Everyone is laughing and I am not. Kevin Smith's speech for SPEC is one long dirty joke with no punch-line. He is not talking much about film, but it does not seem to matter to the college audience that instead we get an anecdote about watching his father grope his mother at Morton's, the slow details of the reach between her legs the night that he died. Although it is likely that people are laughing because he is genuinely funny (he is a little bit funny), people are really laughing only because here is Kevin Smith, talking about how fat men are good at eating pussy because "here is a woman, and I better make an impression."
Kevin Smith is speaking about cock now as I write, thinking that I cannot possibly cull anything intellectual from this talk worthy of the neurological activity of my 40-thousand-dollar-a-year brain.
"Tons of buttfucking," he says. The audience laughs. Kevin Smith likes anal.
Here is an artist who, despite becoming a hero for disaffected suburban American youth (what can be more mainstream than that?), still plays the underdog-independent-filmmaker role. Kevin Smith has no problem getting financing for his films. He has no problem getting stars on his roster -- Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, J. Lo -- he can name-drop Hollywood stars as many times as he can say the word "cock." What is the meaning of his posturing then?
Two words: New Jersey. Smith embodies the neurotic complex of that shitty little state sandwiched between New York and Pennsylvania, two great states with a rich history. What does New Jersey have? Strip malls and convenience stores. Smith is commodified punk and Eminem -- he gives suburban American teenagers the street-cred they need to rebel so desperately against their mundane lives and mundane parents.
But he is mainstream: laughter fills the cavernous auditorium. The girl behind me has this annoying, automatic, piercing laugh. Is he drunk? Smith is so not funny right now it is counterpoint. The girl's voice is the laugh-track generated from a life of suburban mediocrity that Smith so brilliantly captures on film. He really connects with his audience.
I'm not laughing.
