2HRS With Kevin Smith

This past weekend, the Sal, the wife, and the I went to the Wizard World Los Angeles comic book convention. The official story is that my wife got "dragged" there. Officially (*rolls eyes*). Anyway, the usual gathering of geeks, freaks, and fan-boys was in attendance. Specially at the Marvel booth, where they were cackling like teeny-boppers at the sight of Jesse McCartney (I'm up on my Tiger Beat current events) for free comics. We weren't all that interested in the exhibition hall. My wife did buy me a couple of trade paperbacks for 1/2 off for my upcoming birthday (March 31st . . . accepting Paypal gifts next week).

What we went there for was the 2 hour Q&A with Clerks/Mallrats/Chasing Amy/Dogma/Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back/Jersey Girl(?) director and Jason Mewes. After getting a quick and expensive bite to eat, we made our way to the Christopher Reeves theater (handicapped accessible) to find a line that was at least 200 people long by the time we got there. No problem, we got to the back of the line and sat around for an hour. Then, it finally started moving, and we surprisingly secured seats 3 rows from the podium, right around the middle.

Kevin Smith comes out, and the usual gamut of questions about his movies, what comics he reads, what he's working on currently and he answers all questions in his usual manner. Great stories all around. The only one that stands to attention though, is when someone asked him what was his weirdest experience ever. He was a little uncertain about that until someone chimed in with "sexually", which set him off on a story about his first ever three-way with a girl and another dude. The story was entertaining, but it takes a strange twist when he starts talking about how he actually managed to put his penis in his own mouth once. This took a lot of training on his part, and even though he had his gut back then, he was able to get on his back, throw his legs over his head, and sucked himself off to climax.

The whole crowd was laughing at the story. No other man could have told this type of a story with more confidence and attention to detail than Kevin Smith. He also gave insight into the gay-mutant subtext in the X-Men movie (think about it, it makes sense . . . although the Sal disagrees). Also his work in the upcoming Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) movie called Southland Tales, and another supporting lead role he has in a movie called Catch and Release with Jennifer Garner and Timothy Olyphant (Go). He had a couple of choice words about Olyphant. A little drama on the set, nothing large. Olyphant just critized his "acting" skills. Very infantile on his part, which soured Smith's take on him. Now his favorite actor in Deadwood is Ian McShane.

Another hilarious part of the Q&A session was when he noticed a 5 year old in the second row. He immediately tried to apologize to the girl and told him everything he was saying was "not for true", but it was too late. The girl had heard everything about his gay brother and his "bear cubs", his sucking his own cock story, his eating pussy story, and every fuck shit asshole and other dirty word that came out of his mouth. Not his fault though, the parents should have known what to expect if they were big fans of his.

The best part of the session was at the end, when Smith gave us a sneak peak at Clerks 2 prefaced by a very Dogma-ish disclaimer about not videotaping it. It was a hilarious scene in a Mooby restaurant with the guy from the videostore getting into a discussion with a customer (some guy from Alias . . . the techie-guy) about which trilogy was the best: original Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Hilarious dialogue. Also, he showed us the teaser trailer that will be tacked on to the trailer reel in Scary Movie 4. One out one good reason to go see that piece of shit. After that, it was announced that the entry tickets we had been given at the beginning served a purpose. On the following day, he would be signing autographs for a couple of hours there at the Con, and anyone with the #7 as the last number on the ticket would get in. Surprise surprise, I had a ticket with a #7 on the end, but I was not going to pay another $25 bucks to get in. I looked around the theater, looking for a someone to scalp it to. The first proposal went like this -

Me - Hey, you want to go to this thing tomorrow? I'll sell you the ticket.
Jackass - How much?
Me - How much is it worth to you?
Jackass - Nothing (laughs glibly).
Me - Whatever, your loss dildo.

I looked around some more and heard someone say

Fanboy - Man, too bad I didn't win. I really wanted to go to that.
Me - What? Really, I'll sell you my ticket.
Fanboy - (Drops all his shit on the floor) Let me get my money, how much??
Me - Umm . . how much does $25 sound to you?
Fanboy - Perfect! (Rustles through pockets) Here, man, this is so cool.

Thanks to my wife, I've developed this annoying nice streak that really gets in the way of taking advantage of people. I cold have gotten way more for that ticket. At least twice that much, but . . . I could see that this guy would have enjoyed this way more than I, so I let it go cheap. I made a complete stranger happy, and cut down on the cost of the day at the same time.