My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (17 page)

When I get home, Mewes is all over me about going with him to the Caddy dealership to co-sign a two-year lease for him (Mewes has shit credit at the moment). I tell him we can go right after I’m done at CNN, and he tells me he’s heading to the bank to grab the deposit for the lease. I take a shower, get dressed, then head over to CNN.

I run into some of my old new friends at CNN; then, they put me in the chair, give me the earpiece, and get NY on the line. Apparently, they like me over at
Showbiz Tonight
(as this is the third time I’ve been on in four weeks) but they don’t trust me to be on live anymore (because of the ol’ “golden showers” comment). They’re paying a bunch of dough in satellite time to have me comment on
Sith
, though you wouldn’t know it based on the amount of yakking the hostess is doing in her lead-up to the question. Mid-answer, she cuts me off to comment on my commentary. It’s a strange way to run a whorehouse (bring a guy all the way over to the office just to essentially listen to the host’s thoughts on the topic at hand on-air), but eventually, we both get through it with little incident, and I’m off on my merry way.

On the ride back home from CNN, Mewes calls to see if I’m ready to hit the Caddy dealership. He’s also out on the road, so I tell him to meet me at the View Askew office, where we’ll leave his car and drive to the dealer in mine.

I get to the office and Susanah Grant calls my cell. I bitch about CNN for a beat, until she cuts to the chase and gives me some guff about not going to my fly-fishing lesson. I apologize and tell her I’ll fly-fish my ass off the week before we start and all through the shoot, just hitting ten and two non-stop. She tells me that after rehearsal on Saturday, the hair department’s gonna come look at my mop and see what’s-what for the show. I ask if I’m gonna be allowed to rock my mullet, and — devastatingly — she tells me no: the mullet’s not gonna be in the movie.

Now, am I insanely pro-mullet? No. But I’ve been growing this shit out for the last three months in prep for
Clerks 2
— fighting with my ol’ lady about it, wearing it on national television — only to suddenly learn that I’m gonna have to hack it off. So when I hang up, I launch into a tirade for Scott and Phil about how powerless it is to be an actor and have someone telling you where to go and how to cut your hair. Mos and Phil are looking at each other like “karma, bitch...” Mewes arrives to hear me bitching about cutting my hair and immediately objects, as I haven’t let him cut his hair in over a year in prep for
Clerks 2
. I tell him to shut the fuck up: actors are to do what they’re told. Bryan Johnson pops in and opts to take a ride with Mewes and me to the Caddy dealer.

On the ride over, we talk about Bry’s ex and the bad weirdness in her life. But the bad weirdness is yet to come, as we get to the Caddy dealer, pick out the car, and fill out all the lease agreements... only to then learn that California rolls a lot differently than Jersey when it comes to co-signing.

I was set to throw my name down as financial security for the dealership — so that if Mewes defaulted on his lease payments, they’d come looking for me. This is co-signing for a lease/loan as I’ve always understood it (and done it) back home. Out here, there is no co-signer; it’s only co-buyers. What that means is that I’d be leasing the car with Mewes, right down to having my name on the registration too. This isn’t good, because it means that if Mewes gets into an accident, I get sued as well. As much as I hate to, at this point I decline to co-sign/co-buy. Mewes understands, but is bummed — as he was a mere signature away from being a car-owner (he was leasing-to-buy). Thankfully, another option presents itself.

There’s another Caddy, the same model that Mewes wants, only a few years older, with merely three thousand miles on it, available on the used lot. It’s a thirty-thousand-dollar car, and the manager of the dealership says that if Mewes puts a third or more of the price down, he can probably get him financed for the rest. Mewes checks out the car, and likes it even more than the new Caddy he was gonna lease, so he’s in. The manager says to give him a day to pull the paperwork together. Mewes — ever the very essence of patience and serenity — offers the guy five hundred bucks to make the paperwork happen now. The manager, bless him, says he doesn’t need five hundred bucks that badly, and tells Mewes he’ll call him tomorrow.

I drop Bry and Mewes off at the office and head home, just as Jen and Harley are coming back from Target and various errands. We put Harley to sleep and head upstairs, where we settle into an Anna Paquin flick called
Darkness
, while checking email and reading the board. When the movie wraps up, we head downstairs, cuddle up, and fall asleep to TiVo’ed
Simpsons
.

Wednesday 4 May 2005 @ 11:03 p.m.

It’s not the dogs but Jen who wakes me up, as we’re going into Harley’s class to read books this morning. I quickly jump in the shower then go looking for a book to read. I dig out the DC hardcover from a few years back called
Bizzaro Comics
, leaf through it, find a pair of stories, and join Jen and Harley in the car.

At the school, we head to the front of the class to read to the group. I’m too leery to sit in one of the tiny chairs (lest I simply accept it up my ass, it’s so small), so I take to the floor, while Jen sits in one of the kiddie chairs with Harley on her lap. Harley starts off the Smith Family Reading Extravaganza with one of her training books. Jen follows, reading a kids book about a young Mia Hamm and another book about a British kid with a weird fashion sense. Then it’s my turn. When the kids hear the first stories about Hawkman, I immediately win over the boys in the class. When I move onto the story about Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot, I win the girls. And when I bust with the story about the little boy who finds the Bat Cave, I’ve got ’em all. It’s weird, the power Batman has over little kids, even to this day. I guess it plays into what Stan Lee has always felt was appealing to kids about Spider-Man: beneath that mask, he can be anyone — so any kid can imagine he’s Spider-Man. Batman has a little of that going for him, but he also has the credibility factor: he’s not from another planet, he’s not freakishly strong, and he’s not invulnerable. It’s his humanity that appeals to kids, I think, that and his suit and car.

Afterwards, Jen and I grab some Griddle and head home. I check email and get into updating the online diary when Mos IMs me about it being time to head to the store for the
Mallrats
documentary interviews.

I swing over to the office, pick up Mos, and head to the Stash. As we get there, Mewes is just finishing his interview. I jump in his grave, shut the store, and do an hour with JM Kenny about the history of the flick and how it found another life on home video. As per usual, sound asks that the air conditioner be shut off, so while we’re getting good sound, I’m sweating my balls off. My face and hair look like I dipped them into a toilet.

When I’m done, I clear the way for Scott to do his interview and head outside to talk to Chappy. I suggest we go for a ride around the block so I can sit in front of the air conditioner in the car and cool off. We take a spin to In-N-Out, and Chappy and I talk about the Richard Kelly book project as well as a new trade paperback for the
Clerks
comics that’ll include a story that happens between
Clerks
and
Clerks 2
.

We head back to the store and meet up with Gina and Scott, who has just finished his interview. Me, Chappy and Gina go over the proposed September street date for the
Rats
DVD and try to figure out if we can do a signing at the store in the midst of the
Clerks 2
shoot. Since we’re only gonna be shooting five-day weeks on
C2
, a weekend signing sounds like it’d be in order. However, holding it the weekend after the title streets seems kinda pointless. We quiz Meredith from Universal about the feasibility of doing a weekend signing at the Stash the weekend before the disc streets (always an iffy proposition, as other retailers might feel you’re getting an unfair advantage). Mosier delivers the coup de grace, pointing out that a weekend event would get on the Monday night news,
E.T.
and
Access Hollywood
, and presumably drive the sales of the next day release. Meredith agrees, and says she’ll push it with the higher-ups.

Jason Lee is in the hizzy, so I say hi and give him a hug before he sits down to do his interview. While he’s engaged, I hang out in the back alley with Bob, Gina and Scott. Mewes — who’s not only there for his interview but is also working the store that day — joins us to reveal that the manager from the car place has given him the nod for the financing deal. Mewes wants to race over to the dealership immediately, but I tell him he’s gotta wait, as we’ve got a new Stash commercial to shoot for the DVD.

Lee finishes up, and him, Mewes and I wing the commercial (a companion piece to the Stash commercial on the special edition
Dogma
DVD). Once he’s done, Mewes is off Jesse Owens. We say g’bye to Lee, and then I head to the back of the store again to answer some EPK questions. Once that’s out of the way, I also shoot a quick
Clerks 2
hype spot for Harvey to take to Cannes to amp up the overseas buyers. We wrap everything around seven, at which point Mos and I race back to the office so I can drop him off and he can get to Cookie’s party before it starts.

I get home and Jen’s putting Harley to bed. She doesn’t want to tell her we’re going out, as it’s our last night at home before the Vancouver trek. So Jen, dressed up and in heels, fronts like she’s just going upstairs to watch TV. My job is to sit downstairs until the kid’s asleep. Once the coast is clear, I’m to collect Jen so we can head over to Cookie’s party. Quinnster stalls and stalls, refusing to go to sleep. I put the dogs up on the bed with her, but she still won’t close her eyes. Finally, I head upstairs and tell Jen we should just go, as we’re already an hour late. We ask Gail to lay down with Harley and to tell her we went to In-N-Out if she asks where we are.

We get to Alex’s party at this restaurant near Silver Lake. We’re seated outside at a long table with like twenty-five people in attendance, most of whom I know, some of whom I don’t. I sit next to some cats I know: Mos, Dave Klein, his wife Marty, and Sue McNamara, our production manager on
Dogma
and
Strike Back
. We chit-chat for awhile, catching up, and chow down while Jenny flits about, working the party, talking to Cookie, Catherine and Annaliese (who’s back from a year in New Zealand, working on
King Kong
). The birthday girl, as one might imagine, is radiant.

At eleven, the outdoor portion of the restaurant stops serving booze, so the party starts breaking up to head inside. Jen and I excuse ourselves, as we’ve got to get up early to pick up donuts in the morning and then the drive ahead of us all day tomorrow.

We get home and Jen heads upstairs. I hear a car pull up to the house and take a peek out the library balcony to see a somewhat new, black Caddy pulling up. I head downstairs where Mewes is gingerly parking and re-parking his car as close to the garage doors as possible. He gives me the grand tour of the vehicle, then we say g’night and head inside.

I climb into bed beside Jenny and we fall asleep to a TiVo’ed
Simpsons
.

Thursday 5 May 2005 @ 11:03 p.m.

I’m with this girl who I don’t know/can’t place, who proposes a three-way with Jen, but then seduces me into some one-on-one. The chick kinda looks like Mewes’s ex girlfriend Lauren, but it can’t be her, as I haven’t seen Lauren in a dog’s age, and even when I did, she wasn’t really my type. The weird thing about her is that this chick’s got massive fucking nipples — monstrous even. They’re so big and thick around that they’re almost like a pair of cocks planted on her boobs (paging Dr. Freud...). I eat her out, she sucks my dick, we bone and cum, and then I excuse myself, as I have to get back to school. I rush back to my old alma mater, Henry Hudson Regional, where I’m somehow still a student, even though I’m also an established filmmaker. I hit the boy’s locker room to wash my face off, so my high school wife, Jen, can’t smell some other chick’s pussy all over my muzzle. I’m hating myself for doing the unthinkable and cheating when I suddenly wake up and discover that, mercifully, it’s all been a dream. I have the same sense of relief I have when I wake up from dreams about being murdered.

Since Byron’s bed-ridden, letting the dogs out in the a.m. requires the climb up to the third floor. I make the climb, take a leak, swish some mouthwash, then head back to the room and open one of the black out curtains, so Harley and Jen can gradually wake up. I grab my laptop and head to the bathroom, where I open up a bunch of nude and sexy pics I keep of Jen, and tug one out in an almost conciliatory manner, to wipe any trace of the sex with a stranger out of my subconscious. After I finish, I check email for a few minutes before I hear the knock on the door of Jen, telling me to hurry up so we can get to school.

I get dressed and head downstairs. I grab the
Daily Variety
off the front stoop, load Jen and Harley into the car, and head over to Winchell’s while reading the paper. When we get to Winchell’s, I tell Jen I want to stay in the car, as a man on a diet shouldn’t have to walk into a donut store. Jen points out that it’s not a great neighborhood, and I grumble as I drag my ass out of the car and join the girls at the counter inside. I bury my face in the
Variety
, so as not to let a single one of those sweet temptations break my stride.

We bring the three boxes of donuts to Harley’s class as a sort of going-away present. The kids are already in their reading circle, so we leave the donuts for them, say goodbye to Cricket, and kiss and hug Harley. I tell Harley that it’s a safe bet we won’t have taken to the road by three, so we’ll probably see her after school anyway.

We stop at McDonald’s on the way home and grab some hash browns and a Diet Coke for the Princess and some sausage patties for me. While in the drive-thru line, I throw out this suggestion: maybe we should skip the Skywalker Ranch première and drive straight up to Vancouver. As it stands, I have to be in Vancouver for three hours of rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, which was gonna require me to fly to Van and back to San Fran on Saturday so that we could continue our drive on Sunday. As much as I’d like to kick back in the Gershwin Room and see
Sith
projected and listen to it on the Stag Theater screen, the most responsible thing to do would be getting to Vancouver by Saturday morning and immersing myself in
Catch & Release
. Jen agrees.