As Kevin quite literally ascended into the auditorium, I reveled in my third row seat. In a sorta cool, sorta goofy move, they had both the speaker and the podium rise up from under the stage. Explaining that he wasn’t going to lecture, and after a brief introduction, we all queued up to ask our questions. Fielding numerous “are you high on the set” queries with patience and charm, he used the questions as a jumping off point for many personal anecdotes. One of the highlights being a forty-minute tale on being invited to Prince’s Paisley Park to talk about filming something for Prince, and ending up staying there a week filming a documentary about “The Truth” about Jehovah, that “will never see the light of day” (As apparently many, many other Prince projects. He has an actual VAULT of films and music videos that will never be released.) The contrast between Kevin’s pragmatism and Prince’s fantasia (”it’s 3 AM and Prince wants a camel, it’s hard to explain that you can’t get a camel in Minnesota at 3AM”) was absolutely hysterical.

Also wonderful were the stories about Jason Mewes. The affection he has for Jason is warm hearted and infectious. I really don’t want to paraphrase, but, Kevin said he realized that Jason was special and “genius”, when he walked into a youth center library and proceeded to fellate every phallic object in the room, never acknowledging Kevin’s presence. Jason walked up to a videogame machine, saw that there was a trackball instead of a joystick, and froze. Then, well, he just went down on the trackball. Jason even called Kevin’s cell phone, “Are you getting some Indiana ass?” (Right as I stepped up to the mike! It made me lose all train of thought.). Oh, and all the variations of “Snootchie Bootchies” mean “Just Kidding”. (”I fucked your mom! Snootch!”)

Other tidbits include that Fletch Won is proceeding with Jason Lee as Fletch, Jersey Girl has to wait a bit since the male lead “want’s to wear a red suit”, the next comics include some DC “ands” (Batman and.”) and Black Cat, and, as Kevin feels he is a writer first he “has a book in him” (Yeah! I was hoping he’d say that!) . Favorite comics, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run. And, he’d like to guest on Sopranos and, “the ultimate”, Simpsons. Favorite directors include Spike Lee and Oliver Stone. The Star Wars character he’s most like to be is Han Solo, and the Star Wars character he’d most like to screw is. Han Solo. “Harrison Ford’s a good lookin’ man!”.

As the hours passed (four of them!), and the auditorium was coming to a close, the questions got goofier and goofier (”I’ll give you head for $5!”, “Why did you waste so much time with the Prince story!”, and the inevitable “Can I be in your movie?” and “What’s a nubian?”). One guy said he lost his job to come see Kevin, and Kevin called the restaurant where he worked to try and get him his job back to no avail. Someone asked him what he smoked, and a gentleman brought him a pack of Marlboro Menthols. When told he had to stop taking questions and go sign autographs, Kevin declined, saying that it’s much more personal to answer questions than to just sign things. He actually kept talking after numerous pleas from auditorium staff that they were closing, only leaving the stage at the stroke of midnight, when the University charter states it has to close.

All in all, Kevin Smith proved to be much like his films, chatty, personal, incredibly charming, hilarious and completely unpretentious. I’d give him head for free. 😉

– Amy Lawrence

Any monkey that beats the hell out of James Van Der Beek can grace the pages of Toyfare any day.

With his immense pop culture knowledge and brilliant storytelling sense, Kevin Smith knew that to make a quality road movie, he needed a monkey.

The true star of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the orangutan named Suzanne is stolen from a medical research lab (the Fugitive-referenced Provasic) and goes with the guys to Hollywood, becoming chummy with the Silent One along the way. She saves the day by beating the creek out of Dawson and Jason Biggs. You may have seen Suzanne walking hand-in-hand with Jay and Silent Bob at the end of Mallrats, scratched your head and wondered why. Now you know.