A Look at My Increasing Acceptance of Latter Day Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith

In all honesty, I have had a tough relationship with Kevin Smith in the past five years. To summarize, he was an influential figure to me in a lot of ways. Discovering Clerks and his body of films left a lasting mark on me, creating a desire to generate content and discover my voice of pop-culture infused analyses of the world. However, the older I got and more aware of the moment that I did, something slipped. I felt a little betrayed by Smith for his sudden change of pace. With the release of Tusk this week, I want to believe that the good old Smith is back and making compelling pictures, but I am also left with the impression that things are irreparable at this point. This is, yet again, another lament on the subject of Kevin Smith.

It is true that Clerks was one of those formative films. Chasing Amy is even more of that with it ranking in my Top 10 Favorites. While it hardly qualifies as high art, its impersonal nature and dedication to skewering the norm remains influential to me. I occasionally still drop references here and there depending on the mood. Unlike figures like Adam Sandler that you obviously grow out of for reasons of quality, there is a sense of passion to Smith's work that I can't help but shake. He made the slacker into an art form and turned pop culture into a lexicon long before The Big Bang Theory attempted the same thing. He was in many ways an important cultural figure of the 90's. In fact, I still kind of envy his world building, no matter how basic it actually is. The idea of several characters coexisting seems like a great idea.

The story is familiar. He convinced me to write about film and TV culture as a passion. However, when Cop Out came out, I was torn. The film itself was awful. Considering my bar for Zack and Miri Make a Porno being "pretty good," it isn't like I had low expectations. Instead, it was soulless and I initially would write it off as a failed attempt. Meanwhile, with the internet evolving and the ability to interact between fans and criticism becoming more prevalent, I was torn. He hated people who hated Cop Out and insisted that the critics were to blame. He called for them never to see his films again without paying. He made a big hoopla about it and soon, I was forced to decide what my true feelings were. Do I stand by an artist whose product was awful and denounces the career decision that I was influenced by him to make? Things had to make sense.

The issue continued with Red State. It still didn't shake. I tried to get into his podcasts, but the further into the hole I got, the more obnoxious the repairing became. His jokes were becoming more crass and the desire to get high overpowered what made me like him. His SModcast podcasts including Jay and Silent Bob Get Old started to blur together into something undesirable and boring. This was my life for a few years following Cop Out. I tried to find that influence in him again, even if I had moved onto Francois Truffaut and James Whale. I still have that passion buried inside to write contemporary conversations like he does, though not as crass. In fact, I still see some of his influence in my writing, which is a little unnerving.

In the past year, I feel like I have gotten over my grudge against the man who decried critics as a cancer. It wasn't recently when he denounced his feud with critics, but sometime last year. It was a wound that took awhile to heal, so soon I had to stop my "I hate you because you disowned me" attitude and went straight to appreciation. I figured that even if I don't get him back. Even if he appeals to a demographic that I no longer feel deeply rooted to, I admire him from a strategic standpoint. He can sell Red State to an audience effectively with road show-type behaviors. He can entertain with nothing more than a microphone. Even if I found his book "Tough Shit" to be a complete letdown compared to his earlier work, I admired that he built an empire and maintained it. Most of all, has still released far more films that I find influential than awful, so there's that.

Yes, I try to claim to be a high class cinema guy. However, there's still the roots. Chasing Amy (which was also my first Criterion purchase) has a strange influence on me to this day. Even his An Evening With DVD's occasionally receive my referencing (though not the latter ones outside of this series). The issue is that I sort of disowned him during a period that can easily be described as "frustrated writers block." This is evident in Cop Out or his contradictory attitude to his naysayers by saying himself "Cop Out sucks." Even if Red State felt like a gimmick to get back at the Westboro Baptist Church, it was a move that felt different. Sure, combined his last five films could be seen as an identity crisis, but I have come to admire his desire to branch out.

In fact, I would argue that SModcast has been pretty good as of late. He is more clairvoyant and less reliant on cheap and boring jokes. He's still juvenile and I doubt I will love him as much as I did a decade ago, but I want to say that I like him again. I miss his comedies, but Cop Out was probably that call that he was burned out on that genre. I applaud him for moving into horror, even if I don't feel he is all that successful. There's something twisting in his brain and despite having an infrequent release module (Clerks III and Hit Somebody remain consistently on and off), he at least has ambitions that sound appetizing. They may not be high caliber like Dogma, but hey, there's still value in a Kevin Smith-esque trilogy on Canadian culture.

I am not entirely sure what I am trying to get at here. I still feel like Tusk is too much of a gamble and I am reluctant to see it. In fact, I wonder why it is getting a wide release this weekend. Even then, to know that the filmmaker is contempt after juggling a million projects and announcing retirement prematurely is quite something. Yes, it may be hypocritical to be a critic and like his work, considering that Judd Apatow and Dan Harmon have practically stolen his empires, but there's still merit in the 20+ career that has gotten interesting in a hit-and-miss way. Sure, Richard Linklater and Quentin Tarantino are likely to grab your attention more, but with Tusk, I want to believe that Smith is entering a fascinating period where he isn't mad at anyone but himself for making weird movies. Will it pay off? I doubt Tusk will shine at the box office, but that's more because it makes no sense (in a great, midnight movie sort of way). If nothing else, his podcasts have a sense of quality to them again, and that alone is worth visiting.

Why did I make a big deal out of mentioning my relationship with Kevin Smith? In all honesty, he was a figure that I admired and have had issues coming to term with. He was like an idol until he became overly vulgar and mean spirited towards critics. Is he my favorite director? No. However, in the past year, I have secretly been getting back into his work and appreciating what he's done. Even if he never flies as high as I would want again, he at least remains an interesting force of compelling dialogue-producing cinema.