ve worked so hard on for so long; without being able to get up and defend themselves or the flick. Of all the aspects of filmmaking that go into the gestalt of cinematic storytelling, this is definitely the least appetizing. I don’t know any filmmaker who enjoys it.

Now normally, one test screens (or is forced to test screen by the studio) in an effort to look for cuts or make changes in the flick, based on how audiences react to the screening. On
Jersey Girl
, we endured ten of these screenings, in a failed effort to make the movie more palatable to a mainstream audience. With
Clerks II
, the idea wasn’t to look for cuts or changes (indeed, the prints are locked at this point); tonight’s test screening was purely a marketing screening, set up by the Weinstein Company in an effort to shed some light on how to go about selling the flick.

Based on that, there was no real risk to us: if the audience hated the flick, we weren’t going to be forced to make changes. After all, the flick only cost five million to make, so the financial risks facing the Weinstein Company are minimal at best. And with the lion’s share of our foreign pre-sales taken care of at Cannes 2005 (a year before we’d screen at the fest to an eight-minute standing ovation, plug, plug) the movie’s budget, it’s been revealed, was already taken care of; in essence, the movie’s in profit before opening day.

Still, any screening in which cards are gonna be filled out and comments about the qualities (or lack thereof) of the flick are gonna be made is nerve-wracking to a filmmaker. So when the lights dimmed in this Kansas City theater (chosen because the Weinstein Company wanted to see how the movie would play in the heartland), I was sweating it. This wasn’t a room comprised of hardcore fans. The audience recruit for the test screening didn’t list any of our previous flicks on the list of movies potential attendees had to have seen theatrically to be considered for inclusion. The ‘Qualifying Films’ list (of which the audience must have seen at least three) looked like this:
Bad Santa
,
Malibu’s Most Wanted
,
The 40 Year Old Virgin
,
Dodgeball
,
White Chicks
,
Team America: World Police
,
The Ringer
,
Old School
,
Anchorman
,
High Fidelity
,
Napoleon Dynamite
, and
Wedding Crashers
. Not a
Chasing Amy
or
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
anywhere in sight.