Seven Reasons We Love Kevin Smith
Today marks the 46th birthday of Kevin Smith, the director of some of Hollywood’s most unique and unforgettable movies set in and around a New Jersey convenience store that somehow became a landmark. Seven reasons, then. We could have done twenty. He would have.
One: Clerks. Made for less than a studio spends on sandwiches, shot at night in the shop where he worked, and still funnier about dead-end jobs than films with a hundred times the budget. If you have ever argued about Star Wars when you were supposed to be working, this one already knows you.
Two: he talks to an audience like a person. The Q&As, the podcasts, the way a story about a film becomes a story about his mate. Plenty of directors got famous and learned to say nothing. Smith got famous and learned to say everything, sometimes too much, and we would still rather have that.
Three: Jay and Silent Bob, a double act that should have been a one-film joke and became the through-line instead. Silent Bob is the better critic of the pair, which is a good joke if you know who is writing him.
Four: Dogma. A messy, talky, genuinely felt argument about faith that made studios nervous and fans less so. It is not subtle. It is a comic who loves the material enough to risk the boos.
Five and six, because he will not mind us bundling them: he casts his friends and keeps them, and he tells on the films that did not work. The brand was never perfection. It was showing up, including after the heart scare that turned into a whole new pile of stories.
Seven: he never forgot the shop. Plenty of geek-culture success stories sand the counter off their biography. Smith kept it in the frame. Happy birthday. Try not to spend all of it in a cape. Actually, do.