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The creator of Jay and Silent Bob shares his X-rated thoughts
in his diary, telling all in his usual candid, heartfelt and
irreverent way. Lewd, crude and hilariously rude, Kevin Smith
pulls no punches in this hard-hitting, in-your-face exposé
of, er, his rather dull and uneventful life... well, not always
dull. In between watching his TiVo, he manages to make and
release Clerks II, relate the story of his partner-in-crime
Jason Mewes's heroin addiction, get a tattoo, serve on a jury...
and get caught stealing donuts from Burt Reynolds. Thrown
in are his views on the perils of strip clubs, the drawback
of threesomes, the pain of anal fissures and his love-affair
with Star
Wars...
My
Boring-Ass Life is
an odd book. The majority of it reprints, I assume, over a
year's worth of director Kevin Smith's online diary. Whether
this has been edited at all is unclear as Smith's introduction
doesn't really explain whether this is reprinted in its entirety
or not.
While
I am a huge fan of Smith (and I loved his Silent
Bob Speaks
book) I almost gave up on My Boring-Ass Life. By page
10 I had really had enough of Smith's rather dull life. But,
because I am paid to, I persevered and read the entire 470
pages - and I am very glad that I did.
While
it would seem, at first glance, that Smith's life revolves
around being woken up by his two dogs, taking a morning dump,
driving out for breakfast, lunch and dinner (and snacking
throughout the day) on the worst kind of junk food (or the
best, depending on your point of view), watching tons of bad
(and the odd good) DVDs and falling asleep to TiVoed Simpsons
episodes, after a while you kind of get sucked into his life.
Every
now and then something interesting happens, like his wife
(Jennifer Schwalbach) organises a charity poetry recital evening
at their home with a number of celebrities giving readings;
Smith keeps us up to date on his time on someone else's movie
when he stars in Catch and Release; and Smith takes
his young daughter, Harley, to get her ears pierced - but
she panics at the last minute.
It's
moments like these that show Smith in a different light. Love
or hate his movies you can't get away from the fact that he
is a pretty good dad. And, despite having more money than
he knows what to do with (most of it goes on gambling at casinos)
he comes across as a really down to earth guy.
However,
there are sections of his book where he doesn't go into details
- just gives us a hint that something is amiss. Firstly, while
filming Catch and Release he reveals: "... a visiting
Affleck buddies up to me a bit, but I blow him off, as I'm
currently p*ssed at the guy." Smith doesn't go on to
explain why he's p*ssed with Affleck and I assumed it was
because of all those Internet rumours where Smith revealed,
in an interview, that he was mad at Affleck because he hadn't
asked him to guest star in the first movie he was directing.
But apparently that's not the case (as Smith is on record
as saying he was misquoted and that was a joke). So why was
Smith annoyed with Affleck?
He
also mentions that during an instant messaging chat someone
who was due to work on Clerks 2 was discovered to not
be who Smith thought they were and was dropped from the production.
For a while Smith mentions this incident but, probably for
legal reasons, we never find out what the full deal is.
For
me though, the highlights came in the Me and My Shadow
chapters which detail Jason (who plays Jay to Smith's Silent
Bob) Mewes's long history of drug addiction - which he's thankfully
now over; and Smith's cameo role in Bruce Willis's Live
Free or Die Hard. There are also great stories around
Smith meeting with Chevy Chase (when Smith was in the running
to direct a new Fletch movie). This resulted in Chase
giving a rather scathing interview where he slated Smith.
Now we get to hear Smith's side, and it's quite an amusing
story. And there's the Good Morning America movie critic
Joel Siegel, who writes a terrible review of Clerks 2 after
he stormed out of the press screening, making a spectacle
of himself in the process. In response Smith lets rip at the
guy, and to be honest I love the fact he has the ability to
reply in such a way as to reach more people than Siegel ever
had.
It's
this right to reply that I applauded while reading this book,
although I have to admit that I don't really understand why
he goes on chat rooms to kick-off against saddos who post
venom about him and his films. You can't reason with people
like that, so why bother? Just let them get on with their
sad little lives.
At
the end of the day this is an interesting book that lets you
spend just over a year in the life of Smith, his family and
friends. While large chunks of his life are indeed boring,
the majority is riveting stuff. Smith fans will love this,
and be left wanting more. And more there is - as there is
an online diary that is kept pretty much up to date.
Nick
Smithson
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£5.99
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£5.99
(Waterstones.com) |
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£9.99
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£9.99
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$10.17
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All prices correct at time of going to press.
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