Jun 22, 2005

Book Review

Silent Bob Blabs

It's like I told my main man in Brunei: How many times can you ink phrases like huge, monster cock and expect people to laugh? Lots, Chauncey, lots. And even if writer-director Kevin Smith never sees his new book translated into Malay, the View Askew juggernaut (the website, not Smith) rolls on.

If you remember Smith as the film auteur who took his successful New Jersey narrative from off-color middle-school-isms to the wonderfully skewed humanism of 1999's Dogma, then you fall into one camp. If you rejoiced at his return to the few-holes-barred realm of dick jokes and stoner wisdom of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back two years later, then you fall into another.

Those of you who stuck around to suffer through his ungainly shift towards unguarded sentimentality in Jersey Girl have probably abandoned him altogether and just hang your heads lower now that word of Clerks 2 is official. Along the way, Smith did his best to subvert the expectation of fans, built a robust cottage industry around memorabilia and upped the profitability of his off-set downtime on the college lecture circuit.

With Silent Bob Speaks, The Collected Writings of Kevin Smith (Hyperion, New York, 2005), the aroma of naked opportunism is beginning to muscle in on the clouds of chronic hovering at his Red Bank headquarters. But the good people of Monmouth County probably aren't too concerned with Local Boy Done Good so long as his stash keeps him and his films off the controversy circuit for the moment.

The Catholic League stalked Bluntman before and after Dogma's release, while Jay and Silent Bob brought the heat from Rainbow Warriors that found the film beyond homophobic. So it's up to the eight people that Smith expects to be reading his new tome to keep his end of the force aloft until he turns again to the box office for support.

Built from a collection of columns commissioned by the now defunct website psycomic.com and mags like Arena and Uncut, Smith tracks the pre-production of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, his experience interviewing mega-star Tom Cruise and his loathing of Britney Spears. If his regular guy take on the film industry's workings is only so illuminating, his love fest with Cruise unashamedly servile and gushy, and the other assorted blog-like entries, well, blog-like, that's okay. Smith maintains he was more cajoled than inspired into working this project - former Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein is credited as being the initial catalyst - and had only limited hopes for it to do particularly well.

But if you picked up the DVD An Evening With Kevin Smith (2002), know that he can still be the wry wit of years' past. (His extended bit about working with Prince was not only worth the price of a rental, but was straight-up bold, considering he probably betrayed scores of non-disclosure agreements in the space of 15 minutes.)

Here's an example from the book: "Then she looked at me very seriously and said, 'I want to get painted in the nude.' Off my confused and worried look, my wife continued, 'You have your whole career, a modicum of critical respect, cult fame….' Oblivious to where she was going with her rationale, I asked, 'You think I only get a modicum of critical respect?'"

Maybe not the top-shelf dialogue of the Chasing Amy era, but it's a glimpse back towards the time when Smith was perhaps writing at his best.

Why Smith backed away from the spot-on satiric depths he plumbed so well in Dogma may be tough for the, er, faithful to swallow. The book shows him to be fairly unapologetic about it and equally open about the whys. Faced with death threats and a fanbase that often tilts toward the potty side of his humor, he sees nothing disingenuous about making funny yet crass movies that actually let the people that back his films see a return on their investment. But being only 11 years on from the success of his debut, there's a good chance that no matter how long he lingers in the convenience store phase of his career, the draw toward other wellsprings will arise.

Will we want to read every step he takes en route as some sort of shared moment? Well….
JoE Silva

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