My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (39 page)

Springsteen’ll have that effect on a motherfucker. For years, I tried to deny the Boss — simply because I was a quietly rebellious Jersey lad who refused to dig on Bruce simply out of a sense of Central Jersey pride. But by the time I was twenty, I couldn’t escape the fact that I, too, dug Bruce. I mean, the man wrote and sang ‘Thunder Road’, for Christ’s sake. ‘Thunder’ fucking ‘Road’!

I’ve never been a car-guy (indeed, I’m still not sure how an automobile works), but when Bruce romanticizes cars in his songs, it makes a brother wanna hang out around a garage or, at the very least, go to Pep Boys. The man’s a fucking poet who, as Susannah pointed out, knows how to make the mundane epic. He takes small moments in the lives of the working class and reveals them for what they are: unsung miracles.

There was this one moment that Bruce Springsteen won me over for life. It was just after 9/11, during which Monmouth County was hit bad, losing about forty to fifty people from our neck of the woods — commuters who’d ferry or bus into the city everyday and work at the Trade Center. So a group called the Alliance of Neighbors of Monmouth County formed and put on two benefit shows at the Count Basie, featuring a lineup of Jersey music acts (and friends), all raising money for families who lost people in NYC. Bruce and Bon Jovi were the headliners, naturally. I was asked to emcee both nights.

So Thursday night, the night of the first show, I’m getting up and introducing each act to a packed-to-the-rafters Basie crowd. And between intros, while I’m backstage, I spot the man himself, hanging out with his wife Patti. From time to
time, Bruce joins some of the acts onstage, doing the back-to-back rocker thing with Joan Jett on ‘Light of Day’, or joining former Elvis backers the Sun Records Rhythm Section for a few covers.

Ultimately, we said hi to each other, shaking hands, at which point, the Boss says to me “I like your flicks.
Chasing Amy
’s my favorite.”

My head and heart almost exploded.

So the night goes on, with me introducing every act. Then, ‘round midnight, it’s almost time for Bruce and a scaled down version of the E Street Band to take the stage. However, Geraldo Rivera (a local) goes out to talk about the Bin Laden attacks and introduce some execs from Comcast, who were presenting the Monmouth County 9/11 widows with a big check. At the end of the presentation, the Comcast exec announces “And now, a man I’m sure needs no introduction...” essentially cueing Bruce. Bruce looks at me and shrugs and heads out onstage. And inside, I’m bumming a bit, because I would’ve loved to intro the guy myself. But this night isn’t about me, and I’m getting ready to enjoy a stage right view of Springsteen live.

So Bruce walks out to thunderous, deafening applause, plugs in his guitar, and gets ready to play. Then, he looks around and says, “Where’s the emcee?”

I just about faint.

Bruce looks at me, waiting in the wings, and says: “C’mon out. Let’s do it right.”

So I rush out onstage, giddy as fuck, and sputter, “I’ve lived here thirty-one years, and I never thought I’d have this moment. Ladies and gentlemen... BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!”

From that moment on, I knew I’d take a bullet for Springsteen, if given the chance. I mean, the man went out of his way to have me come out and intro him, after he’d already
been
introduced, after he’d already
been
on stage for a minute and change. The guy knew how much it meant to me, and he wouldn’t start his set until I got my geek-out moment. I’ll take that with me to my grave.

After nailing a tricky little shot involving my gut, Juliette’s hand, and my wide-eyed face, Sardi calls an official wrap on Vancouver. Hugs abound, as the champagne flows. I give Susannah a big kiss and thank her for the countless votes of confidence, not the least of which was casting me in the first place. The production now heads to Boulder to shoot a bunch of exteriors, including one in which I work. But as I don’t have to be in Colorado ‘til Thursday,
Catch
comes to something of a close for me. I say g’bye to all the Vancouver cats who aren’t coming to Boulder (Elaine, Heida, Shelly, Lori), then head to the vanities trailer to get my hair and makeup removed, tell the rest of the crew I’ll see ’em in Boulder, and get the fuck out of Dodge.

Since I’m pulling out of town, I leave the rental car at the set and get a ride back to the hotel from Blake. Jen’s there waiting, and I ask her to dig around in the packed shit to find the remote for the TV I gave Lori. She finds it, and Blake’s off, to deliver it to Lori.

Jen and I check out of the Sheraton Wall Centre, our home for nearly three months, get in the car, and start driving. In less than two hours, we’re back in the States.

We’re on the road for five hours, finally settling, ironically enough, in Vancouver, Washington, where we spend the night in their new Hilton, falling asleep watching an
X-Files
.

Sunday 24 July 2005 @ 4:57 a.m.

I wake up around six and check email. Jen wakes around nine and orders coffee, while I get in the shower. We check out and hit a Starbucks for coffee she can take on the ride.

We cross the bridge into Oregon and grab some Mickey D’s breakfast to go, then drive like motherfuckers, listening to music and chatting the whole way. The goal is to get to Sacramento, stay the night, then finish the drive to LA Monday morning.

When we hit the Sacramento area, it’s only 7 p.m. We make the decision to drive all the way home, which should put us in around midnight/one.

We stop at an insta-town just outside of Sacramento that seems to have just been inflated a minute before we got there. The tract housing and strip malls feel like they all went up at the same time to create a suburb around the Arco arena. Very weird place.

We stop at a joint called Pizza Pucks to grab some dinner, favoring the Mom & Pop shop over the Round Table Pizza in the other strip mall. The Pizza Puck, we’re told, is a pizza done like a Cinnabun: thin dough, rolled up with the sauce and cheese. There’s confusion with our order and what should take five minutes winds up taking forty. This may have something to do with the two twenty-something cooks in the kitchen staring at me for fifteen minutes instead of getting our order right. In instances like that, I wish folks would just come over and ask: “Are you that fat director?” or something. The stare-down is a little creepy.

We hit the local Borders, where I take a dump, while Jen grabs a book to take home to Harley. We shake the ‘burb dust from our sandals, and with that, we’re
back on the road.

After another five or six hours of driving, we finally pull up to our beloved home around 2:30 in the morning. We carry most of the bags in, then head to the bedroom to get into our woobs and sack out in front of the TV. I chug some cereal while watching TiVo’ed
Simpsons
, after which Jen and I fall asleep, elated to be home.

Monday 25 July 2005 @ 1:43 p.m.

Wake up, talk to Jimmy and Byron, then surprise Harley in Nan and Pop’s room with being home.

I take Quinnster out to Jerry’s Famous Deli in the Valley for breakfast, then head over to Castle Park, for a couple hours of skee-ball and other games of chance. We clean up, ticket-wise, and Harley trades them in for a bunch of crappy-but-cherished-for-a-half-an-hour prizes. We take photos in the photo booth and head over to Laser Blazer to grab DVDs. Ron lets us go through tomorrow’s new DVDs as well, saving us a trip back this week.

We head home and Harley chills with Jen for a while, during which I lay on the bed and check email and update the diary on my laptop.

Gail makes family dinner, and me, Jen, Harley, Byron, Gail and Jimmy eat on the deck, joined by Bry and Mewes.

Jen puts Harley to bed, and I fall asleep around nine, watching TiVo’ed
Simpsons
while Jen unpacks.

Tuesday 26 July 2005 @ 1:45 p.m.

I wake up, take a dump while playing Tetris, then head to the office to check email. Axel Alonso at Marvel has forwarded me new pages Terry Dodson’s drawn for
Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do
— a mini-series for Marvel I started back in 2002. A few months back, I turned in the scripts for issues four and five while I was at the We Care Spa, doing a week-long fast and colonic program. At that point, I was in touch with both Axel and Joe Quesada (the artist on my
Daredevil
run from ‘98/’99, and now the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel) and let them know that I’d need to add one more issue to my run, as I’d written myself into a corner by the end of issue five. Joe was ecstatic, as I was finally finishing the book that had become the running joke of the comic book industry, sporting the rep of the latest comic in history (indeed, by the time issue four streets, it will have been three years between it and issue three). I was on such a roll, he invited me to write a
Moon Knight
revamp/ongoing series that he’d draw when I finished the script to issue six — at which point I reminded him that I was the guy with two and a half years between comic scripts for a mini-series that was supposed to be done in 2002. As tempting as it was to take him up on the offer — especially with him doing the art — I did the responsible thing and backed off.

It was the third Marvel series I begged off of doing in three years. I’d been offered
Trouble
— the Marvel girls-gone-wild series — as well as
Amazing Spider-Man
— a deal for which had actually been announced in
Wizard
, the comics magazine. I was already in arrears on not just the
Spidey/Black Cat
book, but another mini I started in late 2001,
Daredevil/Bullseye: Target
— for which I’d written only two scripts, about a year apart, resulting in only the first issue being published thus far. As much as I love comics, and as much fun as they are to write sometimes, I’m just plain lousy with hitting deadlines, and I over-commit like a motherfucker — usually resulting in chronic lateness or shit just never coming to fruition, due to the fact that writing comics is not my main gig.

Back in the day, it was
Jersey Girl
that pre-empted my work on the
Black Cat
mini. Then, almost anything else came first (
Tonight Show
,
Degrassi
, Vulgarthon,
Evening With 2
, the opening of the west coast Stash,
Clerks X
,
The Passion of the Clerks
, etc.). I’d gotten countless emails from Joe, insisting he needed me to finish the series; that he was holding the higher-ups at bay who were demanding another writer be hired to finish my arc, so that a solo
Black Cat
book could move forward. And countless times, I’d respond to Joe with “I’m on it...” only never to get on it at all.

Then, a few months ago, Joe had given me a drop-dead date, which I swore I’d turn in the final issue by. That date came and went, replaced by another drop-dead date — which also came and went with no script being turned in. Joe wrote me a very serious email giving a final date my script had to be turned in by, lest he have to give in to corporate and hire someone else to finish the series, so that the
Black Cat
monthly could proceed. But, knee-deep in
Catch & Release
, I missed that date, too.

I’d then received pretty depressing emails from Joe, chiding me for fucking him over, and informing me that someone else had been hired to finish my story. Few things suck as badly as letting someone you love down, and Lord knows this was an extreme case. Feeling like a putz, I dropped Axel Alonso (my editor on the
Black Cat
mini) a line, and we hatched a plan.

I asked Axel to let me write the last script, but keep it on the down-low, as a surprise for Joe. I insisted that if Terry started drawing issues four and five, that I’d get hyped seeing the art, and it’d power me forward through the script to issue six. Axel was down with the plan, but fairly, insisted that he still commission the alternative script from another writer, so that if I didn’t deliver, he wouldn’t be fucked, and the mini could finally end. I agreed, and we settled on the end of July as my deadline.

So for the last month, Terry’s been powering forward on the art, and Axel’s been feeding it to me, via email. And it, indeed, got me pumped, and made me want to finish the fucker in a big way. And as I sat at my desk-top Mac, I decided it was time to throw everything else aside, and concentrate on
Black Cat
.

The first order of business was doing a dialogue revamp of the first eight pages of issue four, as Axel’s plan is to reprint the first three issues of
Spider-Man/Black Cat
as a Marvel Must-Have, that then concludes with an eight-page preview of the start of issue four. I polished up those pages and emailed them to Axel. Then, I continued rewriting some of the dialogue in the rest of the issue, before moving on to do the same for issue five, both of which I sent to Axel, getting the thumbs-up.

With that done, I finally... FINALLY start writing the end of
Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do
.

I write for a few hours, before deciding to take a break, and heading out to run errands with Jen. We drop stuff off at the framers in Toluca Lake, hit Jen’s bank to exchange all the Canadian cash we brought home, then pick up some lunch for Harley, Hans and Kevin, Reyna’s boys.

When I get home, rather than go back to the script, I chill out and watch a documentary about John Wilkes Booth with Jen, while eating our late lunch. I’d picked up a bunch of Biography/History Channel DVDs, so they’ve become the watch of choice lately. After Booth, we pop in another doc about the Loch Ness Monster, which we chase with a doc about UFOs, during which I fall asleep. Jen wakes me, reminding me I’m supposed to go down to the store to sign a bunch of stuff that’s being loaded onto the truck for Chicago. I hop in the shower and, joined by Mewes, truck down to the store.

At the Stash, I chill with Christian, Mewes and Bob, signing an ass-load of merch for not just Chi-town, but also the store. Bob and I go over the West Coast Stash schedule for the next few months, figuring out what dates the
Mallrats X
and
Jay and Silent Bob Do Degrassi
signings are gonna be, as well as a possible Alex Ross signing. I tag stuff ‘til closing, then head back to the house, dropping Mewes off at his friend’s so he can play the
Lord of the Rings
skirmish game all night.