Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good (10 page)

Following years of anti-Hollywood sentiment at Miramax, I believed the studio was the enemy. But in reality, the studio was lovely every step of the way. Even when they told us we were going to have to change the title
A Couple of Dicks
, they were more collaborative than condescending. Having seen what I’d gone through with the ratings board on
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
, Warner Bros. called the networks and asked if they’d have trouble running spots for a buddy-cop movie cheekily entitled
A Couple of Dicks.
The networks said they loved the title but wouldn’t run the spots before nine at night. The studio explained that they couldn’t be expected to market the movie effectively if they couldn’t run TV spots before nine, so they asked for a title change. Producer Adam Siegel and I were deflated that we had to trash an entire sequel campaign hatched with Robb Cullen
for
Dicks 2: Dicks Come Again
, with poster taglines like “Things just got harder” or “Get Dicks-slapped!”

The
Cop Out
budget was thirty-five million dollars, but since we shot fewer full days than all the half days on the other flicks I’ve ever shot
combined
, we brought the flick home for thirty-two million—saving money, just like we always tried to do at Miramax. All that propaganda I’d been fed about how the studios didn’t care about their flicks and how all the execs were just collecting paychecks? Utter horseshit.

Not only had I spent my entire career stupidly believing in the anti-studio rabble, I was plagued by other childlike beliefs as well: I’d given up lots of money to work beside a guy I’d made a hero in my head. And not because he played a hero in the movies, but because he’d
made it
: Like me, Walter Bruce Willis was born at the asshole end of the showbiz universe, with no apparent means of entry and no Hollywood pedigree, and he
still
got through the gates. As David Addison, he gave me laughs, sure; but more important, he gave me
hope
—hope that maybe one day,
I
could be in the movie biz, too. But who we want or need people to be and who they really are tend to be miles apart—especially in the movies.

It was some tough shit because I genuinely liked the Bruce Willis
persona
and imagined Bruce Willis might be cool, too. But at the end of the day, he wasn’t cool and he wasn’t a miserable person: He was just a movie star. We project identities onto movie stars, forgetting most are really just blank canvases across which some very cool performances can happen. I projected a personality onto Bruce and was ill-prepared to deal with the reality. While I’d read about Hollywood for years, I’d never worked with a bona fide movie star before
(please don’t tell Ben Affleck I said that). Ultimately, the only thing that mattered, I guess, was if Bruce was good at
playing
a hero. And he was: always has been, always will be. The great pretender.

You know who the
real
hero on
Cop Out
was? Tracy Morgan. Severely diabetic, Tracy was going through a particularly tough foot episode during the shoot, requiring him to wear a medical boot fixed with a draining device between every take. The hole in Tracy’s foot should’ve prohibited the guy from even working, let alone running around a movie set pretending to be a cop. Yet even with that, he gave 100 percent and beyond for the show. It was Tracy who kept the show going. Tracy—the guy who’d make everyone laugh while he was nursing a damaged foot you could see through. He, too, came to work with a legend and he, too, learned pretty fucking quickly that the guy he showed up to be in a movie beside didn’t exist anymore—if he ever did at all.

It may not have played out in the finished film, but every day on the set of
Cop Out
, we’d watch a hero trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time try to do some good, running around with cut-up feet. But sadly, in
our
production of
Die Hard
, Tracy was John McClane, and John McClane became the flick’s very own Hans Gruber.

To whom I say,
“Yippie ki-yay, moviefucker.”

F
or years, I’d made movies about stoners—all while having smoked weed less than ten times total in my entire life. I’d known exactly one stoner ever—Jason Mewes—and he hardly qualified, as he barely went green before dancing with Mr. Brownstone. Mewes may have portrayed a stoner, but in reality he was just passing through Weedville on his way to harder, scarier shit. We were a couple of frauds (or actors), yes; but it’d be those fraudulent flicks I’d made that would eventually put me on a set with the man who would become my ganja guru and place me on the pathway to enlightenment, bliss, calm, and creativity.

Seth Rogen is a genius—there’s just no two ways about it. He’s a comedic genius who can write on his feet. He’s a life genius, too, as far as I’m concerned, because the dude cracked the code for me. Seth was the most productive pot smoker I’d ever met, and he never seemed remotely fucked
up. Here was a guy who could not only handle
his
high, he could handle your high, your friends’ highs,
and
your mom’s high—all while getting lots of shit done. I’d never known anyone like that before, and even though I’d always been pretty straight-edge, I found it appealing and somewhat enviable.

I loved watching Rogen’s razor-sharp wit build joke after joke in the middle of the scene, while cameras rolled, with little prep, making every frame usable. But as much as he gave me on the
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
set, it was what he gave me
off
the set, after we wrapped, that’d change everything.

Right now, every bear and bear-loving twink is hoping the next paragraph is about me and Seth Rogen sharing his joint. If you wanna stop right here so you can tug one out—the image of two zaftig, bearded, fluffy funny boys bouncing into each other with their wieners in the splintered jerk-drawer of your mind’s eye—read no further.

What really happened was that I smoked some weed with Seth.

When the flick wrapped, I asked the king of the stoners if he wanted to spark a celebratory joint in the editing room that night. We blazed and reviewed the entire shoot, laughing while watching outtakes, and freely conversed in a way I hadn’t in years. Rogen talked about how influential
Clerks
was and I talked about my favorite part of
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
—when Seth is playing a fighting video game with Paul Rudd, winning, and narrating what’s happening on screen—his character beheading Rudd’s. I lost my shit and rewound five times, just to hear him say, “I’m ripping your head off; now I’m throwing it at your body.
FUCK YOU!” It was a fun night. It was candid and honest. It was weed. I loved it.

But I was Captain Responsibility, so I didn’t smoke again for another three months. Even though I’d partaken of God’s own air and found a better version of me waiting there after I exhaled, I still had misinformed notions of what weed did and was: I didn’t think I could work
and
smoke.

So it wasn’t ’til after I wrapped the edit on
Zack and Miri
that I indulged again—this time on Fourth of July 2007. Jen’s parents had taken Harley out of town, up to Big Bear, leaving Jen and me the whole house to ourselves. And since I grew up part of a family of five, in a small, one-floor, three-bedroom house, whenever there’s an empty house, my mind immediately turns to transgression. When I lived with my parents, as soon as they left the house for a few hours, I’d try to get
something
accomplished that was either frowned upon or flat-out against the rules. There wasn’t much logic to it other than “Nobody’s here to say no …”

That instinct has never gone away. Even though I live in a house with enough distance between me and my kid’s rooms that she’ll never even suspect her parents are fucking, let alone
hear
’em, I still get rock-hard erections when nobody else is home but me and Jennifer. This is all heightened by the fact that my wife fucks in a style I can only describe as “high school fun-tastic”: Even though I’ve been fucking this same woman for the past dozen years, she
still
induces in me the crazed hormonal hysteria I’ve only otherwise felt back in high school during those heady (and head-y) days of what my grandmother adorably dubbed “teenage titty-twistin’ and freshman finger-bangin’.” Every time I have sex with Jen Schwalbach, it feels like we’re
getting away with something. It’s transgressive while being about as un-Hollywood as you can imagine (two people having monogamous sex, alone in a bed). Schwal-Doll pops with the sexy in such a way that even when my in-laws are around, I hotly pursue like Pepé Le Pew.

So with all of our loved ones away, we spun the wheel of naughty to figure out what we could do in our house that’d feel dirty and wrong enough while still being safe and postcoital sensible: Nobody wants to cum and
then
come to their senses. We remembered some weed that her friend had given us for Christmas years prior, which had sat in the safe forever, waiting to be smoked. Getting stoned while alone in the home we owned on the Fourth of July not only sounded sexy and naughty, I imagined it’d have the same disconnected, vaguely patriotic feeling I got whenever I watched
Saving Private Ryan
. So five years into our marriage, Schwalbach and I rolled really bad joints and set about getting stoned together in our empty house.

To say it was glorious, dear reader, is to short-sell an orgasm as feeling about as good as a stretching yawn: There’s just no comparison. We smoked and had amazing conversations full of humor, love, and truth. We called a cab and ate tons of cotton candy at the Simon L.A. restaurant, making out under the stars on the outdoor couches like we were sophomores at the lunch table who’d spent last period apart.

Then we fucked. Lots. And it rocked. It was an inhibition-free, total surrender to married carnality. I even took my shirt off.

And I
liked
who I was when I was smoking weed. I liked Stoner Kev so much. He was relaxed. He couldn’t care less about the movie biz or where he stood in it. He spent
less energy trying to make people laugh because he was laughing lots
himself
. At that point in my life, weed was exactly what I needed.

So at age thirty-seven, I started smoking weed every day. I made a deal with myself: If I was going to smoke weed, I had to tie it to something creative. If I was blazing, I was writing, podcasting, or editing at the same time—same way I did with cigarettes. I wouldn’t allow myself to simply smoke weed and watch movies or TV; if I was going to be irresponsible every day, I had to couple it with productivity. I decided to get my work done by five
P.M.
, then indulge in an evening smoke while writing.

After a month, I wondered why I’d set that arbitrary five
P.M.
smoking start time. I didn’t have a job-type job and I wasn’t a vampire, so what the fuck was I waiting ’til sundown for? The start time moved up to one/two-ish o’clock, post-lunch.

T
he turning point was the opening weekend of
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
, starring the dude from
Knocked Up
and
Superbad.
Sadly, it was made by the guy who did
Jersey Girl
and marketed by the people who sold
Hoodwinked Too!
Seth Rogen’s amazing streak of R-rated comedy success at the box office had been broken. By me.

That’s the day I became a wake-and-baker.

I’d rise in the morning, head down to my office, and start blazing. I didn’t go near the Internet for fear I’d be crucified or chased with pitchforks and torches after putting a stink on Seth. Instead, I started pulling sealed DVDs off my library shelves—movies that’d been purchased but never viewed,
most still as wrapped in plastic as Laura Palmer. I’d always overbought at the DVD store because I assumed one day, I’d have enough time to watch all the flicks in my DVD library. I imagined, somehow, I’d end up paralyzed—and if that was the case, I was gonna be prepared to watch a shit-ton of movies. This is the only reason I can think of for why I would’ve possibly bought the copy of
Baby Mama
that stares down at me from my library shelf, unopened.

Turns out the paralysis I was preparing for was creative paralysis: I didn’t want to make Kevin Smith movies anymore. Some critics would’ve been happy to hear that, as they didn’t want to
see
any Kevin Smith movies anymore, but I couldn’t share that information with the world. What would they possibly say if they knew I was losing interest in making bromances? I started making those flicks because they didn’t exist, but now lots of folks were doing movies about dudes in platonic love with one another. There was a hole and it had been filled. But who would I be if I wasn’t the
Clerks
guy? What would I do with myself if I wasn’t making movies any longer? “How the fuck can you even
think
about walking away from a gig this sweet, you fat asshole?!?” I asked myself.