The Lost Kevin Smith Interview
In celebration of the 15th anniversary of 2010's Cop Out
In honour of the 15th anniversary of Cop Out (2010) - an anniversary that has me feeling nostalgic and sentimental - I am pleased to present this long-forgotten article that I wrote for The Varsity, the student-run University of Toronto newspaper. Along with several other Toronto journalists, I attended a roundtable interview with Mr. Smith about a week before Smith’s much-maligned entry in the buddy-cop genre hit theatre. Scholars of Smith lore may be fascinated to know that this roundtable took place mere days before Smith’s infamous “too fat to fly” incident.
This article was first published February 22, 2010.
Oh, That Kevin Smith
By Will Sloan
“How’s everybody doin’ this morning? Waddya wanna talk about? I know we haven’t seen the movie so it’s gonna be impossible to talk about it. We could talk about the making of it, we could talk about me theoretically selling out, we can talk about any number of things…except for the plot itself, apparently, but to be fair, we would’ve spent about 20 seconds talkin’ about the plot. It’s one of those movies. I love this movie to death and you’ll enjoy it—I think you’ll enjoy it. If you’re a movie geek, I think you’ll enjoy it.”
Kevin Smith continues: “When I was a kid you’d always read interviews about Spielberg and Lucas and when they made Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars movies they always referred to it as, ‘We just went back to the past and took the serials that we loved and made our version of it.’ Now, I’m not sayin’ that we got Raiders of the Lost Ark on our hands. We don’t. But I remembered that when we were makin’ this movie and I was like, ‘Y’know, I’m gonna approach it the same way…I’m gonna go back to my youth and all the buddy cop movies I watched growing up—those were my serials, so to speak, ’cause during the ‘80s that’s all they made—and I’m gonna try to make that now.”
This is a heavily condensed version of the unprompted three-minute monologue that Kevin Smith, the Clerks director and erstwhile Silent Bob, immediately launches into at a roundtable interview while promoting Cop Out, his Bruce Willis / Tracy Morgan action comedy. To call him talkative is an understatement: Smith has become as famous for his Q&A tours as his films, and being at the roundtable is like having one’s own “An Evening With Kevin Smith.”
Cop Out is the first film Smith directed but did not write, a move prompted by the indifferent reception that greeted his last film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. “I was crestfallen. I was just destroyed by that. I was just like, ‘All this work and we just did the same fuckin’ thing we always do. What am I doin’? There’s no point, I’m just spinnin’ my wheels at this point—nobody cares anymore. I’m irrelevant. Judd Apatow does what I used to do way better than I do. I should just get out of this business.’ And I went and shut myself in the library and started smokin’ lotsa weed. Lotsa weed, and lots and lotsa hockey videos.”
Smith is the most candid filmmaker I have ever met. How candid? Consider his response to a question about Bruce Willis: “Working with Bruce Willis as an actor in Live Free or Die Hard was amazing. Working with Bruce Willis as his director on this movie was tough … Bruce is used to making the movie that’s in his head.” Or a random aside: “…and I’m fuckin’ around on Twitter, talkin’ about eatin’ my wife’s asshole or somethin’.” Or his reaction to the title change from A Couple of Dicks to Cop Out, prompted by TV networks’ refusal to run ads with the word “dicks” before 9 p.m.: “23-year-old Kevin Smith woulda been like, ‘Fuck ’em! I’m gonna die with dicks in my hand!’” Being Kevin Smith, he also mimes giving two simultaneous handjobs.
Smith has a cult following as devoted as any filmmaker, but he has often seemed unreasonably sensitive to detractors, going so far as to feud with critics and defend himself on message boards. He does not need to be prompted to spend several minutes explaining his new attitude about the haters: “Look—you can like my shit or not like my shit—and there are people in both camps—but you have to agree I’m an absolute heart player. You can sit there and be like, ‘God, movie’s got a lotta heart no talent, but a lotta heart!’ But you can see I put everything into it.”
He alludes to his often modest box office performance. “Why on earth did I think any of the bullshit I made SHOULD make a hundred million dollars?! Y’know what I’m sayin’? It’s not populist entertainment! It’s bloggy! I didn’t make films, man—all those years people were like, ‘You’re not a director,’ and I’d be like, ‘Yeah I am.’ They’re right, I’m not a director—they’re fuckin’ dips for sayin’ it, but they’re right! I wasn’t a guy who was directing, I was just rippin’ open my chest and pullin’ out fatty chunks of heart on a platter and puttin’ it up on a projected screen.” He mimes pulling out fatty chunks of heart from his chest.
“They’re absolutely right: those aren’t films, they’re blogs. This [Cop Out] is a movie. For the first time I can stand by this and be like, ‘Hands down this is what most everyone on the planet agrees a movie is.’ And there’ll be lotsa people goin’, ‘Hey, man, you’ve been makin’ films for years, Chasing Amy’s brilliant blahblahblah,’ and for me it’s just like, I just wanted to test myself to see if I could swim with sharks. You know what I’m sayin’?”
“After Zack and Miri, that’s what I needed more than anything else: [to] completely recharge my batteries. And now y’all are fucked ’cause I’m here for another 15 years. Until the heart gives out from all the weight.”
Cop Out opens in theatres February 26.