"The Bottom Line"
Live from Wizard World LA
by Ryan Riley

March 18, 2006

I’ve been to a fair amount of comic book conventions in my time. It doesn’t matter what else they try to call them nowadays, I’m not likely to refer to them by any other name anytime soon. I’ve attended quite a few discussion panels at these conventions, but few of them generate the fan turnout that Kevin Smith’s Q & A sessions do. The man is just flat-out entertaining, even when he’s just shooting the breeze with the crowd. He is appreciative of his fans, self-deprecating to a fault, and equally liberal with the raw language and humor behind the podium as the characters in his films are. Having been a fan of his since the release of Mallrats, I was naturally looking forward to the opportunity to catch his act once more and maybe, just maybe, catch a glimpse of his upcoming movie Clerks II, the upcoming follow-up to his breakthrough 1994 film Clerks.

The Kevin Smith Q & A experience for me invariably starts out the same way, and this time around was no exception. The panel was scheduled for 3:30 p.m., and I scouted out the location of the hall he was going to be in at around 11:00 a.m. I thought, “Hey, this con isn’t nearly as crowded as San Diego usually gets so if I get in line at 2:00 p.m. I should get a primo spot.” So I get lunch and look around on the convention floor until then. I make my way over to the hall and see about 20 people already in line. Feeling good, I walk around the corner and see the other 230 people in the line. Poor planning on my part notwithstanding, I still got a pretty decent place in line once the ushers tightened the line gaps up. I ended up with a good seat in the fourth row, with a clear view of the podium and dual view screens flanking either side of the stage.

(Editor's Note: Ryan touches on this, but I wanted to interject that this panel had greater attendance then all the other panels I attended over the last two days... combined! - Mike)

Once most of the fans attending the Q & A session settled into their seats, one of the Wizard World organizers addressed the audience. He gave the obligatory warning about no video cameras being allowed during the session. He then warned the attendees with small children in tow about the language Kevin uses during these sessions (a rather classy thing to do, considering that I saw a fair amount of smaller kids in there).

After the announcements were made, Kevin himself came out with his on-screen hetero-lifemate Jason Mewes in tow. To his credit, he did away with the usual explanation of how his Q & A’s work and, as Chris Rock would say, “rolled with the new”. Here is the breakdown of some of the topics that were covered, along with some of the more interesting storytelling tangents he went off on:

• Superman Returns: He stated that any Superman film is better than none, with the exception of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. He is looking forward to it, and expects that Bryan Singer will do a good job. He then commented on the first two X-Men films Singer directed being allegories of how homosexuals are treated by the outside world, joking that the third X-Men film could have been called “Brokeback Mutant” if Singer directed it.
• The Green Hornet movie: He dropped out of both writing and directing the project. He mentioned the proposed $70 million budget, joking that he would have used $5 million to make the movie and blown the remaining $65 million on “coke and whores”. When Kevin was asked a follow-up question about the proliferation of comics being made into movies, he said that it’s a good thing, as long as he’s not being asked to make them.
• Resurrecting the Clerks animated series: He is planning on making a straight-to-DVD animated movie called Clerks – Sell Out.
• Jay & Silent Bob Do Degrassi: A girl in the audience accused him of selling out by doing the show, adding that it wasn’t even very good. Kevin retorted that while he has no problem with her not enjoying it, he couldn’t agree with it being “selling out” if it’s for an obscure TV show like Degrassi Junior High.
• Ben Affleck & Jason Lee in Clerks II: They will not be playing the characters they have played in previous movies. Kevin then mentioned that Affleck went from not even wanting to be in the film to getting a brief cameo to wanting a line to say.
• Acting projects: Kevin touched on his experiences with acting in Southland Tales and Catch & Release. For Southland Tales he told the tale of sitting in a make-up chair for 6 hours getting fitted with prosthetics to change the appearance of his face. For Catch & Release he related how Tim Olyphant was less than thrilled with how he chose to deliver his dialogue in a scene. Kevin wagered that his performance would get a better rating from a test audience than Olyphant’s, and was proven right at a test screening he snuck into.
• Reese Witherspoon winning the Best Actress Oscar: (For those of you that have not read about Kevin’s past dealings with Ms. Witherspoon, check out this link: http://www.viewaskew.com/press/psycomic/5.html.) His response was that he thought she definitely deserved it, stating that it’s never been her acting talent he doesn’t like, but rather the person herself.
• Ain’t-It-Cool-News talkback forums: While he had some fun responding to some criticism leveled at him on that forum, it’s not something he sees himself doing again anytime soon.

After the Q & A session wrapped up (or rather, when the Wizard World organizers told him he had to wrap it up) he treated the panel to a clip from Clerks II, featuring Randal arguing with a co-worker and a customer about the Lord of the Rings movies, and followed that up with the first theatrical trailer.

Well, that’s another Kevin Smith Q & A over and done with. My only disappointment was that Jason Mewes took off less than five minutes after he arrived. Having seen him in action during past sessions, I can say that although Kevin is more than capable of carrying these Q & A’s on his shoulders, they’re just not the same without Mewes’ offstage antics.

For anyone that hasn’t had the opportunity to see the man in action (or inaction, depending on your viewpoint), you’ll obviously have to wait until he attends another convention (most likely ComicCon International in San Diego this summer). However, if he’s not scheduled to visit your area anytime soon, don’t panic. He’s been doing the Q & A thing at various conventions and universities for some time now, some of which have been collected on a DVD called An Evening With Kevin Smith. If he isn’t scheduled to hit your town anytime soon, this DVD is definitely the next best thing to being there in the audience.