Boring-ass life? Not this geek
Wearing his trademark “Silent Bob” black overcoat and Vans deck shoes with an image of Homer Simpson imprinted on them, Kevin Smith makes a sit-down chat turn into an exploration of all things geeky.
What else would you expect from the writer/director/actor who’s been letting his nerd flag fly high ever since he broke onto the scene with ’90s indie hit Clerks?
Smith, 37, has inspired a fervent cult audience for whatever he decides to do – from comics he’s written to guest-starring on Degrassi: The Next Generation, one of his favourite shows.
The pop culture vulture has two movies in development, directed the series pilot for the devilishly good new series Reaper and started work on an episode of Heroes: Origins, the upcoming spinoff of the NBC hit series Heroes.
Then there’s the reason he’s in town, doing a media blitz for his new book, My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith, a collection of blog entries from Smith’s website, ViewAskew.com.
“It’s kind of nice to back into a book, but I was like `who’s going to buy it when you can read it for free online,'” Smith said yesterday at the Toronto offices of publisher Random House.
“They said, `well, not everyone has a computer.’ Like really, everyone I know has a computer. So at the end of the day I didn’t have to do much for it, as it was already written.”
Smith has been posting to his website since 1996. He says the blog/book started after one of his fans asked how he spends his days. So he started cataloguing everything he did.
“It moved beyond the initial question, where I was like, I would like to have all this, so 20 years down the road I can look back and know exactly what I was doing on a specific day – and look at it how much I wasted my youth.”
But like most bloggers, the idea of feeding the online beast became an issue.
Documenting his life from March, 2005 to November, 2006, My Boring-Ass Life begins with daily writings that evolve into longer, more sporadic posts as time goes by.
If there is a highlight, Smith says it’s the almost 70 pages called “Me and my Shadow,” where he details the journey of best friend Jason Mewes (Jay from the Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob movies) as he battles drug addiction.
“He’s actually lived through something, as opposed to me. I am pretty boring,” Smith said. His fans wouldn’t agree, but it’s all on the page for anyone to judge.
In January, Smith starts filming Zach and Miri Make a Porno. Afterwards he hopes to start on Red State, which he describes as “a political horror movie.”
Other projects Smith is working on include a weekly podcast with friend, producer Scott Mosier – they call it a Smodcast – at quickstopentertainment.com.
As for Smith’s take on this age where all things geek have gone very mainstream, he’s sanguine about it.
He doesn’t think that there will be a backlash, but rather “people will just sooner or later just become disinterested.” Perhaps, but his career is solid evidence to the contrary.
Kevin’s interview on the CBC’s “The Hour with George Strombolopoulos” can be seen on its website. Be sure to check out the hilarious cold open of the show featuring Kevin doing a “bit of business”, as he often likes to say. There’s other guests on the program, so you may need to skip in a bit to see Kev’s bit — The show streams in several pieces, so be patient, you may need to wait a few seconds here and there to let it catch up with you, depending on your connection speed.
One fan was nice enough to break out a camera and film a few minutes of what went down at a pre-book signing Q&A this week, too. Watch the shaky cam though, it’s a little rough. Sounds like a HUGE turnout for the signing there, though – Canada loves Kevin! Check out a couple short clips, direct from Canada, via YouTube : Canada Book Signing, 9/27/07 – Part One and Canada Book Signing, 9/27/07 – Part Two.
