October 25, 2009

  • *edit* I was asked to take the videos down, so I guess ignore any mention of it in my recap? Oh and NO you cannot request me to give you a copy of my footage. SORRY

    There's been a lot of movie director/writer/actor Kevin Smith this past week. First he was a special co-host to the Kevin & Bean radio show on the weekdays (whose zooming who?), and then he tops it off with an "Evening with" appearance at The Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, CA. That's where I was this past night, to see him do what he does best. Talk. Usually I catch his Q&A's over at the San Diego Comic-Con relatively for free, but this time around, I was more than willing to pay for the Kevin Smith experience.

    I've never been to the Orpheum Theatre before, but to my pleasant surprise, it wasn't hard to find, and parking was a breeze. I brought my digital camera with me, but I wasn't sure if it was allowed. When I walked through the doors however, no one bothered me about my camera, as it turns out the only rule regarding that is to not take flash photographs. No problem there. His Q&A was scheduled to run for 3 hours straight, but I had enough batteries and memory cards to fill that time.

    Once Kevin Smith stepped out, he did his opening statements, starting with how this wasn't a sold out show. I'm surprised myself, but go figure. Actually I wonder if it's because people like me upload his Q&A's to youtube, which gives people a little bit of incentive to just wait for those. If that IS the case, I apologize Mr.Smith. Well I did indeed capture the night on video, except for maybe about 30 minutes of it, when I decided to give my camera and my arms a rest. I did try and limit each video segment within the 10 minutes limit that youtube has, but that turned out a bit futile for some of his answers. In particular, there was one question where he actually spent about ONE HOUR to answer. Because of that, I learned that my digital camera can record roughly near 40 minutes straight of video, before it automatically stops recording. That was almost the moment when I decided to take a rest from recording until the next question. I think my digital camera was being pushed to it's limits, because the auto-focus was acting up, and it couldn't handle the lighting well in a consistent manner. My ability to hold the camera still this time around wasn't the best either, so sorry about that.

    You can just watch all 19 videos that I have from the Q&A (link below), which saves me a bit of time describing what he talked about in this blog (like Silent Bob's secret origin?). If you've never heard a Kevin Smith Q&A before, be warned that his language is very much rated NC-17, and this night was no different. As for what he talked about that I did not end up recording...

    He did talk about how the underwhelming opening weekend of "Zack & Miri Make A Porno" really disappointed him, which in a way pushed him to smoke pot a lot more than he ever has. The movie made "two..." "TWO-welve million?" "No, Two Point something." "Holy Crap, I killed Seth Rogen's career!" So after that happened he apparently took time off away from the public eye and the internet, which got him to stay home and watched DVD/TV more.

    He talked about watching a Wayne Gretzky documentary that affected him emotionally a lot more than he expected. "Go to where the puck is going, and not where it is." Kevin Smith says that's what he tries to live up to, when he made his movies. Very inspirational right? "Gretzky is like the Jesus of Hockey. In fact, he is better than Jesus in Hockey. Because there is more real life footage of Gretzky than Jesus has." When he learned about how the accident of Walter Gretzky caused him to forget about his son Wayne's life, Kevin Smith supposedly broke down in tears to his wife, who responded "you have a drug problem." He did say that he is going to make a Hockey movie, so that's something that came out of this.

    Kevin Smith then talked about how writing a Batman comic book high on pot may not be the best plan. Especially when he wrote a plot where Bruce Wayne was taking a swim in the waters of his girlfriend's remote island and suddenly sees Aquaman himself show up. Here, I'll try and remember how parts of that conversation went.
    Batman : "Arthur (Aquaman), what are you doing here?"
    Aquaman : "I thought you were in trouble, because what are you doing swimming here? Are you escaping from a villain? I heard somebody yelling "Dee-Dee."
    Batman : "That's what my companion calls me." (Dee-Dee is apparently his girlfriend's pet name for him)
    Aquaman : "Robin calls you Dee-Dee?!"
    Now we know what a Batman movie might end up being, when done Kevin Smith style.

    While those three subject matters don't seem connected, they were actually the last parts of that big one hour answer he did for one of the questions. Which now that I think about it... that's quite an answer he made. Kinda wish I actually did capture all of that on video. It was classic.

    True to the schedule (and possibly because Kevin Smith is going to see Craig Robinson's show a few blocks away right after) he ended the Q&A at 11PM, despite the fact there were many people who could have asked him more questions. Some of those people BTW should not be asking him questions, but Smith always handle's those situations really well. I swear, his "evening with" shows are really like hanging out with a friend, who just happens to have a lot of funny and interesting things to talk about. Kevin Smith, you da man!

    * click here for the PHOTOS I took *