Wonder Con: Day1

After a horrendous LAX experience, and I guess we all need at least 3, my WonderConning was off to a rocky start. That could be a blog unto itself, but as none of it was particularly nerdy, I’ll refrain.

By time we finally arrived at the convention hall it was nigh on 4:00pm and the prospect of a wasted day looked sadly like an inevitability, however there was a Kevin Smith Q&A at 6:00 and I thought if anything can put me right, an evening with Kev could.

After arriving in the ballroom very early, we were treated with episodes of “V,” “Fringe,” and “Human Target,” which were dumb, weird, and better than expected, respectively. Then we had a wait, our fiftieth since arriving at the airport at 7:00am. The tiredness was creeping toward the “pass-out-or-break-down” stage, when a guy came out to introduce “the man himself,” Kevin Smith. I saw Kevin Smith last summer at San Diego ComiCon from about the 200th row and while he was funny and I enjoyed myself, I wasn’t terribly moved by him. This time we were sat about 10 rows from the front and in fact he was directly in front of me the whole time.

Kevin Smith is one of the three filmmakers that directly influenced me during my impressionable late-teens and without him, I surely wouldn’t have gone into movie writing, let along blog-writing. Without putting too much emphasis on it, “Clerks” is the reason I wrote my first script, which sucked incidentally. I heavily immersed myself in Smith’s “Askewniverse” and quoted those films with my equally irritating college friends ad nauseum.

Still, in recent years, I’ve grown apart from Smith’s work as a filmmaker. As of last Thursday, I’ve sold all of his dvds, save “Clerks” itself. I’d moved on in my movie tastes, off of the likes of Kevin Smith and onto Stanley Kubrick. I wasn’t the emo 18 year old anymore. His films represented a specific time in my life and for the most part don’t hold the same feelings they once did.

Even though I had moved on from the man’s film work, I was and am still an avid fan of him as a personality. For the passed 111 episodes, I have listed to SModcast, which is a hilarious conversation Kevin has with one of his friends, usually his longtime producer, Scott Mosier. SModcast is often ridiculous and always entertaining, and it’s patently obvious that Kevin enjoyed SModcasting as much as I enjoy listening. He’d become less of a filmmaker in my eyes and more a commentator of popular culture. Was I selling the man short?

Friday night’s Q&A was definitely illuminating for me. Amid the usual kids asking dumb questions and Kevin responding with a barrage of lewd comments and stories, someone asked him out of all the many things he does (write, direct, edit, etc.) he enjoys the most. Kevin’s response was a bit of a shock. He said very simply that making movies doesn’t hold the same power over him as it once did, that now he enjoys interacting with people, via Q & As, Tweeting (or Twittering, I never know what the proper verb is) and especially SModcast. He enjoys the continual conversation with people those outlets provide for him. It’s the immediacy he craves.

He said that while he still loves film and enjoys making it, “it’s not religion anymore.” He also said that he looks at his film “Zach and Miri Make a Porno,” and it seems inauthentic to him. It was made by a guy who didn’t entirely believe what he was saying. All of this is very clear to me, as I wasn’t so much a fan of “Zach and Miri.” It felt forced. He made his name by making stories of foul-mouthed working class heroes, but couldn’t accurately depict that anymore. And that made me sad initially. One of my heroes didn’t speak to me anymore. But he felt the same way about it.

To hear this type of honesty coming out of a filmmaker is refreshing. Kevin Smith has always been overly forthcoming with details of his sex life or bowel movements (a story he told at the end of the night involved both having a two hour shit and trying to have sex with his wife for the first time high) but I’d never heard him be that frank about his career or where it’s headed. This is a man who thoroughly enjoys his life and what he’s doing. He’s at a point where people come in droves to hear him speak and listen to and read his every thought willingly and filmmaking is just another outlet.

There’s always going to be a new crop of young, whiny kids who discover “Clerks” or “Chasing Amy,” get inspired, and become Kevin Smith fans, and that will ensure that he’ll be relevant for years and years to come, which is really all he wanted in the first place. I can only hope to be so lucky.

You’re welcome.
-Kanderson