Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good (18 page)

Red State
would go on to win Best Film and Michael Parks would win Best Actor at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain, the world’s biggest genre festival. But as sweet as that
was, nothing else that ever happens to
Red State
will ever be as satisfying as the moment when the guy who inspired the movie said he fucking loved the movie.

As the Year in
Red
ended, I received a package from Shawn Chaulk—the Albertan who brought a hockey stick all the way to Sundance for me to hold onstage. Inside, I found a photo of an Oilers-era Wayne Gretzky,
signed by the Great One himself
!
And while it probably won’t qualify as an actual “
fresh
” movie critique at
RottenTomatoes.com
, it’s a review of
Red State
that shoots
and
scores.

“Dear Kevin—
Red State
rocks!”

And with that, the puck caught up.

A
fter
Hit Somebody
, I’m going to retire from directing. Everything else I’m working on will continue as-is or hopefully grow, but I know it’s time to fold up the director’s chair.

I’ve been incredibly blessed the past two decades. Back in 1991, I got this idea in my head that I wanted to be a filmmaker, even though I’d never shown interest in film study or craft. Less than three years later, my first flick got picked up by the biggest distributor on the block. For over a decade following, I got to make every film I ever wanted. I even got to make a movie for a bona fide “original six” Hollywood studio. It’s been twenty years of wonder and win. But it
has
been twenty years. Two decades. Ten films.

I’m not done yet, but I’ve been feeling it since
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
: What I was once zealously passionate about has simply become my job. I didn’t burn or yearn to
make films like I did in the early days; movies became just what I did for a living. I’d made one incredibly uncharacteristic and bold move that resulted in an entire career and then reaped the benefits for years, keeping my head up, stick down, grinding out a body of work. I could certainly execute … but I’d stopped elevating. And while I’m grateful for all that I’ve been given or allowed to do in film, that means it’s time to go. And after the next flick, go I shall.

Even Wayne Gretzky hung up the skates. He could’ve gone another season, but after playing for twenty years, as much as he loved the game that gave him everything, he said good-bye. In his heart and head (and probably in his muscles and joints), Gretzky knew he couldn’t do what he used to anymore.

It’s tough realizing you’re done doing that which
defined
you—in my case, since the early ’90s. And it’s
frightening
. You’re torn between not wanting to overstay your welcome and just doing the job to keep the status quo; you’re haunted by the thought, “What on earth will I do with the rest of my life?”

Point being: There’s an accepted norm, and when you deviate from it, life gets more difficult. Swimming against the mainstream is exhausting, and you often look at all the other kids in motorboats, wondering why the fuck you can’t simply toe the line like everyone else. As much as you want to walk your own path, you’re terrified of standing apart because the pack offers security, normalcy, convenience, protection, and identity.

So here’s the tough shit: Security, normalcy, convenience, protection, and identity are opiates you’ve gotta
wean yourself off before you can be an
individual.
You can’t stand out if you’re blending in.

When I first told my friends Bryan and Walt that I wanted to be a director, over a pizza in Highlands, circa 1991—that I was going to enroll in the Vancouver Film School, learn a thing or two, then bring that knowledge home so we could all make a movie—their reaction made it seem I’d actually just informed them I was slipping under the table so they could sword-fight in my mouth. And while my parents didn’t share that specific reaction, they, too, were taken aback.

“Not a lot of people ever make it in that business,” I was told. “You’ve gotta be really good to get through the door.”

But that smelled like horseshit. I’d been watching movies for two decades at that point and had seen enough average, mundane, or crap flicks to know that I had as good a shot as any of the folks who’d made them. Sure, I’d never be Martin Scorsese, but maybe one day, if I worked at my craft constantly and played the game with pure passion and will over skill …

Maybe, instead, I could be Kevin Smith.

Two decades later, I’m still no Scorsese. Instead, I’m
me.
And while I don’t have the eye, talent, sense, or height of Scorsese, I’m still
called
a director—just like Scorsese. But Scorsese will likely leave this world toes-up off a movie set. He’s the gen-u-ine article: a bona fide, natural-born filmmaker. Me? I’ll likely leave this world on a McDonald’s floor, after eating one too many McGriddles. So before that happens, I’m gonna wrap up my directing career and go explore the
rest
of the art forms—y’know, the
less expensive
ones.

Self-expression is the heart of all arts—even movies. But
unlike the rest of the arts, movies are a costly fashion in which to tell the world what you’re feeling. If I could paint, I’d slap some color on a canvas and it’d communicate who I am. If I could sing, I’d open my mouth in song and you’d know what I was trying to say. But I’m a filmmaker—which means I’m the artist who says, “I need to express myself! Quick, get me twenty million dollars and Ben Affleck!”

But with the advent of technology comes new art forms, most of which offer far less costly ways to express myself—both in dollars and common sense. My first language isn’t cinema, it’s English. And my true strength is not in assembling pictures that tell a story; it’s
talking
a blue streak. I can talk for hours and all it costs me is time, not dimes. And even better? When you listen to my stories via spoken word,
you’re
doing all the heavy lifting
for
me. I don’t have to string together visuals or move a camera; it’s theater of the mind, so the listener builds word pictures for me in their head, directing their own internal movie based on the yarn I’m spinning.

Still, even given that I’ve found other ways to tell you stories that make more sense, it was tough deciding to leave directing behind, as it’s all I’ve been doing for nearly twenty years now. But I didn’t make
Clerks
because I wanted to be in the movie business; I made
Clerks
because I wanted to be a filmmaker. I wanted to tell stories, and doing it cinematically made the most sense at the time—that time being 1994. But making films opened lots of interesting doors and afforded me the opportunity to play in multiple artistic sandboxes—so by 2007, the toys in the other yard were starting to look (and
be
) a lot more fun. And in a world where Dad died screaming, I’m not going to go out with any regrets.

So I quietly accepted the fact that, for the second time in my life, I was going to tell people something extremely uncharacteristic: Twenty years ago, it was “I want to be a filmmaker.” Twenty years later, it’s now “I want to be an artist.”

Some artists suffer alone, but I’ve always tried to involve my friends and family in my art as well. This isn’t altruistic at all: If you’re surrounded by people you like and admire, you never feel like you’re actually working; it’s more like hanging out with a purpose. Hire your friends if you can, but understand it means, one day, you may have to fire a friend as well. So if you choose your friendployees carefully, even if you’re paying their salaries, they’re not working
for
you—they’re working
with
you.

If we are the sum total of all our experiences, then who I am today has everything to do with who I was back in the day. And back in the day, all I did was hang out with Bryan Johnson and Walt Flanagan. My life will always boil down to two eras: B.C. and A.D. B.C. stands for, of course, “Before
Clerks
”—when I was just a fat guy, not the Fat Guy Who Made
Clerks
. A.D. stands for “After Dante”—the existence I’ve led since Miramax bought my first flick back in 1994. Bryan and Walt have always been the bridge between those two eras.

Walt Flanagan was my reluctant guru. Circa 1989, we worked together at the Highlands Recreation Center for a year, during which time he’d loan me copies of
The Dark Knight Returns
,
Watchmen
, and
Mage
. The broad strokes you know about me—“Kev likes comics and hockey!”—have everything to do with Walter. He fuel-injected those passions into my heart because they were
his
passions. Whenever he spoke about comics with such wonder and awe, he came
across with all the fire and conviction of a fundamentalist preacher. It was Walt’s interest in comics that sparked mine.

That era was an age of wonders. We’d spend weekends going to comic book shows in New York City, cherry- picking from the wall books and discount boxes ’til dusk—at which point we’d scamper back home to the Monmouth County suburbs, where nobody’s ever been mugged. When there wasn’t a weekend show to hit, we’d drive from one end of Jersey to the other with a phone book, tracking down hole-in-the-wall hobby shops, hoping to find still-racked first printings of Alan Moore’s
Batman: The Killing Joke.

During those many hours on toll roads, we’d talk about the story arcs and specific issues we loved, and—like all comic fans—how we would’ve improved plot points or dialogue with our fan-boy attention to detail and love of continuity.

“Wouldn’t it be awesome to work for DC Comics?” I’d ask. And even Walt Flanagan—who was never really a dreamer so much as a doubting-Thomas pragmatist—would say, “Yeah …”

Unlike Walt, Bryan Johnson
was
a dreamer. I started hanging out with Bry more and more when Walt began dating Debby Grasso (whom he’d marry a few years later). Bryan and I tried to attend Brookdale Community College together a few times in the early ’90s, but it never really worked out because we
were
Dante and Randal: overeducated and seriously fucking lazy outsiders who didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. Our post–high school routine went something like this: We’d try a little college until we realized
it wasn’t for us, then quit and hurl ourselves back into the job market.

And
market
was the key word, as I was the king of the convenience store circuit. From Highlands to Atlantic Highlands to Leonardo, it was all counter terrorism for me and Big Bry. Convenience stores were easy and never really felt like work, primarily because it never
was
work whenever Bryan Johnson was around. We took loads of shit from friends and the occasional customer who insisted we were wasting our lives behind a register, but we loved Quick Stop. We met interesting people there, as well as mouthy assholes, the desperate and the damned. We learned life’s beautiful and universal truths while slinging cigarettes, skin mags, and Entenmann’s cakes. We were shaped by the people we waited on, trained by quick-witted battles against fourteen-year-old would-be shoplifters. And most important, we got to eat all the snacks and drink all the chocolate milk we wanted,
all day long.
That’s a
big
bucket of win.

But what would eventually happen is Bry and I would start to panic that the rest of our lives were fucked because we didn’t get college degrees. All our high school betters were working toward their bachelors at universities, and we couldn’t even get it together enough to get associate degrees at a local CC. So we’d psych each other up to be like everyone else, head back to Brookdale, and enroll in a new round of courses that never exactly indicated our eventual directions in life.

Classes sucked, but Bry and I would entertain each other with cartoons and poems about our classmates. One of my favorite pastimes at Brookdale was to see how hard I
could laugh without being noticed or caught in class, during lectures. I’d never had a funnier wingman with whom I could sharpen my comedic teeth, and all that practice would eventually lead to a career in entertainment.

Bry and Walt had no idea they were arming their friend for a life of paid play in movies, but they never could’ve imagined that our long hours of conversation and analysis we’d devote to the mundane and seemingly unimportant would aggregate into an empire decades later—and that they were, in essence, investing in their own futures. All that chatter, all those conversations, and all those laughs would be the fossil fuel that eventually powered one very large podcasting concern.

And ironically, that podcasting concern would be born out of
actual
concern: concern for the health and well-being of another powerful, life-changing friendship.

I met Scott Mosier in 1992 on our first day at the Vancouver Film School. At first glance, I was sure I hated him: He was a leather-jacket-wearing, dual-citizenship-carrying pretty boy who likely never had to beg for a handy. Within the first two weeks of school, we were thrown together for a class exercise that eventually forced us into conversation. Thankfully, I’d been training with conversational ninjas in the delicate art of what-if scenarios for the previous five years, so I was able to free-associate about our instructors, movies, and pop culture, and all of it was biting, sharp, and funny. The Bry and Walt influence in New Jersey had led to film school coffee-shop conversations and dissections of pop culture in the True North with Scott, a world away in Vancouver, British Columbia, which would lead to
Clerks
and everything after.