By BRUCE KIRKLAND – Toronto Sun

Kevin Smith talks about reviewer Bruce Kirkland and the five best decisions Smith ever made.

Kevin Smith is on the phone from Los Angeles, where he lives now with his wife and daughter after buying his pal Ben Affleck’s old Hollywood house.

He is friendly but feisty, still stung a little by my original so-so review of Clerks II (and he reads everything written everywhere about every one of his movies).

“I have too much love for you,” Smith offers, “but I’m befuddled by your confusion. It’s my best film in years. For me, I love it best out of everything I’ve ever done. I thought it was the one that totally nailed it. It kind of supplanted Chasing Amy as my all-time favourite.

“It was the absolute right flick to make at the absolute right time and, boy, it was like one of the five best decisions I ever made.”

Top five? “Wife (Jennifer Schwalbach Smith), kid (Harley Quinn Smith), the first Clerks — I’ve gotta give those things priority,” Smith says. “The other in the top five? A wild-card slot. I’ve got to have room for something I perhaps have forgotten.”

So it goes in another instalment of a delightful and dynamic on-going conversation not-so-silent Smith and I have been having for 12 years, ever since he dropped into the Toronto Sun offices during the breakout of his original Clerks in 1994. The New Jersey-born Smith speaks his truth, no reservations, no worries about political correctness and with plenty of salty profanity (excised here to save delicate readers).

Our latest session is prompted by the fresh release of two separate DVDs, both of them fully loaded two-disc sets. One, of course, is the arrival of Clerks II in separate full or widescreen versions; the other is the widescreen-only release of An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder.

The second set is director J.M Kenny’s record of two of Smith’s famous stand-up Q&A shows, during which he fields questions from the audience and riffs on politics, sex, filmmaking, Dora the Explorer, shooting his wife for Playboy and the unique possibilities of turning into a beast that is half-man, half-sausage. One show was taped in Toronto, the other in London, England.

Both the Clerks II DVD and Evening Harder are definitive releases. “As always!” Smith says. He tries to avoid the common DVD practice of successive releases which oblige fans to buy, re-buy and buy again.

“I overcompensate,” Smith says of doing DVDs right the first time. “I grew up fat, so of course I overcompensate. It’s like giving way too much so they don’t notice your shortcomings. So that extends into every aspect of my life, even the home video. I tend to go above and beyond because this is the final record of my movie.”

Smith’s only exceptions to “double dipping” involved the original Clerks — the first DVD was what he calls a laserdisc dump and the Clerks X: 10th Anniversary Edition became the definitive one — and then the second Mallrats DVD, which was forced on him by the studio, so he made do as best he could. “If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have done another Mallrats because I thought we put everything we possibly could on the first one.”

The Clerks II DVD has tons of Smith-like fun, from a peek behind the scenes of donkey love to bloopers, deleted scenes and a 90-minute documentary on why and how the sequel even exists.

“I want this to be the only version of the DVD we ever do, so let’s put everything we possibly can on it!”

As for the Evening Harder DVD, Smith was intrigued by the contrast between the wild, over-the-top Toronto show at Roy Thomson Hall and the more restrained, yet surreal London show at the Criterion.

“Toronto audiences are legendary by how much they embrace everything,” he says in admiration. Smith did Arty Hall twice, one of them recorded for this DVD. “They’re two of my all-time favourites, further proof that I really was born in the wrong country.”