Mallrats really isn’t very good.

Back in 1995 when Mallrats came out, I was a Kevin Smith fan, having seen and loved Clerks, and I was definitely interested in seeing his next movie.  However, the reviews were really bad, and even more importantly, the reviewers said that the movie was really gross.

I don’t do gross.  I am a wimp; I can’t watch TV dramas set in hospitals or crime scene shows because I get squicked out so easily.  So when I heard that Mallrats had a scene so vile that it was making people sick, I knew there was no way I’d watch the movie.

But, if I wanted to edit a book on Kevin’s work, I thought I should really see all of his stuff, so off to the library I went (more royalties lost; put it on my tab, Kev).  By this time, I had read more about the movie, and knew about the pivotal scene of disgustingness (the infamous “stink palm”), but I figured I was ready for it.  Though I had heard it was a bad movie, in My Boring Ass Life, Kevin had said that he thought the movie held up okay, so I was ready to watch it with an open mind.

And the movie didn’t totally disappoint; it had some funny parts, as all Kevin Smith movies do.  That’s one of the reasons I like his movies and will always go see them in the theaters (see, Kev, you do make some money off of me).  I know that there will always be stuff that cracks me up, even if I don’t love the movie as a whole, and that’s what happened here.

The Jay and Silent Bob parts of the movie were very funny, in an over-the-top kind of way.  Mewes makes me laugh – he’s kind of a naughty man-child who can get away with saying almost anything because there is a sweetness behind his vulgarity, and Kevin’s Silent Bob works well because of his very expressive face.  So their stuff was good. 

As always, the movie had some great dialogue – smart, funny, and fast, but the problem I have was that I didn’t buy into the key relationship in the movie. Some of the acting was not so great, and the central part of the movie just didn’t hold up for me.

Overall, I think the main problem was the tone: the Jay and Silent Bob parts were funny in an exaggerated way, but the rest of the story had a more realistic feel to it, and for me, the two parts didn’t fit well together.  It was like two different movies put together.

Most surprisingly, the horrifying gross-out part that kept me from seeing the movie for so many years was actually no big deal.  I mean, the stink palm was gross, but the scene could have been much worse.  Things have changed so much since 1995.  If the movie had been done now, it likely would have been far more over the top.  When the guy who ate the stanky pretzels threw up, well, it was handled quite tastefully.  If it had been done now, there would have been vomit everywhere.  So I survived the gross part (though I did not snack during the movie).

Philosophically, there wasn’t much happening in Mallrats.  Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Clerks 1 and 2 provide more interesting things to talk about on that level, I think.

One thing that stood out to me as a positive and negative was Kevin’s use of in-jokes and references.  As a fan, I love it when directors/writers reference past works.  It’s like a treat that makes you feel like a part of something.  Joss Whedon does this a lot, and I really appreciate it; it is a way of acknowledging and appreciating loyal viewers.

Kevin definitely does a lot of this, perhaps too much at times.  A throwaway line like “He’s faster than Walt Flanagan’s dog” is one that very few people are going to get, especially at the time the movie came out.  The willingness to give a shout out to his friend is part of what makes Kevin so likeable.  And now that the story behind the line is out (in My Boring-Ass Life and one of the Smodcasts, I think), more people can appreciate it.

But it’s not really that funny for most of us, and too many in-jokes/references can end up being alienating for viewers.  Even though I am a fan, personally, I just don’t remember a lot of details about movies, so many of the references to characters from the Askewniverse in Mallrats went past me, even after reading about it right before seeing the movie.

My understanding, though, is that a lot of people really love the movie, and I get that.  Certain movies hit you at the right time in your life and work for you, even if they don’t for other people.  Maybe if I’d seen it when I was younger, it would have resonated more for me, but seeing it now, it was just okay.

So, now I’ve seen all of his work.  Time to investigate the world of Smodcast.

The Response: A Cop Out

At this point, I think my boyfriend was probably regretting having encouraged me in this project.  I have a tendency to get, shall we say, a little focused sometimes, and I was perhaps putting a little more time and energy into the project than needed.  I also talked about it.  A lot.

So he and I flew off to Miami Beach for vacation, and I wanted to forget about this whole thing for awhile.  I was really fed up, and had developed an irrational anger at Kevin.  What a jerk!  Not taking time out of his busy schedule to respond to a request from a stranger to do some work for no reward – how dare he be so rude!  Mr. All-about-the-little-guy couldn’t be bothered to help this little gal. 

But reason prevailed; I knew it had been a long shot, so I forgave him and we decided to see “Cop Out.”  Though I’m not a big cop/buddy movie fan, but I liked the movie.  It was funny and enjoyable; the little kid and the guy who played Stifler, especially.

I Tweeted Kevin that I had enjoyed the movie more than I’d expected based on the reviews I’d seen.  And what do you know?  He responded, expressing fake shock that reviewers could be wrong.  I had a feeling I’d get a response, given how he had been expressing a lot of dismay at movie critics lately.

He continued to ignore my Tweets about the book proposal, but I did take one more step toward making contact with him: I figured out the trick with getting email through to him at ViewAskew.

You should use the correct email address.

I hate being a stereotype.  I encourage my dog to love the mail carrier and not pee on fire hydrants.  But I frequently find myself confirming the stereotype about absentminded professors, and yes, this whole time I was using the wrong email address.  D’oh!  Once I used the correct address, the email went through no problem.  Score!  Except now I’m back to waiting, which as Tom Petty so accurately explained, is the hardest part.

Humiliation 2: Electric Boogaloo

I mentioned the idea of using Twitter to my mother, who explained to me how Twitter works.  I repeat:  MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME HOW TO USE TWITTER.  This is the same woman who only recently got an ATM card (“Why would I not just go to the bank for money?  They’re very nice there!”), only gave up the rotary phone because the phone company made her, and just recently discovered that they make these devices that will open your garage door for you!  And, yes, she knew more about Twitter then I did: “Oh, you just go online to twitter.com, enter your email address and make a password.  That’s all you have to do!”  Apparently, it was on one of her programs recently.

So, I created a Twitter account, and discovered that Kevin Tweets a lot. A whole lot.  I tried reading them, but found it pretty annoying to follow.  I like sentences, paragraphs, essays, blogs – good old fashioned stuff like that. 

I did think it was cool, though, how he frequently responds to people’s Tweets – acknowledging praise, responding to criticism, making jokes.  He’s a funny guy, and his high level of accessibility to fans is just plain nice.  He seems like such a good, down to earth guy; very likeable. All this increased my hope that he would respond to my request; he’d have to be willing to throw a quick email my way, right? 

So I figured out that I’d have to write a good, catchy Tweet to get his attention, and that I’d have to send it while he was online if I hoped for a response.  As most conscious human beings know, on Twitter, you get 140 characters to express yourself, and trying to explain my book project and what I need was kind of complicated for a Tweet.  So I set to work on my message, using those horrible text message abbreviations that I can’t stand. After a few attempts I came up with: “I’m proposing KS and Philosophy book.U say U like=more likely published.UR participation optional.Pls reply if interested.ty”  Mildly annoying, but I thought it got the point across.

Now all I had to do was catch him online and send it.  So I did. 

Nothing.

Crap.

Now I wasn’t sure what to do.  Did he read it?  Did it make sense?  Would it be rude to send it again?  I didn’t want to annoy him and get “KA-BLOCKED,” that is, blocked from sending him Tweets.  As a big fan of Miss Manners, I puzzled over the etiquette for awhile before deciding that trying again would be ok, but this time, I’d make it a question, as he did often respond to people’s questions.  So I sent this:

“Would you be flattered and/or amused by “Kevin Smith and Philosophy” book?”

By this time, I realized that he hated the stupid text-messaging abbreviations as much as I did, so this one had the advantage of being in actual English, and being a question that he might be interested in answering.

But he didn’t.

Double crap. 

Now sending another message would really be pushing it, I thought.  If he’s read them and if he’s seen the letters I’ve sent, he’s going to start thinking I’m a crazy stalker lady who won’t leave him alone.  But I really wanted to edit this book.  What could be more fun than having an academic project on movies you love?  As much as I love esoteric ideas in philosophy, I also love applying philosophy to everyday things.  Showing my students how they engage in philosophical thinking all the time without realizing it is one of my favorite things to do. 

Every semester, my human nature class does a paper in which they take a movie, book, piece of music, or work of art of other kind and show what it is saying about human nature, using the philosophers we have studied.  My favorite comment that I get from students all the time is that I have “ruined” movies for t hem – they can’t watch anymore without thinking about the philosophical concepts the movie is presenting.  Score!  That’s my job – ruining students’ lives by getting them to think.

So I sucked it up and Tweeted some more.  Four more times, I tried to get a response to a Tweet about the book, and four more times I was ignored.

I did finally get one response from him on Twitter, though.

It’s worse than no.

 First, my email was delayed – “DO NOT RESEND” the automatic message from View Askew said, so I d id not resend.  It would be rude to ignore an automatically generated email, and I am not a rude person.  Then, my message was not received, no reason given (though it said TIMEOUT on it).  I figured since the airline kerfuffle, he might be getting a lot of emails and his box might be full.

So I resent it.  “Delayed,” “Not Received.”

So I resent it. “Delayed,” “Not Received.”

Lather, rinse, repeat; you get the idea.

Aaaaarrrrrggghhh!  This is when I started getting frustrated.  I can be patient, but this was just so excruciating.  The decision about the book was going to be made in a few weeks, and I needed to get in touch with Kevin right away!  Ever the optimist, I kept resending that stupid email about every 2 days.  I figured maybe the swamping of the email would die down in a bit, and it would have to get through at some point, right?  Right?

In the meantime. mobilizing my forces, I put the boyfriend to work finding the name and addresses of View Askew Productions and Kevin’s agent.  As he has what the kids call “mad Internet skillz,” he found the information for me, so I sent letters to each, and an email to his agent.

Still nothing.

My fantasies of thoughtful, amusing chats with Kevin were starting to fade and I was getting crabby.  I really wanted to edit this book; it would be such a fun thing to do!

At this point, I started to consider the possibility of using Twitter.  Kevin clearly loves Twitter, and he responds to fans’ messages, so maybe, I thought, I could get through to him that way.  But I didn’t know how Twitter worked, which led to a level of horror I could never have anticipated.

Just get in touch with him…

So the day after I sent the proposal in, I heard from the editor of the series, who liked the idea (yes!).  But, he cautioned, books on directors haven’t sold as well, so if I could get “an informal promise” from Kevin that he’d consider writing a foreword or afterword for the book, it would help the chances of getting the go ahead for the project.

Well, cool, I thought.  I’ll have to get in touch with Kevin.  Even as a normal (non-fanboy) fan, I was excited by the prospect of communicating with him about the project. I imagined us having a thoughtful conversation about his work, sharing some anecdotes.  So I carefully crafted an email to send to him at viewaskew.com (with help from the boyfriend).  I tried for a breezy tone to sound as cool as possible (given that I’m a philosophy dork, this is not easy).  As a philosopher, I couldn’t help but pick up on the way Ed said that what I needed was an informal promise that he might consider writing something.  Not that he would definitely write something; just that he would think about it.  So I tried to make it clear to Kevin that all I needed was for him to say: “sure, I’d think about maybe writing something for you.”

Would he do it?  I had no idea.  It didn’t seem like a lot to ask.  Emailing me or Ed that he’d consider maybe writing something didn’t seem like a big deal; even if he didn’t really intend to do it, all I needed was the hint that he might think about it in the future.  Nothing legally binding.  But I really couldn’t see much benefit for him.  I doubt he’d get paid, and if he did, I doubt it would be a significant amount.  So it would be work for him without much reward.  The best I could say was that I thought it might expose his work to a different audience, but I’m not sure if academics are exactly his demographic.

Asking for a favor from someone I don’t know felt really awkward; hell, I have trouble asking favors of people I do know.  But, I swallowed the awkwardness and sent the email.  The worst that could happen would be that he’d say no.  Right?

“Oh, the guy who’s too fat to fly!”

 

I was almost done with my proposal when I heard about The Incident with The Airline That Shall Remain Nameless.  Aside from feeling really bad for him for being treated so poorly, I wondered whether this would be a good thing or bad thing for my proposal.  On the one hand, it really highlighted his popularity and the power of Twitter.  On the other hand, he was treated pretty badly by the media, and maybe the editorial board making the decision about the book would view him more negatively as “the guy who wanted special treatment and was obnoxious” (and if you’ve listened to his and Natali’s Smodcasts about it, you’ll know that his behavior was not a problem in any way.  It really sucks that the media have done their usual shallow treatment of the situation instead of paying attention to what was really at issue – the way that so many business will just lie to people, and not own up to mistakes they make.  Most of us get that human beings make mistakes, and when one is made, we just want to hear “sorry, we made a mistake.”  Instead, we’re in this weird place where no one takes responsibility for anything, and we get jerked around.  But I digress.).

I decided to mention the proposal to my mother, a great source of common sense advice, to get some outside perspective. 

Me:“It’s about the director, Kevin Smith.”  

Mom: <silence>.

 Me: “he directed Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma.

Mom:  <silence>. 

Me: “I told you that you weren’t allowed to watch Chasing Amy even though you love that Ben Affleck because you’d disapprove of the naughty language?”

Mom: <crickets chirping>.

 Me: “He’s the guy who’s too fat to fly.”

Mom: “Oh, that guy!” 

So I guess the incident has caused his name to be familiar to more people, though not for good reasons.  Mom gave the idea a thumbs up, so I forged ahead.

Unsure of what to expect, I sent the proposal off.  I was as nervous as if I were asking a guy out on a date.  Maybe this was a bad idea and the editor would laugh at me. Would he think I was an idiot?  What if he hates it?  Total dorky freakout!

The response came surprisingly quickly (that’s what she said).

Inception and Voiding: The Origin Story

 The idea began, like so many do, at 5:30 in the morning when I had to pee.

That night, my boyfriend and I had watched “An Evening with Kevin Smith.” While the DVD came out in 2002, I hadn’t even known about it (or the second one from 2006) until recently, when I had stumbled onto Kevin’s My Boring Ass Life in a bookstore. [I’m going to refer to him as Kevin, as I know more about his bowel movements and sex life than I do about most of my friends’.  And that’s not an invitation, friends.  Keep it to yourself.] 

While I was a fan of Kevin’s movies, having a uterus, I was just a regular fan, not a rabid “fan-boy” type.  When his movies come out, I’ll go to the theater to see them, knowing I’ll always get a laugh, but I didn’t know much about him, had never been to his website, and can’t recite endless movie quotes.  I didn’t even get “snootchie bootchies” right – I thought it was “snootchie booches,” like more than one booch (c’mon – it makes as much sense as snootchie bootchies). 

In fact, I hadn’t even seen all of his films.  The bad reviews Mallrats got were enough to prevent me from seeing it when it came out (though I plan on seeing it soon; just waiting for it to come through the library’s interlibrary loan – yep, I’m cheap). 

But I knew I liked his sense of humor, so I picked up the book that fateful day (as I am cheap, I only got it because I had a Christmas gift card; thanks, Mom!). In it, I read about the Evening withs, so I got one from the library (I owe you some royalties, Kevin).  It was really funny, and when I woke up to pee at 5:30 the morning after watching it, the idea of having a Kevin Smith and philosophy book came to me.  I got really excited, as I realized I could be the editor, which would be fun and very cool.  Realist that I am, though, I figured that someone had probably already done this book, so I tried to go back to sleep.

When I got up later, I immediately checked online and found that the book did not exist.  As I am prone to doing, I started second guessing myself.  Maybe this was a stupid idea; after all, the man specializes in dick and fart jokes, not exactly the best fit for an academic pursuit.  So I ran it past the boyfriend, and he liked the idea (he may be regretting that now).  I decided that I would follow through on this, and within a week, I had put together a proposal for the book and sent it in.

Just before I sent it in, though – “Fatgate” hit.