Saw K-Smith at the Dogma screening at the Arclight Cinemas last night. Gotta say, never get tired of seeing him live.

The show started a little late, was supposed to be 7:30, but rolled probably closer to 7:45 or so. I’d never been to these theaters before — it’s the type of place where you drop $14 for reserved seating, and that’s more scratch just to get into the theater than I can spend most movie nights. But it’s a nice place, with great sound and comfortable seats – and since as an ‘Arclight Member’ I got a buck off the cover price, it only cost me $10! Whoo! Now I can pay for parking.

The print itself had seen better days — it was a little rough and that was sort of a bummer but it’d been years since I saw it on a big screen and I never saw it with much of an audience — the experience was awesome, bad print or no.

After the flick and a short intermission, they trotted Kev out for some sit-down Q&A with a ‘host’, some dude who used to work the Entertainment beat on CNN. They talked the usual stuff — the Dogma backlash (including the now infamous ‘Dogma is Dog-‘ protest sign story), how Kev came to write Dogma, how people got cast – if you were a fan of Dogma or Kevin, you knew most of it. Then they broke with the ‘Arclight’ hosted format and allowed Kev to do what he does best – talk to his fans.

Man does the cat come alive then — he just loves to shoot the crap with his fans. Some of the questions were, well, inane might be overstating, but one chick (who, ad nauseum, talked about being from NJ) went on and on about how Kev doesn’t cast real Jersey people in his supposed Jersey flicks. Which, in usual Smith manner, Kev responded to with ‘Let’s cut to the chase – you just want me to cast you, right?’.

He hit on –

‘Fletch’ (he still wants only Lee and Miramax/Weistein wants Affleck or the generic equivelent)

Superhero movies (no interest – I’m betting the Jon Peters thing still stings – plus he said he did one – Dogma is a big graphic novel – and he says it’s a badly drawn one at that – which I kinda disagree, but thats me)

Comics (wants to finish Spidey/Black Cat and Daredevil, but never finishes a story arc – would love to work Green Arrow again, but has no plans for anything now)

Clerks animated movie (still awaiting the flash demo – from the guys who did the Jen Saves Ben game)

Getting married on the sly at Skywalker ranch (I had never heard this one).

And more — he spoke for a few hours until we were kicked out at 12:30! Didn’t feel that late – but that’s Kev. When he speaks, the hours just fly. Can’t wait to see him again.

I attended the show and it was highly entertaining. Dogma was amazing on the big screen and didn’t fail to impress. Heres a quick lowdown (of what i can remember) of the rougly 2 hour Q&A that followed:

Well the Q&A was part of the “Master Storytellers” series at the Arclight. There was a moderator who filtered the questions submitted on 3X5 cards. This was somewhat entertaining but the good stuff came out after when Kevin did the normal Q&A format. He touched on many things a few which I prolly forgot 🙂

Jason Mewes: Number one on my list is Jason Mewes status. It was a touchy topic for Kevin but he expressed all his feelings rather bluntly and opened up with the fans. Apparently Kevin got a call last week from Mewes telling him that there is an HBO crew following him around filming a documentry about his life. The HBO crew is not confirmed as Kevin was trying to figure it out still. He said Mewes has been bad with the drugs for the past few years and has been in and out of rehab for some time. His court appearance was today and apparently he got 2 years probation and 6 months mandatory rehab. This is straight from Kevins mouth so it must be pretty legit. He said that he wants to do another Jay and Silent Bob picture but he’s only willing to do it if Mewes is clean. He is offering it as sort of a reward for Mewes since he loves doing the pictures so much. Hope things go well for him in the future 🙂

Clerks Animated Movie: Next up he talked about the clerks animated feature rather shortly. No new news here, he just talked about the animation tests that were previously reported.

Vulgarthon: He said that most likley the next one will be held in the Los Angeles area. What he wasn’t sure of though is if there would be one this year or not.

Next Project: He mentioned VERY briefly about what his next project might be. He said said and I quote “Something in the realm of sci-fi, but not really sci-fi, about relationships” Take that with a grain of salt because even he didn’t look like he knew what he was talking about when he said it. He also mentioned doing a remake of the old 1973 movie “Running with the Devil” He said this rather jokingly and went into detail about how he decided he wanted to do it and how eventually Weinstein told him it was a dumb idea. Was a funny story and you could tell that he never really meant to go full steam ahead with the project.