My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (84 page)

“The Man wants to see you in his trailer,” he said. I followed him to Camp Bruce: a trailer bigger than my childhood home.

When I entered, I saw Len, Skip, Bill and Bruce. Suddenly, I felt like I was getting fired. Instead, Bruce welcomed me with a drink in his hand. “You a drinking man, Kev?”

“Not really,” I replied.

“Well I am.” And he threw back a shot, plopped into a recliner, and announced our plans.

“We’re letting the crew go home, and starting fresh in the morning. We’re gonna shoot two versions of that speech: the long one you wrote, because that’s what we want, and a shorter one we cut from what you wrote, just so the studio gets what they want. Everyone’s happy.”

“Got it.”

“You wanna go see the new
Rocky
with me and Justin? Big premiere at the Chinese in ten minutes.”

“No, I’ll stick around here for a few and cut the speech up into the smaller speech.”

“I wanna thank you for your patience with us today, and for all the work you did on the scene. It’s not always like this around here. We just kept putting the Warlock scene on the back-burner ‘til it snuck up on us, y’know? But it’s all good now, and Len’s gonna shoot the shit out of it tomorrow, and you’re gonna do that speech, and it’s gonna be
Live Free or Die Hard
.”

With that, we were ushered out. I’d arrived at 7:30 that morning. It was 9:30 that evening. We hadn’t rolled a frame of film.

The next day, I opted against arriving at the appointed 7:30 call time, now knowing full well that we weren’t gonna start shooting ‘til at least noon, if at all.

We started the blocking rehearsal around eleven, worked through some minor issues, and by 12:30, I finally got on film. Barring any heinous edits somewhere down the line, I was now in
Live Free or Die Hard
.

Once we started rolling, things went smoothly. As mentioned, Len never rocked less than three cameras, two of which, naturally, were always pretty much on The Money — Mr. Moonlighting. One of the best ad-libbers I’ve ever seen, Justin somehow found a way to improve upon any of his already strong previous takes. And me? I managed not to fuck things up too badly.

From time to time, Bruce would ask for line-change suggestions. One particular variation he wanted was in the nicknames he wanted to throw at me in the scene to describe my ample weight. He’d done “dump-truck”, but wanted more choices. Having heard them all over the course of my life, I started feeding him the options, each of which made him giggle: “Ben & Jerry’s”, “Dairy Queen”, “Tubby”, “Lunchbox.”

“
Lunchbox
?” he queried. “What’s
that?
”

I
knew
he hadn’t seen any of my flicks.

After running the gamut of insults, his enjoyment escalating to a crescendo with “Jumbo”, I felt it was fair to give back a little. During one of my takes, I took a slight deviation as well.

“You wanna know about Thomas Gabriel?” Kevin-as-Warlock asked Bruce-as-McClane. “He’s crazy dangerous, man! He’s scary. You ever listen to
The Return of Bruno
? ‘Respect Yourself?’ He’s scarier than
that
, man!”

His reaction could’ve gone one of two ways: north or south. Thankfully, Bruce cracked up.

Had I been directing
Live Free or Die Hard
, the three-person, ten-page scene would’ve been shot in a day... and had all the visual flair of a fourteen year-old’s YouTube video. Thankfully, Len wanted to make his movie look like a
real
movie, so the Warlock scene stretched into a four-day shoot. Over the course of that week, I got to chill with a good bunch of people, and finally geek out with Bruce. I quizzed him on
Moonlighting
, his scene in
Fast Food Nation
, and one of his first, meaty TV roles.

“What comes to mind when I say Peter Jay Novins?” I asked him during a long stretch between set-ups.

“
Twilight Zone
and Wes Craven,” he responded, without missing a beat. “My first big gig after I shot the
Miami Vice
episode but before the
Moonlighting
pilot aired.”

I even got to serenade him with a Seagram’s Golden Wine Cooler jingle he’d done in a series of commercials circa 1985/86, and he quickly joined in, finishing the ditty. If I was a chick, I’d have flooded my panties.

Ultimately, however, I had to divorce Bruce Willis after my final take. The cast and crew gave me a round of applause, and headed off to another, Warlock-less set-up. I headed back to my trailer where, for a few minutes, life seemed somewhat emptier, now knowing that I was no longer gonna be living on B.W. Time.

Months later, I ran into Bruce again at the big-ass, Radio City Music Hall premiere of
Live Free or Die Hard
. We chatted briefly, but it wasn’t anything remotely as wonderful as that few days I’d spent on set with The Man. When all was said and done, I shook his hand and resumed my Willis-free existence. He was a movie star and I was a cult filmmaker (at best). We just don’t travel in the same circles enough to warrant an ongoing relationship.

The film would go on to become the highest grossing of the entire
Die Hard
franchise and probably the most critically praised, too — though I can’t take any credit for that; Len simply made the best
Die Hard
flick since the first one — a film that felt like the only true sequel to that 1988 classic. The whole experience is definitely in the top ten of my career highlights, and will forever mark the only time I’ll ever work with a legend and a hero of mine.

Maybe.

On July 5th I was in Las Vegas, playing in the Ante Up for Africa charity poker tournament, hosted by Don Cheadle and Annie Duke, to benefit Darfur massacre survivors. Flanked by movie and poker stars, I donked out around the midway point in the game and did what anyone entrenched in Sin City — where you could throw a rock and hit something to gamble on, imbibe, or fuck — would do...

I went back to my hotel room and played online poker.

In the midst of my anti-socialism, my cell phone rang.

“Kevin?” asked the voice on the other end. “Bruce Willis.”

“Hey, sir! How are you?”

“Just celebrating the anniversary of our nation’s independence here in Sun Valley. Lighting some fireworks.”

“Congrats on the huge opening, man,” I offered. “And the great reviews.”

“It all worked out, didn’t it?”

“It did.”

“Listen, Kev, I was thinking,” said Bruce Willis. “You’re from Jersey, I’m from Jersey. You’re a writer, I’m an actor. What say you come up with something we can do together?”

My fat-surrounded, weight-taxed heart nearly exploded out of my chest.

“What — like a
movie?
” I sputtered, obfuscating the fact that I make my living writing somewhat clever things.

“Just like a movie. You think of something and let’s do it.”

After a few more exchanged pleasantries, I hung up. At least, I
think
I hung up; I doubt I could’ve reached the phone, so pinned to the ceiling was I at that point... until harsh reality slammed me back down onto the bed.

I don’t
make
Bruce Willis pictures. I make movies in which donkey shows figure prominently. I make flicks in which plots turn on stink-palms and snowballing. My mind raced, but I couldn’t think of a single idea which the Mighty Bruce Willis might deem worthy of his time and star power. I was suddenly Tantalus, surrounded by a cool lake from which I couldn’t drink; reaching for fruit from branches that would forever lift satiety from my grasp.

A few weeks later, I was doing a Q&A at a Google event in Santa Monica, when someone in the audience asked me what video game would I like to see turned into a movie. After a few seconds thought, I chose Dig-Dug — the early 80’s trifle in which a helmeted sprite traveled underground and used a pump to inflate and defeat various mini-monsters. My only problem, I said, would be finding someone to play the lead.

“Bruce Willis!” someone playfully shouted from the audience.

And while the audience and I chuckled over this prospect, I immediately started crafting a poster in my mind. “Bruce Willis is Dig-Dug” was the tagline.

If a fat kid from the Jersey ‘burbs could grow up to star opposite one of the biggest movie stars in the world in a summer blockbuster, then anything’s possible.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Wednesday June 6 2007 @ 11:34 am

That’s the title of the comedy we’re doing right after
Red State
(the horror flick), as reported by Jay Fernandez in his
L.A. Times
Scriptland column today.

Granted, I’m biased because I wrote it; but I really dig this script. It’s funny, bawdy, sexy, dirty, titillating (emphasis on the tit) and dripping with heart. If you were gonna do that movie-description thing, I’d say it’s like
Chasing Amy
meets
Clerks II
, with a dash each of
Boogie Nights
and
Bowfinger
tossed in.

Some folks have already said “Sounds like
The Girl Next Door
...” or “Sounds like
The Amateurs
...” A few British cats have drawn comparisons to a flick called
I Want Candy
. I certainly can’t deny that
Zack and Miri
has nothing in common with said flicks — namely the subject of porn movies; but I can tell you that that’s about where the similarities begin and end, as far as I know.

To be fair, all I know about
I Want Candy
are the reviews I read recently in
Empire
and
Total Film
magazines. And in terms of
The Girl Next Door
(a film that always occurred to me as more of an homage to
Risky Business
than the “Let’s-Put-On-A-Show” nature of “dirty movies”.,
Zack and Miri
is about as far removed from the world of slick, professional porn (the domain of
Girl Next Door
) as can be.

No — the one flick I was sweating was
The Amateurs
(recently retitled
The Moguls
) — a flick I hadn’t heard of until I was in the midst of writing
Zack and Miri
. But as it turns out, Laura Greenlee (our long-time line producer) worked on that flick, and after reading
Zack and Miri
, she was able to dispel any fear I had on the subject by offering, “The only thing they have in common is that non-porn people want to make a porn movie. The circumstances, jokes and characters are completely different.”

I breathed a huge sigh of relief, because the last thing in the world a writer wants to be accused of is cryptomnesia; or worse, flat-out plagiarism (well, really, the last thing a writer — or even a non-writer — would want to be accused of is child molestation, I’d imagine; then cryptomnesia or plagiarism). But just because a film shares a similar theme/storyline with another film, does that mean it shouldn’t be made at all? I don’t think so. And I’m not talking about dueling volcano or asteroid movies here; I mean flicks that immediately invoke other flicks. I’m a firm believer that similar subject matter in different hands still has the potential to be original and fresh. I mean,
Chasing Amy
— the flick we get the most credit for — was pretty much the same-old, same-old boy meets girl, boy loses girl story with a bit of a different spin. Were I really sweating the fact that that story had been done to death before, I wouldn’t have bothered with
Amy
— and I’d be all the poorer for it (both figuratively and literally). After centuries of storytelling, there’s always bound to be some familiarity/similarity in books/shows/movies; it’s how each author handles the material that makes all the difference. Just because we’ve seen
For Keeps
,
She’s Having a Baby
, and
Nine Months
doesn’t mean we don’t want to see
Knocked Up
.

Regardless, I know I’m in for a few months of “That movie sounds like...”, but I’m not sweating it; I’ve read my script (even wrote it) and while it’s preoccupied with dirty movies, I know what it’s really about.

And about a year from now, you will too.

Rosario...

Wednesday August 8 2007 @ 4:26 p.m.

A few short weeks ago, in this
MTV.com
interview, I was asked about Rosario Dawson’s involvement in our next flick,
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
.

“I wrote it for Rosario Dawson,” I responded. “I’d be kind of flabbergasted if she didn’t do it.”

Yesterday,
MTV.com
ran an article, in which she was asked about her involvement in
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
.

“It’s going to be a really interesting film. I don’t think I’m going to be a part of it. He wrote it for me, but I’m just signing on to do [
Eagle Eye
] and that’s going to be shooting from November to March.”

It has prompted the following internet articles...

Rosario Dawson ditches Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno for Eagle Eye —
slashfilm.com

Rosario Dawson Says She Won’t Be Making a Porno with Kevin Smith —
Cinematical.com

Rosario Dawson Dumps Kevin Smith —
Cinemablend.com

What can I say? It kinda sucks. And not inasmuch as “Jesus — we’ll never find another actress for this role!” It kinda sucks because, like I’ve said, I
wrote the part with Rosario in mind/for Rosario to play.

How did this happen, you ask?

Well... it’s kinda my fault.

I wrote
Zack and Miri
with two actors in mind for the respective leads: Rosario, natch, as Miri, and this other guy as Zack. The idea was to shoot it sometime after the first of the year, post
Red State
, but the reaction to the
Zack and Miri
script was so enthusiastic across the boards (from producer Scott Mosier, everyone at the Weinstein Co., the agents and managers of both Rosario as well as the unnamed male lead, to
Entertainment Weekly
), that it got fast-tracked into first position (something that wasn’t hard to do, considering
Red State
wasn’t finished yet). Suddenly, we were looking at an Oct/Nov ‘07 start for
Zack and Miri
.